We were invited to attend Cut the Wire/Catwalk 2007, an event in Karlskrona, where we were participating in a contest for "best mobile service for the public sector". We were participating with the text message based game Lost in Malmö, that we developed for the city of
Catwalk 2007
Karlskrona is a quite small town (33 000 inhabitants) and it's placed beautifully by the sea. When walking towards the small island where the first part of the event would take place, we could even feel the smell of tar in the air!
The day started with an open debate where a host interviewed people about their businesses and how they are using mobile services. Our project stood out a bit, since a lot of the others were about keeping track of transports, counting and labeling lampposts, and other useful but quite down to earth services. There weren’t many applications like Lost in Malmö.
Dinner was held at Marinmuséet, and after that 3 buses came to take us to a secret location. We actually never understood where we were, but it was in some kind of industrial building in the harbour.
Coming into the large hall, we were met by the sounds of a crooner who with a soft voice sang
some all time favourites. Behind him a slideshow was running, with pictures of Beatles, Elvis, Rolling Stones, ABBA and Queen... Our little gang was standing around, wondering what was gonna happen, and then we headed towards the bar. :)
But it wasn't time for that just yet, instead there came on another band - a cover band, with a singer dressed completely in white, who also wore sunglasses. They came on strong with "Summer of 69".
Then it was time for some Guitar Hero (on stage), and when the guitar session ended, the cover band came on again. I found some people who looked like fun, and started talking to a guy in a cap. He said "all these crazy people are from the same company", referring to the dancing group around him. "Which company?" I asked. "I wont tell, but you can join in if you want", he said.
So, what could one do but dance like crazy?
Suddenly we realised it had become midnight and the first bus would go back to Karlskrona city. We rushed out to take it, and ended up with a whole bus for ourselves (6 persons) and a drunk man. Noone else wanted to leave that early. :)
We arrived at the city and it was deserted. The two other girls in our company had heard there would be a pub (with karaoke!) at their hotel, so we went there. "Is the pub still open?" we asked, while entering the completely empty reception. "Yes for about half an hour" the girl told us.
We went down some stairs and started hearing sounds. Suddenly a room opened up, it was crowded with people and had party written all over it. It was soo crazy! People were standing on chairs and tables, or dancing all over the place. It was like being transferred into some kind of strange movie scene. A DJ who acted more like a radio show host played songs, he also sang himself and led the karaoke.
And what karaoke! The people at the bar must have done this every weekend for ages, because the musical anthems and Grease duets they were performing were perfectly sung. A woman with blonde hair was singing togehter with a rock guy, then came on 2 girls, also singing something from Grease, and putting on a good show – People were even standing around singing the backing vocals.
The visitors were of all ages, from like 18 to 60, and of all different kinds – from rock kids with *a lot of* tattoos, and countryside people in checkered flannel shirts, to dancing women in high heels, short skirts and bleached hair. And everyone seemed to be friends.
We were just standing there in awe, and I kept repeating "welcome to Karlskrona!" with a strange smile on my face. Small cities, what can you say?
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