As usual East Coast Music Week was no disappointment. We were able to meet some amazing new people, hang with some old friends (from near and far) and check out some amazing bands. This year was Marcato’s first year sponsoring a stage during the festivities! Our Marcato Musician client, J.J. Bookings, in Halifax put on an amazing show at the rad Michael’s Bar and Grill. It was our first time at Michael’s and what a cool venue. We were able to check out The Town Heroes and The Stogies. Awesome music, amazing venue, cool vibe. Total ECMW package.

We also made our way to the Cape Breton Embassy Stage at the Marquee put on by the Cape Breton Music Industry Co-operative. Marcato client Sprag Session completely stole the show and brought down the house with their celtic fusion tunes that fit somewhere between the label of Cape Breton traditional music and rock/funk. Check out this video of them from that night!

Over the course of the weekend we spent the evenings indulging in delicious food. The first night we went to Talay Thai (our go-to Thai place in Halifax) with our new friend Dave from Summerfest (P.S. try the cashew tofu here, it is amazing)! The next night we hit up Hamatchi House for some amazing (and gluten free) sushi. Everything at Hamachi House is delicious so it’s hard to make a recommendation.

So when we weren’t tasting delicious food or listening to amazing music, we were taking in the conference that operates as part of ECMW. This year there were delegates attending the conference from all around the world and it was such a pleasure to meet them and show them how the East Coast can rock.

On Friday and Saturday Darren moderated a two part panel at the conference discussing how musicians can successfully break into export markets. Panel participants included Josh Daly (The Harbour Agency, Sydney, AUS), Charlie Cran (Strawberry Music Festival, Sonora, CA), Bob Paterson (BPA Live, Bury St. Edmunds, England, UK), Joanna Serraris (Musemix, The Hague, Netherlands). As you can see it was a diverse group of industry professionals from around the globe whose goals were to help the musicians gain perceptive on the different markets they might be trying to break into. Even with such a diverse group the panel all agreed that success only comes when artists are willing plan, research and begin preparing months, if not years in advance of the planned export trip. We couldn’t agree more.

Another fabulous ECMA under our belt and we look forward to doing it all again next year in Charlottetown, PEI!

Bon Jovi World Tour

The first highlight of the conference was the opening keynote speaker Johanna Marsal from Moment Factory. It was fascinating to learn about the challenges they sometimes face when creating some of the most amazing light shows in the world. I hope to be able to see one of their shows someday soon!

The next morning at breakfast Warren Evans kept everyone on their toes with his amazing presentation on how trends are shaping the festival and events industry.

Siscar Simulator

After breakfast the Marketplace opened. It was one of the most interactive marketplaces I have ever seen. One of my favourite booths was Siscar. They had an race car simulator where you could track your fastest lap time and I finished in 1st place with a lap time of 20.38 seconds! Just barley beating the time of our VP, Laird who came in at 20.62 seconds.

In the afternoon there were a series of breakout sessions where we could pick from a number of topics and learn from our peers who are experts on the subjects. One of the most interesting sessions was “Engaging Volunteers” with Adriane Beaudry. I speak with volunteer coordinators at festivals around the world everyday so it was great to learn some tips on how to attract, retain and engage volunteers for your event.

The day brought very valuable information and the evening brought great food, company and entertainment. The entire showcase was filled with talented Mississauga local artists and amongst those was Kate Todd! She put on a great performance that left everyone wanting more.

On the last day of the conference it was our time to shine in our breakout session talking about “Adopting Technology at your Festival”.

Thanks to all of those who attended our session and we hoped you learned a little something about how you can ensure success when bringing new technology to your organization, and a little about Marcato Festival Software too!

The closing keynote speaker was Deanne Carson from the Calgary Stampede and what a beautiful presentation she did expelling some of the myths of the event as well as bringing us into their world of uniting the community not only during the Stampede but throughout the whole year. They have just celebrated their centennial anniversary last year and now their team is planning to make year 101 bigger and better than ever before!

