jump to navigation

Fringe Fringe Fringe Fringe Fringe Fringe Fringe May 18, 2009

Posted by Ryan in : Local, , , , , , ; add a comment

Yes, it’s true. I can never shut up about the Orlando Fringe. Fringe is what BarCamp will be in 50 years, becuase they have the same humble beginnings. Actually, if you take Internet Years into account, we are more like 3 or 5 years away from having unconferences that last 2 weeks and appeal to a wide audience. (I know because I want to create one)

photo from orlandosentinel.com

photo from orlandosentinel.com

Of the 67 shows at this year’s Orlando festival, a majority are from out-of-town (USA or International), OR have never appeared at the Fringe before. The festival is spread across 8 venues in Loch Haven Park, so everything is within walking distance. The proximity of the venues, along with the staggering quality of all the shows, makes this one of the premier unjuried theatre festivals in the world.

Half of Orlando has no idea this is happening. It’s even worse for tourists.

Fringe has been going on for 18 years, longer than any other US fringe, longer than the crappy Music Festival, and just as long as the Film Fest.

On top of all these things, 100% of ticket sales go directly in the artists’ pockets. No exeptions, substitutions or refunds. The only things the festival makes money on is the Button (everyone must buy one, $8), merchandise, Beer and Wine, and Donations. A huge part of their budget comes from Grants and Donations. They have several full-time and part-time staff. (donate something, yo)

Happy Hour Monday

If you’ve EVER read this blog before you’ll know I wrangle the herd of cats known as Florida Creatives. Well, once a year I try to inspire this group (you can’t tell these kids what to do, just suggest) to make the pilgrimage to Loch Haven Park with me and drink beer 3 miles from their normal gathering place. Last year, we enjoyed some marginal success, and one guy actually came to see a show with me! I know a few other folks came out on the weekends, brought their kids. Good thing too. Fringe has a great family atmosphere if you’re looking for it.

Blogging Fringe

I love this festival so much, I go there every day for 2 weeks, and I started an entire project (I don’t think of it as just a website any more) where I blog about Fringe, take photos, make videos, and try to inspire people to do the same.

The big change this year is I’m not really trying to aggregate anything, just evangelize. The most I’ve really done to that end is to try and filter twitter posts about Orlando Fringe, which grows in complexity (and annoyingness) all the time. The coolest thing about the recipe I’ve built is that it works with the global twitter community, which is still fairly easy to navigate. I can’t say the same of the blogosphere, especially since so many people are posting to private Facebook and MySpace accounts. The openness of twitter (which almost sounds like a joke) is a strength I am exploiting, and I’m trying to wield in a meaningful and usable way. Not everyone uses Twitter Search or TweetDeck, so I made one for them.

Herding theatre patrons

This year marks the 4th festival since I started doing Blogging Fringe, and I don’t feel as though I’ve gotten very far in getting other people to blog on my site. So this year I wanted to let them create content where they are most comfortable, and have them act as advocates for something bigger than Blogging Fringe or even a single instance of the Orlando festival.

We’re talking about the community.

Just as with my love for Drupal, your reasons for staying at Fringe are not always the same ones that made you come in the first place.

Normally, a friend will drag you to some show or other, or perhaps you know someone in a show, or a second- or third-degree friend is in that situation. At Fringe, the Kevin Bacon game is too easy. The circle is much smaller and the bonds are often stronger. There are plenty of people I only know during Fringe, because they live in Seattle, Canada, or the UK. I have actually taken one of these Fringe Friendships to the next level, by visiting some actor friends up in New York a few years ago.

Just like making friends online, sometimes Fringe Friends can become your friends in Real Life. This is sometimes true of locals, but not often.

Another crazy thing is that this village only comes together for two weeks. I’ve heard similar things about Burning Man. Another characteristic they share is a Gift Economy.

Whuffie at the Fringe

Orlando Fringe has an invention they call “Fringe Bucks”, which is a social currency you can touch. When you volunteer for Fringe, you get 1 Fringe Buck per hour. 4 Fringe Bucks gets you into a show, for free. Your used Fringe Bucks then go to artists, who in turn use their Fringe Bucks to get into other shows. Artists also often “comp” their friends and other artists. Up to 10% of any show is filled with people who didn’t pay money to be there.

