See also Parts 1 and 3.

The Internet Archive Telethon 2015 began at noon on December 19th, and almost immediately we had things go pretty crazy. The co-hosts (Jason Scott and Michelle Krasowski) and the opening staff of the Cortex got used to the timing of the whole thing, while tests and fixes kept happening to get the infrastrucure functioning.

But to get things off to a rousing start, Diva Marisa Lenhardt sang an aria from The Fifth Element and talked about how the Internet Archive’s Wayback machine saved a copy of a site she’d lost due to a disagreement with her hosting provider.

From there, we ran into issues with audio synchronization, to the strangeness of the cameras, and ultimately, a network outage. Due to the efforts of multiple employees coming onsite and online on that Saturday, the network connection returned, stronger than ever, and by 4pm, we had our act together.

So, it turns out that a telethon is a very stressful, very weird, very involved project, and a 24 hour marathon is all of that times 10!

Luckily, the calls and e-mails resulted in some pretty amazing appearances through the day and into the night (and back into the morning). Volunteers have edited together some of the highlights (although there were many more) and they are now available in the Archive’s collections. They include:

• John Law of the SF Cacaphony Society
• The Conspiracy of Beards, an all-male A Capella group that sings Leonard Cohen;
• Nuala Creed, creator of the statues of the Internet Archive’s Great Room;
• The Odd Salon, a set of exciting and well-presented talks;
• A huge Balkan Brass Band, including IA employee Noah Levitt;
• Andy Isaacson, speaking with Michelle about Santa’s Cybersecurity Issues

A pretty historic segment was Brewster Kahle interviewing John Perry Barlow and John Gilmore, co-founders of the EFF and with accomplishments on all sides, doing a combination interview and conversation among the statues.

Internet Archive employees played a huge part in the events and the acts onstage, including Alexis Rossi and Dwalu Khasu singing christmas carols and Jeff Kaplan performing on guitar.

It was a time for interviews and conversations about the nature of the Archive that rarely are heard outside its walls – employees sitting back and chatting about what brought them there, kept their interest, and what inspired them.

Among these were:

• Jeff Kaplan‘s talk after his musical segment about his thoughts on the Archive;
• Jason Scott interviewing Brewster Kahle;
• Brewster turning tables hours later and Interviewing Jason;
• The Now-World-Famous Dancing Archivists

Michelle’s late late show ran from Midnight to 8 AM Pacific Standard Time.  Along with hosting engaging interviews, she was inspired to dig deep into the Archive’s collection to feature some of our fascinating oddities, which included the horrors of candy eating, promotion of violence by Santa, and testing of toys in zero gravity:

• Munchers: A Fable
• Santa Claus’ Punch and Judy
• International Toys In Space

Michelle also pulled out the 35mm filmstrip projector and slide carousel to bring us back to our days of compulsory education in the dark, and we learned about Cities in Space and The Poetry of Rock.

In the Internet Archive 2015 collection, you can see both edited sequences as well as extended unbroken clips, some of them going for hours, of the Telethon as it happened.

There were moments of great excitement, of improvisation, and of having to just make do with who or what was onstage at that exact second. Though it all, hundreds of viewers weighed in with tweets, suggestions, questions and demands.

So, in basically one day, we generated a couple dozen hours of content and media, a good portion of it unique and amazing and some of it beyond classification.

But how did the Telethon actually do with regards to its goal, to raise awareness and funding for the Archive?

That’s in Part 3.

See also Parts 2 and 3.

The thinking was rather simple: The Internet Archive holds a year-end fundraising drive to encourage donations and recurring donations to provide the great service it does to the world. It does this in recent times through a combination of banner ads and grants, all meant to help cover the annual $12 million budget.

But the Archive is also made up of people, and is a resource for millions not just for web pages and historical documents, but for movies, music, software and a range of other data that have been contributed by institutions and individuals over the years. It also has its headquarters in San Francisco, which has quite a diverse amount of artists, musicians and figures.

So, the logic went, why not do a telethon?

The beginning of the setup – machines in the “cortex” and lighting up the stage.

The word “telethon“, a combination of “television” and “marathon”, is the idea that you do something, whatever it is, broadcast it as widely as possible, and keep doing it while asking for whatever it is you’re asking for.  Traditionally, this has been charity or non-profit organizations or causes. It’s probably most popularly heard when you flip past a public radio station and you hear a couple hosts talking about all the things that the station does across the year.

And the Archive happened to have an advantage for putting on a show that many places might not – a wonderfully inspiring Great Room, which was part of the church the headquarters building used to be, which has hosted a number of fun events in the recent past.

So, starting in the later part of 2015, a group of people started organizing the idea of an Internet Archive Telethon – contacting possible guests, figuring out what would sit where, and what would make sense for a final date.

The in-process photos of what would become “the cortex”, the central video switching and social media tracking, show the range of equipment:

The arrangement of computers, video/audio cables, encoders and switchers across the bench of a pipe organ was eventually cleaned up into something a little easier to understand. One or two people could run the three cameras (although they’d have to move them) and then a large monitor would allow the social media tracking (to answer questions and see what people were saying) as well as driving the on-screen graphics (to show donation totals, list who was talking, and send out “more to come” messages).

In all, it was very complicated, very improvised, and of course we had no idea how well it would work for its very first test, a 24-hour show.

The final setup, with a much cleaner arrangement (less obvious wires!) and a big screen.

In 2014, after a power outage, a 5 hour “test telethon” happened, where we sat in the great room and talked to people over a webcam. It was just a big conversation, talking about why the Archive does what it does, and dozens of people weighed in over the course of the event before we called it a day. It proved several things: We could stream live video for hours from the Archive, we could interact with people online doing it, and we needed some class acts to perform during the show.

We got all of that. We’ll talk about it in Part 2.