Chaos Theory and Corporate Events

We're in an arena with 12,000 people all wearing red t-shirts, and they are standing on their feet cheering. It's not a rock concert it's a corporate event.

It incites in me snarky comments like "this is fucking weird." Talk about don't let the blood show, I just want to come in and do our show and move on.

This is heavy production too. We came in yesterday to set up. It involves a retractable moving stage, a 50 foot video wall, serious rigging of audio and lights, and live video playback. 

There are dozens of stagehands, audio, lighting, and video personnel, runners, catering crews, artist handlers and production staff. 

It's a production in the truest sense, in that they are producing feelings in the audience. It's how a mega-church or political event is produced. The audience is 12,000 employees from around the US: managers, regional managers, and general employees.

The company's mascot dog is here too, the one from the commercials. And he looks scared as hell out on that stage in the bright lights surrounded by a sea of 12,000 people in red shirts full of energy.

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Yesterday we had problems during soundcheck, and it turned into a high pressure situation. 

The drum-pad which triggers the playback system wasn't working. It's our gear. Our drummer hits a pad and it cues a system that starts the song. It's our gear, but it's routed through the audio company's system.

At 5:55 PM it became a much bigger issue because union dinner break was at 6:00 PM. After dinner they had other acts to soundcheck. We were supposed to be done at 6:00 PM. At 5:59 PM a gray-haired man came to stage and yells at some of his crew, then storms off. He's the owner of the audio company. 

We never had this problem before, and neither had they. What a great opportunity to learn something new. Except there's no time for that. 

Tensions rise and the expressionless faces crack. The consequences of going over on a schedule can get expensive quickly.

At first it was smirks and grins off to the side. The crew mumble under their breath, "these guys' shit isn't working." They've seen everything. To them, it's our shit that wasn't working. To us, it's their shit that wasn't working.

The crew guys are a generation older than us. They are Boomers who grew up listening to the Rolling Stones and the Beatles. Or Black Sabbath and Iggy Pop. Back when music had balls ... they would tell you. We're just a dumb pop band to them. If they could speak their minds it would go something like, "Listen kid, I've screwed up way bigger gigs than this before. Just do your dumb show without the drum-pad. This is just a Pro Tools rig. Real bands don't use Pro Tools rigs. Figure it out. We need to go to dinner. It's a dark stage at 6pm."

But we don't compromise. We could do the show without the drum-pad. But we wanted to do the show our way. The way we always do it. Besides our gear always works. We've done this hundreds of times. Thousands, even millions of times. We've done millions of shows with the band and it's always worked. So there has to be a solution. AND it's not our gear, it's your gear.

Also it's not expensive for us. Someone else pays that bill. And their attitude of I'm-not-happy-until-your-unhappy isn't going to work. We stayed straight-faced and calm.

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That day we had been up since 5:00 AM traveling. Car-plane-car-hotel-car-venue. Sounds simple and easy until you do it a hundred days in a row. Then it becomes a grind.

This event was difficult and frustrating before we even got there. Getting even basic information was a challenge because the overall production schedule kept changing. Which caused our travel to change.

I had everything timed out perfectly with flights, cars, soundcheck, everything. But then the schedule changed, and changed again, and it threw off everything on our end. Going in to this day I told myself "keep your expectations nimble." Easier said than done.

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So we were at soundcheck trying to get the drum-pad to work. Everyone was focused on this one thing: the drum-pad. It's one piece of gear, but had the potential to cause thousands of dollars in union fees, throw off schedules, and get everyone into a fluster.

Everyone focused on the drum-pad. No one takes a step back to ponder the problem from 30,000 feet. No one looks at the initial conditions that started the malaise. Perhaps the problem wasn't the drum-pad but was much bigger. Two Category-5 hurricanes hit the southern coast of the US in the previous 2 weeks: Irma and Harvey. 

The company had 120,000 employees displaced. They had planned this event for months but the hurricanes just hit. The mood changed from upbeat to somber. Therefore the CEO changed the show, which changed the overall schedule, which changed our schedule.

We had to change our flights, car service pickups, and hotels last minute. Freight pickups and dropoffs had to change. It also shortened our set up time for soundcheck. It set us up for high optimization. No time for errors.

This was one butterfly flapping her wings in Brazil and setting off a chain of events that caused two Category 5 hurricanes to hit the United States. It was one CEO changing the program schedule and setting off a chain of events that caused hundreds of people to shift their schedules and expectations last minute. And now it was one drum-pad causing thousands of dollars in union fees and a dozen or so production staff to get heated.

It's leveraged by one small initial thing (butterfly, CEO's desires, drum-pad) and compounded exponentially over time (hurricane, shifting schedues, costly fees). It's a nonlinear event in that the initial small action (butterfly, CEO's desires, drum-pad) caused unforeseen randomness in a later state. Chaos theory (the "Butterfly Effect") states "sensitive dependence on initial conditions."

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Everyone was getting squeezed.

In high pressure situations, one thing to keep in mind is that everyone is squeezed. The event is not perfect. It changes constantly, and will continue to change through the event until it's over. Expectations will continue to change but the earth will continue to rotate around the sun, clocks will tick, and time will continue to move forward.

Besides, we will see this crew again. The industry is small. We've worked with this team three or four times in the past year on similar events. One thing I've learned is that a small group of the same people produce the same type of events. One small group produces festivals. Another group produces TV events. And they are all connected, and know each other.

Everyone knows each other, and everyone remembers. And I don't want to be remembered as the guy who loses his cool.

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About twenty minutes into dinner break one of the audio techs crawled under the stage to run a cable. It fixed the issue. It took five minutes. I ask one of our crew "why didn't he just do that in the first place?" And he said "I think he just didn't want to crawl under the stage."

