Funny things can happen when you get a ballroom full of pension plan actuaries and third-party administrators, and add booze and some disco music. More funny than you'd think, considering the demographic.

Mostly, people are a little more comfortable speaking their minds on what is really going on in the retirement business. And so after several days being embedded, more or less, with the folks at the ASPPA conference, I think I got an interesting glimpse at what remains unspoken underneath the relatively civil and businesslike proceedings in the retirement world. As I say, a few cocktails and repeated playings of "Gangnam Style" didn't hurt.

Turns out — and this is just the unsolicited and non-official commentary of show-goers, industry front-liners who have to deal with plan administration and 5500s and all of that mind-numbingly complex but impenetrable-to-civilians stuff that makes up the retirement world — that you're all facing a bit of an uphill battle.