The ‘Fear of Missing Out’ Factor
Special Events With Minimal Disruption Require Balance
As special events get larger at locations worldwide, people are talking about the FOMO factor. FOMO is “Fear of Missing Out” and comes into particular focus following the recent massive South By Southwest (SXSW) Festival in Austin, Texas.
For event promoters, Fear of Missing Out means maximizing profit by encouraging attendance. For participants, FOMO means deciding if an event is worthwhile or just an activity in which they engage because many other people attend. For the city, FOMO might mean not hosting an event that could bring purported prestige or collateral revenue. For the community at large, FOMO is either the opportunity for a desirable activity or the inevitable disruption of special events.
In Denver, city officials claim they are bombarded with requests for special events such as marathons, street fairs, famers’ markets, music festivals, and all manner of burgeoning special events. Katy Strascina now heads the Special Events office with the task of coordinating the activities of 17 city agencies involved in special events planning and coordination.
During three recent public meetings to discuss Special Events and Planning (SEAP), many Denver residents expressed dismay over the impact of large and growing activities, especially in parks and residential neighborhoods. About 200 vocal and sometimes angry people made it clear they weren’t willing to accept former Mayor John Hickenlooper’s assessment that “putting up with some disruption is the price people pay for living close to a park.”
These are really complicated questions and there are no easy answers,” says former concert promoter Jesse Morreale in exclusive comments for Greater Park Hill News. “Just ask anyone who has staged a large wedding reception.”
Asking if an event is too large is the wrong question, says Morreale. “An activity should be sized to the level the audience will support. You don’t book a club band in an arena and vice versa.”
One Denverite who attended South By Southwest this year put it another way: “The event has to deliver value at the scale of the activity. The value starts to decrease when attending the event is more trouble than it’s worth.” This year SXSW presented 2300 performances on 111 stages, up from the 1987 original 177 acts on 15 stages. In addition, there were hundreds of conference activities.
Morreale says Denver officials should be asking residents what kind of events they want, instead of trying to accommodate all requests from promoters. “It’s crazy to think that the city can support everything the promoters propose. We need to determine what the people really want, what the community will support and be excited about,” he says.
“The Capitol Hill People’s Fair is a great example. It got bigger because people wanted to go and participate. People needed an outlet for artistic endeavors and the People’s Fair provided that. People’s Fair is one of the best events of its size in the country, but it takes a lot of work.”
Those attending the public meetings suggested a limit on profit-making events. There is also strong support for full cost recovery and protection of city property.
“Money-making events are not bad,” says Morreale. “But Historic 7th Avenue is not a special events venue. And to a lesser extent, neither are parks. These are spaces paid for with tax money and we have to acknowledge that special events are outside of the original intent of these public spaces.”
City officials declined to respond when residents repeatedly asked why events are staged if the city doesn’t make any money. Parks and Recreation Finance Director Fred Weiss previously told the Greater Park Hill News that the city cannot speak in terms of “profit,” but is limited to “cost recovery.”
Weiss had a prominent role in developing the policy and setting fees on park events, which do not have to be open to the pubic and can charge participants to enter. City Council recently overruled the cost recovery fees set by Weiss for business operations in parks, sometimes called “stroller moms.” Council members indicated the fees were too high to encourage the activity.
“Fred Weiss is a thoughtful, conscientious person,” says Morreale. “He is a good person to be asking how to get to the bottom of doing this. It can be done. But event organizers have to be responsible to the people and the surrounding area.”
According to Morreale, staging a concert in a defined space is easier than events in public spaces. “Anybody can book a confined space like Red Rocks Amphitheater. But we (concert organizers) have to be thoughtful and responsible to do the rest. There are many steps to making an event safe, secure, and enjoyable. It literally involves a cast of thousands.”
Publicly, city officials also dismiss suggestions for a dedicated, permanent festival facility as a location for large activities. Advocates of a festival park point to places such as Milwaukee, Wisconsin and Roskilde, near Copenhagen in Denmark, where hundreds of thousands of people attend special events and concerts every year. Even South By Southwest has a semi-dedicated facility, at Zilker Park in downtown Austin.