WSMA FESTIVAL MANAGERS

PLANNING, TIPS AND TRICKS

For A Successful Festival

COMMUNICATION

NOTE TO CONFERENCE

NOTE TO TEACHERS

COMMUNICATION – IN-BUILDING

• Talk to your building/district now!
• Rooms
• Custodians / Buildings & Grounds – do a walk through of the building addressing both your and THEIR concerns.
• Secretaries
• I.T. / Tech guys
• AD – tournament schedules??

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COMMUNICATION – IN-BUILDING

• BUSINESS OFFICE
• How are checks cut for judges?
• What information do they need?

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• I used to run mine through my Activity Account – checks get done quicker – but now through the Business Office
• Extra ”hoops”
• Do you need IRS forms from judges??
• When are you going to collect those?
• Do judges need to become “employees??
• Passports/birth certificates/background checks/mandatory reporting videos, ………
• Does your HR department need to see judges in person before the festival to get this info?

COMMUNICATION

• JUDGES
• Via e-mail – MAKE SURE THEY RESPOND BACK
• Follow-up with phone calls
• Form letter?
• Send Maps – to school (with directions if tricky) and Floor Plans
• Send Their Schedules
• Ask for Cell Phone / Give your Cell phone – in case of emergency
• Let them know about planned lunch meal (dietary issues)
• Do they have any physical/health issues that might affect something?

COMMUNICATION - DIRECTORS

• TO OTHER SCHOOLS PARTICIPATING
• Schedules (duh), but also…
• Send Floor Plans
• Send Equipment List
• Send Piano/room info – what type (Acoustic/Digital) is in each room
• Send concessions menu and prices
• Directions to school

COMMUNICATION - DIRECTORS

• Equipment List

THINGS TO THINK ABOUT NOW…

• Floor-plan / layout
• Map of school/directions/room sites
• Grand Piano?  32” timpani? Will it fit?!
• Warm-up room distance to sites
• Keep instrumental and vocal apart
• Sound-proofing between rooms?

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• Organize your help
• Music Boosters?
• Volunteers
• Concessions
• ONLINE SIGN-UP
• GoogleDocs
• Other online options – things like Volunteer Spot, Sign-up Genius, etc.

VOLUNTEERS �& DONATIONS

These are examples from when we did things via GoogleDocs. We now use other free online volunteer services:

SIGN-UP GENIUS

Also:

Volunteer Spot

iVolunteer.com

Many others…

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VOLUNTEERS & DONATIONS

FLOOR-PLAN

• Example and ideas:
• Keep instrumental and vocal apart for sound reasons
• What are you putting in your big spaces? Figure that out before you start scheduling. EX: Site 6 has to have larger vocal ensembles for us – madrigals, etc.
• Do you need to keep a room buffer between each performance site for sound?
• LABEL EVERYTHING!
• This is what we hand out at the Info Table. We will write time searches on this instead of using full programs.

STILL THINKING AHEAD

After you have made your schedule…

• Run through the day as “each person”
• Student/performer
• Parent
• Director
• Judge
• Accompanist

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• What is your plan for set-up night? Morning of?

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PIANOS

• Plan your rental NOW
• Who from – your own? Music store? other schools?
• Delivery – when? Storage?
• Tuning
• Storage

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• Digitals – pros and cons
• PUT SIGNS ON EACH DIGITAL ABOUT HOW TO TRANSPOSE/Un-transpose

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• Tell directors what rooms will have transposing / acoustic
• That could affect who can be in which room

TRANSPOSITING PIANOS

Post instructions on each digital piano about how to transpose - - - and UNTRANSPOSE

SCHEDULING!

• Most of us are Festival Managers AND Directors on festival day.
• Better scheduling makes your day easier.

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• ASK FOR A DAY OFF for scheduling

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• Accompanist-Based Scheduling vs. what you’re “supposed” to do…
• Blocking
• Room locations

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• INSTRUMENTATION: What –IS- that “miscellaneous ensemble???
• Ask ahead of time if a school is bringing a “large” ensemble
• NAMES
• have directors list kids you are doing more/most solos as the first name large groups
• List directors as “Accompanists” for conducted groups
• Make sure that Accompanists names are listed the same – especially if 2 districts are sharing the same person.

