We moved the production desk!

Surprised Richard hasn't blogged this, but on Tuesday night we moved the production desk. He asked if I'd come along to help, and foolishly I accepted. That said, I couldn't make the 6:30pm start so offered to help from 9pm or so when I could get there.

So I turned up at 9pm, with Richard, two of the camera guys (Pete and James), Ron from Comtec and Neil already there. They'd already labelled all the connections and disconnected everything, took apart the platform, and were just finishing assembling it in the new location. So we moved the equipment back onto the platform and whilst Neil and Ron screwed seats back into place, we started working on the cables.

Now it might not seem like a big deal, but we have cables running from each camera position to carry audio and video, into the production desk. There's then cabling running out to the plasma screens and speakers. This had all been bundled together and fed up to the location where the desk was.

We had to unbundle and untangle this mess of cable, and re-run it to the new location, fortunately when it was originally laid the guys had had the foresight to leave enough length that they would reach the new location. I think it took me and Pete (with help from others) around 2 hours just to sort out the cabling. (Extra kudos to Pete, who did all the spiderman work on the beams around the edges of the rink!)

Whilst we were doing that, the equipment on the desk was reconnected, and cameras and stuff setup around the rink so everything could be tested properly. Then as we fed up each cable it was quickly connected (due to the earlier labelling!)

By the time we had everything tested it was well past midnight, and then we had to pack
everything away again. At around half one we'd packed tidied and loaded and headed for home.

So the production desk is now situated in the corner of the rink...