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Post by flyingfish on Jun 29, 2015 17:35:20 GMT
Also heard some comments from members of the public that they came only because someone else had mentioned it to them. So publicity is maybe something to look at. Are there options to get one or more kite traders selling kites? One way to get people to take up kiting is to give them the opportunity to buy a kite, and have expert help available to make sure their kite will fly and they leave positive about flying kites. We got a few members of the public asking about buying kites (after we told them our kites weren't for sale!).
By the way, I did not intend to criticise Wendy at all, far from it. She should not have found herself in a situation where she was ground-crewing for us (thanks again Wendy, if you see this!), and at the same time wear a marshall's hat in getting the little **** out of the arena, while its parents clearly couldn't be bothered.
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Deleted
Deleted Member
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Post by Deleted on Jun 29, 2015 19:03:05 GMT
Council advertising.
Its the same comment from members of the public at events where councils are involved.'we did not know about this event' You have to realise that the council staff are just ordinary people with little or no commercial experience in promoting an event.
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Post by ekim on Jun 29, 2015 22:51:35 GMT
will be commenting later once I have had time to get my thoughts together however having read Lex's comments regarding the sterling work carried out by Wendy I just had to add my thanks. Not only did she have to cope with the errant child but Im afraid I increased her workload by inadvertantly landing the Dream On a few more times than planned. Thanks for getting me airborne again so quickly Wendy. Mike
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Post by malcolmf on Jun 30, 2015 12:07:33 GMT
Just a feedback on a couple of comments.
Lex mentioned kite traders, unfortunately there appears to be no-on trading at festivals who come from within Kent, Surrey, W. Sussex, Greater London or Essex. Our present trader Hiz-a-kite is ending trading this year at festivals. So far have not found a replacement for Teston next year and certainly not for Bewl Water, as all traders now wish to be on site for two days. This fully understandable if travelling some distance, it does take time to set up and take down their displays of kites. Last year and this year my other half Debbie was selling kites on behalf of KKF in the gazebo, and it did seem the public was aware to the fact that we almost sold out this year, just a few kites remaining and a couple which were brought back as unflyable. Rather than have upset customers whilst we got these to fly we exchange the kites or gave a refund if nothing else was suitable. If we are unable to obtain a trader for one day events or even for two day events the committee will have to decide if KKF should continue to source kites and sell to the public. I have had one suggestion of a trader, who I will approach at Brighton, but belief they are based in Southampton.
Len raised the issue of kite making workshops needing 4 + members: wherever possible I arrange for some-one else to run the workshops and we take £1 for every kite made and sold, so the charity or as at Herne Bay, the group behind the funding, take the remainder. The exception is Brogdale as KKF are requested to bring along the Kite Making workshop for the Cider Festival and especially the Apple Festival.
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Post by malcolmf on Jun 30, 2015 12:10:07 GMT
will be commenting later once I have had time to get my thoughts together however having read Lex's comments regarding the sterling work carried out by Wendy I just had to add my thanks. Not only did she have to cope with the errant child but Im afraid I increased her workload by inadvertantly landing the Dream On a few more times than planned. Thanks for getting me airborne again so quickly Wendy. Mike I also would like to add my thanks on the forum to Wendy, as without her it would probably have been me out in the arena, she also was out in the rain shower that came along, without any waterproof jacket.
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Post by rokbottom on Jun 30, 2015 15:45:42 GMT
Len raised the issue of kite making workshops needing 4 + members: wherever possible I arrange for some-one else to run the workshops and we take £1 for every kite made and sold, so the charity or as at Herne Bay, the group behind the funding, take the remainder. The exception is Brogdale as KKF are requested to bring along the Kite Making workshop for the Cider Festival and especially the Apple Festival. Ah! I think you misunderstood me, I said we were 4 Members short to add to our Display of Kites as THEY were attending a Kite Making Workshop. Len.
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Post by rokbottom on Jun 30, 2015 15:55:25 GMT
We got a few members of the public asking about buying kites (after we told them our kites weren't for sale!). I had a lot of Kites for Sale in My Car, these were those remaining unsold after our Online Auctions and all the 2 Line ones in near perfect condition and the single line ones in good condition, they were not assembled but photos were available in the Catalogue along side the Posters advertising them. I am just a Member and not a Trader. Len.
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Post by ekim on Jun 30, 2015 21:53:00 GMT
Feedback
Firstly let me say how much I enjoyed the day, for a small club with limited resources I think we put on a good show however there are always things that could be done to make it better.
Steve & Alex have both pointed out the rather disappointing arena "barrier". Before lunch the tape had become so stretched that it was almost useless more stakes would have helped and made it look a bit more like a fence line rather than a flappy bit of striped tape blowing in the wind. Having said that it survived well and was only breached by a group of teenagers at the very end of the day.