The evening brought the annual FEO awards ceremony where the top 100 festivals of the year were announced. We were happy to see a few of our clients, The Collingwood Elvis Festival and Hillside Festival take home multiple awards! We also met a lot of great people throughout the week who also won awards. Congratulations to everyone!

All in all it was an amazing week! We would like to say thank you to Gary, Rosemarie and Nicole from the FEO team for having us at the conference and we look forward to seeing everyone there next year!

Don’t forget to  follow us on Facebook, Twitter (@marcatofestival) and LinkedIn to stay up to date on new features, resources on planning your festival and much more.

Don’t forget to  follow us on Facebook, Twitter (@marcatofestival) and LinkedIn to stay up to date on new features, resources on planning your festival and much more.

This year’s lineup looks as though it will not disappoint. Icelandic rockers Sigur Rós are one of the main headlining acts. People are also chatting about how you must see Dirty Projectors, Phantogram and Patrick Wolf. We’re also really happy to say that one of our amazing Marcato Musician clients, Mo Kenney (hailing from Halifax, Nova Scotia), is also playing the festival. Just from our ears, we think you should consider checking out Of Monsters And Men and Half Moon Run.

If you are in Iceland checking out the festival, please let us know about all your favourite things. Send pictures, video, whatever! We are there in spirit!

Here’s a picture of Halifax’s own Rich Aucoin literally “surfing the crowd” at the 2011 festival:

In the last blog Tourism Tidbits focused on some of the key security planning stages for festivals and events. This time Tourism Tidbits provides more insights into event and festival security by featuring some of the principle ideas of Greg Mullen, police chief of Charleston, South Carolina, a major event/festival city. During the Spring, Summer and Fall seasons, Charleston is filled with festivals and events; it is the task of the Charleston police department to make sure that they events are safe and secure.

See your event as part of the local hospitality industry

Mullen notes the importance of taking event security seriously. He notes that he hospitality industry is growing; the number one economic driver in many areas. A basic principle comes from Peter Tarlow’s book “Event Risk Management and Safety (Wiley) that when risk is not taken seriously, specific event is disrupted and collateral damage occurs to host location. (Tarlow, Pg. 2). Mullen stresses to his police officers that events function as a form of tourism and suffer from the same sociological issues as tourism. Thus when events suffer from a negative occurrence this may turn into negative publicity impacting the entire hospitality industry. As in all forms of risk management then, it is more cost effective to deal with the risk than it is to deal with the damage once it has occurred.

Do not measure your success by the number of traffic tickets you give out or the number of arrests

Instead measure your success by how well you mitigated risk, how safe your public felt at the event, the number of crimes that were prevented and the desire of the public to return because the event “felt” safe and secure. Critical areas of event risk include: health and safety issues (especially if food items are being sold), crowd management, alcohol sales and consumption, traffic management, including coming to the festival, parking and leaving the festival, and personal security should fights break out, a robbery occur, or even a mass killing.

Review all critical factors well in advance of the event

Among these are: What is the sponsoring organization’s purpose and experience in running an event. Is this event to promote a specific cultural, political, or social agendum? What is the event’s history? What has gone wrong in the past? How happy or unhappy is the local community with the event? If the event is to take place in on a residential street then the problems may be quite different from the same event being held in an open field. How can weather impact the event? Think beyond rain. For example, if this is a summer outdoor event, will people suffer from sunstroke? How will they get water and how many rest rooms will the event provide?

Distinguish between different types of risk

Not all risk is the same. Physical risks refer to things that can happen to the person or the place. These are tangible risks and their consequences can be measured. “Reputational risk” refers to the cost to a community’s reputation when something goes wrong. Most people protest that the media are not fair and tend to emphasize points taken out of context. In many cases that is true, but places that depend on tourism need to have a plan to deal with the media. Another form of risk is the emotional cost to personnel and locals when something goes wrong. Emotional risk means that an event has to have the back-up personnel in place so that first responders are in good shape to do their job and without worry. Final there is the fiscal risk to any event. If people do not show up, if there is a weather disaster, event planners need to ask themselves can they recover from a sever financial loss.

