I am STILL debriefing myself from the 2011 Essence Music Festival. Before I begin, I just wanted to take the time to send a shout-out to the group who invite me, and organized my trip.
Now the brown-nosing is over, just wanted to take the time out to do a quick recap of all that I experienced during the festival…from a tech perspective of course!
QR Code Heavy
First and foremost, there was TONS of QR Codes everywhere. From recording artists like Kem keeping attendees informed on upcoming tour dates and other appearances, to advertisers in all of the festival brochures adding QR Codes to their inserts, to the Actual Essence Music Festival using Microsoft Tagg code???
Some of the members of my group loved my QR Code Biz Cards, so EVERYTIME they saw QR Codes being used, they made sure to let me know: “Hey BrothaTech, here’s another code” LOL! I was the resident tech of the group, so I was more than happy to give the tech lowdown!
All Apple Everything
From the media, reporters, and journalists using iPhones to record interviews, shoot images and videos of celebrities, and artists; to festival post-production using Final Cut Pro; to event organizers using Macbooks to sign-in guests; to surveyors using iPads to sign up attendees for a customer satisfaction survey; to Essence (and our hotel) using iMacs as kiosks…to even my first white iPhone sighting, it was clear that Apple was in the house. It seems as if the “disposable income to burn Hipster” cliche that follows your average Apple fan has turned into something else with Apple’s many appearances at Essence…I’ll let you figure what label you want to put on it.
Press Release Thumb drives
Press Release thumb drives saves trees...cause I don't recycle
I always try to go as paperless as possible. So before trip, I organized all the documents for my trip using my Google Docs account and my Docs2Go iPhone app so I could just whip out my phone and get any info I needed. Of course, there was STILL tons of paper that was handed out. But a glimmer of light in the darkness of conference handouts came in the form of Press releases from the festival’s major sponsors stored on Thumb drives that was handed out to the media. Finally, somebody gets it.
Celebrate Your Story with Verizon
Speaking of Essence Sponsors, Verizon Wireless did a great job of catering to the tech crowd with a cool booth that took users through “The Verizon Experience” that let attendees play with some of the brands hot new smartphones, tablets, and other mobile devices. The overview also included shout-outs to the 4G LTE network that VZW has built from the ground up.
Another impressive and relevant aspect of Verizon’s presence was Celebrating Your Story, a Verizon Initiative put on for Black History Month. VZW had a sound booth set up where attendees had 15 seconds to record anything they wanted in regards to their story (history, legacy, heritage, etc.). Attendees got a link that they can view, and share their video. In case you’re wondering, Of course a Brotha did one…
…Of course, that wasn’t all the tech that was looming around the festival. There were gigantic monitors setup all around the festival locations that show attendees’ tweets using specific hashtags and text message walls that displayed attendee’s shout-outs and other messages during during the concert’s intermissions. Different exhibition booths deployed all kinds of techie tricks to engage all the attendees, and so on.
In the end, I was proud to see all the tech going on at the 2011 Essence Music Festival. Just good to see that technology can be just as useful and enjoyable at well-known conferences, festivals, and other major events, as well events like the Essence Music Festival that caters to a demographic that flies under the radar in regards to tech-savvy…and that’s about as nice as I’m going to put it.
….Oh, did I forget to mention that part of our group got stuck in an elevator leaving on of the sponsor events? My road-dawg during the trip, Denene Milner dishes the details in her Essence recap.
For more pics and info. from my Essence trip check out my earlier posts:
Essence Music Festival Tech – Mobile Site, Cell Phone Donations and More
Essence Music Festival Tech – Why I’m Here
Essence Music Festival Smoothie Production
