Our workspace isn’t ready yet, and the crews are still getting their gear together… but we’ve already begun creating stories for broadcast!  I’m finishing up the script for a piece that explains the historical connection of this Congress with the previous two and with events 100 and 200 years ago – and still making it seem interesting and compelling for a general television audience!  Yikes!

The Congress officially starts on Sunday night, but it’s my ambition to create at least this one piece beforehand, in order to test out the entire production work flow.  This one piece will see if all the pieces work as expected:  the camera output is easily ingested to the media server; the edit suites all able to access it; the audio easily stripped off for use in radio reports; translators able to record the narration in the 8 languages that we’re working in; graphics created and edited in; finally the “automatic” step of creating the multiple resolution and codec versions for various uses; and then the upload to our dedicated ftp site and download to stations around the world.  Let’s pray it works.

First problem already found – and fixed.  There’s no coffee.  Really.  I’ve done several of these types of events and you always work late – especially when you’d rather not!  And dang it, we’re all jet-lagged!  Finally, after much sweet talking and cajoling… I still couldn’t get any coffee for our team.  So, when the going gets tough, the tough go shopping.  I found a grocery store and bought a kettle for boiling water and a bunch of instant coffee.  Ok coffee snobs, I’d rather grind my own and use a french press, but this an emergency.  We’re a blue collar group and we’ll drink instant coffee, thank you very much.  This is nothing fancy, just your basic cup o’ Joe.  So, tomorrow, when we get our own work area out beside the edit suites and HD TV truck, we’ll have coffee anytime we want/need it.

I’ll try to post a link to the first story that I described at the beginning of this post, hopefully later tomorrow. But if you are part of a television or radio outlet, and you’d like access to full broadcast quality stories for free use on your outlet, please contact me, and I’ll get you set up with a link to our ftp site.

Panera is great. Free wi-fi, free coffee refills, superb music, and those amazing cinnamon crunch bagels.  But tonight (as the incredible Concerto for Two Violins by J.S. Bach is playing) I’m having the Greek salad, with no hot peppers, no olives, no onions and dressing on the side. (Some would argue: “so how’s that a Greek Salad?” — my reply:  It has feta.)  But I digress.

I came here because I couldn’t write in my office. As soon as any spark of inspiration would come, a distraction drowned it out.  And voila… I just finished writing a show.  I think it’s pretty good, and it got done in near record time.  But just as I was feeling great about it and refilling my iced coffee, it dawned on me…

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