Thursday, June 26, 2008

AV in Brussels

Surprisingly enough, AV in Brussels feels just like it did in Prague. That is because Horst and Andrea our vendor from Munich arrived yesterday. They are the same vendor that we use all over Europe. They arrived at 7:30 pm last night after an 8 hour drive.
It was so good to see them! We met in the hotel bar called "Le Bar" had some beer and watched the soccer game between Germany and Turkey. This was very important to them and apparently a huge event in Germany. Andrea told us that in Berlin, they set up huge projection screens outside and 100,000 people show up to watch the game, as well as another 60,000 in Munich and so on and so on.

In Le Bar, we were about the only group of people cheering for Germany. This became quite obvious when Turkey scored their first goal and everyone except us cheered loudly.
Then when Germany scored, we all tried to make as much noise as we could to represent! It was quite funny when Horst said loudly... that we had to make more noise because everyone else was cheering for Turkey.. but he was German.. so now everyone in the bar knew that they had some competition!
In the end, Germany won the game and people congratulated Horst. It was quite fun and a really enjoyable time.
Bedtime was about 1:00 am and because of the time change, I really wasn't sleepy. Tired yes... sleepy no. I tossed and turned and finally fell asleep. The wake up call and alarms went off at 6:30 am and I reluctantly crawled out of bed to take a shower.
I was to meet Horst and Andrea in the lobby at 7:00 am and help them pull some gear off the truck for this mornings meeting.
When I got down there, Horst had pretty much pulled everything off the truck already. So, I helped move the gear inside and we rocked out the setup pretty easily and efficiently. It was really great! the three of us worked together like a well oiled machine.
The setup consisted of a couple of wireless mics, Yamaha mixer, small amplifier, two speakers on tripods, and a data projector. We finished it all quickly and then Horst, Andrea and I helped Tina the Meeting Planner put out booklets, Agendas, move chairs and tables around and anything else that needed to be done.

I bring up this last point, because it is out of the ordinary in my experience. Horst and Andrea are not only willing to help out in anyway possible, but they feel it is there responsibility to do whatever they can to make sure the entire meeting is successful.
I was very proud this morning of our relationship with Horst and Andrea. They respect Rick so much, that they do whatever it takes to make him look like a star. I believe that they held true to the "Value Added" Service that Rick is always striving to provide at every opportunity.

The meeting has kicked off, and unless the power gets cut off because someone shorts out a power strip or something, I am pretty much going to be hanging out surfing the internet till about 5:00 pm this afternoon when we load in the General Session.

Here are some images from Brussels that I have been working on while hanging out waiting for the emergency call that never came.

Grand Place 3.jpg

Belgium Streets 1

Lion watching the gate 2.jpg

Leopoldo II

Grand Place 1

1 comment:

only myself to blame said...

that last shot is Amazing!