September 23rd, 2005

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Vancouver
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The Sea Vancouver Debacle

Back in July, I wrote about what an financial farce the Sea Vancouver Festival became. The festival received big-ticket funding from all levels of government, was poorly organized, and ended up $1.2 million in debt. I don’t know much about civic festivals, but I know enough to say that that’s quite an achievement in incompetence.

I was reminded of this debacle, because Pete McMartin is writing a set of columns about it. I often find McMartin to be a sensationalist and a curmudgeon, but these pieces have proven good reading. The first two are behind the Vancouver Sun’s Great Wall of Subscription, but the third is still available. It discusses the 2002 Richmond Sea Festival, which lost $472,000. Yet, the city of Vancouver approved the 2005 festival with the same people in charge. That’s some sound decision making, eh? Here’s a Globe and Mail article along similar lines.

The festival’s website is shut down, with a an apologetic message from the board. The whole thing kind of reminds me of a Simpsons episode: “I’ve sold festivals to Ogdenville, North Haverbrook, and Brockway”

Comments: 8 Responses so far

Leonie
September 23rd, 2005
5:38 pm

Hi Darren, How’s it going?

I found your site doing a search on “yurts”!

Read your last post and it reminds of my dormant blog Lotusland Notes. Those crazy festivals and what not. Next boondoggle: Olympics.

Now I concentrate on the gallery (URL included).

Just wondering about your Google ads. Are they too obtrusive? Do you mind if I ask how much they earn you, or is that a trade secret?

I’m going broke here in Vancouver. Will have to get a yurt and move to Gabriola or something!

Thanks, LZ

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Darren
September 23rd, 2005
5:41 pm

Thanks for writing. I haven’t had any complaints about the Google ads–I don’t think they really bother anybody. Google’s terms and conditions prevent me from revealing how much I earn through their program. Suffice it to say it’s not making many people rich, but it helps.

Good luck with the yurts.

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Mel
September 24th, 2005
9:58 am

Just so ya know…the link to the G&M article leads to the same Vancouver Sun article linked to above.

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Darren
September 24th, 2005
11:31 am

Whoops, thanks for that. Fixed.

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Matthew
September 24th, 2005
2:52 pm

Yes, but the production team the producer was using for Sea Festival are the same people who have been running a very successful Dragon Boat Festival every year, as well as the over-sold-out First Night Festival last year. The media never mentions the MANY successful projects, just a bad year in Richmond. What sunk them, if you’ll excuse the nautical metaphor, was a combination of festival fatigue on the part of Vancouverites, a city where almost every summer weekend has a festival or a fill-in-the-blank Days; and what seemed like an attempt to cut back on the PR and publicity costs by not doing much. Not one person I spoke to felt anything but frustration at getting information about or tickets to the event.

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Matthew
September 24th, 2005
2:55 pm

Oh - but yes, to note the end of your post, it DOES nonetheless feel very:

“MARGE: But Main Street is all cracked and broken!
LISA: Sorry, Mom, the Mob has spoken!
ALL: Monorail… Monorail… Monorail!”

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Darren
September 24th, 2005
11:19 pm

Matthew: You make a reasonable point about the successful festivals. Though, in truth, the Dragonboat Festival has a tremendous user base which most festivals do not. That is, the participants themselves attend, which is vital insurance against failure. Additionally, according to this article, previous First Night festivals have suffered financial difficulties, and the 2003 edition was cancelled.

As for festival fatigue, shouldn’t the Sea Vancouver organizers have considered this? It’s hardly anybody else’s fault. I agree that everybody but me seemed to be lacking awareness of the festival. I, on the other hand, felt deluged with festival advertising.

That said, the festival was obviously poorly organized. There were multiple sites with multiple entrances, and few or no clear instructions as to what was happening where, and how to get from point A to B.

I also read multiple reports of two and three-hour lineups to get out to the ships. This, to me, demonstrates a lack of simple algebra (x attendes times z shuttles/hour = maximum capacity). I wonder how long the queues would have been had attendance been as good as or better than expected.

I’ve also read that the festival was planned far too hastily. So, there are plenty of reasons to blame the organizers.

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Joey
October 3rd, 2005
12:36 pm

We all know from media reports that tall ship owners sailed away from the Sea Vancouver Festival in July without payment, and that cheques made to Jeff Healey and other famous entertainers bounced.

What the media hasn’t stressed - and understandably so since the ‘little guy’ is rarely newsworthy - is the fact that hundreds of contractors were also hurt by this debacle.

Hundreds of people were hired as contractors to put the festival together. As is generally expected with festival work, we made Sea Vancouver our life for weeks, if not months.

The Society probably knew after the first two days of the festival that they would not meet their financial target, given that they suffered a $1 million deficit.

But they didn’t tell us then that they wouldn’t be able to pay us as planned. We continued working, putting in long hours during the remaining two days of the festival, and also in the post-festival wrap-up period.

In fact, they didn’t announce it until several days - if not a week or two - after the media had already reported the bad news.

During this period, the Society was fairly unresponsive to requests for information. They simply - and literally - boarded up the office and left creditors hanging.

The Sea Vancouver Society seems to exist solely to put this festival on, and they stand to lose very little, as far as I can tell. Since this is their first year, they don’t have a reputation to lose, and since they’ve declared bankruptcy, their assets are untouchable. Their liability is limited.

In fact, the whole event seems carefully engineered so that the production company who headed the event - fgenius productions - and produces several other events (Dragon Boat Fest, First Night, etc.,) each year, gets away without a financial loss or damage to their reputation. Everyone who is responsible for the decisions that led to the $1 million deficit seems to be trying very hard to dissociate themselves from the event.

Now it’s the hundreds of individual contractors and the small businesses that are paying for this extremely expensive mistake.

One last point: it’s not simply bad weather that sunk Sea Vancouver. That particular July weekend was so bright and sunny that I got a sunburn. And even if weather was a factor that caused poor turn-out, the possiblity of a typically cloudy West Coast day should have been factored into their projected budget.

The fact is that their revenue estimates were implausibly high given that previous tall ship festivals in Vancouver had failed, and that - since this was the first year - there was no established market or ‘returning audience.’

Truthfully, the event seemed to suffer from extremely poor organization, planning, execution and vision as well as a ‘no holds barred’ approach to spending. In my opinion, there were too may sites, too little information and the ticket prices were far too expensive.

There were numerous complaints from the general public about various aspects of the event.

An example: there was a fleet of near two dozen school buses which ran every 6 or so minutes, offering free rides between sites to festival goers. Those buses - which probably cost plenty and ran all day for 4 days - were virtually empty every time I saw them.

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