Before the Festival recedes, like it does every year, into pleasant and sustaining memory, I am trying to gather my own thoughts about how Web 2.0 might interact with the Festival in particular, and events (in Orkney and elsewhere) in general.
David Rendall, in a previous post commenting on Joyce McMillan's review of Mixter Maxter (and other events) in The Scotsman newspaper, humorously suggested that we might aim to configure the Festival as an alternate reality game (ARG): this is probably at an extreme end of at least one spectrum!
If you are reading this, and have some views, PLEASE comment here!
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There are 2 official Festival online manifestations:
1. http://www.stmagnusfestival.com/
The official SMF website
2. St Magnus Festival friends
The official SMF Facebook page
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This year 2 "unofficial" Web 2.0 channels sprang up, experimentally:
1. http://www.stmagnusfestival.blogspot.com/
This blog!! An unofficial outlet for news, gossip, reaction and pictures from the Festival.
2. http://twitter.com/stmagnus
An unofficial information and alert feed from the Festival, trying to bring together and make visible any and all mention of the Festival, and its participants, on twitter
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As in previous years, various artists and projects appearing in (or part of) the Festival have online presences. This year, notably:
1. http://rsnoatstmagnus.blogspot.com/
The travel diary of the RSNO's participation in the Festival
2. http://www.kgsorkney.co.uk/mixtermaxter, http://www.youtube.com/mixtermaxter
The blog and YouTube channel for the Transform Orkney: Mixter Maxter project,
led by The National Theatre of Scotland Learn (see also NTS's Facebook page)
in association with SMF, Kirkwall Grammar School, Determined to Succeed and Scottish Power Learning
supported by 9 charitable organisations in addition to
Orkney Islands Council, the Albert Hotel, Kirkwall, Clark Thomson Insurance Brokers, Lows Orkney, McAdie and Reeve, JEP Robertson & Son, WHB Sutherland and Tods of Orkney
3. Psappha
4. http://twitter.com/RSNO,
http://twitter.com/elspethmurray (of the Puppet State Theatre Co),
http://twitter.com/cubecheat (featured in the Moulin Rouge show)
Twitter feeds of festival companies and artists
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To add some more data into the mix, I installed the Google Analytics script on the blog pre-Festival. I'll post the full data in due course, but it's interesting to note that - although the peak was on Monday - there's been a sustained tail, with the visitor numbers actually rising on Friday. A blog isn't just for xmas you know, people might actually stumble on something in the blog (via Google or whatever) that intrigues them to come to the festival, and blogs tend to get pushed higher in the search results, especially if they're regularly updated.
ReplyDeleteOne idea we discussed was that it might be possible to have last minute ticket availability sent out via Twitter. Assuming by next summer Twitter have sorted out their agreements with the UK mobile phone companies, this would allow festival-goers to get text messages informing them of unsold tickets. The only cost involved would be making sure that someone on box office or front of house knows how to use Twitter. Don't know whether it's worthwhile in terms of sales of course, but it's a relatively easy thing to do.
We also discussed whether the blogging, tweeting, etc creates a feedback loop between the performers, volunteers and organisers. That already exists of course, through the Festival Club and so on, but this is another way of doing it perhaps?
There's my tuppence anyway. I'll step back now and hope we get more input from folk who actually know something about the Festival, unlike me(as probably became obvious in my blog posts!)
This all sounds good to me! I wasn't suggesting that all blog posting might recede with the end of the Festival, just that I felt the need to write down what I was thinking (and the details of what I was up to) during the festival at this point, before rosy-memory syndrome (or just blankness!) sets in. Would be great to think we could keep up some level of waffle through the year. Time will tell!
ReplyDeleteAt the very least, it's been great fun! Many thanks for getting it all going, and letting me join in!
best of luck for their festival and may you great luck in future...
ReplyDeleteso keep doing and keep sharing with us....
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