Volunteers take Roskilde Festival through IT revolution

Posted: July 05, 2010 by Daniel Vámosi Martinussen

The shift from paper to digital archives, cloud-services and ad-hoc solutions to integrated IT systems make up the framework that one of the worlds largest music festivals is dealing with these years. And every developer is a volunteer!

This year the musician Prince marked the end of the 40th edition of the legendary Roskilde Festival. Whilst most people would agree that the spirit and atmosphere have barely changed since 1971, few people know of the changes behind the scenes.

July 2010 did not only mark the 10th anniversary of the tragic accidents where 9 people from the audience died, it is now also 10 years ago the festival started to focus on the shift to IT and IT development.

For the past ten years PhD students, engineers, developers and other IT specialists have been working several months every year to ensure that all IT systems are ready for the Rock'n'Roll week. And since the festival administration receives plenty of applications they can afford only to engage the top people.

This year 40 voluntary IT developers have been working to prepare and develop the IT systems towards the festival week. Many of these have put in more than 100 hours of work merely based on enthusiasm since the only benefit is a ticket to the festival.

Per Rasmussen, Head of IT maintenance and development at the festival, explains that the motivation for many of the volunteers is the opportunity to dig into work areas that they do not normally get to deal with in their respective day jobs. Today, the conduction of Roskilde Festival comprises 12 applications developed for various tasks.

Many applications run individually since they are developed ad-hoc, and with the current focus on rationalization and optimization through IT development the festival is now about to take the next step with a master IT strategy, which will also put everything in "the cloud".

Source: Computerworld and Roskilde Festival

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