The Show Must Go On
Tags: Technology, Giving, Covid 19, Wifi, Events

Entertainment Industry Techs Continue With New Purpose

Their job is to be invisible, wear all black, and work in the dark, so nobody ever really thinks how many people were left.

They build entire towns in three days time for one night of amusement, the lights go on because of the work done in the dark. And while everyone is entertained, the invisible crew sleeps.

This is the life of an IT roadie, ruthless jokesters that jab at each other like family. They spend exorbitant amounts of time together, swarming fields and stadiums, March through September. The crew has a running joke that they are more of a disaster for towns than entertainment. But similar to stories heard far too often this last year, the tech family had to fight to find work and stay together.

The entertainment industry is much larger than the talent on stage, it can be easy to forget about the machine when you never see it run. That’s just how fluid the work is when your crew is tight.

To put on a single concert takes hundreds of people, the security, gate keepers, ticket collectors, concessions, techs, sound and light crews.

The average concert takes over 500 event professionals to go live. A music festival typically utilizes as many as 1,500 people behind the scenes.

Everything and everyone hidden behind the stage was, well, left behind when the industry curtain called last March, explains TOURtech founder and CEO Allen Cook.

With 245 events in 2019 and a staff of 25 and another 30 contractors that work during the season, 2020 was set to be the biggest season the crew had seen. No one saw the real disaster looming.

Cook runs the crew of 25, and had to make the “heartbreaking” decision to shut down in March, laying off the staff, including his own wife.

TOURtech lost a 6 figure job and then another customer backed out of a major event, which Cook was preparing a site survey for. Over the span of three days the entertainment tech group lost $800,000 in planned revenue.

But TOURtech is not alone, the industry as a whole suffers in unison.

According to statistics gathered from the Department of Labor and industry surveys, 12 million jobs were supported by live events, a 1.4 trillion economic impact of live events in the US alone. Altogether, 96% of businesses in events cut their staff, 97% of 1099 gig workers lost their work, and 77% of event pros lost 100% of their income.

The show must go on.

Tech For Good

Chris Patmon had been traveling with TOURtech since July of 2019 when he was laid off. Patmon was a veteran techie for the industry, logging 10 years running cable, programming gear, and hanging Access Points for shows.

Similar to his fellow industry workers, the entertainment shut down left him with financial uncertainty.

“That was my main source of income, and I was looking for options after TOURtech shut down,” he explains.

Patmon was trying to stay positive through the shock of losing his job, and facing payments with no income, in what he described as a “difficult year of change.”

When his phone rang.

I was cooking lunch when Allen called me and said “Hey, are you working?”

I said “No.”

Allen shot back “You want to?”

“He told me about a project [ITDRC] was starting up, and it sounded awesome,” Patmon recalls.

IT roadies were not hard to find, everyone in the industry was on the hunt for work.

Dennis Kenyon, a fellow roadie from the TOURtech family also got a phone call. “Allen reached out first about [projectConnect] and asked me if I wanted to do it…I said absolutely, the next week I was in Dallas,”

Kenyon had also logged a year with the group, setting up connectivity and driving trucks. During the off season Kenyon worked construction and as he admits, “I would rather be pulling cable instead of carrying lumber.”

The idea to put some in the entertainment industry back to work was one that would serve IT roadies while aiding the growing minds in underserved communities, affectionately called: projectConnect.

ProjectConnect was born out of the pandemic, and is a nationwide initiative by ITDRC to provide free community WiFi installations to connect students and families to the internet — especially those living in rural and underserved communities.

Once education shifted to an online environment, many students were at greater risk of falling behind without proper access.

Local WiFi in schools, public spaces, libraries, and coffee shops was limited during lockdowns in many cities, leaving struggling students with few options.

“That was a pretty great phone call, it changed my life,” Patmon recalls.

Layoffs expanded well past concerts and festivals, and into Broadway productions.

Asher Robinson, who has been working the entertainment circuit since his early years in community theatre works in New York’s Broadway tech circle.

The entertainment industry work is 100% of Robinson’s income and similar to the statistics above, his last real gig was March 12.

At first the party line was “we are just taking the week off,” but now Robinson says he has no idea when they will be going back, and most of the new productions he was working on have closed permanently.

