Share The Moment: My Eurovision Song Contest diary

Until the 29th of May, it’ll all be about the 2010 Eurovision Song Contest, where I have the honour and pleasure of working (for the 4th year) as Manager Communications & PR. Trough this diary, I’d like to give you an insight on what my team and I are actually doing in the month leading up to this massive event, so you get an idea what it takes. Oh, and if you would like to know how I ended up working for the Eurovision Song Contest in the first place, check out the About me page. Enjoy!

17 May (-13)

The large number of rehearsals always impress newcomers to the Eurovision Song Contest. The event is one of the largest TV productions in the world, and bringing all the pieces together requires time. Lots of time! In total, there are over 100 hours of rehearsals on the Eurovision Song Contest stage every year. My editor Gustav wrote an interesting piece about the amount of time we spend on rehearsals at the contest!

Things are going according to plan here, I must say! NRK, our Host Broadcaster, is doing an amazing job, and it’s a great pleasure to work with people like Peter, Geir, Torbjørn, Stina and of course Jon Ola, our Executive Producer. I’m gonna miss them afterwards!

By the way, today is Constitution Day here in Norway! That means a lot of Norwegian flags, traditional dishes at the crew catering and happy faces (correction: there have been happy faces all the time).

We’ve had no major issues so far, just some small problems to be solved. A noisy entrance door, a not-so-smooth distribution of promotion material amongst the press’ pigeon holes, and we figured out how to communicate about the ash cloud concerns. Finally, we’re getting more strict regarding the accreditations of people who are not supposed to be here, simply because they don’t work, but just scout for promotion material. So far, Day 2!

15 May (-15)

Today is, what we call, Day Zero. It’s the day the Press Centre opens, but not much is going on yet for the media. The first journalists and fans have arrived, picked up their accreditation, and made themselves familiair with the Press Centre and the surroundings of the Telenor Arena.

We’re ready to rock tomorrow, when the first contestants will rehearse on stage and give their press conferences or fan meet-and-greets. We’re on schedule, and – fingers crossed! – have had no major, nor minor setbacks the past days.

As I write, the crew is doing a sound test at the Press Conference Area, to make sure everything is ready by tomorrow. Meanwhile, the press tent has been proven water-proof, since it’s pooring rain outside. A good job by Tent4Event from Sweden. Thumb up, guys!

More pics can be found on my Flickr account.

13 May (-17)

At the airport. It’s a busy day at Amsterdam Schiphol, because a lot of people are going for a long weekend holiday. It’s awkward to see how people are still unaware of the strict regulations on bringing liquids in your hand luggage. Or, as a fellow passenger said to the security employee about his 500ml bottle of lysterine: “And what if I drink it?”

We are ready to roll. Two days ago, we announced that people have the opportunity to record themselves doing that Eurovision Song Contest flash mob dance at home, at work, at school or in a public place, and upload it online. The best ones have the chance to appear during the live broadcast of the Final, and get their seconds of fame!

Last night, we finalised the pre-rolls and bumpers for the live stream. We’ll be broadcasting the two Semi-Finals and the Final live online, and we are planning to do something exciting backstage as well. The pre-roll is the short sequence before the show featuring the sponsor logos, the bumpers are meant for breaks, the end of the show and – fingers crossed we won’t need it! – when there is a technical problem. They look pretty neat, I have to say!

Tonight or tomorrow morning we’ll be sending out another press update, the last one before people will be heading for Oslo.

Later today, I’ll meet with my Norwegian counterpart Peter Svaar at the Telenor Arena press centre, to jointly do a last check-up of the facility. Looking at the pics (thanks Ola!), we’re getting there! Big thumbs up for my colleagues in Norway.. they are doing an amazing job!

10 May (-20)

It’s been way too long since I posted an update, and there is a good reason for that! Obiously, the past days have been very busy, though everything is on schedule, both here at the office as well as at the Telenor Arena in Oslo. My Norwegian counterpart, Head of Press Peter Svaar, posted some pictures of the rigging on his Facebook page. Cool stuff

Last Thursday, we completed the Production Handbook and had the last Skype meeting with the volunteers team. Everyone is getting excited, as we’ll all be travelling to Oslo in the days ahead.

