The reactions from the employees in the stores varied. Participants were told to do simple things like “pet a product,” “neaten up a display,” and “find a product that’s close to $21 without going over.” Perhaps the most fun was slow dancing with a product. First we had to do some birthday shopping. “Hold a product in the air, as if you are in awe of it.”The theme for this year’s experiment was “Steve’s Birthday.” Steve, the normal narrator for our Mp3 Experiments, was replaced by his brother Mark who informed us we would be surprising Steve at a location to be announced later. Young participants in StaplesEveryone pressed play at exactly 6:00 PM, their watches and phones synchronized to a clock on our site. Ideally you wouldn’t be able to tell participant from non-participant until the experiment began. Unlike the past few years, participants wore no identifying clothing. Participants were told to blend in like normal customers before the experiment started. A few of the larger stores like The Gap were perhaps a bit excessively crowded. It seems like we did a pretty good job of filling all of the stores on the map, big and small. Of course, I also didn’t know how many people would attend. I didn’t want the stores to be too crowded, but I also didn’t want participants to be so spread out that they would not see each other. It was tough to know how large to make the starting zone. I wanted to make the actions in the stores as peaceful and subtle as possible. While we were a permitted event in Bryant Park, we obviously did not have permission to stage our event in these stores. There are dozens of stores in the area, including several huge national chains. I figured it would be exciting to have participants converge on the park from all directions, so we had everyone start the experiment in various retail stores surrounding the park. It’s an incredibly gorgeous space right in the heart of Midtown Manhattan. Pre-mission documentation team meetingI was thrilled when the good folks that run Bryant Park agreed to host this year’s Mp3 Experiment.