Cor dear me. Sorry for the absence, it's been a long week. Much to recount but so little time so I'll stick to today for now, the first day of our 2007 Reading Festival coverage.

Last year the online coverage of the festival was down to the two of us on the BBC's Berkshire online team, plus a freelance photographer. Using my laptop, a creaky internet connection and my GMail account, we shifted dozens of top quality photos to the BBC's Reading and Leeds website, plus text updates from around the festival site.

Here are Dayorama posts from last year's festival:
25 August: Work + Rock - the internet goes down for everyone except me!
25 August: Giving It Some Welly - it's raining but we're snapping away...
26 August: Wow - Muse are amazing and our photos are up!
27 August: Think Penis! - Tales from the festival arena as we go out filming.

This year things are a little different. The BBC is this year's 'official online partner' of the festival and we're part of a team of fourteen people keeping various BBC websites ticking over. We even have our own office in the ginormous BBC compound, sat in the shadow of legion mammoth BBC Outside Broadcast trucks. The Beeb have taken over a corner of the festival to set up an incredible array of outbuildings, cables and vehicles. It's like being part of a small invasion force, as another white off-road vehicle with 'BBC Outside Broadcast' stencilled to the side thunders past.

It's an incredible operation. Think about it: someone has to make sure the television programmes go out on air, from set design through to driving the trucks, from powering the broadcast through to packing the right cables. Someone has to make sure the radio programmes go out on air, from setting the correct frequency for radio microphones through to issuing passes to all the correct staff. And someone has to make sure the online content reaches the web, from setting up broadband access and buying in laptops to going out and collecting the raw material - and that's where I come in.

Today I've been out in the campsites talking to the punters as they arrived. There's a funny smell as you reach the camping area, a sort of cow-meets-beer aroma, and once you turn a corner the vast extent of the human herd is thrown out before you. Reams of tents rise up to the right of a narrow metal track rising an inch above the rapidly liquifying soil, while on the left a line of shops can flog you anything from a smoothie to a sombrero.

You can click here to watch the footage I shot and see some of the people I met. One group of girls were so thrilled to be interviewed that they demanded a photo with me, so I ended up with one on each arm while their male friend took a picture - the trappings of fame.

If you can't watch the video you can hear from various people in a short package I've produced for Friday night's live broadcast from the festival site. Use this audio panel to listen to it.

Hopefully I'll have some time to keep you updated over the next three days - it should be fascinating being behind the scenes at such a major operation. Coming up on Friday we'll be out taking audience photos then producing a one-hour festival special for broadcast from 7pm, then on Saturday we're filming around the arena to gauge reaction to all the top acts. We have not one but two live specials from the site on Sunday, and that's after my usual 6am shift! It's going to be a busy one.

Here is a link to this year's BBC Reading and Leeds website. To see the fruits of last year's labour, here is the 2006 version.