I was there!

High Output emailed me before the end of the week after the last show.  The campaigns finally realized that there was an election coming and maybe they should think about that…  High Output asked me to do Elizabeth Warren, as their main guys were working on Rmoney’s Election Night HQ.

It was the Fairmont Hotel on Copley Square in Boston.  We were in the main floor ballroom, with FOH setup on the balcony, way in the back.  They hired me to send cable TV feeds to Warren’s two huge 12 foot screens that flanked the stage. I had 2 60 inch monitors in front of me, showing the two screen program, the identical feed going to the two big screens.  And I had four 20 inch monitors, one for each of the four cable boxes to choose from as source: We had three dedicated sources: CNN MSNBC NECN and we also had a rover we would channel surf looking for something new.

My job was to inform the Warren supporters what was happening as election night progressed.  We would punch up the cable source that had the latest information as soon as we could.  We kept the room hopping and cheering all night long. Sometimes we would bring up the sound so the room could hear, but we only did that maybe four times.  We pumped the room for excitement, building slowly at first, showing projections and returns from surrounding states.  Vermont was the first state to go to Obama, so for over an hour Obama had 3 Electoral Votes, while Rmoney got up to 40 or more.

We would punch up whatever we could find to give the crowd the news.  Every time we’d put something up, they’d point to the left screen of the right screen and scream their heads off.

The best was right before the election was called for Warren, we had NECN up on one screen and Channel 5 on the other.  We saw the NECN reporter getting ready for her stand-up and when she started talking we put her up on both screens.  The room realized they were live and they went nuts, cheering and screaming.  Over the reporter’s shoulders were the screens showing her reporting.

Then they cut to the Brown room.  He had a band playing and only one screen showing an endless loop of Brown’s name.  No one was cheering, no one was even moving.  They were keeping their voters in the dark as to what was going on in the world. Rmoney was the same way:  Obama’s room was moving, Rmoney’s room was static, nobody moved an inch.

We saw Warren projected the winner and put that up on the big screens and the crowd went nuts.  Brown finally came out to concede and the crowd went nuts.

We turned up the sound so the room could hear him speak.  He rambled on for a while and his crowd started the Brown chant, which I swear was, “Kill, kill, kill!”  Our room would start chanting “Warren, Warren, Warren!”  After a while Brown was rambling on, and our room started chanting “Wrap it up! Wrap it up!”

While Warren was speaking, which was carried live on MSNBC for a few minutes, the west coast polls closed.

When Warren had finished and the crowd was still cheering, Obama’s number went to 250-something.  And then it happened: MSNBC projected Obama to have won.  I put that on both screens and the noise was deafening!