NBN sat down with DM Production co-chairs McCormick junior Caleb Young & Communcations senior Jas Baziuk.
Tell me what it's been like to have a headset on and have a voice in your ear all weekend.
JB: I actually don't know what it's like to do DM without a voice in my head. I've had a radio for three out of four years, so I'm kind of used to it by now.
CY: This is my third year with DM and my first year with a radio. It makes me feel important, so that's cool. But it's also always challenging, because you're talking to someone else and then the radio will come on and you kind of have to interrupt conversations. So, it takes a little bit of getting used to.
What have you guys been up to?
JB: For a good portion of the first chunk I was adding slides onto the computer to make sure that everything would be on the computer at the time it needed to be put up. We've been working with everybody about, like, if we're running late, then what do we do next, and that kind of stuff.
CY: Our whole committed is to designed to work when everything's going according to plan, and when everything isn't going according to plan, we're kind of there to change the plan. If it's not going according to plan, to get it back on track. Overall, so far, it's going very smoothly, but you know there've been a few instances where we've changed around things, and got everything back on track.
Can you talk about the change to nearly all LED lights in the tent?
CY: For awhile now, we're using what are called LED lights for Productions, but this year is the first year we kind of went all-out with those and basically used all LEDs, with a few minor exceptions. So basically, LEDs are a super-efficent form of lights, and so by using those for all our overhead lights, it draws a lot less current, and so a lot less power from the source.
How does it feel to be past the halfway point?
CY: I think for me, it kinda just feels like we've finally kinda got the hang of it...The first half was kind of me figuring things out, and now I'm just excited to kind of enjoy the ride for the rest of it.
JB: I'm really sad. I'm a senior and I'm also graduating next week, so DM is the, like, end of my college career this weekend. Being over halfway through is kind of devastating. That's how I'm feeling right now.
How did you change the staging this year to accomodate the beneficiary's needs?
JB: Obviously with our beneficiary being Team Joseph, we had to have a wheelchair-accessible stage. So we worked pretty hard to implement one. We went through a lot of different designs of where to put it, and we ended up deciding to put it behind the stage because that seemed to be the best option for everything that we need to do.
CY: We just made sure that when we did the ramp, we wanted it to be compliant with requirements. And so the requirement that applies here is for every inch of rise, you need 12 inches of run. So for a 3 foot stage, that applies to 36 feet of ramp. There's also a requirement that if it's more than 30 feet, you have to have a landing halfway down...We had to go through a lot of iterations to figure out where to really place it.