[00:00:01.450] - Announcer
Do you wonder if others are dealing with the same project management challenges as you, not sure where to turn for guidance and leadership? Office Hours are in session as we discuss project management and PMOs with global leaders hearing their story and learning their secrets to success. Our goal is to empower you and help you elevate your PMO and project management career to new heights. Welcome back to Project Management Office Hours with your host, PMO Joe.
[00:00:31.050] - PMO Joe
Welcome everyone to Project Management Office Hours. We're the number one live project management radio show in the United States, broadcasting to you from the Phoenix Business RadioX Studios. I'm your host, PMO Joe, and for the next hour or so, we're going to be talking with our special guests with us today, joining us from Italy, and we'll get to their introductions in just a moment. But here, as we finish up the year, I want to be able to say thank you to everybody who has helped us during the year. This is our fifth season. Hard to imagine. We've been doing this for five years and over 100 episodes, but I'm just the voice and the face of the show. There are so many people in the background that make all of this happen. So I want to take a moment to thank everybody who makes the show be a great success. Our champion from the beginning has been Karen Nowicki, who's the owner of Phoenix Business RadioX. And certainly without her support and confidence in me, none of this would have been possible. So. Thank you, Karen. The man behind the microphone and the camera over here is Darrol Robinson.
[00:01:37.720] - PMO Joe
Darrol helps us out every show that we do. Usually we never think about the people behind the screen or behind the microphone, but those are the people that make all of this come out the way it needs to. So thank you, Darrol, for making all of this happen. I really appreciate it. Of course, we've got a team back in Atlanta that helps us with our editing, our promotions, the administrative work. So for everybody back there, thank you so much as well. And then, of course, our guests, right? We've had five seasons worth of guests, and this year we had a continued great lineup. We were live from Ukraine with some guests as well. During the year, we had people from all over the world. So it's been a fantastic year. I'm simply the guy in front of the microphone and in front of the camera that's asking the questions and facilitating the discussions. But the reality is it's one big team effort to make all of this happen. So thank you to everybody. A reminder also for everyone in our industry that professional development units PDUs are important to make sure we keep our certifications up to date.
[00:02:42.930] - PMO Joe
Each of these shows goes about an hour. That means you get one PDU. We're over 100 shows, so you've got all your PDUs. You need to make sure that you get your certifications current. So I encourage you to go out there and listen to the show. Some amazing guests we've had on with fantastic insights to help you in your career. So that's it for our announcement today. I am super excited to be able to have with us today from Italy, as I mentioned, Fabio Zaffagnini and Claudia Spadoni. Thank you so much, both of you, for joining Fabio. Fabio, if you could take a moment just to say hello and introduce yourself to everybody, that would be fantastic.
[00:03:28.290] - Fabio Zaffagnini
Yeah, I'm Italian. My name is Fabio, and I started my career as a marine geologist doing some research for a research center here in Italy. And then I focused a little bit later on on technology transfer and R & D for private research centers. In 2011, I started getting interested in the startups, so I founded a startup called Trail Me Up, and we used to create virtual reality experiences of hiking trails. That didn't really work, but it was a lot of fun and I learned a lot from that. And afterwards, I founded Rockin' 1000 with some friends that now is a global community of musicians, and we organize concerts where 1000 musicians play simultaneously in big stadiums. So basically, this is like a very short summary of my life.
[00:04:32.230] - PMO Joe
Thank you so much, Fabio. And we have you guys on today because we'll get to the full story about the video and everything, but you're a project manager as well. Whether or not you have that entitled or you organized, I think one of the most impressive projects in our current lifetime, and I think that's why we're here today, to learn more about that. So thank you so much. Claudia, if you could take a moment to say hello and introduce yourself as well.
[00:05:05.010] - Claudia Spadoni
Okay. I'm Claudia Spadoni, and I start my career as a project manager of musical and cultural events. I work for film master events for more than ten years, and I collaborated like production manager and tactic producer to some festivals. Of course, I am one of the founder of Rockin' 1000.
[00:05:40.670] - PMO Joe
All right, fantastic. Thank you, Claudia, so much for being on with us today. So let's get to the story, right? For me, this is how this happened. One day I'm just surfing YouTube, watching music videos because I love music and I just want to see what's going on. I love the Foo Fighters, so I type in Foo Fighters into the search channel, and this Rockin' 1000 thing pops up and I'm like, what the world is this? So I click over and watch it. And as I'm watching it, I'm starting to feel emotional, right? Like tears coming down my eyes. It really moved me. I was like, this is amazing, and I highly recommend for everybody that you go watch the video. We'll put the link up here in a moment. But what I was watching was not the Foo Fighters. What I was watching was a call, a passion play to the Foo Fighters. And Fabio will ask you to tell the story in a minute. But during the video, at one point when the music ends and you grab the microphone and you start talking, you say, I've been working on this fucking project for one year, thinking about every day how I'm going to make this happen.
