I had the privilege of being part of the TEDxExeter Team. I was the production manager.

What started out as an offer to help out with the speakers slides and a bit of tech stuff soon grew.

it grew to include sourcing and making stage signs – thank you Timber Cut for the MDF cutouts

Buying a square of red carpet and travelling across the city (ok, that makes it sound a long way) to find a man with a sewing machine who could cut and bind it. Thank you Graham

(thanks Benjamin for being the official photographer)

And, most fun of all, was working along side the Northcott technical crew to set the stage, lighting and audio in place for the day

you can see 5 hours work in 4 minutes here – Thursday morning started with me setting up a simple time-lapse to capture the setup. Enjoy.

The speakers themselves were mind blowing. Even seen from back stage, the presence of Satish Kumar, the power of the heartfelt words of Bandi Mbubi that brought those in the audience and back stage to tears. Chris Anderson, curator of TED came in person, speaking of how we can still have hope for the future.

The intensity of the individual stresses and strains of performing was palpable, and the intimacy of mic-ing speakers up, reassuring them, counting them down onto stage, feeling the stress of every slide transition, the relief as they walked off… intense.

But, before I sign this blog post off, I want to give a special mention to the back stage, technical crew; Dom, Ben, Chris and Hamish. Spending two days back stage at the Northcott Theatre, working on the simply awesome TEDxExeter event was quite an experience. I was embraced as a new, temporary member of their community, inducted into their language, their rituals, their patterns, teased, joked with, enjoyed the relentless banter in the cans. And now, the show is over and I feel somewhat bereaved.

Sigh.

the TEDxExeter blog has great summaries up, and hopefully the videos will be out soon.