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Seeking advice re: town festival


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I'm unofficially co-chairing the first annual Farmington WA Harvest Festival committee. This coming Wednesday is our second bi-monthly (twice a month) meeting. The first annual Farmington Harvest Festival is scheduled for Sept 22, 2012.

I've never done this sort of thing before... pulled together a small town festival. I'm hoping there's folks here who can help me down the path.

Our vision is a fairly generic small town festival:

1) Main stage with a headliner for an evening street dance at the park and a variety of local entertainment through the afternoon leading up the the headliner event. (which is in-place)

2) Food & beverages... both children and adult oriented. (which is in-place)

3) Various events during the day oriented toward families & young-uns: Hay rides, balloons, marshmellow roasting for the kids, marshmellow drive for the adults, crafts in the park, horse-shoe tourney, bouncy air-house for the kids, etc... most of which is in-place.

4) A motorcycle show and shine on main street, next to the park (which is in-place)... another aspect to the "everybody gets a trophy day (or something to remember) theme of the event"

The town's insurance covers this sort of activity. We know we'll need to supply a suitable amount of portapotties and sanitation stations, as well as EMT & peace officer presence... that's all in-place. Power, parking, camping... all of that is in-place or well in the works. We have a mission statement (community bonding & enrichment) & "a good cause" (proceeds to go to the park & playground equipment fund).

Any advice or words of wisdom (knowing that the devil is in the details)?

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Quote Originally Posted by dennis a View Post
Website
Bad weather contingency plan
Power for vendors and main stage
Good points.

Website: We're working on formulating an official (.gov) website for the community (including upcoming community events) and hope to have that on-line within the month (and realistically the town's website should come together before mid summer).

Weather: I purposely picked the Sept 22nd date because of likely weather locally for that time of the year. Our climate history suggests the day should be: average low temp of 45F (+/- a few degrees), average high temp of 75F (+/- a few degrees), mean temp of approx. 60F, maximum 24hr. precipitation of 0.00" (+ upwards of a light sprinkle) and calm wind
Power for vendors and main stage is in-place: 3ea. 200A suitably placed drops with plenty of (knock on wood) feeder cables and distros.
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Quote Originally Posted by W. M. Hellinger

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Power for vendors and main stage is in-place: 3ea. 200A suitably placed drops with plenty of (knock on wood) feeder cables and distros.

 

And a dedicated AC power tech to deal with all of the issues caused by vendors all day long?
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I second the radios/walkies idea. You can waste a lot of effort roaming back and forth, back and forth. And if you don't want to go that route at least have everybody's cell no. so you can phone or text back and forth. I just did a multi room event where I used (in moderation) texting to coordinate - and I hate to text, but it was a neccesary "evil".

I would also suggest that everyone involved on game day has a comprehensive, but easy to read schedule of events with onsite contact names and numbers. And speaking of events, spend some time when with your schedule to determine how long each event will really take, and which events should run concurrently and which ones should run consecutively.... so that folks can see each event without rushing from station to station.

An emergency plan for natural and man made emergencies would also be good. Even just having a chain of command if an emergency arose would be a good start.

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I presume you are hiring in a good sound/production company for the main stage?

Here in FL, September is pretty hot, but I like it when venues have plenty of water to drink at no cost (fountains are great), hand-cleaning stations, and an area where folks can sit and chill out comfortably without getting rained on or baked in the sun.

As a dad, I like it when there are some family-friendly change facilities for looking after little ones is handy.

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I believe he scores enough LARGE gigs with the "other" company he invested in (not Audiopile) to not be concerned. Unless he has silently sold his share, I surmise he has plenty of shows on the books that would dwarf this event.

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Plenty of barricades for places you don't want no one or cars. put as man in one spot too , because people will drive around just one in a certain spot, i do events that we have to use them and the people here are plum ignorant about it. if you put one barricade in one area then they drive around it, we have to put them about 2 or 3 at one certain area. I mean one should be enough to say "Hey WE DONT WANT YOU HERE, DONT COME THROUGH HERE" But it don't register in their minds rolleyes.giffacepalm.gif

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Quote Originally Posted by Axisplayer

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I surmise he has plenty of shows on the books that would dwarf this event.

 

I'm sure you are right but then why join the committee? They are a PITA that suck up a lot of your time. Also, doing the home town festival is good advertising for a sound company. All the locals get to see what you got.
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Here's a few things that popped into my head, based on the festivals I've worked at or attended:

Make sure you have people constantly emptying garbage cans. Also, have plenty of garbage cans for them to empty. You want people to throw their stuff in the can, not on the ground. They fill up fast.

Make sure there's ONE person in charge at the top of the food chain. If someone needs to know something, they can ask that ONE person and get ONE answer. That one person should have lots of people to delegate things to, so they're available to answer all those questions and coordinate things. That person should be everywhere all the time. You don't want a committee in charge on the day of the show.

