Fall fest

Nothing has been planned as of yet. Need to get a few people willing to plan it out and it could still happen. Just need the right people to step up and get the ball rolling on it.

 

The fests move around. For a while it was SF in DSM and FF moved around, we mixed that up more recently.

Last FF was members-only tanks, i.e. no commercial vendors, and then we had a Potluck and food contest you can see all those threads here - Events & Fests. Basically we were trying something new, a smaller more club-only event (still open to public) and low cost. Also Fall Fests historically are usually a bit lower turnout due to timing, school activities, etc - that's hobby-wide.

While there were a few bumps in the road with FF, overall the people who attended liked it and I think the sellers did as well.

But essentially to get it going, someone has to want to be the point person. We established roles for Social Media, Graphics, etc and there are a lot of people who are still here that have fest experience and can help lay out the road map for what needs to be done. It can be a lot of work, but if you have a plan and work it, and distribute the duties and just stay of top of things, anyone can do it. Updating the "fest guide" has perpetually been on my to-do list, but the old version is available if you are on the Committees group.

 

QC is a possibility, the fact that there are 2 really good stores there I believe was a factor in the "buying activity" that (commercial) vendors saw (edit: at SF16), but when you're talking about only GIRS members having tables, a lower $ venue, more laid back, etc, that's a different story

One of my "overview" plans I had thrown out there over the past year or so was to basically have one bigger fest, and one smaller fest. Spring events have historically been a bit bigger, and I hear this a lot from the vendors as well. So it made sense for SF to be the "big" event.

Next was looking at locations and taking into account population centers and ease of access, etc. Long story short, my idea was to alternate SF between DSM and Iowa City/Coralville, staying very near a main interstate (I had a lot of feedback from vendors about this, more detail than I want to go into here, you know me, long winded)

Then for FF, rotate that around, make it a major yearly "swap" type event, but not really a full-on thing with a bunch of commercial vendors. Craig came up with the potluck/cookoff and that I think was a great idea. It required a lot less planning, was not expensive, good deals, etc.

....what it all comes down to is having someone willing to step up and be the point person. If anyone is interested, PM me and I'll give you my phone number and we can talk about what it would involve.

 

Event posted!

Fall Fest - [Nov 12, 2017] Fall Fest 2017! (Williamsburg, IA)

I'm going to go ahead and lock this thread, let's take the discussion to the Event thread!