And so ends the webcast
After 24 hours of hard work (and any many months of stress for the oranisers), the webcast is over.
It was a fantastic event, and the organisers, especially Douglas, Catherine, Karin, Simon, the tech team and everyone else, deserve big thanks for putting it all together.
Douglas said that one of the highlights for him was fitting the Shanghai Telescope into the schedule, late in the day. The astronomers had been standing in the rain for hours, hoping for a slot. Simon thought that they looked like the Men in Black. He´s an observant fellow.
At the end of the webcast we all went into the studio and congratulated Douglas and the team with champagne. Douglas looks completely out of it, not surprisingly.
Well done eveyone. Could you look a bit more excited for this photo? Please? No?
My highlights had to be the LiveBlog plugs from Nadine and Colleen. You are both heroes. All of the presenters are, as they had a really difficult job.
And the final webcast photo. You can see on the table the three key items needed by the presenters: earpiece (check), booze (check), clothes peg (check).
In the end I was awake for FORTY (40) hours, without coffee or drugs, legal or otherwise. It was a similar story for many of the webcast team, expecially the technical people who worked so hard to set everything up.
The various segments can be viewed again here: http://www.ustream.tv/channel/100-hours-of-astronomy
There are still 135 people in the uStream chat channel. Don´t they know it´s over?
Coming next on the LiveBlog: I´ll be visiting Odeonsplatz in Munich, where astronomers have set up special telescopes so that people can safely see the Sun.
There´s still time to get involved in 100 Hours of Astronomy events near you, so go to the official site, www.100hoursofastronomy.org, and see what´s going on.
April 5th, 2009 at 3:40 pm
They did look like man in black, in any case I had 3 mins to get them back in to a good mood and smiling before i put them live so I had to think fast especially when I realised it was my fault they were standing in the rain for 2.5 hours, bit of a communication breakdown, I was told they were available in a holding room we set up so i passed the message to stand by…….thinking they were in an office or something, imagine my surprise after 2.5 hours I brought them in to explain the procedure and they appeared on my screen, standing outside in the rain………Sorry guys but you were great in any case!
Lee, was a pleasure to pour beer over you last night and I look forward to the next time.
April 5th, 2009 at 6:30 pm
Kudos and compliments to everyone involved with the 100 Hours webcast. It was fantastic! What a great community we live in. Now we’d all like to see the programs captured in a way we can all have copies (downloadable or on a DVD). Thanks again! — Alan
April 7th, 2009 at 1:56 pm
Thanks Simon! You did a great job under near-impossible circumstances. I think the Chinese astronomers were completely baffled about the Men in Black reference! Now, please think of a way to get me to Rio…
Alan, lots of people have requested a DVD, so I expect something along those lines will be produced.
April 13th, 2009 at 2:09 am
Some exclusive behind-the-scenes video clips from the webcast - and a few highlights - can be seen from 27:40 til 46:35 in the April edition of the German Web TV show “Sternstunde Online”.
April 13th, 2009 at 10:23 am
Thanks for the info, Daniel. I just watched it, and there’s some excellent footage!