Fringe Bucks

Fringe Bucks

Volunteers also get a free Button, so if you are willing to spend time at Fringe (which is natural for many people), you can get into all the shows you want, for free, within reason.

I was reminded of Fringe Bucks when I read Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom, and learned Cory Doctorow’s wild theory that someday money will be based on meritocracy. He called this new Social Capitol “Whuffie”, coining a term that has started a movement in social media marketing. Tara Hunt has even gone so far as to write a book about Whuffie. It’s called The Whuffie Factor: Using the Power of Social Networks to Build Your Business, and I can’t wait to read it.

Printing Money, Whuffie Style

Other than volunteering, several other ways exist to earn social capitol at Fringe. “Hug a volunteer”, is a mantra that’s heard and acted on often. Billeting artists (giving them a place to sleep) actually earns you a SuperPass, which gets you in to any show for free. Buying someone a beverage at the Beer Tent is often proffered as a reward for a favor, a free ticket to a show, or just as an excuse to get some face-time with your favorite artist.

My mission this year was to try and capture some of that implicit social capitol and have everyone make the festival better by participating in a game. I often describe it as a scavenger hunt, but it’s not really correct to call it that.

I was inspired by Akoha, which is a game where you are given a physical card with a unique “Mission ID” or a deck of missions, and the whole thing is tracked online. The idea is to “play it forward”. One card will pass from person to person, as you perform small kindnesses to other people, making the world a better place.

ted_deck_spread_medium

Akoha at TED

The Game Itself

Each participant gets a small booklet containing a piece of paper with several “challenges”. Some of these are easier than others, but initially they were designed to be things you could do for free, and especially to generate a story you could then tell to others. The best one so far was a bizarre hula-hooping mishap… involving a girl wearing a skirt.

The Game, Manifested

The Game, Manifested

Each mission is worth 10 points, with modifiers for fun reasons.

… and so on.

In order to get players engaged right away, I invented the idea of your first mission being something you’d have to carry out right away, with two added bonuses:

  1. The First Mission always involves a 3rd party, who has not yet started playing the game.
  2. You must convince said 3rd party to complete your mission without speaking to them.

This makes the first challenge, well, challenging, and gets you from zero to one as a player right away. Now, you also have to explain to your friend what the heck you just did when the mission is over, thereby spreading the game virally.

Choose Your Own Adventure

I had originally wanted to do this game more like Akoha, with an online registration for missions, players and points. Anyone could create a mission, assign a mission to someone, or gift points in recognition of “going above and beyond”. It would turn everyone into a facilitator of the game, and in a perfect world, it would have been great.

In the end, I chose to use paper and online photos as the medium, because it’s more accessible and there’s a lot less overhead (this is a free time project).

Any player is still invited to invent their own challenges, either by having me write them down, or by printing out their own sheets. You just need a 4 1/4″ square piece of paper, and you can write anything on it.

Artists often use printed fliers to promote their shows, so I thought this would be a good chance to make the fliers useful beyond just saying the show times. Now every flier you hand out is interactive and viral, and it inspires your patrons to share something related to your show.

We have designed a platform.

Measuring Success

As players are encouraged to use whatever platform is most comfortable for them (Flickr, Facebook, MySpace, etc.), measuring will be just as difficult as with most social media campaigns. My Blogging Fringe twitter bot helps a bit, and Google Alerts help a bit more, but the only (simple) way to be able to see all these posts will be to have all these people add me as a friend on the relevant network and look at their Activity Streams.

This is where open standards would really help. They could make aggregating this content easy, but Facebook and MySpace are inherently closed to the average Joe, and that’s me.

Luckily I know most of these people, or I’m getting to be Fringe Friends with them. In the future, scaling this game will be hard without a centralized web site to collect all the data, but for this year’s experiment, what we’ve got isn’t bad for the amount of time and money I put in to it.

The Goal

In coming up with my presentation for BarCamp, I stumbled across the mission for Blogging Fringe. Even though I had done it for 3 years prior, I couldn’t verbalize fully and succinctly why I was doing it. I came up with the following:

To inspire entertaining and unexpected interaction between patrons of the arts, artists and arts organizations.

To inspire entertaining and unexpected interaction between patrons of the arts, artists and arts organizations.

Everything I generate now for this project and future iterations of Blogging Fringe will take this statement into account, and give me the razor-edged accuracy I need to make this free time project greater than the sum of its parts.

There’s a lot I haven’t covered here, but that’s the way with this project, it really is quite deep and nebulous. It took me more than 3 years to understand it, and I feel like I’m learning and re-learning new things all the time.

I’d love your feedback, or stories about similar campaigns. This will definitely come up in a future podcast, BlogOrlando, BarCamp or other session. I’d love to know what others can learn from my experimentation, and how I can make this project even better.

Radio Rickshaw! April 7, 2009

Posted by Ryan in : Podcast, Video, , , , , , ; add a comment

John, Dan and Corey rock it out in the Rickshaw Boy studios.
http://rickshawboy.com/radiorickshaw

Letting go the Strings of Servitude October 23, 2008

Posted by Ryan in : Tech, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ; comments closed

Pandos

That’s right, folks, I quit my job at Bonnier. No more PopSci, no more corporate life.

Somehow I thought our friend Jonathan (above) working his VCRs and television sets helped get that message across. As Pandos, instead of fighting against modern technology, just letting a couple of simple magnetic tapes play serves as a more entertaining picture than a single curated stream.

My life working at Bonnier had become a lifestyle – long days (and nights), spending all day in the same place doing the same thing. I couldn’t even take 7 months of that.

So now what?

I’ve got a couple of freelance things lined up that should bring in the next month’s income alright, but I don’t want another hourly job. Here are some ways I plan on keeping myself distracted:

To all my Bonnier peoples, I will keep in touch. Let’s do lunch! Blackwater BBQ?

To everyone else, it’s good to be back!

Did you get enough Fringe Crush? May 31, 2008

Posted by Ryan in : Local, Video, , , , , , , , , , ; comments closed

This year I thought I’d employ a bit of science to my Blogging of Fringe – I was worried the site had turned into all Fringe Crush, all the time, and completely about local acts instead of National and International. I was mostly right.

Here are some handy graphs to point out why we suck:
Fringe Crush Wins
Here we see Text only posts at 10%
VoiceMail Reviews and audio at 13%
Any non-Fringe Crush videos at 37%
Fringe Crush takes it home with 41%

My second criticism is that we favored local, and the numbers don’t lie:
Local vs. Otherwise
International 6%
National Acts 13%
On the Fringe 38%
Local Artists 43%

This scale is even graded on a curve, because I counted Bric-a-Brac as national because they’re from Austin, but they all used to live here, and they were produced by Beth. And the only things in the “On the Fringe” category were folks who were not in shows, but many of them have been in the past.

That means we had a distribution like this:
Us and Them
I guess 19% isn’t bad for Long Tail content. I’d like to do better. It’s a mission of mine to keep that number above 20% all the time, so I guess we did pretty well this time.

The Videos and Audio did have some categories we threw them in:
Content Channels
The new Fringe Moments were 11%
The VoiceMail Reviews at only 13%
The favorite Fringe Crush with 41%
Everything else this year with 35%

Also, I was very proud of us when I found out Beth would be presenting a Fringe Crush award for the show with the most crushes. Denna counted up the results, and by no surprise, VarieTease won! I think that’s a challenge to the cast of Oral to do some more campaigning for next year.

One last statistic, of the 32 shows I saw, 55% of them were not local.
Local vs. Otherwise, tickets bought
Again, we’re counting Bric-A-Brac and Parlour Games as National, because they are… sortof.

Radio Rickshaw Fringe Podcast May 24, 2008

Posted by Ryan in : Local, , , , , , ; comments closed

Cast and Crew of the Greg Barris Heart of Darkness Rock and Roll Circus, Orlando Fringe
Greg and John, and someone else… maybe the tech?

Two years ago, John Valines and the Rickshaw Boy crew won the Fringe of the Fringe Award – last year they gave it to Blogging Fringe. Radio Rickshaw is a long-running podcast here in Orlando with a small network of shows, and a barbershop quartet.

Also hosting this episode is Greg Barris from the Heart of Darkness Rock and Roll Circus. I actually don’t know much about Greg, except he used to live in Orlando, and he was involved with SAK Comedy Lab. His show was part monologue and part stand-up comedy, and it was pretty good.

Sometime during the week, I bumped into John and Greg with the Marantz recorder interviewing folks, and they talked to me a bit. I talk about Twitter, USB Humping Dogs and Fringe Shows, and I might be on mushrooms.

Radio Rickshaw Episode 62: Fringe 2008

Listen to the show.

Final Weekend of Fringe May 23, 2008

Posted by Ryan in : Local, , , , , , , , , ; comments closed

Only 3 more days! (plus Patron’s Pick Day) Looks like When Pigs Fly and Alice in Wonderland have already been announced as Patron’s Picks for their venues, which sort of makes sense. If you’re interested in supporting the Fringe AND seeing TJ Dawe, check out Monday morning at 11:30, when TJ will be performing the Slip Knot.

As we rolled into the weekend last night with some light rain and lots of folks crowding the Shakespeare Center, I noticed three college-looking kids soliciting people for photographs. I walked up to tell them about Blogging Fringe, and it turned out they were the Orlando Metromix “SHOCK SQUAD”! Is Metromix the Sentinel one, that’s going to be changing their name? It’s not CityBeat, is it? It’s one of those. I went to see what coverage they had of the festival, and it was exactly one article – recommendations based on watching the preview. Also, no comments allowed. They asked me to link to them, and in hopes that they link back, here we go.

Check out Orlando Metromix’s Fringe Photoset – lots of familiar faces in there.

Last night, I lost my festival program. Normally no big deal, but this was different – I had written all sorts of notes in my program, marked down page numbers of shows, kept my tickets inside, and started to feel like my program was a treasured item – sort of like a stuffed animal or something, now lost. I checked the Brown Venue, the Blue Venue, the Ticket Booth, and the Garbage Can too, but my program was gone. I went to the box office to get some tickets re-printed ( handy reason for using credit card or the internet to buy your tickets), and proceeded to go through the tickets I did have with the volunteer to make sure I wasn’t missing any others.

Apparently, I’ve seen a lot of shows:

  1. A Brief History of Petty Crime
  2. American Squatter
  3. Boom
  4. *Flamenco con Fusion 08
  5. Galapagos: The Directors Cut
  6. **Here Be Dragons
  7. *Mark Baratelli
  8. Move!
  9. MR. FOX
  10. *Mr. Marmalade
  11. **New Rochelle
  12. On Second Thought
  13. *once upon a time: The End
  14. Oral
  15. Parlour Games
  16. perfectly broken
  17. Power To Pleasing: The Sex Lives of Teenage Girls
  18. *Red, White, and Ignorant: An American Love Story
  19. **Reefer Madness
  20. Shadows In Bloom
  21. Skip Peril and the Players of the Lost Trunk
  22. *Swell
  23. The Boy’s Own Jedi Handbook
  24. *The Bric-a-Brac Vagabond Vintage Variety Show
  25. The Cody Rivers Show presents: Stick to Glue
  26. The Greg Barris Heart of Darkness Rock and Roll Circus
  27. *The Slipknot: A Benefit for the Orlando Fringe
  28. Totem Figures
  29. TV iMature
  30. *Wet
  31. **VarieTEASE: No. 24 Doll Factory
  32. When Pigs Fly

* Indicates shows I have not seen, but I have a ticket for.
** Shows I saw after writing this blog post.

