To Boldly Go!

TEDxKyoto Special Event featured George Takei

We kicked off the 3rd year of TEDxKyoto by having a special event named “To Boldly Go!” on 4th June 2014. You may want to read this Deep Kyoto’s great article and Huffington Post to know how the featured speaker, Mr. George Takei, enlighten us.

I believe some of over 900 participants and volunteers of this event will tweet, blog, or write on SNSes about how they are impressed by George’s talk.

I will, however, not write my impression of his talk here. I’d rather like to leave some notes about what we did for this event, because I think I’m the only person who can do this…

The event was scheduled as a very small event at the beginning. We would show 1 TEDx introduction by Chris Anderson, 2 TED talks, and 1 general speaker, Mr. George Takei, as well as 1 TEDx talk by CG Patric Linehan with his comment. We originally planned to host about 100 participants in, say, a small class room.

Once we opened the ticketing system — though the event was free for everyone, we needed to reserve seats and headsets for simultaneous interpretation — we had to change the venue from a small classroom to somewhere much bigger.

The venue, Morita Hall of Kyoto University of Foreign Studies, was familiar to us because we had run TEDxKyoto 2013 Audition, and TEDxKyoto 2013 in the last year. We, however, booked the hall for 3 days for setting up stage, lighting, audio, cameras, and simultaneous translation.

I first started up a Facebook group and invited several volunteers from TEDxKyoto 2013. We had a camera director Masatsugu, an audio/visual specialist Mr. Noda, a lighting expert Jun, a graphic/industrial designer Ryo, a carpenter Shirokuro, an IT specialist Tadaaki, a translator Takahiro.

We also hired professional stage crews (a manager, a lighting engineer, an audio engineer) of Morita Hall, and several camera operators. We also rented 5 professional cameras and 1 crane for filming the event.

The first sheet of the storyboard of TEDxKyoto Special Event “To Boldly Go!”

I drafted a storyboard and shared it on the Facebook group. I personally don’t have a background in drama but in film, I draw storyboard even when I manage the stage. The volunteer lighting expert Jun draw out necessary information and directed the engineers of the hall. Masatsugu illustrated positioning of cameras and stage sets.

The large TEDxKyoto logo.

The volunteer carpenter Shirokuro fixed a lagre TEDxKyoto logo which we used in the last year. This big logo was originally intended to be put on the stage but eventually it was put at the entrance hall. We placed smaller TEDxKyoto logo which we used in 2012 instead for better picture.

The designer Ryo made up Keynote presentation and brochure on which our chief curator Christina wrote biographies of CG Linehan and Mr. Takei.

I myself checked our wireless microphone system with the audio engineer of the hall. We also examined a simultaneous translation booth of the hall for knowing what we had had to bring in. We needed a few hours to arbitrage wireless channels with the venue.

Timetable for stage crews.

We also set up a green room with nice healthy snacks and water under the support of Christina and our Operation Team director Angus.

We decided not to live-stream the event, thus we didn’t need long cabling between cameras and video switcher. This decision greatly helped us especially when we needed to clear the hall within 20 minutes.

I also asked Angus to send us a group of volunteers, who eventually joined Show Team volunteers. The volunteers were 2 camera supporters, 2 escorting persons, 1 time keeper, 1 recording engineer, 5 stage crews.

At 8:30 of 4th June, the day of the event, we started final set-up with all the members of TEDxKyoto including Tsukasa, the architect director, Isao, the partnership director, Masa, the PR director, Taka, the communication director.

Since we only had 1 hour before CG Linehan and Mr. Takei arrived at 9:30, we moved super quickly for setting up everything. From 9:30 I joined briefing while other members were still making the stage. From 10:00 we started rehearsal.

The Morita Hall was filled up by 900 participants even it was Wednesday morning.

At 10:30 we opened the door of the hall as scheduled. The camera operators checked color balance of every camera at this timing.

At 10:50 we started Chris Anderson’s video on time.

CG Patrick Linehan introduced his talk at TEDxKyoto 2013 by himself.

Everything went smoothly thanks to the engineers of the hall, our volunteers, and our leader, Jay. I’m so proud that I’m a member of this team. You can see the official photo set of the event at Flickr.

The Show Team, of which I’m a director, has been working hard on editing George’s talk and published the video on YouTube.

I think I’m still excited — and English is my second language — I’ll need to come back and edit this article after finishing the film of Mr. Takei’s talk.

Bye for now, and thank you thank you thank you.

Our leader, Jay.

PS. I found that I should’ve write about Jay, our leader, and his leadership much more. His existance was so natural for me that I assumed everyone had the same feeling as I had… He has been, and always will be, the real leader of TEDxKyoto. He never forget sense of humor even when everyone is upset and getting nurvous. His endless passion and tireless work are lighting the power of ideas. Thank you again, Jay.

PPS. TED.com featured George’s talk on 4th July 2014.