Tuesday, October 7, 2008

Columbia Heights Day Pictures

It's all over, and it was a lot of fun. The turnout was good. The tents and activities were pretty busy throughout the day, despite the open field itself seeming somewhat sparse at times. I thought this wasn't necessarily a bad thing, since it meant there was plenty of space for people to relax and watch the music, or play frisbee, or an impromptu game of foursquare. The vibe was good and there were plenty of fun things to do and see over the course of the day. I ran into lots of people from around the neighborhood, both new and old friends, and felt generally that there was a lot of good energy throughout the day.

While I think we did a great job pulling this together, there are definitely some things that could be done differently to make the event even better. Part of this is my own impression from being there, and part of this is from reading some of the criticism that came out on a couple blogs yesterday. One of them seemed to have sparked a little firestorm, which I already made a comment about this under my original post before Columbia Heights Day and I won't say anything more about that here.

From this point forward I think what's important for us to do is take the online feedback from individual attendees for what it is - individual experiences. While myself (and obviously some others) were surprised to read from a neighbor who said she didn't find much interesting going on, the fact that she didn't mention any of the major activities should tell us that we didn't do a very good job of letting attendees know the day of the event what was happening and where.

So lesson number 1 for next time: We should make the events schedule and a detailed map of the grounds more readily available. This could be in the form of large posters at various strategic points throughout the grounds, or flyers available at the door. I think I like the first option better from a waste standpoint.

I have some other thoughts, but we haven't met as a group to discuss how it went for everyone, so I don't want to say anything else here. But regardless of what went wrong, I think there was a lot more that went right and throughout the day I saw hundreds of people laughing, playing and enjoying themselves. So I'll close by sharing a few pictures from the event.

Coverage so far:

Columbia Heights Day - Good Times (Prince of Petworth)

Columbia Heights Day (Creative DC)

Columbia Heights Day - Dull Times (City Desk)

Columbia Heights Day Pulls Community Together (The Hilltop Online - Howard U Student Paper)

All my pictures here on flickr. I have more still to upload.

More pictures from others on Picasa

Free Yoga @ 10 AM with Quiet Mind Yoga

Rise and Shine Yoga

Petting Zoo

Dog, Meet Camel

Cupcake Eating Contest by Sticky Fingers Bakery

Messy

Food line

Food Frenzy

Foursquare

Four Square

Early Morning Coordination

Allison Making It Happen

Best Buy/DCUSA

Best Buy and DCUSA

Beads

Beads

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Yah, I'd say a map would be helpful. And as awesome as I'm a sure the food table was, I didn't even bother to go over there figuring, wrongly of course, that nothing at a festival is free.

A map with the schedule would have been hugely helpful though. I'm not entirely sure why since it wasn't a gigantic affair, but I think I would have more time and effort to check things out that way. Also, if it remains about that size, perhaps things could be tightened up a bit more so if feels less dispersed? Just an idea.

Thanks for putting it on.