The Day the Lights Went Out

// The Lights Went Out

I want to tell you about the day everything went wrong for You Are the Media - I say 'went wrong' but it was a defining moment in the history of the community because it was actually the moment that everything came together.

I was in 'vlogging' season in 2021 - I was creating videos for fun and this event just seemed to land right in the middle of that season so I captured it all - it became one of the best days I can remember.

Not because of the power cut but because of the moments we all shared and I was privileged to capture it all on video and I remember making the video live and I actually had an audience that stuck around for the premiere and watched it go live when it did.

// The Plan

It was a Thursday - every You Are The Media event is on a Thursday and it was the kind that Mark Masters had been putting together for years but this one was slightly different in that it was a hybrid show. Offline audience in the theatre, online audience on Zoom, a guest speaker, food laid on, the whole thing carefully prepared and ready to go.

We'd (the collective we) been putting on hybrid events since the lockdowns ended - it was a hangover from people not wanting to be with others and the fact that we'd tried to make it as inclusive for those people as possible.

Ollie had set up his cello, Gordon was downstairs running through his talk - relaxed, excited, not over-rehearsed. The screen was up. The sausage rolls were out thanks to Ollie (the other Ollie, not Cello Ollie).

People arrived, it was the hustle and bustle of every other event - I remember it as if it was yesterday because there were people everywhere in the foyer of the theatre in Christchurch.

And then the power went out.

Not a flicker - not a brief interruption that sorts itself out in thirty seconds. Nope. The whole building went dark.

Emergency lighting only.

The theatre needed to be evacuated due to health and safety reasons.

And just like that - the plan was gone - the event was over?

// What Happened Next

There was a serene type of chaos in that moment - everyone who was in the theatre was still committed, they hadn't gone anywhere. It could have been a morbid fascination of wondering what was going to happen next because it could have ended there. I mean, everyone would have understood because nobody signs up to a community event expecting a power cut.

There was no backup plan in that moment - Mark was upstairs trying to figure out if the power was going to come back on, we were all searching frantically for alternative venues - nobody would have blamed anyone for calling it a day.

But that's not what happened.

Instead, people stood around in the dark with sausage rolls, made decisions on the hoof, and we eventually found a pub called The Snug, dragged the whole thing upstairs in that place and we carried on.

The show went on.

Not the show that was planned because we didn't have the setup but it was something scrappier, louder, warmer, and considerably more memorable - Ollie played his cello like it was the going down of the titanic and the online audience - the Zoom crowd who'd tuned in expecting a polished theatre show - they got something far better, they got the real thing - they got to witness first hand, the chaos of it all - they got a group of people who refused to let a moment die.

// What the Day Actually Was

I've been in rooms where everything went perfectly - events are supposed to flow from one thing to another and the AV works, the speakers are supposed to be sharp. The content is always supposed to be good, the coffee is always supposed to be hot and of all of those events that I've been to and supported - I've forgotten most of them.

But I haven't forgotten that Thursday.

Because what the power cut did - accidentally, chaotically, without anyone planning it - was strip everything back to what actually matters. It took away the theatre and the screen and the carefully prepared setup and left just the people - the community.

And the people were enough - more than enough.

That's what shared moments do, the ones that bind people together are rarely the polished ones. In sales, I was always taught that clients don't remember the moment when you sign the deal or the moments where everything goes right, they remember how you deal with a crisis or what happens when things go wrong and you can lose a client if you don't support them when you need the.

The shared moments are the ones where something goes sideways and you find out who people really are - they're the ones where a plan collapses and what's left standing is something realer and more valuable than the plan ever was. Because you come together to experience everything as one.

Adversity has a way of doing that - it removes the surface and shows you the foundations.

// The After Party

We ended up at Bodega that night in Christchurch drinking Argentinian Malbec - the debrief that only happens after something unexpectedly brilliant.

During that melee and that afterparty moment - someone said - half joking but with the stress of the day, in all likelihood, a little truth "that makes me never want to do a live event again"

Everyone in the room laughed - because everyone in it knew the opposite was true. Those were the events that people live for.

That afternoon, with its power cuts and cancelled venues and improvised pubs, had done something that a perfectly executed event rarely does. It had created a story, a shared one.

The kind that gets told at the next event, and the one after that.

Remember the time the lights went out?

Five years on - here I am, still telling it.

// The Thread

Community isn't held together by consistency alone - It isn't held together by showing up when everything is easy.

It's held together by the moments nobody planned for.

The power cut that sends everyone out into the street, the plan that falls apart and forces something better to emerge. It's all in those moments because the afternoon where everything goes wrong and everyone chooses to stay anyway - that's what brings people back again and again.

Those are the moments that matter.

Not because of what went wrong, but because of what they revealed - that the people in that room weren't there for the theatre or the screen or the sausage rolls - they were there for each other.

That's the only community worth being a part of.

And sometimes it takes the lights going out to show you that it was there all along.