For an event with its own - slickly designed location-aware iPhone app - the expectations were prety high. All week i was thinikng, "This is what the events experiences of the future will be like." If so, lord help us...
Spent 5 hours at the free event today; I didn't feel ripped off in the way that Gotham Gal and many of her commenters (where some of this rant also appears) did, but definitely felt the food-serving capacity was completely off for the number of people there. I felt pretty happy about getting a Spotted Pig burger instead of waiting 4 hours for a table, but the 200 people-long line for Luke's Lobster was incomprehensible.
What really bothered me, though, was the atrocious AT&T and Verizon service. The only thing the festival drained faster than my wallet (though I wasn't totally unhappy about the beer tent) was the battery on my iPhone. I would have tried to tweet, check in, or text, from the time we got to Prospect Park onward, even as we left the festival area late afternoon, no email, Text, calls, or Foursquare.
I feel the worst for Lexus.
They had this really cool Instaprint booth in the "Third Rail Coffee" tent, printing photos tagged with their hashtag. ZOMG - where have you been all my life. Maybe if I had been able to use Twitter at all, I would have seen some tweets about it!!!
After a day of trying in vain to text my friends about the Luke's Lobster line, tweeting a branded hashtag seemed like a pipe dream at best and salt in the wound, at worst.
There was no way to know about the hashtag outside the booth, and I must say that knowing how much the Lexus sponsorship (combined with the Extra Mooga integration) likely cost (including branded VIP shuttle to and from the Extra Mooga area), I'm hoping the whole Instagram ecosystem doesn't get blamed for the poor ROI of this one installation.
Like the rest of the festival's data services, the one social-media friendly element was a total dud.
Enjoyed the Crawfish Monica, Jean Georges Chicken Sandwich, Craft's Duck Dog, and some excellent beer. I had the Southampton Abott 12, and the
Harviestoun Old Engine Oil. It was pretty amazing how much local/ specialty beer was displayed by Brooklyn Brewery and Saranac, but it seemed like by 2pm they were all empty kegs.
But you'd never know I was there if you're my Foursquare friend...but I suppose I covered that already.
