Eurovision Song Contest Malmö 2013 chooses Projectplace for the year’s biggest music festival

Projectplace, the leader in social collaboration tools, has been selected by Eurovision Song Contest Malmö 2013 to provide project tools for work on the year’s biggest musical event, which kicks off in May. The Eurovision Song Contest is the world’s largest live entertainment programme, with over 100 million viewers every year. After Loreen’s victory last year, Malmö is now hosting the event, and three live broadcasts are to be produced.

“Quite early on, we identified the need for a shared platform for communication, scheduling and file-sharing,” says Christel Tholse Willers, Head of Relations for Eurovision Song Contest Malmö 2013. Over 400 staff are involved in the project, alongside co-arrangers such as the City of Malmö and Malmö Arena, which have their own project organisations.

After looking at various suppliers, the choice fell on Projectplace, which offers project management tools that can be accessed from any computer or mobile device, wherever the user happens to be. There are many advantages; among other things, this avoids bottlenecks as all the information is collected in one place and is available to anyone with the right access within the project. All the information must be accessible to the people concerned, and this is easily arranged with a central collaboration area in cloud.

Projectplace’s clever permissioning system ensures that all the 39 participating countries can get at exactly the material that concerns them and their appearance. One sub-project, for example, will hold information on the lighting, stage layout, music and costumes for each entry.

Many of the files to be shared between the staff and co-arrangers, such as 3D models of stage sets, CAD drawings of structures and technical installations, and heavy video files in full HD, also demand high capacity, something that Projectplace’s tool can provide.

“Projectplace showed that it could meet our needs and ensure that work on Eurovision Song Contest Malmö 2013 runs smoothly, so we will be able to offer a fantastic music festival in Malmö in May,” says Christel Tholse Willers.

The logistics are another challenge with such a large project as the Eurovision Song Contest. 39 countries will be participating in the event, and around 90,000 people will be in the audience in the Arena for nine different shows. The City of Malmö is a co-arranger and has already been using Projectplace to handle the logistics for the event; parking places, hotel accommodation, freight transport etc. The fact that both parties are using Projectplace means that the two projects can cooperate smoothly.

“We are proud that the Eurovision Song Contest project has decided to use Projectplace for such a special event as Eurovision Song Contest Malmö 2013. It is great to be part of a music festival of this calibre which involves so many people from all over Europe,” says Johan Zetterström, CEO of Projectplace.