For the last two years, I have been acting as AV team lead for a small festival called Skoomtown. It’s independently organized by a group of ~15 people, and once a year we welcome about 100 people into a barn for three days over a weekend. I had been messing around with some stage lighting at home for fun, and was approached by the group to help because they needed someone to organize lighting – and I quickly became entangled with the project and took responsibility for orchestrating the majority of AV needs.
Here’s an overview of everything I did for the festival:
- Coordinated with other lead organizers for considerations around budget, site access and props and decorations
- Coordinated with 3 other AV team members to delegate work involving truss rigging, stage setup, power requirements and busking
- Designed the stage layout and created a visualization
- Created a plan for signal flow (lighting/DMX and audio routing) and power managment for lights and sound
- Created and maintained an inventory of all the components required to build the stage
- Programmed the stage lighting in MagicQ
- Coordinated setup and teardown of the stage on site
- Provided ongoing tech support throughout the festival
- Ran a workshop for how to control the lights (busking)
- Did several hours of busking myself
Some pictures from the organization parts of it:
We got great feedback both years for lighting and the festival as a whole, and are already planning a bigger and better version for 2026!
Here is a video of some busking I did:
I also performed as a DJ both years, if you like bassy electronic music you might enjoy my set for 2025: