2nd Annual SoNo Fest a Success!

Yesterday in North Park was the 2nd Annual SoNo Park Holiday Fest & Chilipalooza.  Thousands came out for chili, craft beer, live music, kids activities, shopping - and a lot of community fun.  Paula and I were again proud to be co-chairs of this event, called "one of the best neighborhood events of the year" by one community leader.  Besides raising money for the school our boys attend, the most gratifying thing was just seeing so many people come out and having a good time.  There was a great picture in the U-T today (aptly named "A Chili Day in North Park"), and below are a few other early picks from the event.

Party Production Rentals was a sponsor of the event and provided the majority of the rentals. 

A view of Thorn Street not long after the event started

The Beautiful View was a crowd-pleaser on the North Park Stage

A few members of our awesome event committee

The Creepy Creeps on the South Park stage

Organization Keeps Stress at Bay

We did a street fair recently where they were anticipating 50,000 people.  I noticed one of the main organizers was relaxing with his family an hour before the event was supposed to start.  I commented that everything must be going well if he was able to get in some "chill time" before the event even started.  He said things were going smoothly and showed me a detailed diagram they had put together showing the vendor layout and flow of the event.  He and his team spent many hours working on the details ahead of time, and clearly it was paying off.

There were a few big takeaways:

1. Make sure that you've got a detailed plan of how you want your event to go.  This will help you think about everything that needs to happen on the day of, so you won't be scrambling to find something if you think of it 30 minutes before your event.  Be sure to clearly communicate appropriate elements of your plan to your vendors prior to the event.  What you share should include the time frames they can arrive (staggering is good), where they need to go (their spot plus how they enter/exit).  
2. For your event rentals, you should have a clear list of all the items that should go in each area along with a diagram of how you want things set up.  One client from another recent fair had chalked out where they wanted each canopy - this made set-up a snap.  
3. Be sure to have a point person for questions and direction - if you're on a tight time frame, you don't want any of your crews waiting around to get questions answers or guidance.  If you have a big event with multiple areas, have a point person for each area (e.g., main stage, kid's venue, food court, etc.).  They can get to know what needs to happen and facilitate everything as it happens.  
4. Have good communication between areas, ideally with radios.  If something comes up, you can use the radio vs. wasting time trying to track down the people you need to talk to. 
5. Leave ample time for the unexpected.  It always pays to start early... you can never anticipate all the things that could go wrong.  If you only allow enough time for things to go perfectly and they don't, at a minimum, you're sure to get at least a few new gray hairs... or worse, your event could start late. 

 What was our role?  Party Production Rentals was the primary equipment rental company, providing the canopies, staging, seating, tables with linen and umbrellas and more.  Our part was done ahead of schedule (again allow ample time!), which our client greatly appreciated. 

SoNo Park Holiday Fest - Success in the Street!

It's now been a few weeks since we put on the SoNo Park Holiday Fest.  The event was a street fair in North Park benefiting McKinley Elementary, and we had 3 goals:

1. Raise money for McKinley's arts and music programs - our target being at least as much as we did in 2009 with the Chili Cook-Off and Arts and Crafts Fair.
2. Draw in the community to support McKinley.  The school had a tendency to hit up the school families over and over again. We wanted to start an event where the community would pay to participate, and we would build a knowledge and experience base to do it again in the future.
3. Last but not least, put on a fun event! We wanted attendees, restaurants, bands and vendors to want to do it again and go away talking about it so they'd draw in even more people for the next year.  They'd also see what a special school McKinley is because they do this kind of event.

I'm pleased to say that met all 3 goals.  Having goals really helped us focus our efforts and to set expectations with the McKinley PTC and participating businesses.  It's also a basis for us to say we were successful.  While we haven't completed the final accounting for the event, we've surpassed last year's fund-raising from the 2 events we replaced by more than $1,000.  We wanted to get at least 1000 people to attend from the local community, and our best estimate is that we had more than 2000.  And while the "fun" aspect is harder to measure, the anecdotal evidence suggests people had a great time.  We received many compliments from a broad range of participants, such as "This was the best street fair ever!"  Perhaps most importantly, we learned a lot, and we have many insights that will enable us to make next year's event even more successful - especially financially.  In light of our fun goal, we may have erred on the side of providing too much value.  Something for us to consider.

I'll go into some of learning at a different time.  In the meantime, here are some pictures of the event, and I've highlighted some of the gear provided by Party Production Rentals: beer tent, belly bar with linen, stage, canopies, pop-ups, tables with umbrellas. 

SoNo Park Holiday Fest This Weekend

Ok, so I haven't posted in a few weeks.  One big reason is that Paula and I have been hard at work on the SoNo Park Holiday Fest, which will take place this Sunday from 10am to 5pm.  Our company, Party Production Rentals, is one of the "presenting" sponsors, and we are helping chair the event as well.  We've learned much from this, our first foray into planning a fair on city streets.  More on that later... for now, I want to share what a cool event this will be. 

