Campus Party Diary Party 1

I have been lucky enough to be selected to act as a roving reporter for O2 at this year’s Campus Party in the O2 Arena London. I intend to share my experiences on a day to day basis to give you an idea about what I get up to.

My first day started with the journey from Leeds to London on the train with a fellow reporter Paul Middleton. Having made that journey many times, it was pretty uneventful, aside from the tickets were for a final destination of Greenwich and not North Greenwich (thanks Amanda). So Paul and I had to hop into a taxi for the final leg of trip.

Once we’d arrived at the O2 Arena, we got our passes and sorted out our sleeping accommodation, more on that later though.

We were then given a brief welcome introduction over sandwiches and drinks, before starting a trio of workshops to get a better understanding of what we would need to undertake for the days ahead.

For the week we are split up into 3 teams that have a variety of nationalities. For myself in team 1 I have Paul, the fellow Brit, Jana from Germany, Ondrej from Czech Republic and Raul and Antonio from Spain.

Where we will be spending plenty of time this week

Our first workshop task was a training exercise in getting some video footage to get some practice with the equipment we would be using. This was quite a fun exercise as we got used to working with each other and trying to find things to film. We ended up with a brief sound bite from an O2 staff member and a team introduction.

The second workshop was more of a tour of the O2 Arena and covering off what we will need to report and what would be nice to have reported. Our team has struck it lucky by getting both Jose Maria Alvarez-Pallete and Eva Castillo for interviews. Only downside is that they are running nearly together so will split the team.

Workshop three was to try and create a bit of an article, putting together a few videos and stills. With the Campus Party not quite in full swing yet, there was a bit of a limited scope. But, I managed to snag a quick sound bite from the CEO of Telefonica UK Ronan Dunne, and some great footage of a Google Earth flyby on 3 computer screens. Hopefully some of the footage used will make it to the internal intranet.

After a bite to eat, loads of pizza, we headed out to the opening ceremony which was hosted by former Gadget Show star Suzi Perry. We were tasked with getting some footage of what was going on.

Once Suzi opened the Campus Party, she conducted a 20-30 minute discussion panel with COO Telefonica S.A Jose Maria Alvarez-Pallete, Campus Party creator Paco Ragageles, UK Minister for Culture, Communications and Creative Industries Ed Vaizey and European Commissioner for Digital Agenda Neelie Kroes.

After the discussion panel concluded, we were entertained with a 30 minute set with beatbox legend, Beardyman. Although his style of music is not to my taste, I couldn’t help but appreciate what he was doing. And we managed to capture some great dancing out in the crowd.

Throughout the opening event, I found I was more mindful of what was going on in the crowd than what was occurring on the stage as I tried to look for good opportunities to report.

Once we had a very quick debrief, it was time to head back to our tents, which now had sleeping bags and airbeds. But the fun was to begin as the tents are about 5ft 10 in length and most of the men in our groups are over 6ft. Plenty of feet hanging out of tents ensued. And the 4am wakeup call from Heathrow is really not appreciated.

My sleeping quarters for the week

Needless to say this morning, there were plenty of dreary eyes entering the production office.