Festival or Folly?

Many communities have a festival as a means to celebrate a holiday or a historical event in their community’s history. Organizing and planning such an event requires as much moxie as it takes to run any major corporation.

One of the first tasks organizers must consider is placing competent and well motivated people into positions of responsibility, to ensure each portion of the event's planning and execution is viable and completed.

If an individual doesn’t have the same enthusiasm or perception of priority that the organizing body has, don't expect too much in return from that individual. There are a number of eager volunteers who’ll jump at the chance to assist, but is their experience and ability conducive to meet the end goals? Or is this “opportunity” just a means to help them forward their own career or personal agenda, not to provide the required support needed toward the success of the event? There are many who say, “I can do that,” but in retrospect they really could not. Obviously, this impacts the overall success of the event.

As organizers/promoters, you have to run an event as a business. After all, if the event doesn’t live up to its promotions, an encore event will be even more difficult to pull off. The adage of “garbage in, garbage out” holds especially true here. If one entity of the organization cannot deliver, it affects the rest, potentially leading lead to an overall catastrophe. The strength of a chain is based on its weakest link, so it goes in business and event production.

If you pull together the makings for a great event - bands, food, rides and all of the other fun things, but you fail to promote the event properly…no one shows up to the party. Poor promotion has resulted in failed product releases, sales and even birthday parties. If the marketing materials submitted to the community are dull and boring, so is the perception of the event.

So, to those of you who sit on a board and oversee an event, choose the right people. Choose those who are knowledgeable, capable, resourceful, enthusiastic, determined and motivated to provide the proper planning, promotion and production of your event. Failure to do so…well you understand the consequences don’t you?