[00:06:54.000] - PMO Joe
And as a project manager, it just clicked in my brain and said, yes, this is a project and I have a show. So I have to have Fabio and the team on the show at some point to hear the story of how this project happened. And in our industry, project managers sometimes are boring and it's dull and it's just tedious, but this one really has emotion and passion and purpose and entertainment to it. So Fabio, if you can just kind of share, how did it all start, how did it happen? And then obviously we've got a lot of questions about the details down the road, but the origin, who had the crazy idea that we're going to get 1000 musicians together and play a Foo Fighter song?
[00:07:41.730] - Fabio Zaffagnini
Yeah, well, it was like a crazy idea, one of those ideas that you sometimes have at some point. But I mean, the really hard part was not just having a crazy idea, it's just actually to make it happen. So I live in a very small town in Italy, it's called Cesena, and I'm a Foo Fighters fan. And at some point I really wanted Foo Fighters to come and play in my hometown. And this is something that would have never happened in such a small place. Because if Foo Fighters ever come to Italy, they come to Milan or Rome or anywhere, big cities. So in order to convince them, I needed something crazy to make some sort of crazy request. So one day this idea popped out in my mind and I had this feeling that if we put on a sort of tribute to the band, the biggest tribute ever made, probably Dave Grohl would have been convinced to come over and play a gig. So I had this idea of asking 1000 musicians to perform altogether simultaneously in a park, one of their songs that was Learn to Fly. And this idea in the beginning was something that I just had, but as days went by, it turned into sort of obsession, so I could not stop thinking about it.
[00:09:32.150] - Fabio Zaffagnini
So when I realized that that was actually my first thought in the morning, every day for weeks, I then started asking some friends who actually had some experience in project management and events organizations and video making and so on to help me out. Because being a marine geologist, I really had no experience at all in the event management. So that's when Claudia comes out, and other friends. So I pitched my idea and everyone were, like, kind of enthusiastic about it. So we started working on that and we started facing and every small problem that we had on a daily basis, we tried to solve all these problems. It took one year to raise the money through a crowdfunding campaign to raise musicians that we recruited online. It's been, I mean, tough and intense. But after one year, we were actually able to put on this tune. We made a video out of that and the video just went viral. It made, like, millions of views in a few days. And right after publishing the video, Dave Grohl himself published online on YouTube another video thanking us for distribute and promising to come over to Cesena and give a concert, which is something that happened a few months later for the European tour.
[00:11:10.620] - Fabio Zaffagnini
They decided to come and play in the biggest venue that we have. It's called cardisport. It has, like, a capacity of 3000 people. So we just had this amazing concert by Foo Fighters for 3000 people. And obviously, the ones who were there attending the concert were, like, musicians and donors of the crowdfunding campaign. All the volunteers and everyone involved. So it was like a big part among friends, having Foo Fighters on stage. And that's actually the beginning of how the project of Rockin' 1000 just started.
[00:11:47.750] - PMO Joe
Yeah. You mentioned the video. It's 61 million views later. Right. So this is viral to the max that's happened out there.
[00:12:00.150] - Fabio Zaffagnini
Yeah. It's been, like, one of the most seen videos in the world in 2015. So it's been like I mean, we didn't expect this at all. But getting to see so many people having fun, playing, doing what they love the most is probably what it made the video go viral. Even if we were not a bunch of unknown people from Italy doing something crazy.
[00:12:32.160] - PMO Joe
Yeah, I love it. Just how it's impacted an individual. Again, I'm not part of any of this. And when the day I saw that video is about two and a half or so years ago, I've watched the video every day since. Right. It's now part of my routine as an inspirational thing to watch. Because you go to a concert, you've all been to concerts, right? And you can see how much fun people are having. But you watch this video and you can see something more. There's just something about that video, at least for me, it connected in a way. So now every day, I start my day with that video to make sure that I have inspiration for what I do. So your crazy idea is out there to create Rockin' 1000 but I'm sure it's inspiring people all over the world to do their version of Rockin' 1000. Right. For me, it's this radio show. I followed you to track you down, to get you to be on the show just like you guys did with the Foo Fighter. So thank you for that. And also just to say, I think Dave Grohl was touched so much.
[00:13:34.200] - PMO Joe
His response back. You mentioned that video, he did that in Italian, right? He didn't even speak back in English. He respected you so much for what you did that he spoke in your language.
[00:13:45.430] - Fabio Zaffagnini
Yeah, I agree. It's like something very powerful that we didn't plan, to be honest, but it just happened. I mean, being there, having a thousand people coming from all over the country with their own instrument, their own expenses, doing what they love the most, which is like playing and doing something that we didn't really know back in the days, whether it was actually possible to synchronize 1000 people. So this like, sort of challenge, almost impossible challenge to accomplish, is what really brought together so many people in the beginning. And the feel of so many instruments that are synchronized and play at unison is something that was so surprising and powerful that actually people back then went nuts for many of them on one of those that was probably one of the best and more most exciting days in their own life. And this is something that you can feel and breathe while watching to that video. And in that case, the video director, Anita, was so good in making that, in passing them through the images, that was really authentic. And that's probably the reason why that's so powerful.
