The takeaway from the first story is simple: don't be a jerk.
It's harder to find a takeaway from the second story. How do you in general avoid making whatever mistakes Bill supposedly made with his seminar?
It's harder to find a takeaway from the second story. How do you in general avoid making whatever mistakes Bill supposedly made with his seminar?
You assume that being humble and acting in good faith will get you ahead in academic politics. From firsthand (but not personal) experience, sometimes you can do everything right and people will still get offended. You'll find no evidence of what went wrong, trying to piece together the event sequence after the fact, much like OP's experience. Of course, OP went out of their way to offend, I don't recommend that.
Academics tend to minimize risk [1]. If you try to interpret their behavior outside of that context, you will find it inscrutable, because not only are they playing in a different league, they aren't even playing the same game [1].
[1] much like C suites
By not figuring out what the faux pas's are for the local ecosystem, he was setting himself up for failure. If it wasn't this talk it would have been something else.
Grants are a big thing in academia.