FIRST “Ask Alan” webcast takes down ASSR server


Dateline April 1st, 2011: No, it’s not an April Fool. Within the first few seconds on the first Ask Alan! Webcast on March 31st hundreds of fingers were on refresh and we officially crashed!

After a few minutes to reboot and apply cold compresses the Webcast got underway and for the next two hours Alan Parsons fielded questions direct on the site, from Twitter and from Facebook. One of two questions even came in on Twitter from Japan in Kanji but we didn’t quite have the ability to relay those!

This was an experimental event and processes developed and changed in real time; Alan eventually abandoning his text-based approach for purely verbal replies. Questions – both asked and answered and asked but not yet answered – will soon appear on the ASSR forums so that there is an archive.

The prize for best question was awarded to B. Harrison for his question on how lava lamps came to be associated with recording studios. Alan not only loved this question (and was still pondering a definitive answer the following day) he also awarded an unscheduled second prize to alakalazlo for his question on monitoring. Prizes were copies of the full DVD set.

Further Ask Alan Webcasts are in the works. Though not confirmed, the next one may coincide with Alan’s concert tour in South America in May.

The ASSR team would like to thank all 250+ who took part in this inaugural webcast!