[00:15:14.790] - PMO Joe
Absolutely. In Claudia, you go from a crazy idea in Fabio's head that he shares with a few friends and we see on this end a video. But in between, there's probably thousands of steps that are taking place to make all of that become reality. How does the crazy idea turn into something? Is that project management? Did you actually try to organize this and plan everything out the way it needed to be?
[00:15:50.110] - Claudia Spadoni
Yeah, we start from the people and we create a different area of work. And in fact, we have to create a team for the video production, as Fabio told, and we have to produce something that never been produced for the sound aspect. And we have to do everything with a low cost budget. We have to manage 1000 musician by that for the musical preparation and for the logistic info. And we need to communicate to everybody together. Musician and found. So, yes, it was a particular.
[00:16:57.810] - PMO Joe
Yeah. And I would imagine, right, that as you said, there's a production team, there's a guitar team, there's a drums team, there's an advertising team, a fundraising team. How do you get all of them to work together to try to make this? Because the timing has to be there. You have to have enough budget by a certain amount of time to book the equipment, and you have to have the equipment in place to be able to have the musicians use it. So how do you organize all of that? So the right things happen at the right time. Was that planned or did that just let's see how it goes. We'll figure it out. Along the way.
[00:17:39.070] - Claudia Spadoni
We have horizontal organization because we had different team and with each team a different model of organization. I think, for example, the video team had a film setting organization, like a movie. The management of the musician, I think is like an Olympic ceremony model. And the communication as a strategy to be viral and have a viral scope. So every team is different, but I think every team probably added the right street to go to the goal.
[00:18:41.450] - PMO Joe
So I would imagine there's probably a little bit of chaos involved in all of that. Fabio, did anybody say, I can't handle it, this is just too much. You've got a passion play and 1000 people coming together, but sometimes it doesn't work for everybody. Did anybody quit on you guys? How did the team dynamics work?
[00:19:04.010] - Fabio Zaffagnini
Well, I have to say that, like, when they when we started to like, raise the early adopters, we would, like, go to people with a certain mindset. So to enter something like this, you need to be like a little crazy, I have to say. So there has been a sort of selection in the very beginning of the people involved. So we didn't really have quitters. We had people that probably underestimated how tough it was working. So they helped us with what they had and with the amount of time that they had. And some of them at some point said, okay, this is like too tough, but I don't believe in the idea, or I'm not having fun, or I don't like it, or other excuses like this or other reasons like this. It's more of, okay, I thought I could work like a couple of hours per week and in the end it was like working our ass off, like every day, at night, in every part that we had. So it's been like, intense. So probably this is like the reason why we had a few people that over time didn't work as much as planned.
[00:20:35.210] - PMO Joe
Yeah. And that just made me think, as you were speaking, right, you mentioned at the beginning you were a geologist. You have this idea and now it's consuming you. Did you leave your job? What happened with you? How did you make this happen?
[00:20:53.370] - Fabio Zaffagnini
Well, personally, being a researcher was quite free in the management of my time. So I went on working as a marine geologist. I didn't have to go on the sea working on research vessels and so on. So I was home. But no, I didn't quit my job. I quit my job afterwards. Afterwards? After a few years. Because it wasn't like economically sustainable in terms of paying people or giving money to all the ones involved on the first year. So only afterwards we had to build like sustainability model to make it work and make it even profitable or sustainable under an economical point of view. So back then, all of us had to work on their everyday job and then try to work on that any second that they had free.
[00:22:00.340] - PMO Joe
Yeah. So that's a good point. Everybody was a volunteer, basically, because all the cost went to cover the equipment and the set up and all that stuff. Wow.
[00:22:11.750] - Fabio Zaffagnini
Yeah. That's the budget. Yes, the budget was very low now I realized that it was really low, but back then it seemed to me like it was like crazy high. I mean, I was saying like the cloud. Yeah. Are you sure? Like €40,000 or something like that. It seems to me like an incredible amount of money, but now, after years, I realize how low budget it was.
[00:22:36.570] - PMO Joe
Yeah. We'll talk about this as we go along, but a movie has also been made and in the movie there's a little bit talk about some budget stuff where you're saying, hey, we're running out of money. What are we going to cut corners on? What are we going to do? And for us project managers out there, we run into this all the time. Right. We have a project, we start it. We think we know the budget. You get in the middle of it and you're like, we're we need more. Right?
[00:23:01.430] - Fabio Zaffagnini
Yeah.
[00:23:02.150] - PMO Joe
So for you guys, you were crowdsourcing. You just have to keep going back to the people asking for more money.
[00:23:08.230] - Fabio Zaffagnini
Yeah, I mean, we didn't have like we were looking for sponsors, too, but we were like a bunch of unknown people with no story behind us. So it was very hard to raise funds and raise sponsors. We tried. We raised something, but we thought that being something from the bottom involving musicians, from the bottom involving people, involving the local community, it was easier for us to raise some money that way with the promise one day to convince bull fighters to come over. People didn't really believe this, that it was actually possible, but in the end, they gave what they had, even to help the local community do something weird.