All of these shows (that I have seen) are awesome. Go see them all. If I could only tell you three, I would include The Cody Rivers Show, On Second Thought and Boom (not in that order). I would say Power to Pleasing, but it’s sold out. I continue to tell folks that if they haven’t seen any dance, they MUST go – we always have great dance at this festival, and I’m seeing all of the 5 dance shows this year. Lastly, (not leastly) if you’ve never seen TJ Dawe, Barry Smith, Jimmy Hogg, Greg Landucci, Gemma Wilcox or any of the other out-of-town monologists (like Paul Hutcheson from On Second Thought, mentioned earlier), they are all worth your time and money. This is also not counting Patron’s Pick day, where I plan to see some shows that have floated to the top, but I managed to miss. It should be a fun experience.

What was also a fun experience was getting a random contact from some folks from Rake Theatre down in Boynton Beach – they’re putting on Fluency this week at the Fringe. Apparently, they are wanting to start an all-Florida arts blog – a very ambitious project. I have about 3 such very ambitious projects in my head, in the works with locals, or I at least own the domain name for them.

The South Florida folks’ project is called, of all things, Florida Arts Blog, which is a Wordpress.com site right now, but for some reason the posts about Fringe have disappeared… ::shrug:: Something and someone to watch in the coming weeks and months. I am trying to sell them on Florida Creatives myself, blogging can come later. They’ve also got a link to Mark’s Orlando Arts Blog up there… I wonder if they’ve been emailing him too…?

Other things happening this weekend would be:

Orlando Silent Rave (see a video)
Saturday, May 24th, 5:24PM @ the Green Lawn of Fabulosity

Kite Flying 2.0 with Radio Rickshaw and Greg Barris
Sunday, May 25th 11AM – 5PM @ the Green Lawn on Drunkenness

Zombie March 3.7 with Rich Weirdos and Friends
Saturday, May 24th @ 3PM Park Ave and 5PM Lake Eola

If you know of more cool stuff, leave a comment and we’ll get it listed.

Where’s the Fringe discussion? May 20, 2008

Posted by Ryan in : Local, , , , , ; comments closed

As it is every year, we post dozens of articles on this site, and everyone reads the Sentinel blog… I love what they’re doing over there, I just wish we had a little of their budget, standing in the community, or the built-in reputation that you get from being a year-round player in this game. If I could pay five seven bloggers, this would be a different world indeed.

As long as you’re comfortable with using your real name (and everyone should be by now), you can go participate in some of the conversation over in Maupin-Land, a magical place where they’ve never heard of video or photos.

The best conversations every year take place at the Attention Must Be Paid blog, and there are invariably a few posts with dozens of comments, like this one entitled “From the Fringe: What’s Good?” (24 comments). Then there’s one that’s pretty much the same idea called “What’s Fab about the Fringe?” (15 comments) — I fail to see the difference between the two posts.

Other posts have garnered between 4 and 6 comments, like the reviews of When Pigs Fly, The UnNaturals, Tod Kimbro, Blues: A Handbook for the Future Homeless, and of course Galapagos, which appears to be this year’s “best kept secret”.

Actually, I’m surprised we don’t have an 80-comment war happening – maybe they’ve lost their edge. We never had it to begin with, it seems.

Sure, the Sentinel claims to have a “Complete Fringe Festival Coverage” page, but all they did here was repurpose the same content they created somewhere else (and often not for Fringe), and they don’t even fit all the reviews on one page.

I know they are working with archaic technology, but if you’ve got the budget to hire 8 people to write about it, can’t you get Danny to post a list of all the reviews on one page?

I had some big plans for this year’s Blogging Fringe, but they had to be put on hold while I figure out how to have a full-time job and be “that guy” at the festival. Also, helping out with the actual Fringe website took a few of my ideas and gave them back to the festival, which is as it should be. With any luck you’ll notice Blogging Fringe coming out of the beta-testing period next year with a critical extra feature that I guarantee the Sentinel and the Weekly wouldn’t touch with a 10-foot pole: publicly editable pages for all the shows so we can have all the videos, links to reviews editable by anyone so we can have a for-real community site.

