Posted by Karen Cage

IPGA Events and Sponsorships Program Manager

December 21, 2006

“HP is going to Sundance? How lucky can you be? What will you be doing there?” When I tell people I’m going to Sundance, they have all kinds of questions because they usually don’t know what HP does at Sundance or what it takes to get there. Here’s my behind-the-scenes peek at getting ready for Sundance 2007.

As the official information technology provider of the Sundance Film Festival and Sundance Institute, HP’s technology, services and people play important roles in practically every aspect of the organization's internal and external operations.

At the festival, HP provides the infrastructure technology for the institute's eight festival venues, Sundance’s official Web site (www.sundance.org) and its Online Film Festival. Additionally, HP recently implemented an easy-to-use wireless platform that radically simplifies the way festival attendees communicate with the institute—and each other. You can learn more about our role with The Institute here.

So what does it take for HP to participate in the 10 days of the festival each year? What do we have to do to create our onsite activities, bring you this blog and our Snapshot Diaries contest? Let’s look at this in numbers:

· 3 – The number of business groups represented at Sundance. That would be all of them!

· 10 – The number of special edition Newsgrams that HP will create to keep everyone posted on the latest festival happenings. Sign up here!

· 50 – The number of posts we expect to have on this blog during the festival

· 64 – The number of employees/agency partners coming to support HP’s activities at Sundance.

· 80 – The number of VIP guests and HP employees that will participate in our annual Entertainment Summit held the first weekend of the festival

· 252 – The number of hotel/condo room nights we have to manage. Not everyone comes for the full time or for the same duration. We practice “revolving-door” reservations – when someone checks out of their hotel room, another person checks in.

· 8,000 – The number of photo albums we expect to distribute onsite. If you’re in town, visit us at any of our five photo locations take home your memories with free photos and a photo album from HP.

· 14,457 – The number of photos we took of festival participants at Sundance last year. Sure, we only had 8,000 albums, but lots of people went to more than one of our five different venues to have a photo taken with family and friends

· Numbers unknown – the number of comments we’ll get on our blog, the number of entries we’ll have to our Snapshot Diaries contest, and the amount of fun we’ll have amidst all the 12-hour days.

Sure, it’s a lot of work. But hey: A long day at Sundance helping HP support this important alliance and interacting 1x1 with our customers easily beats just another day on office email. I can’t wait to see you there! Or here on the blog!