Florida Festivals and Events Association (FFEA)

During your concert experience, as you dance with the crowd…do you ever stop to think about what goes on to make sure this live event is conducted and handled professionally? Annual convention and trade show associations like the Florida Festivals and Events Association (FFEA) have a mission with standards that uphold specific criteria. Florida Festivals and Events Association’s mission is to promote and strengthen the festivals, event and fair strategy in Florida through education, networking, dissemination of information, and the cultivation of high standards for the industry. The Florida Festivals and Events Association, Inc. has reportedly grown to more than 415 members, and represents 750 events throughout the great state of Florida. FFEA also hosts more than 3,300 event organizers, vendors, speakers, and sponsors at its annual convention and trade shows. FFEA presents around 1,000 awards recognizing the creative and technical innovations of its members at these trade shows.

Associations like FFEA are important to the entertainment industry because they promote public awareness of the genre to support the creative and economic viability of professionals in this field. FFEA and other associations like The Americana Music Association demonstrate the effectiveness their influence has on the community as a whole by the success of their festivals and live events. If you’re looking to become a member of the Florida Festivals and Events Association, their survey indicates that the most important reason people join is for the ability to connect and exchange ideas with other event professionals throughout Florida and across the nation. FFEA members also have the ability to connect with other fellow FFEA members in order to ask questions, send out notices, and offer discounts, as well as promoting their event or services. Music festivals & live events are a specific category under the entertainment business field that need guidance and some regulations by associations like FFEA.

Annual convention and trade shows are also a major feature that attracts audiences to FFEA. The convention and trade shows offer a high quality 3-day educational program filled with new ways to manage and grow business event sponsorships, creative and cost effective marketing, safe operations, securing and rewarding volunteers, and how to improve your bottom line. For the trade shows, vendor members have the opportunity to showcase their new and improved up-to-date products and services.

Music, Medicine, & Your Brain

Medicine or music? Law or sports? Something practical...or what we truly have a passion for? These are critical decisions that young adults are having to make every day. World renown TED speaker, Violinist Robert Vijay Gupta performs beautifully for the first two minutes of his lecture. TED is a nonprofit devoted to Ideas Worth Spreading, that started out in 1984 as a conference bringing together people from 3 worlds: Technology, Entertainment, and Design. This lecture is about Robert Gupta who was caught between a career as a doctor and a career as a violinist. Gupta realized he was stuck in the middle of the two worlds, he was ready for both but had a sense of social justice in his heart. In his lecture, Gupta tells an inspirational story about how society's marginalized and the power of music therapy, which can succeed where conventional medicine fails. 

From the lecture held in April 2012: 

"This was the very reason why we made music: we take something that exists within all of us at our very fundamental core, our emotions, and through our artistic lens, through our creativity, we're able to shape those emotions into reality." -Robert Gupta

Gupta's lecture is moving and inspires you to let your brain access that creativity you hold back most of the time. In this lecture you see the audience and their reaction to Gupta's storytelling about the path of music or heading for the path of medicine. Watching this lecture has given me a chance to develop a deeper understanding of Gupta's passion behind education and outreach, both as musician and as an activist for mental health issues. He has the privilege of working with Nathaniel Ayers, the brilliant, schizophrenic musician featured in "The Soloist," as his violin teacher (TED 2012). Gupta's lectures are so moving because he builds a trust with the audiences and shares his personal knowledge with them through his speech. He speaks very eloquently and personable, as if he's sitting down to have a cup of coffee with you. This lecture is mainly about finding one's place in the world with your talents. Dr. Gupta loved both of his worlds and found his place amongst them and continues to help others do the same. 

Robert Gupta: Between Music and Medicine

Filmed April 2012, posted Octover 2012, TEDMED 2012

Other Resources used in research: Ted.com's "Best of the Web"

SXSW Music Fest Pulling Together For Hurricane Sandy Relief

The South by Southwest (SXSW) Conferences & Festivals are banning together to help bring awareness to the victims of the recent Hurricane Sandy. New York City’s subways alone are experiencing the worst damage in its 108-year-history. According to CNN, over 4.8 million people remained without power on Thursday morning in 15 states and the District of Columbia. The worst affected states are New Jersey with 1,983,694 people out of power, New York with 1,514,147, Pennsylvania with 526,934, and Connecticut with 352,286. SXSW has started a Sandy Relief Fund that ties in with the American Red Cross, they ask you to help raise money to bring aid to those who were affected by Hurricane Sandy in any way that you can.

SXSW urges people to donate to the Red Cross because they have an amazing history of being the first on the scene in disasters. This is article by SXSW also touches on how making a contribution, no matter how large or small can truly make a difference in these disaster victim’s lives and the lives of their families. Pat on the back for SXSW to be one of the only music festivals to step up to the plate and lend a hand!

