Mass #Moonwalk at Liverpool St. London 2009 – A Tribute for Michael Jackson

From what started as a joke threw casually in Twitter, this brilliant event ended up as a genius Social Media Engineering act, thanks to Milo @yiannopoulos who turned ‘dream into reality’.
I first heard about ’somebody’ was organising a Mass #Moonwalk at the Liverpool Street Station (in London) from on of my Twitter friend @icebergstorm who re-tweeted @Gailporter

My first thought was immediately “T-Mobile Life ’s for Sharing Ads” ! Especially this one:

Then I thought, ‘This is Brilliant‘ … and … ‘If they can pull this off’ :)  So I wasn’t sure at first if I wanted to go or not, but after reading many other tweets about it, I said f**k it, I wasn’t going to miss this opportunity of a lifetime :)  And the fact that my office is just 2 tube-stops away from Liverpool St. was a clear indication that I should go.

When I got there 10 mins before 6pm (when it scheduled to start), I went straight to the atrium, the one you can see in the T-Mobile ads, because I know that everybody would’ve had the same thought and went to the same place.  Over there, just by the stairs, I could see Milo @yiannopoulos being surrounded by Policemen :) ‘Not a good start‘ I thought :)  So I just went close to see what’s going on.  Meanwhile I could also see a couple of media people with their big camera, and of course the ‘mob’ whom I could see ‘clearly’ waiting ‘anxiously’ for something big to happen.

After talking a few minutes with the Policement, Mile turned and said that the Police wouldn’t allow us to do this in the Atrium.  I could see their point, whilst the T-Mobile ads only had, let’s say maximum 50 people dancing, this one could ‘potentially’ brought in hundreds of people (and you will see yourself how many of us in the video).  So, as a compromise, they would let us do it up on the street, just next the station, and up we went.

By now, the mass was fastly gathering, and indeed I could see there were more than a hundred, more media too.  We didn’t start straight-away though, we had to wait for another 10-15 minutes while Milo was interviewed by a couple of media people and then he needs to set up the sounds system.  By now the crowd had gotten a bit impatient :)

They finally settled the sound on the pavement near a Tanning Shop from where they ‘borrowed’ the electriticty :)

5 Minutes setting up, and off we go !  But of course, just at the time when I needed my gadget to work, it failed me ! What a classic, I couldn’t get my Nokia open the video app so I could record the bloody thing.  I had to restarted my mobile, and then it finally worked.  Unfortunately by then, the first song was already on for about 1 minutes, so you will see that the video starts halfway through Billie Jean.

I divided the video into 3 and put it together in the following playlist.  Each video for each Song that we played, Billie Jean, Thriller and Bad, and plus the bit at the end.  If you would rather watching it in YouTube, here is the link.

And … once again :)

I think you would agree with me that it was a great event, albeit being organised in a very ‘last-minute’ and in ‘Flash-Mob’ style.  It was a bit touch and go at first, even a possibility that it didn’t happen.  It didn’t have much, as Milo said, Moonwalking, but it’s still a great fun. We did it folks!

Thanks for everyone who actually made this happened, big shout-out for the Sound Guys (Grant Turner from London Speaker Hire) especially to Milo … Can we have more of this please?  And of course to everybody who I would say ‘dare’ to come and join us there !  YOU ROCK!

This one is for you Michael! May your sould Rest in Peace.

Other Links:

The original ‘online flyers’

The Facebook Event Group

The Flickr Group