We have produced receptions and afterparties around the Small Satellite Conference (SmallSat) at Utah State University in Logan for years — sound, lighting, video and DJ.
How we got into it
About four years into the business, a colleague in Salt Lake City called. He had been booked to DJ a SpaceX reception and did not have the gear to cover the production side of it. We took the production, the night went smoothly, and we partnered on that event for the next three years. Production was the focus of the business at that stage and the job lined up exactly with it.
The pandemic reshuffled a lot of marketing teams and we lost contact with the people who ran that particular event. 2022 and 2023 brought new partners.
Nano Avionics: two DJ setups, one building
For the Nano Avionics reception we provided sound, lighting and DJ services, with 16 pixel tubes and 40 uplights matched to the company's brand colours.
The interesting constraint was the building. We ran two full DJ setups, one upstairs and one downstairs, opened the reception upstairs and moved the evening downstairs later — not for effect, but because of local sound ordinances. Planning the room change in advance is what let the event keep going instead of getting cut short.
The music ran deep house, Euro house, tech house and some bass house. There was no expectation of dancing at a conference reception, and we had dancing for about half the night.
Virgin Orbit: a video wall and a storm
For the Virgin Orbit reception we provided sound and a video wall. If you have not seen one built, a video wall is effectively a mobile billboard: a truss structure goes up first, then the wall is assembled panel by panel until it is the size of something you would see beside a highway.
Virgin Orbit ran their own playlist through an iPad connection. The weather did not cooperate: about 45 minutes in, the wind picked up and brought a storm through. We took the video wall down for roughly twenty minutes and waited it out with the client before carrying on. That is the correct call and it is worth being plain about — a wall that size is a sail, and nothing on the run sheet is worth standing it up in a gust front. The event had food, bull riding, horseshoes, archery and axe throwing, and other than the pause it ran without a problem.
Reception photos by Mike Johnson.
Running a conference reception or afterparty? Corporate AV covers the full production, and every rental price is published.
