My VIKING mission
Tuesday 5 April 2011
I was absolutely buzzing with energy all the way home tonight, managing to call three friends before I reached my door.
I’d done an 11hour day at The Swedish Armed Forces biggest event of the year. 2500 people from 31 countries has flown in, so the town is packed with international militaries, police and civilians from over 40 organisations, such as Save the Children, UN and Amnesty International. It’s a huge media training exercise going on. It’s called VIKING, and my job is to create the media scenario, which will simulate game play for the attendees. The base has been turned into “Bogaland” and our international TV station and national radio will broadcast on “Zulu” time. I love it!
Apart from working as a multimedia producer, reporter and journalist, I will be presenting the TV news at our English speaking TV station. I will be working together with a guy who currently presents the news for Swedish Television. I’m so excited about it and that’s why I’ve been high and buzzing since dinner. Oh, that’s a perk too. We’re getting fed breakfast, lunch and dinner for free over the next 10 days.
If my last mission - the six days in the forest - had the feel of a music festival, the energy at VIKING reminds me of the MTV Awards. I really love working with big live events like this, and it's great to be surrounded by so many enthusiastic and dedicated people.
Tomorrow will be a long production day. Today mainly involved prepping and attending around a 1000 seminars. I have a real difficult time sitting still and hearing what they’re saying during speeches and seminars. It’s like watching little puppets behind a podium moving their mouths and not having a faintest idea what they’re talking about. And I was really trying hard to listen!
It reminds me of when I started my production company in London and spent a weekend taking speech and sales classes in order to convince my future clients. One thing I learnt is that there are two types of people: cat and dog people. A cat person need to feel involved, talked to directly and have some questions and movement captivating their attention during the pitch, otherwise you’ll loose their attention. Well, the cat people wasn’t catered for today and I was lost in space for half of it.
Starting to feel slightly spaced now too. I’ve just had a long essential oil bath. A shop here emptied their health section last week and I got some amazing deals. Apart from Herbal Bath products, I discovered the most amazing organic lotion I’ve ever tried – Lemon Fresh by Lavera Yum!
