6 ms·
Wherein Twestival screw us over with their egregious unprofessionalism.
- chrismear 17y agoNot that I'm condoning the behaviour of the Twestival organisers, but I find it hard to sympathise with the venue, given that they continued reserving the date for 'months' with no contract and no deposit paid. They took a risk on a clearly flakey client, and it didn't pay off.
- thaumaturgy 17y agoYeah. Sometimes you try to avoid having to do business the way everyone else does, and sometimes it costs you, which sucks.
- dtf 17y agoThe client was doing for charity. Which, as I'm sure many people know from experience, gives them carte blanche to be arseholes.
- idlewords 17y agoYes, and a name like 'Twestival' should automatically translate to double deposit, cash only please.
- notaddicted 17y agoHe does mention at the start that promoters are mostly like this, so it wasn't the red flag that it sounds like.
- deleted 17y ago[deleted]
- nir 17y ago"We sent a contract, and asked for a deposit. Months went by. A few times they asked when they could stop by to drop off the deposit, but never actually did so." The venue's actions seem pretty reasonable to me. They gave the organizers some slack, assuming these are basically decent people. It's not like they're dealing with some unknown or shady operation. Still, discovering a Twitter-related operation turned out to be much noise/little signal shouldn't be that surprising :)
- jgilliam 17y agohttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jamie_Zawinski http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jamie_Zawinski
- cyunker 17y agoTheir website still lists DNA Lounge as the venue... http://sanfrancisco.twestival.com/ http://sanfrancisco.twestival.com/
- diN0bot 17y agosomewhat off tangent: 1. it seems that people are more likely to reschedule and not hold to commitments than 20 years ago. 2. has the population changed, or some other external factor, or has the culture changed? 3. why?
- danw 17y agoMobile Phones. Pre-mobile there was no way of letting someone know you are running late, or changing arrangements last minute.
- joezydeco 17y agoYou've never worked with a subcontractor on a home remodelling project, have you? =) These guys carry three cellphones AND a pager, but will never show up on time for an appointment or call to tell you they're not going to be at your house on the day you took off of work. But when that bill is due lookout: they're magically available and on the phone with you constantly.
- dannyr 17y agoNot to generalize but I lived in SoCal for 2 years and a good percentage of people there do not honor commitments. Either they are very late or just won't show up. I lived in the East Coast before that and didn't have as many flakers.
- fatdog789 17y agoIt's called traffic. It can make a 10 minute commute turn into a 3-hour commute. I lived on the East Coast for 5 years, and people there were flakier than their West Coast counterparts -- even though traffic on the East Coast is more predictable and less congested. The difference? People on the West Coast try to make their commitments -- but run in to traffic. People on the East Coast leave late and blame the traffic.
- ghshephard 17y agoTraffic isn't really an excuse. I've lived in the Bay Area for 13 years, and our traffic ranks in national rankings as some of the worst. With that said, during rush hour, from Downtown Oakland to Downtown Mountain View (880, Dumbarton Bridge, 101), the variance on my Commutes over three years was 52 minutes to at _most_ 1 Hour 15 minutes. 95% of the time it was under 1 Hour. The 1 Hour 15 minutes occured during a flash flood in which most major roads were having water issues. A few accidents pushed us to 1 hour 10 minutes. Another way of saying this is if I planned to arrive 8 minutes early, I would have been on time 95% of the time for an appointment in Mountain View driving from Oakland.
- deleted 17y ago[deleted]
- bkovitz 17y agoI don't get it. Why do they need to close on a Friday night? There are a zillion DJs in San Francisco, and people often come to DNA Lounge just because it's DNA Lounge, without knowing what, if anything, special is planned that night.
- geuis 17y agoDNA Lounge isn't a regular bar. It's a facility. They do a variety of events ranging from concerts to wrestling. So it takes a while for them to setup for an event and properly promote it to get a decent turnout. The other big factor is that burning man is happening around the same time which sucks a lot of the promotional people around SF out.
- anigbrowl 17y agoIn a nutshell, it's more expensive to open the club and book bar staff, DJs, security staff etc. than they are likely to take in on that evening with other big events on and no time to promote (ads to the local newspapers have to be submitted a few weeks in advance). The number of people who go to a nightclub just because it's there is likely to be less than 1-200, and a club the size of the DNA lounge needs at least 4-500 to break even.
