Not Quite Getting the Concept

This one came across my social media stream this morning:

Hey Friends! We have two sweet concerts this weekend. Is anyone available to hang few flyers out of town? We got some special ones made up by Acme Foundation

First off, I saw your post. I was curious enough to click through to your page to see what the "special concerts" are. Of course, there is no mention of the concerts on your timeline, and no "Events" set up for these special concerts. Trying hard to be friendly, helpful, and less than snarky, I commented:

You'd have to hang fewer flyers if you told us about the concerts via social media

Because, seriously - all you'd need to do is mention the performers, dates, and times in your "please hang flyers" post and you'd kill two birds with one stone. I saw the post, I was curious - social media did it's job. But having baited your line, there was nothing to draw me in. And do set up some events for these concerts - and maybe folks might see that, comment, say they are going, share to their contacts.

It's nice to hang flyers, but it's pricey (labor to design, cost to print, labor to distribute) and social media is a lot less expensive. This particular entity has a respectable 2700 "likes" - and Monday is certainly not too soon (might even be a little too late) to crank up the social media engine.

Middnight on Main: Middletown's Answer to First Night

I spent a few hours traipsing through downtown Middletown last evening, at thttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifhe first annual (with any luck) celebration. I've spent a number of New Year's Eves in downtown Hartford at First Night, and I have to say, that Middletown has won my heart.

Mostly, it's about the music. Hartford's First Night did not have a single performer or act that could entice me downtown - I looked over the roster and nothing. Middnight on Main, on the other hand, was overspilling in musical goodness. Gandalf Murphy and the Slambovian Circus of Dreams played two packed sets at the First Church Sanctuary; Hartford darlings The Shinolas did not get the nod in the insurance city, so headed down the river to an overflowing room at the Salvation Army, joined onstage by Mark Erelli and Rani Arbo. Susan Forbes Hanson was hosting the Shinolas sets, as good an indication of the bona fides of the musical evening as anything. WNPR's Jeff Cohen and Catie Telarski, also under appreciated by the First Night folks, brought their talents to Middletown.


A somewhat out of focus iPhone pic of Gandalf Murphy from the First Church balcony.

That's who I went to see. But there was also River City Slim (zydeco), John Whelan (Irish), Barefoot Truth (Rock) and a host of others. You can see the schedule here. The only BAD thing about the event was it was perhaps too successful - venues were filled, folks were turned away. Rounding out the more mainstream music, were Brazilian, Taiko Drumming, Wizard Rock, Show Tunes, Rockabilly, Gospel, Salsa - pretty much anything one might choose to hear.

Middletown has a few benefits that Hartford lacks. A compact and vibrant Main Street - with all of the performance venues easily walkable, made for an easy hike around downtown. They set aside a lot for Food Trucks - where one could find a variety of interesting, yummy, and low cost foods. There are a ton of nice restaurants all up and down Main Street - even as the rabble trekked between Middnight on Main events, folks were sitting down to a more upscale new year's celebration. And though we choose not to imbibe, there were a bunch of nightspots where one could fall in for a New Year's toast if one were so inclined.

And Middletown seemed to get the whole First Night sentiment. Less about a big splashy fireworks show, more about entertainment, mixing, and mingling. A great opportunity to have folks come downtown, see the restaurants and shops, feel safe, and maybe plant the seeds for a vibrant 2012.

Sorry Hartford, my heart has been wooed and won by a little city down the river. I hope that Middnight on Main was a success and becomes an annual event - I plan to be there!

New Media vs. Old Media

A not so happy story from down in Essex - there was a fire at the CT River Museum last night. The Middletown Press seems to have the best coverage so far: Fire at Conn. River Museum may have destroyed historic artifacts

One of my clients is the Essex Steam Train and Riverboat, so I'm familiar with the CT River Museum as a tourism partner - which drew my attention last night. I did a bit of web surfing, dropped by Twitter, and watched the 11 pm news. WTNH's Jamie Muro was on site, but was not able to get close enough, quickly enough to catch the fire on video.

The Middletown Press, on the other hand, rocks it in terms of integrating text, photos, and video, and really documenting the heck out of this story better than anyone else on the web. Their coverage seems to be entirely generated by one reporter (Lauren Flaum), with a camera that captured video. WTNH - needing to set up a Sat Truck and Camera Crew, was unable to get close enough to really cover this as it happened (Mr. Muro noted in his first stand-up that he would have to walk over to see what was happening and would be back later in the newscast) - but Ms. Flaum (on foot, light, and mobile) from the Press got right in there, got some photos and video of the fire itself, and some eyewitness interviews.

Just an interesting example of "how the new media works vs. how the old media is limited"

And from the Press article: ‎"At one point as firefighters hammered away at the roof, a cluster of bats was disturbed and fluttered away into the dark night sky."

It's the little poetic touches....heh.

One More Thing

Self confession - I have too many hobbies and careers. I do engineering work. I code websites. I write. I play guitar in a kirtan band. I play bass in a folk-rock band. I practice yoga religiously (some might say fanatically). I teach yoga. I chase hot air balloons. Kind of a full life, no?

So of course I trucked down to Middletown this evening for the first training program that might lead me to become a radio DJ at WESU 88.1 (Wesleyan University). Sometime last year I saw a solicitation for folk DJs on one of the local folk music lists, and it just seemed right. So here I go.....

Was kind of cool being there - rooms and hallways crammed with shelves full of LPs and CDs. Funky and cool and a little rough around the edges in the way that college radio just is. I feel like I'm getting the chance to do something I might have done back in college had I been really engaged and connected to myself, had I not been full of fear and running for my life.

Tonight was pretty tame - introductions, meet the trainers, go over the history of the station, the structure of the training, some of the rules and regs. Who knows if this will stick. Of course, the last time I embarked upon a "let's see where this road takes me" kind of training I ended up a yoga teacher.

It's never too late to have a happy childhood. Or in my case, a happy adolescence.....