HAPPENING!!!

So after a tough start DIAL-A-DIVA is in full flow! We have been through Australasia, Asia, the Middle East, Europe, Africa and now having leaped the Atlantic we are in the Americas.... WOW. The picture is from our half way celebration here in Stavanger. Cat and Chris from the DIAL-A-DIVA team took to the stage, as did Camilla & Elsebeth and the wonderful Helga. ONWARDS. happy listening.

Illinois is my Bermuda

Painting two layers of bright shiney colour onto the unit and making calls to some of the performers have been todays activities for me. Illinois has turned into my timezone Bermuda triangle... why is it so hard? amazing... thankfully Sid and one of his bandmates who are performing from Evanston, has spotted the mixups and sorted us out with politic use of an online meeting planner. phew.

Thanks to all those patient souls today who put up with my attempts at French communication... Frenchifying English and Spanish words, pretty dire. Thankfully on Saturday we are being joined by both French and Russian speakers.

Today Cat, Chris and Greg all arrived in Stavanger. Tomorrow Bert arrives and the crew is complete. Tomorrow is a very busy day for us. Greg will be up at the crack of dawn to get this show technically on the road - telecoms, streaming and webcam all up and running. The rest of us will be working on the installation of the unit in the venue and more performer liaison.

Here are two message boards I spotted today (a rainy day indeed). One at the bus station and the other at the airport. They are advertising the DIAL-A-DIVA freephone number here in Norway.

progress

Two images from the day... a wonderful flyer from Sé Que No (Argentina) who are on at 4am CEST on Saturday (11pm local time) and the office unit as it looks today - that's the undercoat... colour begins tomorrow.

Arriving in Stavanger

Javel (as they say here in Norway)
I have arrived in Stavanger and as the bus stop poster below shows the Nu-Music Festival (which DIAL-A-DIVA is part of) is about to get underway.

The performer schedule is now closed. It is looking amazing I have to say. An incredible range. Diverse and wonderful talent from literally every corner of the globe. YAY!
Although most of my time & remaining mind power is still focused on the changes and additions to the performer schedule and the wonders of spreadsheet management, being here is a refreshing step into the physical. The picture below shows the office unit which is currently under construction. Petite and perfect. Tomorrow will see us applying undercoat and Wednesday will be painting day - shiny diva green, diva yellow and diva pink of course.



Yes, things seem to be going pretty smoothly. The Stavanger2008 team seem to be really on the case. No major stresses or problems thus far (I am firmly touching the wooden desk as I write that!). Today I have seen Greg's wonder computer for the first time which Trond picked up from London last week. It is now in the hands of Lars from the Stavanger City Council, who is setting it up to work with council network. Greg will arrive on Wednesday and tech testing will happen on Thursday.

International Preparation

So it's certainly not just the behind the scenes DIAL-A-DIVA team that is hard at work preparing... here is a shot of Joe (Joe Bludge) and Andrew (Fall Electric) warming up. Joe Budge and Fall Electric are two of the acts that will take part from Perth Australia. DIAL-A-DIVA will be with them from 10:40 CEST on the 8th.

Time Elastic

Time is melting, and yet, it is not quite pliable enough yet.
I have been going through the schedule - with lots of help from Bert and picking up on errors, overlaps other breaks in the time/space continuum of Saturday 8th September. Although there is nothing impossible as yet, there are still many artists who we'd like to give time to (that isn't in the middle of the night for them) and not much space in the schedule to play with. I am currently taking a crow bar to the 24 hour clock.

Cat is catching up with those still lost in myspace.
Jill is letting potential listeners know about DIAL-A-DIVA.
Trond (Stavanger2008) is travelling from Stavanger to London to collect the computer that will be the streaming server from Greg.
Greg is finalising the webcam details which he'll send out any minute now and has got the DIAL-A-DIVA message up on our phone number. He is also corresponding with Aasmund (numusic) about any remaining tech rider issues...
I believe that there is also a most wonderful office unit being constructed, which I'm looking forward to seeing next week.
Anne Dorthe (Stavanger2008) has co-ordinated a team of 17 volunteers for the event. Some of whom will have the ability to communicate in Russian and French as well as Norwegian and English which will increase our teams ability to understand the performers.
The various mail outs to press and interested parties has happened, much to the surprise of my local Post Office who had to deal with over 400 envelopes of posters and flyers going all over the world.
Audhild and Bente (Stavanger2008) are working on the publicity for Norway.

There is still a pretty long 'to-do' list but it looks like things are coming together :-)

22 days feels like 22 minutes

The run up to any deadline always puts a pressure on time, but this has a special feeling with DIAL-A-DIVA. Right now my main activity is thinking about time, minutes, performance slots, and time zones. TIMEZONES, 1/2 hour ones, daylight saving ones, summer time ones, highly populated ones, like Western South America and Eastern North America... sparse ones like Alaska, French Polynesia and Kiribati. Time on our hands and time slipping past. 22 days to go until we're listening to 24 hours worth of performed telecommunication time.