We started off November working with our sister company Sprechen on Winchester’s largest one-day annual charity event, Winchester Round Table’s Bonfire and Fireworks. Sprechen have been heavily involved with this event for many years volunteering their time, and this has enabled us to join the team of volunteers and lend our Wi-Fi expertise to help make the event a success.

This year the event raised in excess of £60K – A phenomenal community effort, and one everyone involved should be immensely proud of. There are so many great causes and vital work that this money will go towards in the local community of Winchester and we couldn’t be more thrilled to have volunteered our time and expertise to be a small part of that.

You might be thinking; what does a Bonfire and Firework event need Wi-Fi for anyway? Well, this is no ordinary bonfire and fireworks night. Every year, Winchester Round Table host around 20,000 people for an evening of entertainment, food, drinks, and of course the legendary bonfire and fireworks spectacular.

An event of this scale calls for reliable Wi-Fi, and that’s where Geekabit came in. We have a  wealth of experience and expertise in this area that we were more than happy to volunteer to this great cause.

We put in a temporary 4G network with point to point links. This allowed us to install wireless access points on all the important parts of the field. As you can imagine, having 20K people in a field can create some issues in terms of network coverage, but when mobile phone networks became unavailable our wireless network overcame the issues. This also meant that that the Wi-Fi we provided aided the event control room on the night as well.

The event also offers ticket pick-up on the day from a Ticket Booth based in an outside location in the city centre. Due to the volume of people that need to pick-up tickets, it’s not possible to borrow a building or utilise a shop as the crowds and the queue would be too big.

This therefore makes it necessary for the booth to be in a location that will cause as little disruption as possible. Due to outside location of the ticket booth, and the nature of the service it is providing, it’s necessary for there to be reliable Wi-Fi. Geekabit made this possible, which enabled access to live spreadsheets, order information and incoming emails and social messages throughout the day of the event.

On the night itself, we also helped power the social media screen which is hugely popular with attendees, and great to encourage posts on social media channels giving the charity event even more exposure. Thanks to the Wi-Fi we provided, attendees could share photos live at the event and see their photographs on the big screen.

Having Wi-Fi on site also meant that new mobile donation technology could be tested with a reliable connection, helping to improve it’s use ready for next year’s event.

Reliable Wi-Fi throughout the day of this event was vital for production purposes and the smooth running of critical processes.

Working with Winchester Round Table Bonfire and Fireworks was a privilege and a pleasure. Year on year there are more things that require a wireless connection to ensure the smooth running of an event, and we hope to be on hand again in the future to help this to happen.

For more information on our Event W-Fi services get in touch with one of our Wi-Fi experts and we can show you how we can help make your event a success.

Get in touch here.

Photo credit to Joe Lillywhite Photography.