I survived my first festival!! For those of you who don't know, my company puts on two annual 3-day Christian festivals each year (one in Del Mar and the other in Monterey). It was great to witness the festival come together after all the months of preparation. It was quite rewarding. :) When we first stepped foot on-site, we saw the crew set up the grand stand stage, exhibitor tents and food stands. They had deep fried twinkies, chicken, frog legs, snickers...you name it. Gotta love carnival food...hehe. Things were pretty hectic throughout the festival. Trying to make things run smoothly and making sure everyone had what they needed. We were able to get the following 2 days off to recover and it was well spent! Here are some of the highlights:1. "Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf" coffee runs. I don't know what I'd do with out my latte every morning. I heart Coffee Bean. :D
2. Meeting one of the band members from Switchfoot. So my job is to run Guest Services at the festival. This means I have the guest list of all the artists', comp tickets, etc. On the third day, a guy comes up to the table and I'm thinking, "wow, he looks really familiar". He gives his name and it's not on the list. So I tell him that he looks familiar but I don't see his name and he tells me that his band has played at this venue a few times before. So I ask him what band he's in, and he says "Switchfoot". We also happened to have their poster lying on our table. No wonder he looked so familiar!!! I felt a little dumb. Makes me feel like I need to brush up on band members. :P
3. Getting to be part of the photo shoot for Kutless and BarlowGirl - that was SO COOL!
4. I got tons of positive feedback on my t-shirt design! I had the privilege to design the festival t-shirts/sweatshirts this year. They were a huge hit.
5. Getting to finally meet all the people I've been corresponding with over the last 6 months.
All in all, I feel that I've gained a better understanding of why and how things run and I feel more prepared for the Monterey festival, which is coming up in the next few months. I did run into a few bumps at Del Mar, but nothing is ever perfect. I can certainly take lessons from it all. I hope to post some photos soon. Stay tuned...