[00:24:04.410] - PMO Joe
Yeah. And Claudia, from a project manager's mindset, you've talked about how you've got your project management background. You're concerned like, oh my gosh, the budgets, we're running out of money. How do we manage this? What was your perspective on how all of the finances on that worked?
[00:24:23.870] - Claudia Spadoni
For me, $40,000 was a very low budget also in the 2015, but was not so easy. Like Fabric told do the fundraising for that. We plan also party to have the found or sell beers during the event because it was not so easy and we had to delay part of the cost every time. But the people involved come for free and they work for free, so it was possible for that.
[00:25:22.210] - PMO Joe
And the other thing people will see right, when they watch the video is it looked like it was a beautiful sunny day at the park because you're outside. But what if it rained? Did you have multiple days booked? Because if you're trying to get 1000 people to show up at one day, what's plan B? What happens if it rains on that day?
[00:25:46.410] - Claudia Spadoni
Usually the rain is we can speak about rain now. If it rains, musician cannot play. If it really rains.
[00:26:05.630] - PMO Joe
There was no plan B. That's amazing. So, good fortune. I know in some of your other videos you've done since then, I've seen where it has rained and you guys have had to deal with that. So contingency planning is get the towels out, dry things off and hope it doesn't rain during the show, I guess. But also, again, we think music and we think a band of five or seven people maybe show up together and they play at a concert or a venue. But you are having 1000 people. How do you find out where 1000 people fit? How do you have a place big enough? I guess you ended up in a park, but how do you go about just finding somewhere big enough to fit everyone?
[00:26:52.110] - Fabio Zaffagnini
Well, that was, like, an easy part. I mean, there was, like, this park in Tesla that was quite big. There's no trees, it's all flat. So basically it was easy to put all these people in there. And the mayor and the local administration gave us the possibility to go there and make some noise. And that's how it worked. That was the easy part.
[00:27:25.670] - PMO Joe
That was easy. All right. Is there like, a monument or a plaque or something there now to commemorate this is where it happened.
[00:27:33.130] - Claudia Spadoni
Yeah.
[00:27:33.530] - Fabio Zaffagnini
They wanted to make, like, a monument, but it didn't happen. Everyone in here, as they go there, they remember what happened on that day.
[00:27:45.710] - PMO Joe
I think I have to make a trip to Sasana to go visit this place and just lay on the ground and make snow angels in the grass right of where it is. The other thing you mentioned again, this is a project management show. So I try to bring thoughts back to project management. When we do a project, it's usually cross functional teams. It's people from different parts of an organization trying to work together for a common cause to produce some good or service. And that's hard. It's hard to get people to do something that isn't part of their normal routine.
[00:28:24.490] - Fabio Zaffagnini
Yeah.
[00:28:25.210] - PMO Joe
In your case, you got 1000 musicians to play a song together. When we know, if I'm a guitar player, I like to have a solo. If I'm a drum player, I like to have a solo. If I'm a singer, I like to you sure you have medleys, but I want to have my voice be heard. How do you get everybody, 1000 people, to play together?
[00:28:50.310] - Fabio Zaffagnini
Well, I think that in terms of the participation of each musician that came out kind of naturally. It would be, like, impossible to express yourself in that way. Like being the solo performer when there's so many people I mean, you're in the middle of a sort of stage that is as big as a football field. You're surrounded by literally hundreds of musicians. So it wouldn't be possible to stand out in that way. And people sort of naturally fit this collective way of playing because there is no other way. But on the other side, I think that everybody could somehow express their personality in playing because they could wear whatever they want. Every musician had a specific way of playing their instruments. So we had, like, those very technical guitar players that tend to have the guitar very close to the neck and they have more punk style players that they roll their arms on the guitar. So all of them could play in their own way and dress their own way and do whatever they wanted to do. But they had their square and they wouldn't go out of their square. So that's the kind of yeah.
[00:30:34.710] - Fabio Zaffagnini
It's weird, this balance between playing together but at the same time be yourself.
[00:30:44.250] - PMO Joe
Yeah. And I think, for me, that's where the emotion came into play because it was a single sound with all uniqueness built inside of it. And to see that many people come together to produce a single sound, that was special. Right. Because I work in a world where that doesn't happen. People don't get as excited about, we're going to implement the CRM system this week. Right. It's a little bit different. So that emotional connection that I think created of all of these people having the energy and even at the end, you spoke at the end and you said, let's make some noise for the Foo Fighters. As I was watching that, I was like, this is all of the energy boiling up and everybody at once just saying how grateful they were to have an opportunity. I can't imagine what the energy was like to be in there at that moment when that eruption happened. Of all the sound, what was that like for you guys.
