When coming up with an idea suddenly becomes, ‘how am I going to do this?’
The Initial idea
It was getting towards the end of summer, and I felt like I needed to try and do something big creatively. There was an Ubuntu Summit coming up in October, and a few years ago, my band, Lorenzo's Music, played at the summit in Prague. It was a great experience. This year, I saw that the summit was happening in England. I know they weren't looking for bands to play an after-party at this event, but I got an idea.
The first plan was to take a trip
Since I talked to different musicians who are involved in open source and Creative Commons from all across the world, I thought, what if I find out where the Summit is happening in England and try to book shows nearby?
To me, this was a brilliant plan, plus it would be an opportunity to go to England and play music. So I contacted the person I know who sets up the summits for Ubuntu. As I waited to hear back, I contacted some of the bands that I know around Europe to see if anybody had suggestions of where to play and who was available to play a show with me.
The Reality Check
I also quickly realized that this was very involved. I wasn't even really sure if I was going to be able to do it. But I was going to try. Then I heard back from my connection at Ubuntu. The big announcement this year was that the summit was going online and all the talks were going to be streamed, so everybody could see the event. So there was no place to go to where people were gathering; it was all happening on a live stream.
Pivoting to a New Vision
So that kind of crushed my idea of going to play shows in England. But to be honest, I was finding it very difficult to put something together in the few months' time that I had before the summit was going to happen. So I got another idea and asked Ubuntu if they would be interested in a companion stream of open-source musicians playing live during the conference, or setting up an after-party stream from that.
The Challenges of a Virtual Performance
That intrigued them. And I thought, great! I can put that together; people will get exposure for their music, and for the live stream, we'll just have them perform one after the other. This was all going to work in my head. Until I actually started to plan it out. With the Summit stream coming from London, the time zones for all the musicians are very different.
Also, after putting out a callout for musicians just to see who would be interested, I quickly learned something. While my band has dedicated a lot of time to the past year putting together a live music performance stream, it didn't dawn on me that other people aren't necessarily set up to do that. So a lot of musicians asked me if it had to be a live stream.
The Current Plan: Recorded Performances
So with time zones and live streaming capabilities being revealed, I had to quickly pivot to another plan.
So, as of right now, I am trying to coordinate musicians and bands to record a live performance. This way it will still show something unique from the band, them performing and showing more of a personal factor. So for the stream, I am going to be introducing them. One band plays, then there's a break, then another takes the stage.
The Final Stretch
So far, this plan makes sense, and no real-life surprises have come up for this plan like the other ones. I've got less than a month left to get this running, so we will see if everything goes well.