Actually, next year, there may be a completely different concept out there, but that depends on several factors and some collaborations I have in the works with Katie Ball. Look for some fun stuff on the horizon.

Orlando Fringe Begins! May 16, 2008

Posted by Ryan in : Local, , , , , , ; comments closed

Last night was the first day of shows for the 2008 Orlando International Fringe Theatre Festival, and I must say the Fringe has got a lot of great stuff going on! So many wonderful shows, both from Orlando regulars and some new folks as well – there’s even a show that takes place in the women’s bathroom! No matter what happens at this year’s festival, you’ll be sure to find daily updates at http://www.bloggingfringe.com

First thing you’ll notice is that the size of “The Green” has about tripled in size, with the Beer Tent remaining the center of attention. Because of the Fringe Membership drive and the special treatment for VIP members, beer/wine tickets are now $4 each, but I’ve seen some folks getting $1 off with their badges.

I saw Voci Dance’s “Perfectly Broken” at the Red (outdoor) Venue at the Orlando Shakes (the old beer tent location, and I think this is such a great use of this space! Even if the conflicts with the Orlando REP are resolved next year, I still would love to see this extra venue stick around or replace the old Red Venue, which was so tiny and hard to find.

Voci didn’t disappoint either, with an all-new show – lots of solos, more dance pieces that tell short stories over the course of two or three pieces, a live two-piece band and some really amazing dancing. I also liked the “Vocitini” table they had set up outside.

Some cool things to check out are Tod Caviness’ Poetry Vending Machine – $5 gets you a custom-written poem by one of the poets in residence. Also check out the Saturday night Poetry Smackdown events.

Another interesting addition is the Digi-Dada Theatre – Mark Biddle from The Office Art Gallery has written a series of short skits for Fringe Patrons to perform on camera in his mini-TV studio at the Shakes Fest, and he will be compiling the clips into a longer surreal piece to show off sometime soon.

Check out both Tod and Mark talking up their respective projects over at bloggingfringe.com/category/video/

I also went to the opening night of Gemma Wilcox’s “Shadows in Bloom”, which feels like a prequel to last year’s “The Honeymoon Period is Officially Over”. I’d like to ask Gemma and see what she has to say about this. Lots more characters, and lots more Gemma!

We are just getting started, but there is one more thing I’d like to mention – anyone and everyone has the ability to get their 15 minutes in this year, thanks to Blogging Fringe. I will be syndicating blogs – it’s simple and you get to keep all the publicity! Just send me a link to your blog or your blog’s feed – I’ll filter out posts that mention the Fringe Festival and re-post them to Blogging Fringe. When people check out the most recent posts on the site or do a search, they’ll see your posts, but when they click the links, they are directed to your blog, so you get to keep all the comments and maybe make some new friends in the process. Contact me through www.BloggingFringe.com or MySpace/Facebook to get listed as a Contributor.

Last but not least, come join the Florida Creatives on Monday for a visit to the beer tent and some socializing – we’ll be there from 6PM until 7:30, then we’ll head to the Shakes for Barry Smith’s show, American Squatter.

Hope to see you all out at Loch Haven Park this week! Happy Fringe!

May is a Kickass Month for Arts Events in Orlando May 15, 2008

Posted by Ryan in : Local, , , , , , , , , , , ; comments closed

Why is May such a great month for holding events? Sure, for our Northern friends, it means the end of bad weather, the opening of roller coaster parks, and a change in the scenery as the trees and flowers start to show their summer colors, but here in Florida, it’s more like the start of the summer’s hot, humid, rainy monotony, the arrival of the tourists, time-share owners, kids on summer vacation, religious zealots protesting Gay Days, and of course, bad drivers in rental cars.

The main reason I look forward to May every year is the arrival of the Orlando International Fringe Theatre Festival (Thursday the 15th through Monday the 26th). Every year, theatre companies, dancers, comedians, clowns, musicians, improv actors, writer/directors, solo acts and large ensembles, exuberant teenagers and road-hardened veterans alike grace Loch Haven Park with their creativity and energy, and Orlando gives every ounce of it (and more) back to them as many of the national and international acts begin their Canadian Fringe circuit, which brings them to a new city every two weeks. Show prices range from free (as in free software) to $10, and all shows require the one-time purchase of a $6 festival button – 100% of your ticket money goes to the artist. This is one of the only unjuried, uncensored events I know of in Orlando outside of a few open-mic nights, and even some of those are passing judgment on the performers (the other best example here is BarCamp).

