(gentle music)
- Okay, so, we have been trekking
around celebration all weekend
and we've seen amazing things
and done amazing things.
And it might make you wonder,
Just who puts all of these logistics together.
Well, we're talking to three guys from Reed Expo,
and they're the ones that put on
this incredible, huge, wild ride of a show.
So we have Matt, Rich, and Brian.
Do you guys wanna tell us each what you do?
- Sure, I'm Matt Wasowski, I actually run a festival
that we do every October in New York,
called New York Super Week.
But obviously with everyone else on the Reed POP team,
we have a responsibility to all of our shows.
So I've been here doing a lot of line management
and running some of our speed dating panels as well.
So, very important jobs here.
- Rich, what do you do?
- I'm the operations manager of the event,
- So I actually work with our vendors
to put this whole event together.
Everything from the signage to the security,
to renting the hall, the venue.
I put all that together.
- I am Brian Stephenson, I am the
Global Brand Director for Reedpop
so I receive all the branding of the
shows, the marketing of the shows,
delivering an audience, merchandise creation,
and all that kind of fun stuff.
- So you guys don't do anything important basically.
- No, pretty much not. (laughing)
- So here's what I really wonder.
What is the first meeting like
when you're prepping a show like this?
What's the rundown on something like that?
- I mean, we are the, I've been taking notes all day.
While we're here, we're taking notes
on how we can improve things in the future.
So literally, we'll be asleep for about a day after this,
and then we have a meeting to go over
how can we make it better, what are we
doing next, how can we improve it,
what can we do more for the fans.
We'll have a deep dive about that,
and the process starts over almost immediately.
- And I take what they want to do,
and try to implement it within the show.
For me it starts, especially this show, Star Wars,
over a year ago coming to this venue.
Meeting with the venue, meeting with
everyone that runs it, meeting with their
security team, find out how things work here.
I have to contract all the vendors,
so you have security, you have audio visual,
you have computer equipment.
So we have to put all that together.
- So obviously there are a million things to juggle.
But what's the most challenging
thing about each of your jobs?
- Me, it's just making sure the fans are happy.
We want to do everything.
Fans are number one.
So if someone has a challenge, or a bad experience,
we all take it very personally.
What's great, I work at a lot of other events,
but the Reedpop group takes every single
issue that comes up seriously.
And then we'll group together
if there's some similar issues.
We make sure we reply to absolutely everybody.
We work really hard and we're prideful
on putting something like this together.
We want everyone to have their best experience,
and if someone doesn't, it really pulls at your heart.
- Yeah and actually to echo that, I think
what's interesting is that, and I think
it's a characteristic that's shared
by a lot of our team, is that, if there are 10,000
people at a show, and 9,998 of them,
we don't hear from them,
assuming they're having great experience.
But we hear from two of them and we
have some kind of complaint or are
disappointed in something, those are the two that we feel.
We don't feel the other - Yeah.
- 99.99% of success.
So I think it's a good attitude
we're all sort of, we want to be perfectionists.
- Yes. - As far as our
fan experience. - And yeah, that's the thing,
we pride ourselves on always putting fans first.
Part of the job is, can be kind of difficult is,
what can we do to top ourselves?
How can we blow up the fans' minds
even more next time we come back,
or next time we build a celebration or any event we do.
We say it all the time, it's really the fans' show.
It's their show, we're just trying to build
them something that's worthy of their passion.
- Yeah.
- And, that's always the payoff,
but that's always the downside too.
If you reward that passion, they couldn't be happier.
You've given them the best weekend
of their lives, for some people.
You've made those dreams come true as Richie said.
But the flip side of it is, if you don't
live up those expectations, or if you
build something that isn't worthy of
their passion and all the fuel and the fire
that they put into their fandom,
then we always take it really to heart
and we always try to think of them first.
- So dovetailing on that, obviously
this is a challenging and demanding job for everybody.
What makes you stay in it?
- It's really simple and it sounds
probably kinda cheesy, but it's
really just seeing the fans' reactions.
You see kids, you see folks of all ages who come
and this is something that they've been waiting for.
They've had the circle on
their calendar for months or years.
When they get here, you see pictures being taken
by thousands of people of those things that you made.
It's just a really incredibly gratifying feeling.
- It's seeing how excited the fans are.
A lot of times whenever I'm here on site,
I'll be down in the cuehall,
I'll go around giving stuff to fans.
Either stickers, or we're getting in line
or we're just talking to fans, or we're trading pins.
We got some pins flying around here, you see?
We love to do things that encourage community.
We're kinda building a whole ecosystem.
Almost a city within this building for one weekend.
Whenever you have everybody come in
first thing in the morning,
sometimes fans sleep out overnight.
It's cool because a lot of times I'm the
first one that gets to let people come in.
So it's kind of like opening the doors
to the Wonka Factory.
(laughing)
- It's like "Ok here we go, first day
"you guys are the first in line, you've
"been here for hours, are you ready?"
And you just see everybody, just
the energy just well up.
Then whenever you let them come forward and go in,
it's just like you're opening up a special kind
of surprise or gift, a love letter to the fans
from all of us and from Lucasfilm
and from anybody else that we partner with.
And that's the biggest reward.
- But one thing, a question she asked me last night.
I was exhausted, I'm tying my shoe, I'm outside,
and some family comes up and the woman
goes to the oldest son, had to be like five or six,
"Go ahead say something to him"
and the guy goes "Sir, thank you so much for this show."
And he came up and gave me a hug.
And I'm like,
(laughing) just melted last night.
Right in front of everybody.
I didn't know what to say, I almost welled up.
- I'm crying. - I had goosebumps
just talking about that.
- That's always the thing.
We're going, we're here, we've been here for a week.
Some of us are going straight to Chicago
to build C2-E2 next weekend.
So that's two weeks away from family and friends
and the rest of our lives, pulling the 20 hour days
for almost two weeks straight.
But, the cool thing are those stories.
The one that pops into my head was
whenever we were in Germany for Star Wars
last year, almost two years ago now.
We had just finished Sunday night.
We were walking out to dinner.
We were just tired, you're just done
you shut the doors to everything
and you go into a restaurant and there's
about 20 of us, and we're just sweaty and filthy.
There's about 50 different Star Wars fans
in groups at another table,
and they see us comin in,
and they all stand up and applaud.
- Of course. That's awesome.
- That was like, - That's it.
- It's things like that that fuel us and keep us going.
- So what has been your favorite thing
that's happened this show?
It might be his sweet child thanking him,
that's pretty good.
- It is those little anecdotes,
I think that are what's so valuable.
My favorite memory is, last night
we had a big party outside, and there were
two people that had met during speed dating,
and they were out there dancing together.
That's a story that they're gonna take back
and tell all their friends and family,
and it's just a little, it's a minute piece
of a little show, but it just
- Yeah.
- I think the word is, exemplifies it.
- Thanks.
- It's beautiful.
We appreciate you guys so much.
Thank you seriously for putting on an amazing show.
- You've made it - Thank you.
- So easy for everybody here. - That means a lot.
- Thank you for the compliments.
- We, absolutely have had a blast.
Every picture you will see of us,
myself and Matt and Tyler on our crew,
we're all grinning ear to ear and we
look like completely manic monkeys.
And it's all - That's our goal.
- Because of these guys.
It is all because of these guys.
So thank you so much and for taking
your time out of your very very crazy day.
We appreciate it.
You guys gotta get to the next one,
or you're very foolish.
(sad piano melody)
(piano key)