Electronic Arts 1,400 Person Event

This week’s event was a big 1,400 person karaoke event with the Electronic Arts annual party. Now I did this party last year at the Westin Bayshore and it was a blast! This year was even better! What better place to have a 1400 person event then Science World? It is very spacious and has multiple levels for different activities to go on at the same time…perfect.

As is my custom, again I arrived early. It was a good thing too. After I got to Science World, found where I was going to set up, had the equipment loaded in, got a parking pass for the car, parked the car and returned to Science World, it was about a 30 min. process. This is one of the reasons I always arrive early. You just never know how long it is going to take to get into a new venue and quite often, it takes longer to get everything loaded in than what you expected.

After the process of loading in was completed, it was time to start setting up. I had been placed at center stage and if you know Science World, that is the main area on the lower level where they demonstrate different experiments related to science.

Whenever you’re doing big events like this, there are a number of vendors contributing to the success of the event and there’s lots to think about. While I was communicating with the AV company that was responsible for the lighting and sound, they had mentioned that I should hook into the house system that was there. However, something told me that I should bring my own system as well. There again, experience and listening to my gut instinct paid off. The small speakers that were there are perfectly adequate for speeches and for presentations of demonstrating science experiments. They are not great for reproducing music and it was less than an adequate set up for a karaoke event. But I had circumnavigated a possible disaster and proceeded to set up my high-quality speakers.

Presently, I got everything set up tested and ready to go. I had brought a few my own lights as well and the AV company set their lighting so that it complemented mine.

The event started at 8 PM and as the guest trickled in, I did some preliminary training with a new DJ that I was working with. There was a lot of mingling happening with the guests and for the first hour or so I played karaoke versions of some popular songs and let the crowd know that I was there. Presently, Suzanne came along and asked me to play some music and make special announcements. One of the great things about my karaoke and DJ set up is that I can go seamlessly from karaoke to dance music with no problems.

Around 9 PM we started the singing. I already had a few requests and we started out with those. Some of the guests crowded around the stage to watch one of their coworkers sing a few tunes. After about 15 min. I was lacking some singers so I went up and did a song. It is always interesting to note that the guests of any karaoke event always seem to crowd around when one of their coworkers or staff members sing and then trickle away when the KJ host does a tune. I hope it’s not a reflection of my singing.

In any case, as the drinks flowed, the guests crowded around the requests books and request slips soon started coming in. We really got a good singing crowd going this year and the whole area in front of the main stage was soon crowded with people. At one point, there were so many of the guests there that I guess I was stealing the show and Suzanne, the organizer of the event, asked me to announce that there was dancing in the upper rooms. Apparently, there was hardly anybody up in the DJ area dancing the night away. I had them all downstairs singing their hearts out and dancing in front of the main stage. It was a great feeling to have such great support and see the guests really enjoying the performances by the friends and coworkers.

We really had a wide variety of genres. People sang songs from groups like Erasure, Madonna, Queen, The Mamas and the Papas, Maroon 5, Jay Z, and a host of others. It was great to see that we even had a Chinese lady take advantage of my Chinese karaoke song database. With my huge database of over 135,000 karaoke songs plus the Asian karaoke songs, there was lots of songs for everyone to choose from.

We not only had some great singers and great performers, but we had some fun dancers get into the groove and dance the night away in front of the stage while friends and coworkers performed. In the end count, I had well over 80 requests with song requests pouring in right to the very end of the event.

It was truly one of my more exciting karaoke events and I expect the success of this one will result in a return to next year’s Electronic Arts annual party for the third year running.

You can view some of the highlights that I will post in the video section of my face book page here Facebook
And keep in mind that I have a new service of karaoke rentals. Get a fully contained karaoke machine with 100 watt speaker and two microphones plus500 karaoke songs for $99 a day. It is great for small gatherings or when you want to sing the night away in the privacy of your own home.

Cheers
Gary
Boogie Shoes DJ karaoke services