18 months ago, I started gathering a group of my friends together every third Monday of the month for an event called Florida Creatives Happy Hour (Monday the 19th, 6PM @ Loch Haven Park). Now, those original 8 friends are hardly in the same room, but the group has grown to something resembling a small political party representing the creative professionals and hobbyists here in Central Florida (with a group getting started in Jacksonville as I write this). This month’s Florida Creatives falls during the Fringe Festival, so at 6PM on the 19th we will be descending upon their “Green Lawn of Fabulousness” to have a beer and some soul food and socialize. At 7:45, we will be attending American Squatter, starring Barry Smith, the creator of last year’s sell-out hit Jesus in Montana. Tickets are $10 plus your $6 Fringe button.

Despite the fact that Fringe starts on the same day every year, another festival seems to think they are better than the Fringe, by starting on the exact same day. Yes, the Florida Music Festival runs Thursday the 15th through Sunday the 18th this year, at pretty much every available venue downtown. In past years, you’ve been able to buy a one-time pass that gets you in to all the shows for the whole weekend, as well as nightly passes – buying a ticket to just one show will hardly do such an event justice. The festival also has a short film as well as an art contest, check these out too if you can find the time in between all of the other events happening at the exact same time.

What other events? How about that bizarre craft bazaar held semi-bi-anually at Stardust Video & Coffee, Grandma Party? (Saturday the 17th, 10AM to Sunset) For some reason they opted out of celebrating Earth Day in favor of overlapping with FMF and Fringe this year – the reason why is left as homework for the reader. Actually, if you find out, please try to explain this one to me too. At G-ma Party, you’ll not only find loads of handmade goods, like the cereal-and-eggs inspired work of the Breakfast Bunch, but trendy t-shirts, buckets of buttons, live music by some of Orlando’s best local bands (at least those who are friends with the festival organizers), a bal-looney community pool, and of course rummage piles and raffles.

Not as culturally significant, but still worth a mention, the second ever Florida Drupal User Group meeting will be held at the offices of MindComet in Maitland this Saturday (May 17th, 1PM). Check out the event and any follow-up at groups.drupal.org/florida.

Still more to come in this round-up of events, because I couldn’t write such a blog post without mentioning the Corazon Art and Music Festival being held at the Orlando Brewing Company (Sunday the 18th, starts 1PM, All Day). As I’m writing this I don’t have access to any listings, but I know tickets are $5, and I can give a serious recommendation, as this event is being thrown by Robert and Jonathan from Gamble Records, the folks who brought us the ELLA Music Festival in October. I expect you will see lots of singer-songwriter type acts, and you can trust Robert Johnson’s rolodex to bring you some great music (and art?).

There must be more happening during the next two weeks, but isn’t that enough? Of course, we can’t forget about this Friday (May 16th, 8AM-11AM) and the Likemind Orlando coffee meetup at the Lake Eola Panera Bread. This month there will be free coffee and hopefully a few free copies of a book called Murketing – I don’t have a lot of details about it, but I know the publishers of the book are sponsoring the coffee and snacks all over the US, so they get serious props.

If I’m missing anything here, please leave a shout-out, and I’ll try to include it in the next bulletin. Until next time, have a great May!

Which days of Fringe do I take off? April 28, 2008

Posted by Ryan in : Local, , ; comments closed

I have a choice: do I take the first three days of Fringe Week off, the middle three, or the last three? I know opening weekend, the last weekend and Memorial Day will be action-packed, but I also don’t want to lose too much money from work.

Blogging Fringe (or this year, my personal blog and OrlandoScene.TV) will be taking up some time, but I also don’t want to take ALL week off so I can save my pennies. Any thoughts, comments, suggestions?