The touchscreen map Steve Kornacki wields live on air started as a January prototype
Building the NBC News Big Board
EJ Fox recounts building the NBC News Big Board, the touchscreen map Steve Kornacki uses live on election night before roughly 10 million viewers. What began as a January prototype demoed to producers grew into a production tool, built with Michael Small and NBC News Digital. Fox describes editing JSON, VPNing in, and restarting servers from his couch, then watching changes hit air minutes later, and the stress of handing a live performance to someone else.
Building something that gets performed live is the most stressful thing I've ever done — no room for error, and you hand it off to someone else on a screen you don't control.