Getting ready for the "Big Show"

The weekend was spent running around crisis managing erm, I mean "getting ready" for the big event. I could write pages and pages of what happened over the course of 2 days but for everyone's sanity I will stick to the highlights.

Set up

When we arrived at the venue there were people everywhere busily setting up stages, booths, registration etc. Things looked like they were well in hand until you got a little closer. 

Note the two dudes working on this sign: 

They are doing this because the sign which was supposed to look like this:

It literally had smoke coming out of it!! Me, trying to keep it together, asked politely if it was supposed to be doing that - I don't know, maybe it was a special effect? Dude responds, no but continues to stand there. I then respond "well, maybe we should turn it off because it might be on fire!". My lovely colleague who spent her days hanging out at the registration desk kept me posted on its status - mostly, not on fire.

Because now all the service providers were on site Mexico had lots of folks for me to "talk to". All these super keen folks would show up at the office wanting to know this and that - I would start responding and then *blank stare*. I would pause, and ask "habla Inglés" to which the response was inevitably - no. Great!

In good news, half of "the team" spoke Spanish but she couldn't be everywhere all the time so I was constantly borrowing other colleagues. Case in point, my one colleague (who later would be known as the knight in shining armour) ended up being the tech go to guy. He became besties with all the sounds guys and was awesomely cheered on during his panel.

In all his glory:

Documentation

At any event, even digital ones, there are always documents to be printed e.g. agendas, backgrounders etc. This had been an ongoing debate/issue for me but in the end Mexico agreed to print the docs. As we are touring around I see that they have arrived - perfect. I go over, open the box and a dark cloud emerges. They looked like garbage, logos were wrong "The Internet Openess" anyone? Well, thankfully this problem was solved quite quickly! Apparently the dark cloud had rained on them so they were also wet and destroyed so ended up in the garbage. 

Exhibit A

Exhibit B

Of course this caused a whole other issue - what do we do now?!?!? In 48hrs we had new documents produced and printed thanks to an awesome colleague in Paris! But alas, Mexico did not want us to benefit too much from these new versions. On the last day when we were looking for the extra copies, I was informed they had been thrown out. My superstar "team" member was once again on the case - she had her new hotel besties going through the garbage to find them. A few were recovered but the rest sadly, made up more of the tree carnage we had caused earlier that week.

This gives you a flavour of what our week shaped up to be. . .up at 5am and out of the conference at around midnight or so. . .and problems, problems and more problems!

Next up . . .Monday!