This is a blog post with Ola Hermansson, one of the guys in our great crew.

Ola Hermansson - Technical Operations Manager

What is your name, where do you work and what is your profession?

My name is Ola Hermansson. I’m an audio engineer by trade, and work with stage craft and engineering on TV-productions, concerts and corporate events. Where I work? Everywhere…

For how many years have you been involved in this conference?

Hmmm, “As time goes by” (like Sam sung in Casablanca). This years conference is my fourth i believe. My first CS3 (then 4SICS)-experience was in 2015.

How did you get involved in this, both with your profession and with this event?

My profession is a life-long love story (the cliché “I started out as a child” comes in handy…). Regarding me getting involved with the good people at CS3, I think it was my colleague Anders Hagström that was given the opportunity to work with the event, and asked me to join the team.

What is your role during the conference?

I manage and run the technical operations when we’re “live” (so to speak). My main target is to keep the show running smooth (out of a technical perspective) and keeping the keynote speakers happy, giving them the best possible platform to perform on stage.

You normaly travel the world with rock stars and TV celebrities, so this must be the complete contrast, or?

I would like to think quite the opposite. The tools we use during CS3 is much the same as we use in a TV- or concert-production. Except the rock stars are PhD’s and the TV-cameras are fewer.

Is it a marathon race, a 100 meter race, or something else to do this kind of job?

That kind of depends of your position in a production. In this particular case, I come into play when much of the “marathon-like” work is done. For me it’s more like a 100 meter race, for one intense week. Of course there’s a lot of pre production on the technical side of things as well, but the intense part of the work takes place the last days just before a production (when we set things up) and during the show. One cool thing about working live production, is that you really only get one chance to get it right.

What is the biggest challenges that you see?

Beating people’s expectations year after year, that’s a big challenge.

What is your best memories from the previous conferences?

Hmmm, Lot’s off goodies - but Jenny Radcliffe’s “Tales of a people Hacker” in 2017 was really intriguing. Also, for a techie like me, the GeekLounge in the basement is a really cool place as well (even though the technical level of the stuff going down there is kind of above my pay-grade :)

What do you look forward to with this years event?

Working at Nalen (the Venue) is always super cosy, I really like that place. This year will also feature an expo (taking place the day before the actual conference starts) - this means some new challenges for us production-wise, that I’m kind of looking forward to dealing with. It’s gonna be exciting.

Any last words of advice to our readers and the attendees?

I don’t know. Buy a ticket. Show up. Stay geek?