With more free time than he would like, Robinson found ITDRC. It was tech he already knew, and for a cause he felt was worthwhile. After completing the required training, he was deployed to Louisiana after Hurricane Laura.

“After spending time in NY thinking I’ve got problems and then going to Lake Charles” Robinson explains “It was eye opening, the virus wasn’t gone but they had bigger problems to worry about because they didn’t even have a place to sleep.”

Free time is what the working world dreams about, but when you get it, it can make you realize what’s more meaningful in life. Robinson says he found that new perspective in a disaster zone, during a pandemic.

On The Road Again

When a year of trouble comes to your door uninvited, takes the house, and windmills the direction of your life, getting back up with purpose is a great challenge.

Before projectConnect, IT roadies were bunking up together and doing what they could with the family they had built. The majority of techs worked their last job in March and a few lost their homes or were considering selling.

“The entertainment industry shutting down affects so many people, that work so hard to do what they do” says Patmon, “Their work is what they love and for some of them that’s their life.”

Crews had no idea what lay ahead of them for the next year, but knew they wanted to stay together and survive the year. The roadies describe it as the easiest decision they made all year — and one that turned into something quite formative.

The techs gathered in Dallas, and set off across the country with a new cause after facing ruin. Patmon and Kenyon paired off in an ITDRC truck and headed to Washington state with 2 other crews.

“Joe was always telling me to go on break so I wouldn’t be burnt out but I could never be burnt out doing this job…I could do this job 165 days a year, we are making people happy, that’s the job, we are getting them connected,” Kenyon jokes.

Their longest stop was six weeks in Pennsylvania, but the job sites that stuck with the crew took them to Michigan. Where the team connected houses turned into educational hubs for nonprofit Brilliant Detroit.

Brilliant Detroit keeps underserved families at the heart of their work, focusing on creating success stories out of difficult circumstances. For these communities, the COVID-19 pandemic revealed the tears in the government programs they relied on and stretched their families even further to meet basic needs.

Brilliant Detroit grappled with children falling behind due to lack of connectivity and a small amount of devices. They had mothers attempting to work from home with multiple children on different learning levels and no connectivity.

The tight knit community has always relied on each other for support and has continually come together during hard times.

The hotspots brought the neighborhood together again during the hardest year they’ve faced together. While also allowing Brilliant Detroit to use the connectivity to focus on education, health, and family support.

Kenyon a former serviceman for the Navy, and his road partner felt their sense of duty grow for projectConnect after their time in Motor City.

“It helped bring a smile to people during a time when things aren’t the best… to give them free internet so they can talk to people on the phone and skype people so they can see faces… It feels good, it makes your heart warm to connect people.”

It was a chance to give back, in the middle of unprecedented times, an opportunity that kept the crew energized. To Kenyon, it was the chance to bring joy.

“I’ve seen a few of my friends go through some really hard times this year, COVID has hurt so many people. Being in that truck and going 2700 miles across this country, I’ve seen horrible situations that we are working to change,” Kenyon explains “That’s made it a wonderful year, just giving back has been a wonderful experience.”

They watched pure excitement rush over the kids who immediately downloaded Minecraft and danced with their friends to later upload on TikTok.

Patmon recalled families expressing gratitude, the connectivity made it possible for them to FaceTime with loved ones, who they had been estranged from since lockdown.

What began as an opportunity to get themselves out from between a rock and hard place turned into more than just another gig.

“For it all to come together at the end has been a lot to take in, it’s funny how it all worked out,” says Patmon.

Robinson believes art is meaningful and entertainment is something the world needs, but through the opportunities at ITDRC he has found another outlet for meaningful tech.

“It was a different perspective being able to give back with ITDRC, it was rewarding” said Robinson, who is currently installing WiFi hotspots in community centers around his hometown in NYC with Patmon.

To date, projectConnect has established WiFi homework hotspots in nearly 700 communities across the Continental US and Puerto Rico, with the project continuing in 2021.

“This experience means a ton to me, this is the first time since my military career that I finally feel like I’m actually giving back to the community again, after my journey with projectConnect I will always be with ITDRC,” Kenyon explains, as ITDRC’s new South Carolina state coordinator.