I’ve seen a magic show before, but never a mentalist, until this year’s keynote address at the Society of Maintenance and Reliability Professionals (SMRP) 2026 conference. My mind was legit blown by this mind-reading spellcaster. Christophe Fox’s show was amazing.

He performed a series of mentalism and magic demonstrations, including predicting audience members’ chosen playing cards and words, identifying drawings and personal thoughts, making audience members think they were touched when they were not, and predicting the result of a math calculation from randomly selected numbers.

I was kicked back and thoroughly entertained, thinking this wouldn’t be a keynote that I would write about. Wrong.

That sneaky sorcerer was about to make an unexpectedly good case for reliability. Fox was describing magic and what he does, assuring folks it wasn’t "supernatural." Phew! 

“Sometimes magic is just putting more preparation into a moment than anybody else would reasonably expect,” he said.

Sitting in the audience, we saw the finished product. I watched him read my colleagues minds, but we didn’t see is all the work that goes into that trick.

“What you don't see behind the scenes are the 1000s of hours of ideation, creative thinking, refinement over time, failure that needed to be tweaked, and collaboration with my peers to create an experience that feels like magic,” Fox said.

That maintenance mentalist! Isn’t that also the heart of successful reliability work?

Good reliability is often invisible for the same reason good magic is unseen. Like a magic trick, the better the reliability program, the less you see it.

The plant sees the outcome. Look at this trick! The machine runs, production hits the target, the shipment goes out, etc. The plant floor doesn’t necessarily see the hours and work that go into keeping everything reliable. The inspection that caught a developing failure. The lubrication PM performed before contamination caused damage. The standards and procedures that guide the right equipment decisions. The culture that supports it.

This isn’t a ground-breaking concept here, but who knew, you were in the likes of magicians and mentalists?