Two men spent 24 hours taking over 2,000 photos and 4.5 hours of video, sending 79 tweets and 25 twitpics. That’s hyperlocal event reporting.

Every year in Lichfield there is an event in Beacon Park called Fuse Festival. It’s an arts festival, with three tents hosting a various mix of music, performance and workshops. 2010 was it’s 10th year in Beacon Park and just like we did last year, Nick and I went down to cover it for The Lichfield Blog.

We did a bit more this year, though. Between us;

  • over 2,000 photos
  • over 4.5 hours of high-definition video
  • 79 tweets from dedicated account, @Fuse_Live
  • 25 twitpics

In total we worked for 24 hours, doing 6 hours on Friday, 11 on Saturday and 7 on Sunday. We managed to squeeze in the British Grand Prix and of course the odd pint.

Nick and I showing off our TLB polo-shirts.
Nick and I showing off our TLB polo-shirts.

It was a pretty big effort and by Sunday we were in the baking heat having had far too little sleep (though the many pints of Weston’s Perry didn’t help) and wishing to be back home in bed.

Still, we pulled it off and although we had a couple of technical glitches (including losing half of that 4.5 hours of video) it was largely a success. Being the way I am it really made me think – if we can make that kind of effort for fun and with last-minute purchases and borrowing of equipment, what could we do if we were paid?

On Saturday we were invited by Formula Ford driver and Burntwood lad, James Tucker, to Rockingham to watch him take part in the championship for his new team, JTR. Obviously that wasn’t enough for us though so we put on our blog gear and while Nick took lots of great photos, I borrowed James’ Twitter account and tweeted his progress on the day. This weekend we’ll be heading down the road to Burntwood Wakes, another music festival and we’ll do a similar job there.

Where it’s within our ‘patch’ we’ll keep doing this for free because we care (though maybe we’ll tone it down for next year’s Fuse) but it strikes me there’s the potential for us to take this kind of reporting out and sell it to people. Festivals of all sorts can be assured of a good buzz and good coverage of their event with such a service (like the Midlands Music Festival which just took place down the road in Tamworth).

James Tucker introduced us to a couple of Lichfield lads who race as well who we could do a similar job for. If we expanded that to all the drivers we could charge them and kill two birds with one stone whilst making it financially viable to continue reporting the Lichfield lads for free.

Just a though, but one that we’re experimenting with and seeing where it takes us….

Also, check out Warren’s great coverage of the Midlands Music Festival.


Posted

in

by

Comments

4 responses to “Two men spent 24 hours taking over 2,000 photos and 4.5 hours of video, sending 79 tweets and 25 twitpics. That’s hyperlocal event reporting.”

  1. Russell Avatar

    Called “PR” isn’t it? Sounds good!

    😎

  2. […] “…That’s hyperlocal event reporting.” @ [PhilipJohn.co.uk] […]

  3. Ed Walker Avatar

    Good job mate. Festivals are one of the best things for hyperlocal blogs to get involved in, as traditional media will usually just do a write up and some photos.

    I volunteered at the Machynlleth Comedy Festival this year and part of the job that myself and Beth did was tweet, take photos and give information out. Unfortunately we couldn’t get a lot of it on the website as it was an old-school HTML site, but was good fun none the less.

    I did a write-up on how we covered it here: http://www.edwalker.net/blog/2010/05/18/using-twitter-at-machynlleth-comedy-festival/

    I can definitely see music festivals paying dedicated ‘social media people’ during the weekend to create buzz around smaller shows, take twitpics etc as so many people are interacting via social media while at the festivals – or jealously watching from their screens.

  4. Warren Avatar

    Great article and thanks for the recommendation..

    They are great fun to do, and you look at it with a different view to everyone else who is there. I have a whole write up I need to do for Tamworth, based on the Midlands Music Festival, and plans for next year

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *