Dynamics Mobile takes out the trash at Europe’s largest music festival

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From July 3rd to 6th, the quiet fairgrounds outside the provincial town of Roskilde, about a 30 minute drive from Copenhagen, were transformed into a cacophony of music, people, tent camps, and general abandon. Over 67,000 people attended this year’s Roskilde Festival, the largest music festival in Europe, held since 1971.

They party hard – and generate a lot of trash in an area, which each year has to be fitted with an infrastructure “from scratch” to support the comforts of such a large group of people. So every year at festival time, the non-profit Roskilde Festival organization grows from its 25 paid staff to an army of almost 20.000 people as volunteers join to man the booths, collect trash, and do most tasks involved with executing a festival of this size.

One major challenge is keeping the area clear of trash, both for aesthetic and health reasons, but also to avoid fire hazards. This year, the waste collection crew will be using Microsoft Dynamics Mobile devices to stay on top of the trash piles. Kristian Ridley from the MDCC Mobile team has spearheaded the effort, inspired by his many years as a Roskilde Festival volunteer worker.

“I saw the opportunity when presented to a solution from one of our partners, Tegos. Tegos has developed a vertical Dynamics NAV solution for waste management. Roskilde Festival uses Dynamics NAV for its daily ERP system, and so the link was obvious”, said Kristian Ridley.

The Dynamics Mobile solution enabled crew members to better coordinate the dispatch of garbage trucks to hard-hit areas. If a crew member sees a big trash pile in the camp grounds, he or she can send a mobile photo of the site along with GPS coordinates into the system, which allows the driver to better plan the collection routes based on need.

“This new method will also bring relief to the large crew of fire men who are dispatched to the festival and who in the past have spend a lot of time pointing out fire hazards which need to taken care of. So of course, we are really happy that Dynamics Mobile technology can be put to such a worthy use”, said Kristian Ridley.

The Microsoft Dynamics Mobile team sponsored 15 devices at this year’s festival. The Roskilde Festival is a non-profit event with all proceedings from the main event donated to charity and to the local sports clubs in the Roskilde area which represent a large percent of the volunteer workers in the festival.

Read more here: <www.roskilde-festival.dk/2008/frontpage/system/news/singlenews/the-technology-takes-care-of-the-garbage/>

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