It isn’t meant to be a countdown, but somehow it is. There is just 1 Day left until the famous “Now, on with the show!” moment. But let me go back a bit further first:

T-19 days : I sat down with Johannes “Hänu” Hartmann from Decoy Collective.  We chose music for the opening reel, discussed open points regarding live-streaming,  and we went over the post-production schedule.

During the weekend there were a lot of livestream testing and checklist preparations.

T-14 days : Fabian and I held the first round  of rehearsals.  What can I say, I’m more than thrilled to have our speakers on stage!

During the same time there was the Frontend Conference taking place in Zurich.  Parts of the live-streaming setup was tested at the conference under real conditions.

T-7 days : The team of Swisscom Eventsolutions literally rewired the Gurten. They also installed fiber to allow the internet to work for our live-stream and for the audience to have wifi. In the afternoon we tested everything through. I’m truly stoked to see that happening!

T-4 days : Checking back with Bänz from Onebus to see how the Stage looks and discussing the transportation.

T-2 days : The stage needs big red TEDx Letters, they are moved from Zurich to Bern by car. Small Intro videos need to be cut, lists updated, last-minute-calls made.

So let’s go there 1 Day to go – All green (but still a lot to do)!

And next to the obvious and bulky things, there are a lot of small things you need to take care of:

Comfort Monitors : These are an essential piece for the guest speakers. They do not only have to see their slides, but also the big countdown clock for time keeping during the talks.  I can tell you from experience, testing a big countdown clock on the train in the morning, it leads to interesting looks … who else would have a fullscreen countdown clock on their screen in the morning?

Stage Riders: Every speaker has a different setup, not to mention the bands that need different microphones, signal cables and other things. A stage rider is needed for every speaker on stage and it needs to be prepared so that we can just pull up the right page and follow the instructions. This helps to lower the workload on the tech team and frees up precious time in case you need to improvise or fix a problem.

You see, our team is a crowd of busy bees currently. I gotta go, need to do some things today. 😉