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SCHEDULING

• Schedule your VOCAL rooms first, then Instrumental.
• Time requests
• Tell directors to ONLY use for EMERGENCY
• Not that they only have 8 entries and they want to be home by noon…

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• TWO SOLOS IN SAME ROOM – try to avoid - for kid’s sake
• Classical and Broadway in same room

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• Equipment
• Does your 1 drum set need to be in jazz room, percussion room, and a brass ensemble room?
• Where do you need choir risers?

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SCHEDULING - BLOCKING

Do this on the computer or just a pad of paper. Helps you “see” what’s happening in each room.

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This is looking at things based on Rooms.

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Different colors represent different Accompanists

SCHEDULING – ACCOMPANIST-BASED

Do this on a computer on just on paper.

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This helps you keep track of when each accomp. Is busy/free.

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Helps a lot when trying to make schedules when one person plays for more than 15 events.

OR, DO IT WITH PENCIL AND PAPER…

SCHEDULING

END TIMES AND STAGGERED LUNCHES

ENDING & LUNCH

SCHEDULING…

• SITE SCHEDULING SEQUENCE – SUGGESTIONS
• This list is a suggestion for the order that you should schedule your sites. This will vary depending on the number of events and sites your festival has.

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• Site with Show choir/vocal jazz (think about where Instrumental Jazz might go, too – if sharing an auditorium, schedule them now; if now, think about what time of day (maybe opposite show choirs) that you want to schedule them at.)
• Site(s) with Madrigals/large vocal ensemble
• All remaining Vocal sites
• Sites with Jazz Ensembles
• Site(s) with very large instrumental Ensembles.
• All other brass/woodwind site(s)
• Percussion site(s)
• Site(s) with large string ensembles
• All other string sites
• Piano site(s)

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SCHEDULING…

• ADJUST TIMES OF SINGLE ENTRIES

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• THINK OF THE DAY AS IF YOU WERE A JUDGE
• Happy Judges make Happy Ratings
• ADD BREAKS
• DNAs will be breaks, too
• Don’t put in all class As --- or Class Cs!
• CAN THEY JUDGE THAT?? – BROADWAY solos

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• DRAFT SCHEDULE
• Send out as PDF – send by time, then site & accompanist by time, then site.
• Send out draft to directors to catch conflicts of double-booked students
• Give them a few days to find errors (tell them when deadline is!)
• Trade with their own entries within a site – tell you the swaps

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SCHEDULING

LATE ENTRIES

• So, someone forgets something – what do you do:
• Send them to WSMA
• Or don’t…

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• Regardless, have them send me the event info
• (**adding late entries into the website**)

ADVANCED DNA EVENTS

• Have directors tell you ahead of time about DNAs
• Deadline for printing rubrics?

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• These can become open slots to move schedule conflicts

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• Also helps day go smoother with opening
• No confusion over “where is that entry??”

SCHEDULING – OTHER THINGS TO THINK ABOUT…

• Extra BREAKS for moving to new site (Show Choir / Jazz in another room)

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• How to deal with the same room being used for two different things?
• The gym/auditorium is hosting show choir things with the judge from room 3 and Jazz Band things with the judge from room 12. What do you do?

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• Judging “odd” things
• Who should do it? Strings if you don’t have stings?
• Look at class – anyone *should* be able to judge class C
• Suggest they transfer to another festival.

PRINTING

• Print to your copy machine
• Have students collate by room and index #
• This helps find any missing entry forms

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• Print extra blank forms for judges envelopes

– both rated and C.O.

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Use WSMA suggested colors, or…

• Different color for every room
• Different color for every school/district

FESTIVAL SET-UP

• Let your teachers know a week or two, then a day or two before.
• Take pictures of rooms
• Tape-off rooms

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• Try to do it afternoon before

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• Homerooms
• Is it your gym? Have hoops raised up as far as possible!
• No playing signs

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• DOOR LOCKS – can you unlock/key open your classroom doors?
• Other “Safety” issues in your building??

