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Where’s the Fringe discussion? May 20, 2008

Posted by Ryan in : Blogging, Reviews, Newspaper, OrlandoSentinel, bloggingfringe , 3 comments

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.

Good pizza, poor art, no underground November 7, 2007

Posted by Ryan in : Orlando, Links, Trends, Newspaper, floridacreatives, OrlandoScene, OrlandoSentinel , 2 comments

My friend Bill Couch pointed me to this story by Sentinel columnist Scott Maxwell. Bill also works at said newspaper, so if he points to an article, I tend to pay attention
No style, no brains, but oh, our pizza . . . — OrlandoSentinel.com

No. 1 for family vacations and top 10 for our weather, pizza and barbecue.

But after that, things got ugly.

O-Town was either near the bottom — sometimes even dead-last — when it came to everything from our museums and art galleries to our classical music and “underground arts scene.”

But forget underground. They don’t like what’s above-ground either. Visitors panned our architecture, historical sites — even our skyline. And Buddy Dyer has spent a lot of money on that skyline. Other people’s money, but money nonetheless.

They don’t like our farmer’s markets, our jewelry shops or our antiques offerings.

In every one of those above-mentioned categories, Orlando ranked 21st-25th.

Here’s my comment:

Oh Scott, they don’t know us so well. Underground art? We’ve got loads. Pizza? Where did they get that notion? Thanks for saying “Buddy spent a lot of money” and working for the Sentinel in the same breath. That takes guts.

One reason why people don’t think we have good art and music is because they seldom get out and support it. We have enough population to support several art scenes, but no motivation. There are some efforts, like those Creative Village Wierdoes, Apartment E, Assembly Art Party, the Florida Creatives and other gatherings of geeks and freaks like Pandora’s Box and the like all over the city, but it feels like a very small echo chamber. We promote our own stuff to the same people over and over again, and when they don’t show up because they’ve been hit over the head with it, I’m not surprised.