Thursday, August 11, 2005

It’s that time of year when discussions start to increasingly end with comments along the lines of “well that’s probably the best we can do at this late stage, we’ll just have to work the rest out when we get to site”.

It is of course kind of inevitable that a certain amount of issues have to take this route, but given the amount of other work that will occur ‘once we get to site’ it’s good to keep the number of known yet unresolved issues as limited as possible.

For various reasons I fear the number of unforeseeable issues will be higher this year, which should make for an interesting festival.

A rejigged site will doubtless be keeping things fresh and surprising for audience and workers alike.

There was a driving concept this year to freshen things up and make the site layout less like a baguette and more like a bagel. Mind you, looking at the very simplified campsite areas plan above (full version downloadable from here), one could be forgiven for thinking that the orange Festival Village Areas actually form more of a Muller Fruit Corner...

Tuesday, August 09, 2005

It’s very hard to write entries for this blog that give the intended insight into the lead up to the festival, but aren’t deeply dull and monotonous. After all there’s only so many times one can write “came home from work, answered 30 emails, made 3 festival phone calls, updated the intranet site, went to bed”.

Someone suggested I try to give a taste of the different sorts of things that are getting sorted in these numerous emails and phone calls. So here’s a taster from the last 24 hours:

Management Group meeting on Monday night in London, lots of talk about big issues, numbers on site, finances, strategy for next year etc etc The sort of stuff I could tell but then I’d have to kill you…

The meeting was sandwiched between grabbed conversations with key people on exciting issues such as T’shirts for workers, ticketing lists, graphics for lanyards, when toilets will be available in the campsite in build week, opening hours for the art exhibitions, venues for training sessions, programme for the big screen, street theatre, vehicle insurance, dance workshops and so on. The sort of stuff I could tell you about in immense detail, but then you’d probably want to kill me.

Emails over the last 24 hours have been on similarly scintillating topics such as CRB checks, Venue Managers, Centaur Programme, campsite areas, volunteer sessions, risk assessments, Public Liability Insurance for Inflatables, campsite graphics etc etc

Phone calls today have included, a potential new person to join our Health and Safety team, a new Venue Manager, a lovely person asking if there’s anything he can do to help me this week and Stuart our Traffic Stewarding Manager asking me to dream up three new names for the traffic teams (they’ve been based on Cartoons for the last few years, but need a change), because he and his cohort Nick “don’t do creative”. Those stewards do love their nicknames…

Exciting stuff eh? Oh the glamour of it all!

Hmmmmm…maybe just saying "went to a meeting, did some phone calls, wrote some emails…..sorted ‘stuff’ out" would be preferable?

Oh and in case you’re wondering the Ooomap-Loompas, Ewoks and Smurfs will be guiding you onto site this year, lead as ever by the lovely Stuart and Nick - or ‘my little munchkins’ as I’m now calling them. I encourage others to do likewise...they'll love it...and it is in keeping with the planned events on the Monday at Greenbelt