- SwellJoe 17y agoAnd a club that feels empty come 10 or 11 PM will remain empty all night because nobody wants to be where nothing is going on.
- jawngee 17y agoThat's jacked. I used to be an event promoter and that kind of behavior from fellow promoters would end up harming me in some way (not being able to book a venue, extra heavy deposits, etc). Amateur at best, unprofessional completely. On a side note, I am now blind because of the lime green on black. 1994 is calling and wants its "cyber" vibe back.
- tptacek 17y agoThat color scheme dates back to about:jwz, in the first version of Mozilla. =)
- sketerpot 17y agoIf I ever find out what Project Xanadu's default color scheme was supposed to be, then I will probably switch a web site to it. In loving memory of a future that we exceeded and still failed to live up to. (Xanadu was the first idea of a hypertext system. It was more heavyweight than the current system, which may be why it never caught on -- but it was incredibly visionary. Sometimes I read futurist writing from that time, and I'm struck by how much better we've done and by how much of its early promise we have left unfulfilled.) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Xanadu http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Xanadu
- ivey 17y agoAnd in case others missed the point, his site isn't that color in some kind of tribute...his site is that color because he's jwz, and he wrote vast swathes of Mozilla, and he can make his website any color he wants.
- ivankirigin 17y agoI know the central people behind twestival, and have worked with them before. I think it is important to know how things are actually run. You have a few central people who are helping a ton of people organize meetups. This lets those at the center get great reach, and makes the global event really big. It is amazing that a global event is essentially organized by a handful of people. Like the internet, this kind of decentralization requires relinquishing a bit of control. It is daring from a branding perspective to let locals plan events under your brand's global name. So I wouldn't say this story is the fault of "the twestival" - but of those local SF organizers who dropped the ball.
- Kaizyn 17y agoThen the Twestival SF organizers are flakes, and your friends who do the central coordination need to do a better job vetting their local organizers. Otherwise, your friends will earn themselves a bad name.
- ivankirigin 17y agoI agree. Lots of local organizers have been booted for various reasons. I think there are something like 150 cities. There is basically a person or two vetting the whole thing. I think that deserves respect regardless of a few bad examples. I mean, there is money involved, and charities to donate to. That extremely sensitive issue is essentially already settled.
- ErrantX 17y agoTrouble is your usually defined by mistakes. Finding the "rotten apples" is a thankless task and when you get it wrong people notice. I feel myself siding with the venue right now: Twestival seems to be playing the "but it's for charity! c'mon" card a little too strongly for my taste.
- catch23 17y agoYou know, that's exactly how big companies treat bad PR. They'll just blame it on the employee, then fire the employee. The downside of Twestival is that it's all volunteers... sounds like the organizers need to man up and fire the volunteers.
- bjelkeman-again 17y agoThe Twestival consists of hundreds of volunteers in lots of different locations. The people the I and my colleagues have worked with for four different events have so far been very professional.
- eworoshow 17y agoTwestival posted a response: http://sanfrancisco.twestival.com/2009/08/29/our-side-smiles/ http://sanfrancisco.twestival.com/2009/08/29/our-side-smiles...
- gaius 17y agoEither they or JWZ are lying, then. I know who my money's on.
- deleted 17y ago[deleted]
- rwolf 17y agoThey seem much easier to reach with bad publicity.
- tptacek 17y agoAccording to their own response, they never cancelled with DNA. All the rest of their post is irrelevant.
- bravura 17y ago"We admit that we made a mistake by not reaching out to the previous venue to make our decision clear before informing our internal team. We weren’t aware they were passing up other opportunities in our favour and understand the staff is not thrilled about our choice"
- tptacek 17y agoYes, I see how their response concedes that they never cancelled. You'd think they wouldn't cast aspersions after doing that.
- icey 17y agoI'm sure jwz will be perfectly happy with the situation, since they were magnanimous enough to offer him free tickets to their event.
- edawerd 17y agoCan someone explain to me how it is that club promoters work? Back when I was living in LA, I'd meet lots of people who would tell me they're a promoter for club X, but I never understood how they fit into the business model.
- gaius 17y agoThe promoter is an entrepreneur, their product is the event. He or she arranges the venue, the performers, the advertising, etc and whatever's left from the door price/ticket sales once everyone's been paid is their profit. Lots of people do this part time looking only to break even, in that case their profit is in the form of social capital.