[00:31:49.710] - Fabio Zaffagnini
Personally? When such crazy things happen, personally, it's like, for me, living in a bubble, I wasn't really realizing what was happening, and I was very excited. I got emotional many times. I cried like a baby multiple times throughout the day when we realized that actually we could sync everyone, that the drummers could play simultaneously, that we could add all the different sections and make that work. I mean, it was a surprise, but I wasn't really able to realize what was happening. And that's probably one of the things I'm still really bad at that. And this is an area of improvement that I would like to have in my way of experiencing what happens every day or in special occasions because I think that I missed something. But it was, like, so overwhelmed by everything that was happening that I don't know, I was happy, I was excited, but not really aware.
[00:33:13.270] - PMO Joe
That'S happened, I think to all of us right. Where you're in the middle of an event or speaking or just at a party, or just hanging out, and people afterwards say, how was it? And you can't really remember the things that happened during it. Right. You were present, but you didn't consume it. Right.
[00:33:29.090] - Fabio Zaffagnini
And it's also very hard to explain because what happened afterwards is that all the people who were there playing and having fun together, actually they were experiencing something very powerful that is very hard to explain outside of it. So it was basically possible to share those moments only among those who were actually there. It was really hard to pass the feelings that we had back then outside and explain that to other people. Yeah. That's another thing that is very complicated to do.
[00:34:08.360] - PMO Joe
Yeah. And again, you don't see it during the original video, but you'll see in the movie, the orchestra director actually asks everybody, do you commit to playing together? Right. He's getting the confirmation from everyone, no solos here. You all agree to do that. Was that planned? What was the thought process to be able to go ask them that question and make them commit to it?
[00:34:32.530] - Fabio Zaffagnini
Yeah, well, the orchestra leader have concerns. I mean, being experiencing, like, managing orchestras that people who never met before, who never had any experience of playing in an orchestra, they could, like, do whatever they wanted and not follow rules. So he came out with this idea of making this sort of to ask everybody to make promises I don't know how to call it, but to promise that they wouldn't play during the pause, that they had to follow every single note and not change everything. And we were also worried that people would come there and get drunk right after being there. So we decided not to give out fears throughout the day during the rehearsals because we were worried that everybody would be drunk at some point. So these are all fears that we had back then, but now we know that there wasn't really need to be so concerned because everybody, when they were there, they were really focused and wanted to play well.
[00:35:55.130] - PMO Joe
Yeah. And it comes across you're watching the video, and you just again, I salute the videographer for all of this as well, because the different shots of, like, the drummers in sync when you're watching, I don't know, hundreds of drummers at the same time hitting their drums. I mean, it's visually, it's just an amazing performance that you all did. Claudia, for you, another question would be I mentioned the quote earlier where Fabio says, I've been thinking about this project for a year and making it happen, but how did you make that project happen and how did that change your life? If I ever because it's got to be like the biggest project you've ever done, right? Is that life changing? How does it. Affect you and impact you afterwards.
[00:36:46.430] - Claudia Spadoni
For sure. I was an event project manager and I did also very big event. But Rockin' Thousand is different from any other events because it's our project. He's born with us. And like Fabio told, we didn't expect what we did. Sorry, rockintosh is different from any other project I did. And when we did it, it's like something is born because the people want to do it again. The people ask us what. The people asked us to do it again. It's very different and it's a different challenge from other events and is sometimes very difficult.
[00:38:18.670] - PMO Joe
But I love it in Fabio, I'd say oftentimes we think about the event or planning the event, but then there's the afterwards. And at some point somebody must have said, boy, that was amazing, we should do that again. And then Rock and 1000 wasn't just an event, it became an organization. And there was more that came afterwards. So how did all of that happen? Didn't everybody say enough, I can't do this ever again? Or was there so much excitement that you created the organization?
[00:38:54.870] - Fabio Zaffagnini
There was definitely a lot of excitement when the video came out and it started to make millions of views. And they replied and it came over and people said, okay, next year, do it again. Do it for YouTube. Do it for Rahaw chili peppers. Do it for, like, Bruce Springsteen. But we knew that these things just happened once and so a change was needed. If we wanted to move on, we couldn't stop because our musicians went nuts. We had like many people writing us like thousands of emails saying, go on, do something this next year. But we also have to find some sort of model to make it sustainable. So we we humbly proclaimed ourselves the biggest rock band on earth because at least in terms of number, we can say that. And we said, okay, Rocky, 1000 is not just a tribute to Foo fighters. Like all those who were there were surprised. So let's do a concert next year, so let's try to sell tickets, let's play in a stadium, let's make an entire set list of 18 songs, not just one. And it has to be live. So we really raised the bar a lot in 2016.
[00:40:31.690] - Fabio Zaffagnini
The budget obviously followed this phrase. And so we made another Crot funding campaign. And we thought, and this helped us to test whether a concert could work, because you make a crowdfunding campaign in advance, whether people are interested in your product or not. So we said, if we are able to sell at least like 5000 tickets, we do it. If we see through the crowdfunding campaign that that is not possible, then we are not going to do this because it's too risky and too expensive. The crowdfunding campaign went very well. We were able to sell really lots of tickets. Some sponsors showed up. So basically a year after we decided to make this dramatic change. And that was the beginning of the new life of Rockin' 1000, where I have to say that really everything changed. It wasn't just about having fun and doing something crazy. It was about building something more concrete and stable and with a vision in the future.
