This is a guestblog by Thijs van Bemmel. He is a super enthusiastic volunteer at 1%CLUB and is partly responsible for the success of 1%EVENT 2012!
Last Thursday and Friday 13 and 14 Septemer are two days that will always stick in my memory as two of the most intense and inspiring days of 2012. I have never before been in contact with so many nationalities at the same time, never experienced a cooperation that was so powerful and had never co-produced a livestream before.
It all started three weeks before the 1%EVENT, when I first got in contact with some of the labs. I was assigned the task to prepare the labs that joined the international co-creation for the livestream, so I had to communicate with a dozen enthusiastic young professionals from eight different countries. From the very first email I send I felt the energy bubbling, and that only grew with the facebook connections and multiple skype calls.
Two days before the event the energy almost made me loose it. We still had to test the Internet connections, set up livestream channels, prepare videos and schedule all the interviews. The teams were starting up and with that the stress kicked in, leading to some miscommunication. One time I was chatting with Sudan about the songs that they wanted us to play, at least, that was what I thought. After some hints and a few minutes I was reminded that I was chatting with Lamees from Palestine, who just wanted to ask me on what website she could check out the live-stream.
These preparations forced me to learn all the first names, surnames and nicknames of every contactperson of every lab, since I did not want this kind of miscommunication during the event itself. What I remember of the following two days of the 1%EVENT is one big rush of multiple skype conversations at the same time, the opening and closing on google hangout with all the labs, the wonderful reactions of the online viewers but most of all the energy boost I got from the combination of all this!
I was asked how long it took me to recover after the event, but the real question was how long it took me to rehab. The adrenaline that I felt was addictive and I cannot wait to feel it again. 
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