An Interview With Ben Ari
As a part of our series about “5 Things You Need To Know To Successfully Run a Live Event”, I had the pleasure of interviewing Ignacio “Iggy” Rosenberg.
Ignacio (or ‘Iggy’ to his friends, collaborators, and clients!), was born and raised in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and has been working in lighting and visual design for 20 years. Before joining Lightswitch, Iggy spent the last decade designing or executing large touring shows around the world for artists including Karol G, Def Leppard, Janet Jackson and The Rolling Stones in Cuba, as well as numerous corporate shows. Iggy says ‘If I learnt anything in Argentina, it was to be conscious of budgets and maximizing the potential of what resources are available’.
Iggy describes his approach as ‘I’m steadfastly committed to servicing my clients the best way I possibly can. I really believe in putting in the hard work to make sure they get the best solution their money can buy, and if that means going above and beyond in search of excellence, so be it’. Iggy is a huge technology advocate, always looking for new tools and ideas, as long as they serve the design intent.
Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series! Before we dive in, our readers would love to learn a bit more about you. Can you tell us a bit about your “childhood backstory”?
For sure. I was born into a business family in Argentina to a very successful but strict German father. I was very lucky to go to a private school where I learnt English proficiently, but that came with the caveat of long school days, and every weekend we had to go to our farms to work. I did not particularly love the farm on the weekends (I have since grown to realize what a legacy it is and care deeply about them) because I wanted to be…a kid. My dad really taught all of us to work hard for what we want. We had everything we needed, but we had to work for it in return. A lesson I know try to instill often.
Can you tell us the story of what led you to this particular career path?
We had to do a couple of plays and shows throughout the years in my school, and there’s a photo somewhere where I’m looking behind me (not singing) when everyone else is looking ahead (singing). There was a smoke machine by me and I was fascinated by it. That led me to like musicals, want to do special effect for movies, realize there’s no movie industry like that in Argentina, and end up doing sound and lighting. Eventually when I graduated college I had to specify and chose lighting, and the rest is history.
It has been said that sometimes our mistakes can be our greatest teachers. Can you share a story about a mistake you made when you were first starting and the lesson you learned from that?
First starting? I do them now! There was something really silly when we were rehearsing a play once: the director was motioning to the sound booth, and I (as the 2nd in the audio team) decided to be “the hero” and stopped the music mid song. The head of audio stared at me in shock, the director was indicating to lower the volume and I had gone into complete confirmation bias thinking he meant to stop. It was embarrassing and taught me to think twice and analyze situations with more clarity.
Is there a particular book, podcast, or film that made a significant impact on you? Can you share a story or explain why it resonated with you so much?
Pink Floyd’s “Pulse” live movie. A schoolmate gave me the VHS (!) copy and after being amazed by the lighting I flipped the cover to see “Lighting Design By: Marc Brickman” and I knew then that was the job I wanted.
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?
There’s a quote I always say which is “Don’t yell at the fire”. I came into a show once and there was a fixture on fire up in the rig. Everyone was running around yelling about what to do, and I remember telling them we had 2 options: we let it burn and eventually it would douse, or we stopped the show and went up to extinguish it. Yelling at the fire 60 feet in the air wasn’t going to help. Whenever people panic and start getting out of control I always pull that quote. I was also a very angry roadie for many years and it’s ironic that quote and the behavior about it makes me a pretty calm designer nowadays.
Ok, thank you for that. Let’s now jump to the primary focus of our interview. For the benefit of our readers, can you tell us a bit about your experience organizing events?
At Lightswitch we have over 30 years of visual design for entertainment. I personally do everything from lighting to full production design for live events, ranging from small fundraisers, large corporate events, to giant shows for UNESCO and stadium-selling artists.
Are you running any exciting events in the near future? We’d love to hear about it. What do you want attendees to bring back with them after they attend your event?
We always have things in the work, and there’s some very exciting things at a very big scale coming up, I just can’t talk about them (yet!). I insist that most times in the world I inhabit people don’t’ go see a show, they attend an event. I want them to feel like they’re part of it. In a corporate show I want the brand colors, textures, and raison d’etre to be all around them. In a concert I want the energy to be palpable in the seats. It’s more fun when there’s a give and take from stage to audience.
In your opinion, what is an example of a company that has done a fantastic job creating live events? What specifically impresses you? What can one do to replicate that?