FESTIVAL SET-UP

• SIGNAGE:
• The more, the better!
• We hang our site number signs from the ceiling by the door – easier for people to find.
• Quiet Signs
• Arrow Signs

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• In Room signs:
• Turn off Noise Makers
• NO RECORDING OF COMMENTS SIGN (from WSMA)

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FESTIVAL DAY - HEADQUARTERS

MORE SET-UP

MORE SET-UP

We give our students pictures of what each room should look like when it is turned into a performance space.

FESTIVAL DAY

• Volunteers
• Have a separate table for volunteers to check-in
• Have job descriptions available for each person/job
• Name tags – with assigned job?

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• Have descriptions for their jobs available.

• We have even made videos to share with our volunteers:
• https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B_o0yR5cjSVNYWIySGZNSVFBb1k

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FESTIVAL DAY…

• Door Locks (again)

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• Keep a WSMA Handbook handy – You answer rules questions

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• What’s your plan? How can you be reached
• Do you stay in one place all day or are you with your students?
• How do people get a hold of you/Festival Manager?
• Give HQ your cell phone # to text/call.
• What is the plan if you’re conducting an ensemble and an “emergency” happens?

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FESTIVAL DAY SCHEDULING

• After 9:00 a.m., the schedule is a suggestion
• Small time issues will not be a problem (ex: a 2-min. overlap)

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• It is okay to take entries out of order
• Just make sure that you are aware of angry parents…

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• Keep judges on time!
• Tell room monitors to keep judges aware of times
• You talk to judges

SCORES

• Where do you post?
• All in one location?
• By Room?
• By School?

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• Put Schools in different locations?

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• Put near concession stand???

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SCORES

• Print on paper or just online?

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• I used a Google Site

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• DePere HTML Script – for TVs in school.

OTHER THINGS…

• Score Card Math issues
• Address with judge right away, not after they have heard 15 more entries.

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• No video taping of judges verbal comments. Have room monitors remind.

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• Have a great FESTITUDE
• Try to offer 5-Star service

HOSPITALITY ROOM

• Treat your judges well!
• Bring them food and drink

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• Hospitality Room
• Food options
• Breakfast / Lunch / Snacks
• Catering Food? - VERY EXPENSIVE
• F.A.C.E. Program help – can they “cater” for you?

FESTIVAL DAY

• Instrument Repair?
• Sometimes your Music Store will send a repair tech to your festival
• Extra Instruments?
• Instead of a repair tech, ask your Music Store for a spare set of instruments (from their rental pool) to use if something breaks.

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• Copy Machine?

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CONCESSIONS

• Never too early to have food for sale!
• Have a variety
• Can you use things for multiple foods choices?
• Fruit
• Free stuff from your fundraiser people?
• Cookie Dough
• Pizza?
• Again, send this out to the other schools so their kids know what will be available.

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FESTIVAL DAY

• Homerooms
• Where can you put groups?
• Different Classroom for each school?
• Everyone in gym?
• Label sections of Bleacher for each school
• Raise your basketball hoops/remove any toys!
• What can you do to make the day a little more entertaining for kids stuck at your school all day?
• We adjust our Public WiFi settings to allow for things like Netflix – keeps those kids “occupied” instead of wondering…..

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Label sections of your bleachers for each school

END-OF-DAY

• Make sure paychecks are in HQ
• Have judges just bring their final cards to HQ for check-out procedure

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• CLEAN-UP
• Post pictures of room inside room
• Have clean-up crew start working as soon as room is done
• Don’t wait for 4:00 if room is done at 3:30

END-OF-DAY

Take photos of rooms to help return them to how you found them.

END-OF-DAY

Take photos of rooms to help return them to how you found them.

HOSTING EVERY YEAR

• No, I’m not crazy!!

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• Gets Easier and Easier each year
• Parents know what to do
• -Your- kids benefit the most
• I can schedule them when they need to go
• It takes up less of their time
• Process gets streamlines and efficient
• Boosters run all volunteers, food, etc – I get to focus on my kids
• You Make $$$

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OTHER TIPS AND TRICKS

• This is what works at **MY** Festival

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• What has worked well at yours?

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• Ryan Petersen – petersEnr@deerfield.k12.wi.us