I’ve got a lot more to show you from the USA but I couldn’t not post about Wikimania 2014. Wikimania is taking place right now at Barbican in London, and I’m writing this from the crew room, 12 and a half hours into todays shift. I have organised all the entertainment (that’s 4 stages and 150 artists over 3 days, fact fans) and last night I had the absolute pleasure of playing the Opening Ceremony, managing to homage some of my all-time musical heroes in the process.
For months and months this job has been a series of ever-increasing e-mails and frantic scheduling, and it wasn’t until about two weeks ago that the team as a whole started coming together. We moved into central offices, started staying the night at the staff flat and spending more time together, eventually moving on site to the Barbican at the start of this week. The last 5 days the whole team has been working as one, making this conference into something much bigger than the sum of our parts.
When you’re working in such close quarters and at such a constant pace it doesn’t take long for traditions to form. Close friendships and bonds are created in a matter of days. Entire relationship histories are formed after a single 16 hour shift. It only takes a weekend for certain journeys to become a daily ritual. Everything is a big blur of familiar and new. Constant snapchats, repeated lunch-hours, losing and finding my clipboard on a hourly basis, struggling with phone chargers, making finger puppets of everyone in the office and racing around looking for members of my various acts have all become part of my strange, current, frantic, Wikimania life. All together… YAYYYYY!
TAPE PARADE 