Determine what are acceptable risk levels for your event

Try to develop methods by which you can diminish risk by spreading the risk across the event rather than concentrating it in one location. You can also diminish risk by sharing responsibility with allied agencies, participating in joint training exercises and during the event continuously monitoring for unexpected or unplanned for changes. Not only do you want to seek ways to reduce risk but also there may be times when it is wise to cancel an event due to unforeseen risks. In such cases, not doing anything may result in a major risk.

Never hold an event without a good organizational (incident command) structure

Often failures occur due to poor communication between parts of the event. It is essential that prior to holding an event that all stake holders use the same vocabulary and understand each other, have a system to communicate, and practice coordination. Good incident command structures not only lessen risk but should an incident occur they are essential in protecting life and property.

Evaluate, evaluate, evaluate!

A major error in event and festival event risk management is to fail to evaluate the event or festival after it is completed. Be sure to conduct a through after-action review. Include in this review both positive and negative outcomes, what went right, what did not happened due to luck and what mistakes were made. List areas for improvement. Never be defensive in your review, instead analyze your plans and document both positive and negative tactics in a written report. This report should be written within 30 days of the event so that memory loss and idealization do not occur.

1. Provide the tech company rep with as much information about your team as possible

If you know someone in your organization is resistant to change, give your representative at the company a heads up, as they will normally have techniques to help ease them into it without overwhelming them.  For example, they could have this person take part in the initial research of the product with you, so they feel a part of it, rather than something that is being forced on them. Have them speak directly with your contact at the company to talk through their workflows and see how their job can be adapted into the system.

2. Immediately invest the time for your team to learn and implement the new system

Don’t just think it can be squeezed into a regular work day. Ask the service provider what their suggested path is, what training material they have and how long they suggest you look it over. Taking this time right away will ensure that your new technology does not end up being something that falls to the wayside. This approach will also make you aware of any potential issues with the new technology before you get to the point where corrections or changes cannot be made in time for your festival.

3. Set up a meeting a few weeks into the implementation with your team to see how things are going and decide next steps for increasing engagement

After that meeting, connect with your rep and discuss questions and concerns that came up. Have your rep lay out a plan to fix them — this is critical! Everyone knowing that there will be an evaluation session about the software and how it is working in your organization will put the pressure on them to put time into the system and bring any issues to the table early enough to find solutions to problems.

4. Ensure that each member of your team knows who to contact if they have questions and that they are comfortable with those methods

If someone runs into a question and they don’t know where to go to get a quick answer, you increase the risk of them exiting the system and doing things the old way.

5. Use the switch as an opportunity to re-engineer your workflows

Just because you asked a bazillion open-ended questions on your paper application form doesn’t mean there isn’t a better way to approach the process. Make sure you don’t just replicate the old way with the new technology. Making a change in the systems you use to do your job creates an opportune time to potentially refine and tweak some of your core processes. If your service provider is an expert in your space, they may have some valuable information on how others do it, and what sort of success normally comes from different approaches.

6. Commit to the change

Without this, you risk doubling your work by maintaining two technologies. Make falling back on the old way impossible. Many people find change challenging, as old habits are hard to break. Once everyone knows the new system and all issues have been pointed out and solved, it’s time to dive in head first. Make sure everyone commits to the new system and processes. If only a portion of the team makes this commitment, the results will not be a strong as a full team-wide commitment. Committing early in the process will enable you to discover potential challenges before critical deadlines and address them to your service provider.

7. Give it a chance

There will be a learning curve and a period of resistance. Stay the course and give the new technology a chance to work for you. I recall the first album I recorded using Protools — it was a pain in the ass at times, but once I had the tool figured out it changed my efficiency in the studio forever!

Technology can enhance our business and personal lives, but in most cases this enhancement follows an investment of learning/embracing new technology and ideas, and opening your mind to change. Follow these tips and you will be well on your way!