Archive for January 12th, 2008

Anyone who ever got into producing Renaissance Faires to make a pile of cash really need to have their heads examined. Now granted you can make some money, but all it takes is a rain out, snow out, last minute permit issues, or any number of occurances that impact attendence and you can go from an event in the black, to one in the red and sending you running to see about that 2nd mortgage.

The short form of the above is just meant to express that margins on events are very thin, and every new expense has an impact. For years the West Coast has been lucky enough to have a number of Jousting Troupes, and they ranged in expense from $2,500 to $5,000 per weekend for a basic show. Generally the pricing was at $3,500. Now over the last 24 months the prices have all jumped up to the base price being in the $5,000 for a base price.

One of the largest elements of their expenses is of course the insurance, which can be rather high. Spreading it across multiple events would help defray the expense. However it seems that now that events are having to rethink their jousting inclusion on their schedule, forcing prices to rise even higher based on fewer events.

Polling the community, it almost always comes back with the opinion that Jousting is very importaint to the success of an event, but the question stands – how high can it rise before it becomes a losing propisition for the event and the benefit of having one is outweighed by the outlay. Even as it stands for an event to have a joust, the expense isn’t just the flat rate (for example, $5,000), there’s also the inclusion of the expense of hotel rooms (generally demanded), fencing for the arena, seating of some kind (haybales or bleachers), and in the end it’ s over a $7,000 propisition. Given that many single weekend events have entertainment budgets under $10,000 that leaves only trace amounts for everything else (stage acts, musicians, court, and all the rest).

The Village Blacksmith is one of my favorite smithing acts/setups I’ve ever seen, but they went from an old expense of about $500 a weekend to $1500 and up. It doesn’t seem to really dawn on them that it’s not a personal expression of disliking them – it’s just that they no longer fit into the bigger picture of event expenses.

The West Coast is lucky (in some ways) to have 20+ faires a season, with three of them being long run events. But with all the entertainment options, the quality of events often suffers due to attendence numbers that just aren’t what they once were (or are in other areas of the country). It’ll take some time to sort out what new attractions, marketing, and efforts will draw in more audience. It’s even more critical now that the economy continues to be delicate (to say the least), and people in general have less discretionary funds to play with in going to events.

• 

By now if you’re reading this post, you’ve already heard about the stunt that the tech gizmo blogging site, Gizmodo, pulled at CES this week. A doodad called TV-B-Gone had fallen into the dolt’s hands, and they had the bright idea to wander around turning off every TV in sight. Now at CES, that’s about every few inches (literally).

Now there’s no debate that CES is a big assed event, with bells and whistles all over the place, rather like the Oscars but for the high tech industry. It’s snobbish, and thinks very highly of itself. What shocks the hell out of me is how many people think that intentionally ruining presentations is a good idea (and in fact rather funny). I would have thought more of the tech community, but obviously perhaps the bloggers aren’t as mature as a community as they’d like to think themselves.

A number of postings all commented that it’s obviously not like pouring a drink over a keyboard, since there’s no physical damage that came from the act. However what they’re failing to see is that the point isn’t that a TV was simply turned off; the point is that people who’s jobs are on the lines (if not the presenters, then the techs who are already frazzled of keeping things running in that environment having system failures). The Motorola attack (yes, boys and girls, it was an attack) was during a press conference – which can directly impact revenues by reporters writing about the ineptitude of the presentation; that gets taken up by partners and clients, and decisions are made. Don’t they get that at it’s core, CES is about those kinds of impressions and deals.

The same people would [probably] have some pause at firing off an air horn at a wedding or a funeral, and this is hardly any different. So we’ve heard that CES will deny them access next year. I truly hope that legal action is also taken by one or more of the companies. This is exactly the kind of thing that needs to have a prescedent set for – Brian Lam should lose a good deal of money, and hopefully a house or two. Something that teaches him that he doesn’t get to pick when vandalism is ok, or endangering other people’s jobs is a good idea.

What would he even think if anyone does or did lose their jobs over this? Would he even lose a wink of sleep? If he’s got something against the CES brass, then have the balls to step up and be honest about it – stand out front and Picket the event, hand out flyers, whatever seems prudent to get his point across. Not hurting those people who’s very livelyhoods may hang in the balance with his stunt.

•