Harvard Goes Dark

If the guest list of your event includes the U.S. secretary of education and Harvard-level scholars, simply handing out some hors d'oeuvres and uncorking a few bottles of wine won't do. So a few years ago when I planned an appreciation event for this crowd for Harvard University's Graduate School of Education (HGSE), I knew I had to pull out all the stops. However, a wiring snafu almost left my educated bunch completely in the dark.

Before starting my own company, I worked as the director of the Gutman Conference Center at Harvard's Monroe C. Gutman Library, which is part of the HGSE. To celebrate 100 years of pedagogy at Harvard, I had planned a weeklong conference that included lectures, symposiums, and roundtables on the topic of education. The culmination of this week was an appreciation event at the conference center to thank all the dignitaries and HGSE supporters who had made this event possible.

I chose an international theme for the event since students from more than 90 countries attended HGSE at the time. To convey this theme, I divided the conference center into five areas representing five regions - Asia, the Middle East, America, and two European sections - where cuisine from each would be served. I planned to hold a reception on the first floor of the library, and a dinner/dance in the Gutman Conference Center one floor below.

During the two weeks prior to the event, my team and I built sets featuring cultural images and props for each of the regions, and during the two days leading up to the event, we installed the sets along with a bandstand and dance floor in the conference center. Since the room's concrete walls were lit with unflattering fluorescent lights, I also decided to brighten the event with theatrical lighting that would both illuminate the room and draw attention to our world-themed sets instead of the gray walls. As each set was built, my team and I installed the lights and then checked to make sure they were shining brightly before moving on to the next section of our installation.

The day of the event, each set looked perfect. But just to be sure, I checked the lights in each section one by one to make sure they were working and that the tables and decorations were illuminated. With everything in order, I turned off the theatrical lights and headed upstairs to the first floor of the library where our 500 guests would soon arrive.

At around 6 p.m., guests started filtering into the library, where we served drinks and appetizers. At 7 p.m., our staff was supposed to escort them from the library to the Gutman Conference Center, where caterers had set out a world of tasty creations.

So around 6:50 p.m., I headed downstairs to check on the food and turn on the theatrical lights. But when I flipped the light switch, the whole room went black - and I started to panic. In mere minutes, my 500 esteemed guests would descend the stairs, but all they would find at this point was a world of darkness.


Knowing that my team upstairs would start sending the guests down to the dark room at any second, I raced back to the first floor and told them to stall. Next, I called the campus electrician and begged him to drop whatever he was doing to come help me. Thankfully, he agreed, and I started breathing again.

As I waited for the electrician, I told the caterers that the lighting situation was temporary, and we'd have it fixed in no time. So by the light of their Sterno flames, the food-service folks fumbled along in their duties.

Luckily for me, the electrician lived close to campus and arrived at the conference center at about 7:10 p.m. He quickly headed over to the breaker boxes in the back and analyzed the problem. He soon explained that he could get the fluorescent lights up quickly, but he informed me that the electrical system in the conference center hadn't been designed to handle the load required by all the theatrical lights. Apparently, each time I'd tested a section of lighting during the install, I'd reached - but not exceeded - the wiring's capacity. But when I turned them on all at once, the wires couldn't handle the load, and the breakers blew.

The electrician quickly came up with a plan to fix the overload problem, but he figured it could take up to an hour to implement the solution. He hoped to rewire the breakers so they could handle the heavier load, and he estimated that it would take about 10 or 15 minutes per section. He figured he could bring up the bright lights on my five regions one at a time as he worked.

It wasn't a perfect solution and the event would actually start out rather dark, but the idea of each section coming up one at a time meant I could add a bit of drama in the process. So I quickly set the electrician to work on the breakers, and turned my attention to the attendees upstairs, who were getting a bit restless.

I raced upstairs to the first floor and told my crew to start moving the guests down to the conference center. Needless to say, as the crowd descended the stairs, they were less than impressed by the dim, flickering fluorescent bulbs lighting the party at the time. But about 10 minutes later when the lights dawned on the first world region of our buffet-style banquet, namely the Italian section, I loudly announced "Welcome to Italy!" and acted as if I was officially "opening" that food section.

As each subsequent region was illuminated, my team welcomed the guests to that part of the world. And right around 8:30 p.m., just as it was time for the band to begin and the attendees to start dancing, the electrician lit up the dance floor. Voila!

Since the electrician had saved the day, I wanted to thank him. I knew that our Italian-cuisine caterer also happened to own one of the hottest restaurants in town, where reservations were hard to come by. So toward the end of the night, I asked him if he'd do me a favor and get our wiring genius a reservation at his restaurant - with me paying the tab, of course. Knowing our event had come this close to imploding, the caterer happily agreed.

While the electrician headed home and the caterers cleaned up, the guests danced and dined until about 11 p.m. As various dignitaries said their goodbyes at the end of the night, many complimented me on my dramatic unveiling of each catering section. Apparently, they enjoyed the little touch of drama - and had no idea how much real drama had gone on behind the scenes.

- David Wilson, president, Wilson Event Supply LLC, Tampa, FL