There are so many outstanding players that choosing one is very hard. All the production companies we collaborate with have noticeable traits. They bring all the teams in early to ensure the design, organization, logistics, and creative process is done at the same time; his saves so much time and cost in changes down the line, and it means we’re a unified front in producing an event. The other thing we see a lot is being unafraid to tell a client that there may be a better way to do something. It’s easy for someone to see something cool on TV or in a show and want “that”. Most time what they want is the wow factor, or the way it made them feel. We can create that feeling for that event, company, brand without just copying what someone else did. It takes guts to tell a CEO or CMO to stop copying someone…but it will make their show better and that’s always worth it.
What are the common mistakes you have seen people make when they try to run an event? What can be done to avoid those errors?
The biggest thing we’ve seen is not allotting for rehearsals and tech time on schedules. Managing offsite rehearsals is so vital because the main rooms need to teched, and things need to be rehearsed. We have a very strong previsualization software where we can start working on lighting and video programming in a virtual environment while the show is being physically built, but we still need time with the actual room. Dancers and entertainment need to rehearse. Things break and need to be replaced. Running the crew ragged never produces great results.
Are there any essential tools or software that you think an event organizer needs to know about?
We’ve seen a lot of great organizational tools out there. Showflo is probably the most revolutionary thing to come out the last few years. It does mean that everyone needs a very solid internet connection, but the flexibility and tracking it provides makes shows so much more fluent, and it saves SO. MUCH. PAPER.
Ok. Thank you for all that. Here is the main question of our discussion. An in-person event can have a certain electric energy. What does it take to create an engaging and memorable event? What are the “Five Things You Need To Know To Successfully Run a Live Event” and why?
1. The experience starts at check in. I’ve seen and heard about so many shows where checking in is complicated, the system is incapable of keeping up, or just plain confusing. It gets people in the wrong mood from the get go: nobody wants to stand in line for hours just to get accredited to a ting they probably paid a lot of money to attend. I can check in to an airplane from my living room, checking into a show shouldn’t be harder.
2. Signage is very important. I recently attended a conference myself and I had the hardest time figuring out where the stages and rooms were located. They all had cute names, but no way of knowing where they were, or how to get to them. There were signs for bars but they didn’t exist, or had limited hours. Make information clear. Being late to a talk because you can’t find a room is so silly.
3. The event has 2 audiences. The client and the audience. Sometimes they’re not aligned, and it’s our job as designers and producers to make sure the needs are met for both. I light everything for camera very carefully because there’s always cameras on the shows and I want the execs to look good (lighting makes memories, video makes evidence!), but I also want everyone’s iPhone videos and photos to look great as well. Same reason why I try to bring the lighting and set into the audience, they deserve to be enveloped by the show.
4. Put yourself in the shoes of the audience. For example, if a show is for a tech company you’re going to need stellar wifi and a lot of charging stations (located where they’re useful, so we don’t have bloggers sitting on the floor against wall in the back of the room next to a plug). Make water stations available. Think about what you’d need if you were in that audience.
5. Leverage new technologies to increase interaction. There are amazing new software suites where it goes beyond “scanning a barcode”. There’s chats, side conversations, contact sharing, maps. That conference I attended before had an app called Braindate where you can create ad-hoc converations about any topics. It was a hit, I loved it! With that said, the bottleneck is always the network, so having a 3rd party vendor to provide and manage wifi is imperative nowadays.
Let’s imagine that someone reading this interview has an idea for a live event that they would like to develop. What are the first few steps that you would recommend that they take?
Call us! Besides being a design firm we’re a huge repository of ideas and contacts. We’re always happy to creatively partner with someone and share our “rolodex” of producers, sound engineers, logistics, as well as all our previous experience. We love to help the industry, and I’m happiest when everyone is working and stress-free.
Super. We are nearly done. Here are our final questions. You are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger.
Coming from South America where our public education is lackluster, and having traveled around the world several times, I’m a huge advocate for school reform. For getting real education to everyone. Teach people about the world and cultures, how to do their taxes, how to get a job, how to troubleshoot. It’s a shame that people don’t know that they don’t know what they don’t know, and many don’t even know that they can learn and change their futures. Educate the world, that’s my movement.
We are very blessed that some of the biggest names in Business, VC funding, Sports, and Entertainment read this column. Is there a person in the world, or in the US, with whom you would love to have a private breakfast or lunch, and why? He or she might just see this if we tag them.
Joe Rhode! We’ve had a few contact points in jobs but have never met face to face or had a conversation. I devour his explanations on Instagram, brilliant man.
Thank you for these fantastic insights. We greatly appreciate the time you spent on this.