For those of you who are unfamiliar with South by Southwest (SXSW), the first music conference was held in 1987 in Austin, Texas. Their original goal was to, “Create an event that would act a tool for creative people and the companies they work with to develop their careers, to bring together people from a wide area to meet and share ideas.” In keeping with the tradition, they continue to strive to achieve that goal in music, film, and interactives. According to SXSW, Austin’s eclectic music scene goes back to early in the city’s history and encompasses a wide variety of music including country, folk, jazz, blues, and rock. Central Austin boasts more original music in nightclubs in a concentrated area than any other city in the world.

Below is a video recap of last year’s SXSW festival!

Craving fresh music festival news?

There are many websites that Google hits when you type in “music festival news” in the search bar. But which news are you looking for? One of the most helpful user-friendly sites I’ve picked up on is Music Festival Junkies. This website has the complete 2012 guide to music and art festivals in the United States, Canada, and throughout Europe. For any interest you may have regarding top festival cities, top free festivals, and unique festivals, you name it this site can be your information tank for it! Music Festival Junkies offer more than just upcoming news and bulletins, they also have contact information listed if you would like to write for them! The pieces I have read so far are most intriguing and demonstrate innovation and creativity for these festivals all over the world. This article by Vito Valentinetti entitled A Good Idea: Science At Music Festivals is from the Green Man Festival located in the Black Mountains of Wales. It is an awesome read if you’re particularly interested in science! 

Pictured below is from the festival in Einstein’s Garden where festival-goers can ride bicycles and together help power an offbeat music performance according to Valentinetti. 

If traveling to the Black Mountains of Wales is a little out of your entertainment budget, Music Festival Junkies have several other areas of the site you can frequent to find the perfect festival destination for you. This team clearly demonstrates their dedication to covering the experience, the scene, and the music with news, lineups, reviews, and commentaries. With an easy to navigate page, you can filter through which festivals or news topics you’re most interested in and subscribe to their newsfeed. The combination of music, art, science, and love of nature you can experience through this site is sure to attract any eager festival-goer this season!

CounterPoint Music Festival Recap

My interest in music & art festivals started in the summer of 2010, when I bought a ticket to Bonnaroo from a friend who couldn’t go at the last minute.  I had barely even heard of Bonnaroo at the time, and my knowledge in electronic music and dubstep was very limited. A few months prior to that, I attended three underground electronic music shows in New Orleans in one night. That adventure set me on my path to change everything I wanted to study in school. Before those shows I was a political science/pre-law major, after some serious thought and consideration I changed my major to Telecommunications & Film, pre-law. Which is essentially TV/Film/Radio, and the closet major my college had to the direction I was wanting to go in. Since then I have worked on music festivals and attended several of them. I worked on DeLuna Fest in Pensacola Beach as a camera operator for two years in a row and loved it. Currently, I am working on my Master of Science degree in Entertainment Business from Full Sail University. My goal is to be able to obtain a professional career in producing music festivals nationally. Until then, I will use this blog as a resource for providing readers with new insights on what is going on in the live music & art festival world, as well as new breakthroughs in electronic music. 

Last month I attended Counter.Point Music Festival held in Atlanta, Georgia. This is the first festival I’ve been to where most of the music was predominately all electronic. Various acts like Big Boi from Outkast also yielded popular masses from this demographic. What I thought was the most innovative consumer activity this festival had was a project called Connect Live. Patrons of the festival visit the Connect Live tent to sign up for an app that allows them to “scan-in” their badge at various stage locations and be entered to win backstage passes, artist meet-and-greets, and select other offers. Festival go-ers head to their favorite performer’s stage, and spot a tall triangle-tower where they can scan their new badge 30 minutes or so before the artists performs.  As they travel throughout the festival grounds, on-foot photographers spot the Connect Live badges and take professional photos and upload them to Counter.Point Live!  Above is one of their photos from the second day of the festival I found from their website!

People often ask me where I hear all the new music I’m so into, and how I know about upcoming shows and festivals. I’m not sure how I came across it, but the only blog I read every single day is thissongissick.  This blog posts awesome accounts of new music in several genres and styles other than electronic music. It also posts new and exciting events coming in areas all over the U.S. I’m not a coffee drinker, but if I was …this is the website I would read daily with my “morning cup.” It’s informative, but fun and introduces new music with a different spin on it. Major festival news and updates also come from this one blog, and is originally how I heard about Counter.Point Music Festival 2012.

Below is a video from the festival, I already wish I were back there!