[00:41:54.830] - PMO Joe
So I guess it was an example of a project with a specific purpose. Right. Get the Foo Fighters, come play a concert in Italy, and you had success. So then you're like, wow, we can keep going. It was like a project led to an organization. I mean, usually it's the other way around, right? An organization has a project, but you guys had such a powerful movement that it created something bigger than what the original purpose was.
[00:42:20.980] - Fabio Zaffagnini
Oh, yeah. This just happened because everything went beyond an expectation. And even psychologically, the idea of changing when you're at the peak of your unexpected success is kind of complicated thing because normally we would tend to, like, go on following what actually worked, repeating basically the same thing with some changes. But in our case, we thought that this was impossible, so we had to maintain what we knew that could work, but put around that something completely different and more mature.
[00:43:09.430] - PMO Joe
So let me ask a question also. Again, in the movie, you see this? I wasn't aware of this, of course, but you guys do the video, you get Dave GroEL to respond, and before they come play, you actually get invited to a Foo Fighter concert here in the United States, in Washington, right. To meet them. So, again, I don't know, Fabio, we've talked a couple of times, and so I'm just getting to know you, but I'm assuming you're just an average guy living in Italy has an idea, and then a year later, you're backstage hanging out with the Foo Fighters. What was that like for you?
[00:43:48.290] - Fabio Zaffagnini
Yeah, again, it was like a bubble. It felt unreal. When I was sitting in front of Day Bro talking about music and our experience and other stuff, I was asking myself, is this really happening? Is this real? But actually Foo Fighters dave and Taylor Hawkins and Path, they were really welcoming and very friendly, so they really helped me and all the rest of the team who was actually there to feel like home and having a chat with some friends and some tequila. So it was fun. It was definitely fun. I mean, Dave Gro is exactly what you hope he is. Sometimes you're kind of scared that your hero or idol when you meet him or her is totally different from what you expected. But I have to say that Dave girl is actually like that. He's like a really nice and funny guy.
[00:44:58.810] - PMO Joe
And the reason I asked that is because, again, in our project management context, a lot of times the project manager isn't a senior person in an organization, but they're running a project and they have to meet the CEO or the CFO and for them that's kind of like you meeting Dave Grohl, right? For them, they're meeting somebody they've never had a chance to interact with before. And you find out most of the time they're just another person like you and I are in project management world, that happens all the time as well, and a lot of times we get overwhelmed by that. So thanks for sharing that and your reaction to that. Because the other thing is you had the foresight to have a camera crew with you when you met them. I mean, that was another part of the brilliance of what you guys did is you recorded all of this. So this project didn't just happen. There's a recording of all of it. And as a project manager, I want to dive into that detail and just dissect all of it because it's just such an amazing project.
[00:46:01.230] - Fabio Zaffagnini
Yeah, we knew right from the very beginning that that was a good idea and something could we say in Italy, it doesn't work, but if it works, we better have some backup or something, let's film it and one day we might be use it. And that's exactly what happened.
[00:46:25.190] - PMO Joe
Yeah, I mean, it was amazing. In Claudia for you, stuff doesn't just happen. It did happen, but you had to plan things. Did you have like team meetings? Because you picture rock and roll and it's loose and you kind of just get it done. But you were organizing an event, right? How did you guys plan that? Did you get together and meet? What was that like?
[00:46:53.550] - Claudia Spadoni
It was very rock and rolled because we had a very few number of meetings, maybe only one in person because we were in different cities and we worked in the different part of the days considering our job. And so very different from every unusual event because we had the message on what's up? Or some email and very few meetings. Very strange.
[00:47:41.710] - PMO Joe
And that's a good point, right? Because as we're having this conversation, it's bringing project management thoughts to my mind of you were all working your regular job and this was an additional project on top of that. And in our project management world and corporate world, that's what happens, right? We run a project and all of the project team members have a regular job and then we assign them to the project as well. Usually they're not very excited to be on that project because it's taking away from their day job. I think you guys were excited to work on your additional project, but did you find conflicts with people in their day job that maybe they couldn't do what they needed to or maybe they were late trying to do something because again, they were doing the job to get paid while they were volunteering for this as well?
[00:48:32.910] - Claudia Spadoni
No, we had no problem for that. I think anyone has and we work on during the weekend or in the evening. So it was okay with our job, no problem, but of course was very difficult.
[00:49:04.150] - PMO Joe
At some point. Crazy idea, people working on it. It's like, okay, let's do it. We're asking for money. There must have been a moment in time where it kind of said, wow, I think it's actually going to happen. What was that moment for? Because that's not the day of the event, I'm assuming beforehand. Right. It's like, wow, it's just all coming together.