I wonder if it was more like he didn't want to crawl under the stage while there were dozens of people standing around at soundcheck. But twenty minutes into dinner he took ownership. The physical hunger reminded him of a time thirty years ago when he was working for Iggy Pop or Black Sabbath and was emotionally hungry to do anything for the show.

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I think that no one makes it to the top by coming up with reasons that something can't work or doesn't work. You make it to the top by finding solutions. To steal a line from Tim S. Grover, trainer to Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant:

Pressure is a privilege.

How you deal with and leverage pressure will determine in some part your success. When you're in the moment it feels endless. But it will pass. Learn to confront the pressure and live with it.

Pressure is caused by small things that get leveraged over time. If you have the ability to dismantle pressure in some way it's a privilege.

DEN -> SEA

This used to be a challenge but now it's easy. I know the variables well enough that I can see the day play out in my head when I first wake up. 

It's 3:32 AM and my alarm went off at 3:30. Those two minutes I spend visualizing the day.

I get up and go. I'm downstairs now, its 4:00 AM, and our driver is late, hasn't arrived, overslept. That never happens with private car companies. Luckily we're in Denver, somewhat of a real city, and an UBER Black SUV is 4 minutes away. I book it for the rest of the crew and get in the cargo van with the driver and gear. The cargo van picked up the gear last night after the show, and held it over night.

Our fly gear is approx 1200 pounds, 30 pieces. With suitcases it's 35 total at about 1400 pounds and we're going to check it onto a commercial flight fast and cheap. We usually use a cargo company to transport the gear but on back-to-back fly dates that isn't possible. They can't guarantee the delivery. So we carry it ourselves.

We used to have less stuff, and we used to check it all the time, but at a certain point it becomes cheaper and easier to use a cargo company. Either way, we're checking it today.

We pull up to the terminal at 4:30 and the airport is at about 5% capacity in terms of people, lines, cars. In a little over an hour it'll be at 95% capacity per the usual cyclical chaos that airports see every few hours. But we'll already be in the Delta lounge drinking coffee at that point.

There's one Skycap porter at the curbside check-in and two passengers nearby who look lost. He asks them "do you guys have bags"? They go into the terminal to check in there. I say, "I have some bags for you. We have 35 pieces, media bags." The key word is MEDIA BAGS. The other key is to tell him exactly how many PIECES we have at the outset. 

I tell him, "I got you covered. We have 5 passengers on the 7:00 AM departure to Seattle, with Seattle as a final destination. The other passengers are just behind me. We have 35 pieces total." 

"Great, ok, do you want to check here or go inside? Do you have a Media badge? And can I see your ID?"

I show him the pass and he says, "That's what I'm looking for!". I tell him we can check in here or inside, whatever he wants. He wants to do it curbside.

Few people realize you are even supposed to tip Skycap porters. The fabric of society is complex, and productive members of society tip Skycaps. The general rule is $1 to $2 per bag. I already know I'm going to tip $80, which will be the biggest tip he'll receive all day. But it's worth it because we're going to save thousands of dollars using my MEDIA PASS that I printed and laminated at Kinko's for $2.16.

Checking in is a slow but fast process. He has to weigh and tag every bag. It'll take about 30 minutes. It's slow compared to the normal 2-bag procedure, but it's fast considering the weight and volume.

The media rate lets a person check up to 25 bags per passenger, at $50 per bag, so long as the bag is under 99 pounds. Compare that to the standard rates of a 3rd bag @ $100, and anything over 50 pounds @ $175. Basically, instead of approx $3500 it'll be $1000. And that's for 5 passengers. If we had all 10 band and crew our frequent flyer status would knock it down to $250 after everyone's free bags.

The rest of the crew pull up and we're well on our way. By the time we finish it's 5:00 AM, the first departures are two hours away. There are 4-5 people in line behind me. These are the final moments of serenity before the airport ramps up. The sun was coming up. The sky turned from black to purple to orange. The porter thanks me, and then shakes my hand and thanks me again, "Thanks for showing up early". 

5 minutes later we're through security and 5 minutes after that we're in the lounge drinking coffee.

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On the other side, our driver is standing at the bottom of the escalator holding a sign with my name on it. 

I grab two porters and tell them we have 35 media bags and we'll need both carts. 

The gear starts coming out on the carousel. It comes out first because we have priority stickers and I imagine the airlines prefer to put our gear on the airplanes last. Last in, first out. It's a spectacle and people always ask, "are you in a band or something?"

The porters load the gear right away with whatever pieces they first grab. We try to tell them we know the best way to load the carts. They don't listen, probably because they are working for tips and feel obligated. We used to argue but now we just watch them load the carts, and then reload them. 

The driver leads the way to where the vans will pull up. It's important to know exactly where you are taking the gear because this convoy has an inertia that is difficult to change. You can't exactly wheel two 700-pound carts around an airport terminal, up and down elevators or over curbs. You want to go exactly from point A to point B.

The drivers pull up outside: one cargo van and one passenger van. The cargo van with all rows of seats removed is key. Its like having the right tool for a specific job. Many times car companies or promoters will send vans that still have seats in them. What an incredibly huge fucking pain in the ass that is when it happens. It's like trying to turn a screw with a hammer. It's the wrong tool. 

At one point the porters push the cart off the curb and the handle buckles under the weight and the gear scatters. We'd be upset except that's exactly what the cases are designed for, and I know that's nothing compared to what probably goes on behind the scenes at an airport. Once a gate agent slipped and accidentally told us that the loaders behind the scenes at airports call FRAGILE stickers KICK ME stickers. So the proper cases are key.

I tip the porters and close the van doors. It's 9:00 AM and our day has just started.