Provide catering or meal vouchers and lots of water for your workers, at least those that will be there all day with no where else to go. And if possible a good-sized air conditioned room for them to let them get out of the sun for a bit, but at least a tent or something.

If possible, have seperate restroom facilities for your staff. Hopefully an actual restroom, that gets cleaned and maintained throughout the day.

You'll probably need some kind of temporary money-changing facility to service your gate staff and others taking money, as well as your vendors, since the banks probably won't be open. Make sure you have plenty of cash on hand and adequate security.

Give people a secure place to lock up their bicycles, or better yet a bike valet.

Make sure the backstage area is secure, and you have distinctive passes/wristbands to gain access to the backstage area.

Dedicate a parking area close to the stage for crew and talent, give out a specific number of parking passes to gain access to that area, and make sure the people at the entrance are a-holes about who gets in there so that there's parking available for the people who need it, when they need it.

That's all that's coming to mind at the moment. Good luck, organizing festivals is a big job, which is why I never want to do it.

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Load in/out to the stages. If you have bands playing you also have multiple vehicles that need to be near the stage area. Parking passes can work but as someone whose been on both sides of the stage it's better to have some decent parking nearby and work with the volunteers to get people in and out.

One festival I played at in crakima had teepees set up for the talent. Kinda cool. odd but kinda cool. A basic 10x10 with walls and a table and chairs inside can go a long way to helping out.

I really think you're ahead of the game on this, getting local community people involved and letting them give an opinion (however bad, you don't have to listen) will make them invested in what the process is. Find out the personality types who easily overwhelm themselves with work and try to delegate and work with them. Some people feel like they need that stress/tension to feel they are contributing, so spotting who those are can help in the work process.

If your band is playing then schedual yourself and hour before and after where you can just focus on the band needs. You band needs you as much as you need them, give yourself the time.
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Master Information Packets for everyone that's working. Everybody who comes to the event will assume that everyone from the garbage collectors to the whoever is actually in charge know where everything is and what time it's going on. Map of the grounds, vendor locations, stage locations, bathroom locations, etc, etc. Given how quickly details change at things like this, your printer/copier will probably be in overdrive the night before. This is also really important information for EMS/Police, so when they get the call that someone's had a heart-attack (god forbid) next to "Joe's Kettle Corn," they don't have to scour the grounds to get help there.

Along the same lines: LARGE maps of the grounds in prominent locations.

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From a management point of view, have you set objectives for what you want to achieve (eg how much money you make, how many people attend etc) ? You need to be able to look back at the festival and work out if it was a success or not. From your objectives, you can work backwards to see how many people you would need to attend, how you will then need to communicate etc etc. Be very clear on who is responsible for what and make sure that everything is written down and sent to everyone involved in the organisation. If it's not written down it will be forgotten. Even if it's in writing, make sure it is not open to misinterpretation.

From a communications angle, always over-communicate. Work on the assumption that when you and the committee are utterly sick of hearing the messages, it MIGHT just be registering in the consciousness of those you want to reach. Also, work out what you want to say to different audiences - you'll need to think about what and how you communicate to staff, local police, press, and of course to potential attendees.

Oh and did anyone say enjoy yourself ??

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Quote Originally Posted by B. Adams View Post
Here's a few things that popped into my head, based on the festivals I've worked at or attended:

Make sure you have people constantly emptying garbage cans. Also, have plenty of garbage cans for them to empty. You want people to throw their stuff in the can, not on the ground. They fill up fast.
Someone with a golfcart or (much more likely anywhere there's gonna be a Harvest Festival) a quad with a deck to transport fulls and spare bags. And of course, a dumpster or other pre-arranged trash acceptance facility.....
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Quote Originally Posted by dennis a View Post
I "presume" he joined the festival committee to help score the sound gig for himself.
Yes, that's correct... kind-of.

The festival was actually my idea. I'm donating the stage production as well as hiring the headliner act... which I believe is key to getting this event off the ground, otherwise it's likely there's no-way it would happen... at least the first year anyway.

Most or possibly all of the vending (primarily food and beverages) will be under the auspices of the festival committee... proceeds to go to our worthy cause (playground equipment fund or similar).

Our town is really small,
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Looking at Farmington on a map are you trying to get a headliner with enough pull to get folks from Spokane? I'm just not seeing much population around otherwise. 2 things I'd do before investing too much into things would be:

1 - Do some research on other festivals and civic events in some nearby small towns and see what they usually draw for a crowd. If you can't find any or have had several "come and go" over the years, that's a red flag. I'm assuming you may have already done that as part of the justification for the event.

2 - Make darn sure nobody else in the region is having a festival, fair, etc on the days of your event as you'll need all the draw you can get.

OFF TOPIC ALERT - BTW Mark, I just placed an order this morning. My only non EWI purchase for cables in the last 8 years was a 25 ft 4 channel XLR patch snake from Seismic Audio. I bought last June so it didn't even make a year and 2 channels have failed.

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