[00:49:27.150] - Fabio Zaffagnini
Yeah, it's been like throughout the month. It was like in the beginning it was just like an idea, okay, let's try to work that. Then we launched it and after launching, we realized, okay, now this is getting serious. And then we started to raise some money. And after raising money from the Crowdfunding campaign, we said, okay, we cannot go back. And then we were very focused on how to make that work, technically. And we were like also scared about people not showing up in the morning. I was literally shitting my pants the day before because we had no idea whether these people would actually come or not. So personally, when I thought, okay, this is really happening is in the morning at the park, when we saw the first people showing up with their bags and instruments and so on, that's when we realized that that was actually happening. But before that, I didn't even want to think too much about that because that would have made me very nervous.
[00:50:53.130] - PMO Joe
Yeah, I would imagine probably a few people didn't show up and I bet those people afterwards now are like, oh shit, I should have showed up, right? Boy, did I miss out on that one. That was a great one.
[00:51:05.470] - Fabio Zaffagnini
Yeah, definitely.
[00:51:07.710] - PMO Joe
So again, this is this is seven years ago, right, when when all of this happens, and we're talking today. So the power, the stick to it, the stickiness of the project still carries forward. And obviously you guys have the organization, as you mentioned, but what's the future look like? You've created the past, you're in the present. But what's coming next? Are you doing tours? Are you going to do more concerts? What's all of that going to be?
[00:51:36.570] - Fabio Zaffagnini
Yeah, well, during the Pandemic, we really worked hard on really unsexy stuff as a company, just to work better together and be able to face another phase of Rockin' 1000, where a global tour is involved. A very high number of musicians and subscribers needs to be achieved. So basically, our future now is like becoming a global community of musicians so coming from every corner of the world and we want to bring them together and make them leave the dream of rock stars, even if they're not rock.
[00:52:29.120] - PMO Joe
Stars.
[00:52:36.090] - Fabio Zaffagnini
Anybody playing an instrument dreams of playing in a packed up stadium. And this is a goal that is really hardly achievable by everyone.
[00:52:47.570] - PMO Joe
Sure.
[00:52:48.530] - Fabio Zaffagnini
But when we're like 1000 people, it becomes achievable. So we're trying for the future to create a global tour, a world tour starting next year that covers at least three continents in the world. We would love to come to the United States and I am confident that we will. And on the other side, we would like to create opportunities for our musicians to play music and to meet, play together, find friends all over the world thanks to the network of Rocky 1000. So basically these are the two main goals. So not just concerts, but also other initiatives that we can run through our app, helping and enabling people to meet and play together. On the other side, we have other projects like writing the first original song composed for 1000 rockers by 1000 rockers. And this is another project that will be published next year. We have a song and we're going to publish it next year. Nick Chester from Jet is involved in this. And other projects like team building activities, parties. I mean, there's like plenty of opportunities where music is involved.
[00:54:27.150] - PMO Joe
And also you have shirts and merchandise and all of that available out there. I noticed being in the States, you sell to a distributor over here as opposed to directly online.
[00:54:39.650] - Fabio Zaffagnini
Yeah, we try to work just like any other band. So we sell concerts, we sell merchandise, we try to have fans, we have fans, we publish videos, we publish original songs. We're just like any other rock band, but with 1000 people playing and people that change every time. So everywhere we go there's like different musicians that participate in our events and in this way the community grows.
[00:55:13.390] - PMO Joe
Yeah. And again, from a project management perspective, right, the definition of a project is a unique endeavor with a specific good or service that's produced out of it. And you just said everyone is unique, right? I mean, you have different people coming in. So what you guys are doing is just I'm trying to make something not cool out of something that is cool is you're putting on a project every time you guys do one of these things. And if you get to the States, count me in on somebody that's willing to do whatever I can to help you guys make it play here because I'll be there.
[00:55:45.950] - Fabio Zaffagnini
Oh, we will.
[00:55:47.310] - PMO Joe
And I'm one of the fans that's going to make it happen. Claudia, from your perspective as well, right? This is now a business, right? This is something that's ongoing. How do you participate in that and how do you make sure that it's sustainable over time? What's your role within all of this.
[00:56:10.750] - Claudia Spadoni
About the concert, we change our model because now, like Fabric told us, we don't produce the concert, but the risk is of the buyer of the promoter. So we have a flat fee and we have some revenues from the concert. So it's a point for the economic of the piano of our model and it's a different and bigger project, but we want to go around the world, so I hope we will be everywhere soon.
[00:57:11.230] - PMO Joe
So let's record. I'm going to ask that same question with Fabio just because we were breaking up a little bit cloudy and this way we'll be able to cut in maybe if it didn't come across locally. Fabio, same question. So Fabio, from a business model perspective, how does this become sustainable? Right? How do you continue to make sure that you're able to sustain rock and 1000 as it goes forward into the future?
