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| There Has To Be A Morning After! |
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| February 13, 2005 |
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Well, actually it's the 2nd morning after...but who's counting. The staff here at DANIMA have had a busy ride since mid-December - juggling new clients, current clients, Choose Niagara and 2 very important and labour intensive multi-media projects. February 11, 2005 at 10:05 am one of those multi-media projects came to a close. Over 700 people attended the Business Education Council of Niagara's Annual Partners Breakfast at the Sheraton Fallview in Niagara Falls. DANIMA's part in the city's biggest networking event was no small task. With our crack camera crew from Stamford Collegiate High School (and former student - Jumanji), with the assistance of AVW Telav's tech guru Mark Doucet and the DANIMA team (Nick, Tim and I), DANIMA was responsible for the audio/visual for the entire program. This entailed developing a Flash presentation that spanned the 2 hour program, camera work, music and making sure the whole thing ran smoothly.
That we did....in hindsight! It's funny what a difference a day or so makes. On Friday this great DANIMA ensemble pulled off a mistake free event...well, except for one thing. At an integral point of the program when the room went to black and an animated Pac Man movie appeared on the screen depicting the BEC's Board of Directors our "voice man", Mr. Rick McLean started into his commentary and, whoops, no sound. Mic is dead!! Ahhhhhhhhh! But the show had to go on. Sure, we scrambled...but at that point we could not go back. Funny thing is, the original version of this part of the show was made with no voice-over in mind. So, in all actuality it was fine. Of course, being perfectionists we agonized over this from that point on. The rest of the show was seamless....not a glitch (and that's tough for a live show)...we showed our resiliency and got the job done.
After the show we went over various scenarios of what we could have done but you can do that until you are blue in the face and it's not going to change what happened. But here's what we did get out of this small and fairly insignificant gaff - we need to be more prepared for malfunctions. Nick said it best when he said that we always practice and rehearse (and boy did we rehearse the day before) for perfection, but we need to rehearse for disaster. What happens if...? Great point. Something I think anyone who is involved in a live presentation needs to keep in mind. How do I handle a situation if "this" happens or "that" happens? Do I have a Plan B? Do we have back up computers, microphones, cameras, etc.? Most of this we do...but we never actually rehearse and say "okay boys, the computer froze...time for our disaster recovery or our plan B!". |
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In hindsight, Nick is right - the microphone malfunction was a blessing. It didn't ruin the show, in fact, nobody (except those privy to the rehearsal) knew there was a malfunction. So, next week as we prepare for the second of our 2 big multi-media projects, we will not only rehearse how to get it right...but what to do if something goes wrong!
There's always a good side to a bad situation....you just have to take the time and look for it. If something goes wrong....talk about...talk it through with your team and use it as a stepping stone to bigger and better things.
Ahhhh, this was therapeutic for me...hope I didn't put ya to sleep.
Enjoy the Super Bowl of Rock and Roll tonight (The Grammy's) and remember....the person with the most music when we die wins!!
Dave "a bit older, and a bit wiser" Rotella |
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