BCC Live is a small but mighty company. Shameless plug—did you see our job postings? We are hiring!

We tackle big and small events all over the US and Canada. A great example of this is apparent in the last few weeks of our work—as you may have seen in our blog posts, we just finished helping make Rock n’ Roll Las Vegas happen on the weekend of February 27th, which is one of the most intensive projects we tackle. After that, you’d think it’d be time for a relaxing break, right? No way! Events all over the country need our help! Once we came back from Vegas, our team immediately got ready for another event—and another, and another, and another…

The Skyway 10K

While our largest partner and client in the event-production world is The IRONMAN Group, which puts on the IRONMAN triathlons, the Rock n’ Roll running series, and more, they’re by no means our only client! We lend our assistance to a wealth of other events for anyone who needs our A/V and livestreaming experience. (Do you have an event that could use our expertise? Click that “contact” button up at the top of the page and let us know!)

Last weekend we tackled the Skyway 10K, a running event that is as audacious as it is important. As the name suggests, the race is held on the Bob Graham Sunshine Skyway Bridge in St. Petersburg, Florida. Since the bridge is usually only open to motor vehicles, allowing runners to cross on foot is a one-of-a-kind experience as well as a monumental undertaking! Though the race was only inaugurated in 2018, it’s quickly become a premier event for runners in the Florida area.

And the more runners they get, the better—because crucially, the event is all for a good cause. Every penny of the registration fees is sent directly to the Armed Forces Families Foundation (AFFF), a volunteer-only charity which, in turn, uses 100% of its income supporting the families of U.S. military personnel. To date, they’ve helped fund USO facilities, upgrades to VA hospitals, non-profit organizations, and a bounty of other projects, all aimed at “caring for those who care for our freedom,” as their motto goes. Though the AFFF receives funding from multiple sources, the Skyway 10K’s revenue is a significant fraction of their total—so putting on a good event is important!

Since the event went virtual last year, both BCC and the Skyway team had a gap in our experience. But we’ve been with the race since the start, so it was just a matter of doing what we do best: leveraging our experience and the skills of our team members to put on a great show for everyone involved. And what a show it was—live music was the name of the game, and five great bands turned out to support the cause. With the help of our friends at ESI Production Services providing equipment, we set up a classic speaker string at the start and finish lines, as well as a stage for our bands at the race expo.

Pulling out all the stops to make things go off without a hitch, BCC put in long hours over the weekend everywhere audio was needed. Starting off at about 3 in the morning on race day, we laid out our speaker lines and prepped the expo for the race-day band, taking the time before athletes showed up to test all of the equipment thoroughly and plan for any contingency. Fortunately, our team has experience with setting up live performers (and have plenty of experience setting up start and finish lines for races!) so setup and takedown went smooth as silk. What’s more, the event went well overall—the race hit its planned maximum number of registered athletes, and as a result ended up earning over half a million dollars in income for the AFFF. Talk about good earnings for a good cause!

But even once the last speaker was packed up onsite, our job wasn’t done. There was one more task awaiting us—a black-tie gala running late into the night, where the event’s staff and sponsors met to discuss and celebrate the hard work put in for charity. And since there’d be videos playing alongside the presentations, as well as a live band, that meant we would be there! We had the opportunity to work again this year with a great band – Love and Theft.

…But it’s not as though we were reluctant. Getting dressed up in tuxedos to work at a high-class event, as well as enjoy the atmosphere and entertainment? You don’t have to tell us twice!

So, even though race day ended up being about 21 hours long, it sure wasn’t too bad. A fun sendoff to the rest of the event staff at the gala marked the end of our work on the Skyway 10K, and it was time to head home… for a little while, at least!

Check out the video we put together to document and celebrate the Skyway run!

The Chattanooga Marathon

And at the same time, two more of our team members were hard at work in another part of the country putting on another event: the Erlanger Chattanooga Marathon. Chattanooga, Tennessee is one of our favorite places to visit due to its scenic views, great food, and upbeat local spirit.

The Chattanooga Marathon, like many other events of its type, also includes a 5K and half-marathon, so of course multiple speaker sets had to be laid out to create a killer event. There’s a special sauce in Chattanooga we absolutely love for our livestream—Chattanooga’s nationally-recognized blisteringly-fast internet, which beats just about everything else in the country. Using that sort of connection, setting up a livestream of the event was a snap!

Setting up Internet service for the livestream, running power and audio, testing everything and running the show through to the end… it’s what we do best, and years of experience sure paid off.

Sometimes it feels like we show up to an area for just a fleeting moment, work hard behind the scenes, and then vanish without a trace. But the impression we get to make, alongside volunteers and other event staff, lasts far longer than our physical presence. Whether it’s your first race or your hundredth, it has to be a special one, and that’s what we focus on! So, as our team drove and flew away from Chattanooga, our minds focused not only on the next time we’d return to Tennessee, but also the next event to which we could lend our expertise…

The Shamrock Run Portland

With another weekend came another event, and this one sure was notable too! The Shamrock Run in Portland, Oregon is one of the more historic events we deal with, having first been run in 1979 and continuing yearly since—that is, right up until the pandemic threw a wrench in the works. Delays and cancellations in the name of safety ultimately resulted in a 1,092-day gap between events… and since the Shamrock Run is one of Portland’s favorite ways to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day, that’s too long of a wait! Fortunately, everything fell into place this year, and so BCC flew to Oregon to lend a hand there.

We’ve worked with the event staff for several years putting this event together, so when the call came out we were just as ready as ever. In this case, all the local team needed was a hand with announcing the event, so we did just that—though that isn’t as simple as it may sound!

The Shamrock run is notable in that it’s actually six events in one—that is to say, six different distances, all on the same day, all starting within a few hours’ time. Though combining two or three events into one day is fairly common in this line of business, six in one morning is a little different! It takes some chops to serve as the announcer for something like that, with so many flows of traffic to manage, but BCC always has an answer to any problem, and announcing events is just one more thing we’re ready to tackle. As the wonderful event staff set up the venue and herded runners in the right direction, our “man on the ground” from BCC manned the microphone, keeping people updated with the schedule and events as they occurred.

With over 15,000 runners in attendance, the event sure came back strong from the delays! Free food and drinks kept everyone in a bright mood, in direct opposition to the rainy weather. And at the finish line festival, the Celtic-inspired band Coming Up Threes brought their signature energy in the face of the weather, celebrating the opportunity to play a St. Patrick’s Day event for the first time since lockdowns began. If there’s one thing the staff and volunteers at any running event can do best, it’s bringing a positive attitude to any situation and putting that spirit into their work! By the end of the day, as we said our goodbyes, it was another successful event completed.

The whole event, summed up in just over a minute of video. Check it out!

And Onwards

For us here at BCC, no one day is the same. Whether we’re running an event in one of hundreds of locations across the country, planning an event back at the office, shooting and editing video for our clients, or any one of dozens of other tasks we handle, it’s a new challenge and a new opportunity to show our dedication to making everything we touch the best it can be. Folks, we really love what we do—that’s not just a motto we put on our social media posts. When the sun rises on a new day, there’s all sorts of things that could face us, and we wouldn’t have it any other way. So what’s next for BCC Live? Well, more events, more livestreaming opportunities, and more changes of scenery! Stay tuned to see what we do next.