A short story about the feelings and thoughts of being involved in organizing one of the world's largest festivals. We are just a tiny cog in a huge machine. 😊
There's not much I can share due to NDA, but I can squeeze out a few things!
To start — I've been involved in this for 4 years already! That's a fairly long stretch, which means that 4 (!) Coachella festivals have taken place with my participation.
What exactly I do is my small part: we build an app for this festival and others. A universal codebase with a server-driven UI mechanism — meaning the main complexity of the app isn't in its feature richness, but in making everything able to transform, like Frankenstein, into something completely different and look entirely distinct. Though even within that, there were plenty of features that had to be "stretched" over this transformation capability.
The app was built from scratch, and we carried enormous responsibility to make it all work. As you can see, after 4 years nobody's been fired — so I guess it worked. 😊
Let's look at a couple of examples:
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There's a VIDEO above!
At first glance the design looks outdated — and honestly, it is. But we build what we're asked to build.
Now that you understand what I do, let me get to my thoughts...
When I first joined the project, I learned we'd be building an app for festivals, but at that point I didn't yet know what Coachella was. The realization came a little later, when someone I knew mentioned it — a completely random person from Belarus (and the festival is in the US). I decided to look into it a bit... At that moment I understood my personal responsibility and set myself a goal: I want to do this well, so that all the people who come to the festival don't experience any problems because of my work.
The result turned out well — everyone's happy, everything works, the money keeps flowing!
It's a genuinely amazing feeling when you see that millions of people are using something you built, the client is happy, and most of your decisions turned out to be the right ones... It's hard to put into words... Yes, over time you get used to it, but the sense of your own significance never quite disappears. And yes, this story will end for me someday — you have to prepare yourself for the fact that you'll go on to do something less prominent, but still meaningful to someone...
I got no less satisfaction from the journey itself — from the first line of code to a large application that many people rely on. All the challenges along the way, new connections and experiences have definitely changed something in my life and made me who I am today.
As for the festival itself — I really want to attend and hope I'll get the chance someday! There are some logistical hurdles to getting there, but I've been told tickets won't be a problem, and I might even be there as staff! The atmosphere is incredible, even just watching it all on YouTube. To give you a sense of the headliner level: Lady Gaga, Green Day, Post Malone, Travis Scott, Sabrina Carpenter, Justin Bieber, AC/DC, Red Hot Chili Peppers and many others...
Incredible feelings from every moment of working on this project! There are challenges, of course — but how else do you learn without them!
Wishing everyone all the best!
