JANEK MÄGGI ABOUT THE CREATION OF THE EUROVISION WEBSITE: FOR ESTONIA, IT WAS A MAJOR SUCCESS

It was revealed today that the official website of Eurovision was made by talented Estonians. One of its creators, Janek Mäggi, recalls the Eurovision song contest held in Tallinn in 2001 and the course of things which finally led to a functioning website of Eurovision. 

“The period when Tarmo Krimm and Juhan Paadam proposed that I would manage the online gate to Eurovision was exquisite because in previous years, the site had crashed for three consecutive years – the organisers failed to keep the site running,” notes Mäggi about the situation at that time and adds that he went to Denmark twice with Tarmo Krimm to learn about what they had done there and why had it all failed. 

They also visited Geneva and Amsterdam to convince the locals that this would not happen with them. However, it took great persuasion to convince them that Estonians are better than the Danes.

“I do not want to take the full glory of creating the eurovision.tv website because this would not be fair. It was teamwork, led by the great Tarmo Krimm, who is an incredibly talented lobbyist and a marketing champion of television,” says Mäggi, and adds that Krimm was the one who was, and still is, his role model in terms of knowledge and skills.

“My task was putting the thing together with Tarmo and luckily, we were able to do it – despite the fact that we did not have any experiences. But maybe this is precisely why we managed to do it – we did not know what to fear. Sometimes, life is simpler if you are not aware of its challenges.”

“Truth of the matter is that the online gate, which is still functioning, was a result of teamwork. I remember that our only dream was that the site would not crash for the first time ever,” recalls Mäggi and gladly adds that they created a gate which has been running for fifteen years by now.

“This is obviously wonderful and I would like to personally thank Tarmo and Juhan for inviting the young me – I was 28 at the time – and trusting me with something this big. And I would also like to thank everybody else involved. For Estonia, it was a major success,” says Mäggi.