Not that I'm condoning the behaviour of the Twestival organisers, but I find it hard to sympathise with the venue, given that they continued reserving the date for 'months' with no contract and no deposit paid. They took a risk on a clearly flakey client, and it didn't pay off.
"We sent a contract, and asked for a deposit. Months went by. A few times they asked when they could stop by to drop off the deposit, but never actually did so."
The venue's actions seem pretty reasonable to me. They gave the organizers some slack, assuming these are basically decent people. It's not like they're dealing with some unknown or shady operation.
Still, discovering a Twitter-related operation turned out to be much noise/little signal shouldn't be that surprising :)
That's jacked. I used to be an event promoter and that kind of behavior from fellow promoters would end up harming me in some way (not being able to book a venue, extra heavy deposits, etc). Amateur at best, unprofessional completely.
On a side note, I am now blind because of the lime green on black. 1994 is calling and wants its "cyber" vibe back.
If I ever find out what Project Xanadu's default color scheme was supposed to be, then I will probably switch a web site to it. In loving memory of a future that we exceeded and still failed to live up to.
(Xanadu was the first idea of a hypertext system. It was more heavyweight than the current system, which may be why it never caught on -- but it was incredibly visionary. Sometimes I read futurist writing from that time, and I'm struck by how much better we've done and by how much of its early promise we have left unfulfilled.)
And in case others missed the point, his site isn't that color in some kind of tribute...his site is that color because he's jwz, and he wrote vast swathes of Mozilla, and he can make his website any color he wants.
"We admit that we made a mistake by not reaching out to the previous venue to make our decision clear before informing our internal team. We weren’t aware they were passing up other opportunities in our favour and understand the staff is not thrilled about our choice"
I don't get it. Why do they need to close on a Friday night? There are a zillion DJs in San Francisco, and people often come to DNA Lounge just because it's DNA Lounge, without knowing what, if anything, special is planned that night.
DNA Lounge isn't a regular bar. It's a facility. They do a variety of events ranging from concerts to wrestling. So it takes a while for them to setup for an event and properly promote it to get a decent turnout.
The other big factor is that burning man is happening around the same time which sucks a lot of the promotional people around SF out.
In a nutshell, it's more expensive to open the club and book bar staff, DJs, security staff etc. than they are likely to take in on that evening with other big events on and no time to promote (ads to the local newspapers have to be submitted a few weeks in advance). The number of people who go to a nightclub just because it's there is likely to be less than 1-200, and a club the size of the DNA lounge needs at least 4-500 to break even.
You've never worked with a subcontractor on a home remodelling project, have you? =)
These guys carry three cellphones AND a pager, but will never show up on time for an appointment or call to tell you they're not going to be at your house on the day you took off of work. But when that bill is due lookout: they're magically available and on the phone with you constantly.
Not to generalize but I lived in SoCal for 2 years and a good percentage of people there do not honor commitments. Either they are very late or just won't show up.
I lived in the East Coast before that and didn't have as many flakers.
It's called traffic. It can make a 10 minute commute turn into a 3-hour commute.
I lived on the East Coast for 5 years, and people there were flakier than their West Coast counterparts -- even though traffic on the East Coast is more predictable and less congested. The difference? People on the West Coast try to make their commitments -- but run in to traffic. People on the East Coast leave late and blame the traffic.
Traffic isn't really an excuse. I've lived in the Bay Area for 13 years, and our traffic ranks in national rankings as some of the worst. With that said, during rush hour, from Downtown Oakland to Downtown Mountain View (880, Dumbarton Bridge, 101), the variance on my Commutes over three years was 52 minutes to at _most_ 1 Hour 15 minutes. 95% of the time it was under 1 Hour. The 1 Hour 15 minutes occured during a flash flood in which most major roads were having water issues. A few accidents pushed us to 1 hour 10 minutes.
Another way of saying this is if I planned to arrive 8 minutes early, I would have been on time 95% of the time for an appointment in Mountain View driving from Oakland.
Read "If.... consistent...." -- There's your mistake.
I lived in LA for 23 years. Consider: Traffic means that a sometimes-20-minute commute can take 3 hours. And while you can sometimes predict sort of when it will take longer than it should, you can't always. Everyone has to be a lot more flexible. The alternative is to be willing to show up at every appointment an hour or two early... but most people aren't.
Who knows if this is the "root cause" -- I doubt it. But it certainly contributes to the "lets play it by ear" philosophy you find predominant in LA.
I know the central people behind twestival, and have worked with them before. I think it is important to know how things are actually run. You have a few central people who are helping a ton of people organize meetups. This lets those at the center get great reach, and makes the global event really big. It is amazing that a global event is essentially organized by a handful of people.
Like the internet, this kind of decentralization requires relinquishing a bit of control. It is daring from a branding perspective to let locals plan events under your brand's global name.
So I wouldn't say this story is the fault of "the twestival" - but of those local SF organizers who dropped the ball.
Then the Twestival SF organizers are flakes, and your friends who do the central coordination need to do a better job vetting their local organizers. Otherwise, your friends will earn themselves a bad name.
I agree. Lots of local organizers have been booted for various reasons. I think there are something like 150 cities. There is basically a person or two vetting the whole thing. I think that deserves respect regardless of a few bad examples.
I mean, there is money involved, and charities to donate to. That extremely sensitive issue is essentially already settled.
Trouble is your usually defined by mistakes. Finding the "rotten apples" is a thankless task and when you get it wrong people notice.
I feel myself siding with the venue right now: Twestival seems to be playing the "but it's for charity! c'mon" card a little too strongly for my taste.
You know, that's exactly how big companies treat bad PR. They'll just blame it on the employee, then fire the employee. The downside of Twestival is that it's all volunteers... sounds like the organizers need to man up and fire the volunteers.
Can someone explain to me how it is that club promoters work? Back when I was living in LA, I'd meet lots of people who would tell me they're a promoter for club X, but I never understood how they fit into the business model.
The promoter is an entrepreneur, their product is the event. He or she arranges the venue, the performers, the advertising, etc and whatever's left from the door price/ticket sales once everyone's been paid is their profit.
Lots of people do this part time looking only to break even, in that case their profit is in the form of social capital.
The Twestival consists of hundreds of volunteers in lots of different locations. The people the I and my colleagues have worked with for four different events have so far been very professional.
