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KB Interview with Tom Russell of Governors Ball

[This article appeared originally on LineupLive.com, a contributed article by Kim Owens.] 2011 was not that long ago. But in four short years, Governors Ball Music Festival in New York has made some significant operational and technical leaps.

Governor’s Island, where the festival was first held, was only accessible by boat, causing a myriad of logistical and production challenges. “There was no infrastructure to plug into out there,” said Tom Russell of Founders Entertainment, the promoter and agency behind Governors Ball and Farm Borough. “You had to bring everything over on a barge.”

Like creating a city from scratch, they knew that having connectivity along with the basics of power was critical for their production team and for the fans attending. In those barge trips back and forth, they hauled in networking gear and coordinated with mobile providers to bring in Cell On Wheels (COWs) to support mobile access.

The Governors Ball team worked with the IT services company that specializes in high-density and complicated networks for live events, TOURTech, to meet the connectivity demands of brands and sponsors requiring connectivity to support staff and fan-facing activations, along with the media, production team, and other back-of-house operations.

 

Read the rest of the article at “Governors Ball Four Years In: Staying Ahead of the Technical Curve.”

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