[00:57:36.710] - Fabio Zaffagnini
Well, there are different revenue streams, but we just work like any other brand. So we sell concerts to promoters or producers who actually buy the show, take the risk, sell the tickets, and they pay us like a fixed fee and a percentage on sales on top of the break even of the event. So that's how the business model of the concert works. Plus we have like merchandise, we sell rights for what we play. We could also monetize the community, selling services, lessons, perks of any kind. So basically there are many opportunities for Rockin' 1000 to be sustainable under an economical point of view.
[00:58:41.690] - PMO Joe
We've covered a lot and man, there's so much more we could cover, right? We only have an hour's worth of time really to bring everything together. But what would you say to somebody out there who has a crazy idea and just sitting around with their buddies or whatever and it could never happen? Have you learned anything that's shareable with somebody else that the old dreams do come true? Right, but what's your thoughts on advice to somebody?
[00:59:13.430] - Fabio Zaffagnini
Well, I think that obviously dreaming is good and at the beginning of any process we all need like an amount of enthusiasm that needs to be like huge. Because if you really want to make a dream happen, you really have to use all the enthusiasm that you have. And it has to be big in the very beginning, because to make that work, there's a lot of effort, a lot of sacrifice, a lot of not funny things that need to be done to make that work. And that's actually what brings value to that dream and that makes you very happy when you actually can do it. I don't believe that in the very beginning of a dream, of an impossible dream, it is necessary to plan everything because planning obviously is important in the beginning, but you have to stay open and see actually what's happening during the past because you never know what happens when you're trying to create something new. And if you're too focused on the only one plan that you have to make that work, you might lose opportunities, you're not going to enjoy the process and you probably follow the wrong path while on the other side there might be a good path that leads you to accomplish your dream.
[01:01:13.450] - Fabio Zaffagnini
Yeah, that's what I would actually say to someone with a crazy idea that has to start.
[01:01:19.020] - PMO Joe
I love that. Obviously I'm a Foo Fighters fan, but I'm an AC DC fan from when I was a little kid and they've got a great song. It's a long way to the top if you want to rock and roll. The message there is it's not an overnight thing, right. You have to put in the effort.
[01:01:34.970] - Fabio Zaffagnini
Oh, my God, yes.
[01:01:36.160] - PMO Joe
To get there. Great music.
[01:01:38.390] - Fabio Zaffagnini
Yeah. I would also add something else to surround yourself with people that are actually different from you. I mean, me and Claudia are really dear friends and we know each other seems like a very long time, but she's very different from me in handling the situation and working. I am more in the clouds. Claudia is on the ground. She is the one planning and doing, like the general management of everything. And she's really good at that and she's doing something that I'm really not able to do. And I think that the combination of different personalities is what can really make a successful project.
[01:02:28.290] - PMO Joe
Yeah. We think about the world cup is going on right now in football. And listen, you can't win the game if you have just a team full of goalies, right. You have to have everybody that can play their position and that's what you guys are describing there. And that's true on every project. Everybody is needed. So, Fabio and Cloudy, I certainly want to thank you. You've been my Dave grohl, right. I've been trying to get you on the show for a while and I'm so glad that you came. I hope that we were able to tell your story in a way that worked for you and for our audience as well. But there's more, right? If people want to learn more, if they want to be involved in Rockin' 1000 in some way, what's the best way to be able to connect and just do their part to do more?
[01:03:19.330] - Fabio Zaffagnini
Well, we have a website which is Rockin' 1000 dot that contains all the information about how to sign up and be part of a project. As a volunteer or musician, we're always open to welcome anybody willing to contribute to our mission. And then we have all our channels on social media, on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn. We're everywhere. So just right, Rockin' 1000. Google it and we're everywhere.
[01:03:51.310] - PMO Joe
Thank you so much. And Claudia, any final comments from you that you want to share with the audience about the project and what you guys are doing now and what it's like working with Fabio and just being part of this massive movement?
[01:04:10.210] - Claudia Spadoni
I want us to say that we want to go everywhere. So we want to do everywhere. There are musicians, so we want to play everywhere. And I am agree with Fabio about the team, the importance of the difference. Thank you.
[01:04:45.650] - PMO Joe
Fantastic.
[01:04:46.280] - Claudia Spadoni
Thank you.
[01:04:47.180] - PMO Joe
Well, thank you both so much for being with us today. And of course, thank you to all of our listeners from around the world. As Fabio and Claudia know, if you don't have listeners or followers, then you don't exist, right? Because you're only here because of those people that you're sending. Content out to. Be sure to visit our Project Management Office Hours website at the pmosquad. Compodcast to check out all of our great shows. And a reminder to everybody that to subscribe on your favorite podcast channel right, go out on Spotify, spreaker, iHeartRadio. Whatever your podcast platform of choice is, please go out and subscribe to that. Thank you to our sponsors, the PMO Squad and the PMO leader. Without them, none of these shows would be possible, so I thank them. That's it for now. Office hours are closed. Until next time, I'm PMO. Joe and you've been listening to Project Management office hours.
[01:05:47.250] - Announcer
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