The to-do list of items to get done before Oslo is shrinking quickly. A few days ago, I joined forces with Antonios Karatzikos, International Coordinator of the Eurovision Song Contest fan club OGAE, to write a letter to the fans. The Croatian department of the fan club rightly pointed our it is the first letter from the EBU to the OGAE clubs, and the first joint letter as well!

I completed our communications plan for Oslo and got green light from the communications department in Geneva to move forward with it. To bring across a strong message, we determined a theme for every day, whereas articles, fact sheets, photo and video items around this theme will be distributed through various channels, such as the website, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and our mailing list.

We’ve made available our three Eurovision Countdown shows on the contest’s YouTube channel. Norwegian broadcaster NRK, who were commissioned to produce the three half-our shows, did a great job in my opinion, and Ian Wright, who hosted the masterpieces, did a brilliant job. Especially if you’re not into Eurovision (what the heck is wrong with you?!) it’s a must-see! Also a must-see is the presentation of the stage of this year’s contest! It looks amazing, don’t you think?

Inspired by my colleague Ola (read his blog, it rocks!) I’m doing a “you know when you’ve worked with events too long…” from my own point of view. You know when you’ve worked with the Eurovision Song Contest too long…

1. … when you think holding 90-some press conferences in 10 days is really not a big deal
2. … when pulling an accreditation card from someone’s neck is considered a friendly way of asking where one is from
3. … when New Year’s Eve is in the middle of your year, which according to your calendar starts and ends in May

I started packing, doing the last laundry and shopped for some presents for my Norwegian friends, who are already working their heads off for a couple of weeks. Time for bed, nighty!

3 May (-27)

Things are getting really exciting now. Today we started with the traditional online team meeting, which usually lasts half an hour. We discussed the work that has to be done this week, and I can tell you: It’s a lot! We are still finalising the last details for the streaming, and need to decide from where we’d like to get our back-up signal. Better safe than sorry! We are also putting the last hours of work into our production book, which is our team bible during the event weeks. Jarmo is doing a great job on that! On Thursday night, we’ll meet the volunteer editors again on Skype for the last online meeting. Looking forward to see them all in real again!

With the fine people of Eurovision News I’ve been talking about the production of a series of news items, to be distributed to EBU Member Broadcasters and non-Members. Last year we experimented with that, and items were used as far as in South-Korea. Not bad, for our little pan-European song competition!

On the website, we launched the preview mediaplayer. Many people requested us to relaunch the feature we offered in 2007, 2008 and 2009, so we did. It’s the easiest way to view all 39 preview videos, so check it out!

29 April (-30)

Exactly one month to go and for the 55th time, Europe will massively tune in for the Final of the Eurovision Song Contest. Right now, it’s all about fine-tuning, checking, double-checking and making ad-hoc arrangements. The Media Handbook has gone to print, the accreditation system has closed (some 2,000 journalists attending) and all practical arrangements (hotels, flights, equipment, etc.) for the web team have been arranged. My assistant Jarmo is putting the finishing touch on the production book, the team’s ‘bible’ during the event weeks. We now have weekly online meetings with the website volunteers to exchange information and ideas, which is great to build up some excitement. Skype rocks!

Right now, we get a lot done every day and it’s good to see the to-do list shrinking every day. Yesterday, I gave an interview to SBS6 in the Netherlands, today to an Irish newspaper. We also sent the press conference schedule to all accredited journalists, so they can plan ahead a bit.

My personal schedule now looks like this: I will be heading to Tallinn tomorrow, where I’ll meet Jarmo and Kati, who is our Event Manager, for some meetings (and – I admit! – to take the last opportunity to relax a bit at my favourite spa). Flying back to Amsterdam on the 10th of May, then going to meet our video crew in Belgium for a day. Going to Oslo on the 13th of May for the Big E!