Live music. Chili. Craft beer. Arts & crafts.  More chili.  Great prizes.  Kid's activities.  And more chili.  Thorn Street in North Park between 32nd and Boundary.  Be there.

The event features a chili cook-off with chili from 20 great area restaurants such as Urban Solace, Alchemy, Big Kitchen, and Vagabond. Coming to judge, we've got local politicos such as Susan Davis and Todd Gloria, plus well-known chefs like Deborah Scott.  Individuals can also test their chili skills and bring their own homemade chili to a "pot luck" style competition inside the San Diego Ceramic Connection.  You can taste the chili when you buy a hand-spun ceramic bowl that you get to keep (and trust me, this will become your favorite all around bowl in your kitchen). 

There are 7 different bands/artists playing, including Joey Harris of Beat Farmers fame.  The beer garden will feature craft beers from Pizza Port, Ballast Point, Karl Strauss, and Stone Brewing.  We will also have the Charger game showing at Delucca's, so there won't be that dilemma of whether to miss the game or not. 

See the event Web site for more details. 

We hope to see y'all on Sunday!  The canopies, tables, staging, chairs, linen, belly bars and more will all be provided by Party Production Rentals.  We'll have a sponsor table, and I'll be the EmCee for the event, so please stop by. 

So We're Planning a Street Fair

Paula and I have planned many parties and events in San Diego, but never before have we done a street fair.  In the spirit of "we'll try anything once," we are planning a street fair.  It's called the SoNo Park Holiday Fest, and we're co-chairing the event with a few other parents from McKinley Elementary in North Park.  The event we'll be on December 5, and we're closing down Thorn Street between Boundary and 32nd to make way for live music, a beer garden, chili cook-off, arts & crafts, kids' activities, and more.  Even if you're not in the South or North Park communities (hence SoNo Park), please join us for a fun time. 

The complexity in putting on a street fair - other than getting people there, paying for it and making it super cool so people will go on about it for weeks - is making sure that you're following all the proper regulations.  In San Diego, as I would expect in most cities, there are a number of steps that you have to go through in order to put on a street fair.  And since we're closing streets, serving beer and food, having bands with electrical gear, and putting up tents, we're hitting on most of the same requirements that would be involved in say, putting on Street Scene.  It doesn't really matter if you're expecting 50x less people, the same rules still apply.  And you still have to deal with a number of different agencies in the city and county to get the necessary permits, approvals and instructions: such as the Office of Special Events, Police, ABC (Alcoholic Beverage Control), Vice (police again), Risk Management, Fire, County Health, and Storm Water.

Ok, after realizing the scope of the process and having seen the 100 page guide the city puts out to help you with just the permit process (and it's not all-inclusive mind you), I'm tempted to say "Please don't try this at home," but I won't.  It's all manageable, but it will take time and patience.  I plan to write more on our street fair adventures, but here are some bits of advice from our experience so far. 

1. Start early.  Ideally, you'd start the permit process at least 4 months before your event.  There are a lot of things to get your arms around, and much of the process is iterative while you're learning what you can and can't do.  You may have to change course, and if you start early you can change course before you start marketing or executing something a certain way.  It's all manageable if you have enough time.
2. Review the city's Special Event Guide.  While it doesn't cover every eventually (yes, even in 100 pages), it's still very informative. 
3. Put together a good committee. It is a lot of work to plan a street fair, and getting everything in order for the permits could be a full-time job for a few weeks.  Form a committee a divide up the work.  For example, here's how you could divide up the permit work:
• One person on point overseeing everything
• Site map, fire lanes, occupancy and building requirements (for structures, electrical, etc.)
• Security, barricades, signage and traffic control
• Trash, recycling, port-a-potties, and storm water requirements
• Beer garden or alcohol space (if you have one) to work with Alcoholic Beverage Control and Vice, any training required for servers (yes, training is required if you're not hiring servers)
4. Make sure you're tracking your costs carefully.  Many of the city requirements will put additional cost burdens on your event.  It's important to keep track of these as they can add up to a few thousand dollars.  You don't want to end up surprised that you're over budget on your event because you didn't factor them in.  
5. Be flexible. Don't get locked in on your plans until you've understood all of requirements.  Some may force you to change... you may have to move things to allow for a fire lane, need additional security, or need health department permit for participating food vendors.
6. Form relationships.  The people on the other side of this process (i.e., the city people) may seem like bureaucrats whose job it is to make your life harder, but they are just normal people doing a job.  They will try to weed out people who aren't serious about planning a proper event, but if you are polite, ask good questions, and show that you want to do things the right way.  There's a forum that the Special Events department puts on where you can go meet these folks in person, which I highly recommend. You'll find out that they really want to help as you work your way through the process. 

It'll seem intimidating at first, but if you invest the time the first year, you might put on a killer event - and they say it gets easier every year.  Good luck!