The problem of errant children dogs all kite festivals, I cannot think of a single event that I have attended that didn't have this problem children and sometimes whole families have wandered through the arena to the bafflement of all. Perhaps a slightly better looking arena fence might help, however I don't think anything would have stopped one child who as I understand it was ejected from the arena at least three times during the day.
We do need to look at trying to provide more voice commentary, Malcolm did a sterling job and I understand from Steve that the delay on the speakers made it very difficult not to sound drunk as you ended up effectively talking over yourself. The indian fighter demo certainly needed some explanation especially as the kites are so small in a large arena that it can easily look as though nothing is happening. We shouldnt be to hard on ourselves though, there were big gaps in the flying and commentary at Basingstoke but it didn't distract from the day.
While on the subject of the PA, I did feel that generally the background music was to loud, at times I found it deafening.
The big kites / little kites debate is an interesting one and I think we had the balance about right for the size of the flying site. Jamie's dog and Barbara's tiger did attract attention and there is a place for them, but with a small site and limited personel we couldn't accomodate the very large inflateables in the air all day.
Kite flyers from other clubs will either attend or not I'm not sure one can do much to change their minds. However once someone attends a friendly event they tend to go back and I am sure that if we can persuade people that the event is worthwhile they will eventually come along and hopefully we will have them hooked. It is difficult as the kiting calendar is very full and one cannot attend everything. Hopefully as photos of the day circulate around t'internet others will see that it was a good event that they missed out on.
I thnk we have kite sales just about right at this event Debbie did a wonderful job in selling almost all the stock we had, there is a demand.... just not a large enough demand to interest a commercial trader. We have had similar success at other small events and, provided it doesnt become to much of a millstone around someones neck, think that we probably should continue selling kites for future events.
We had a steady stream of people during the day although it didn't look very crowded at any point in time. Lots of people walked through the park and many photos were taken. As far as publicity is concerned there is always something missing. If you pinned a notice to everybodys eyeballs there would still be people who hadn't heard about the event. We spread the word online, I along with others shared the event poster on my facebook wall and Steve managed to get a mention on local radio. I dont live in Herne Bay but seeing as they were providing the PA system I suspect that the local radio had mentioned the event. Kites in the air always attract people and Im sure some people would have been attracted by the racket issuing from the speakers on the day. The few people I had time to talk to seemed to be enjoying themselves.
The main downside for me was the disappearance of everyone when a few drops of rain fell and the fact that they didnt return. We cannot control the weather so nothing much can be done about that.
All in all a good little event that I think shows some promise for the future.
Mike
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Post by flyingfish on Jul 1, 2015 7:47:14 GMT
Few more thoughts (and if people feel I'm interfering in KKF's running of the event, simply tell me to shut up!).
Would be nice to have a few more dual/quad-line displays. Are there any dual-line trick-flyers in KKF who could demonstrate kite tricks? I also saw a blue quad-line Albatross (Chinese Rev-alike) in a corner of the arena at some point. Don't know if that belonged to a KKF member, but if it did, he or she could have demonstrated what you can do with a quad-line kite. For both, commentary is essential, to give the public some idea as to what they're seeing.
Stewards/marshalls to prevent people coming into the arena is essential in my view. Nothing happened this year, but it only takes one child to be hurt by a kite or line flying at high speed to create a nasty insurance mess, a vastly increased insurance premium, and almost surely the end of Herne Bay Kite Festival. Just look at what happened to Malmesbury ...
The delay in the commentary was a bit unsettling at first, but I think I quickly got used to it. The roving microphone mostly worked, except when I was out of range fixing the ferrule on the Dream On.
Finally, IF you guys want us back next year, and we can make it, we intend to have a few more strings to our bow in terms of demos we can do in the arena for the 2016 festival season (one of these is an improvised quad-line routine with VampDevils; no guarantees at this point in time, though).
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Post by timtank on Jul 1, 2015 10:24:31 GMT
The Albatross was Len's, Lex. Bill was flying some trick during the day too, shame Gareth couldn't make it. I flew some 4-line with my 4.2 C-Quad (glad there were no errant kids under that!) and also my Quadrifoil that I'd never flown before so wasn't set up properly (in fact I'm pretty sure it had never been flown before). Did manage a bit of 2 line later but too late. We were mainly flying single line as is often the way of the club and with so many heavy gauge lines around, flying sports kites wasn't a good idea unless you're tucked away at the back where no-one could really see you. i'm not sure how many of our current members regularly fly multi-line these days although we've had some in the past.
There aren't many traders left in the south-east these days, those still going tend to trade more online these days. I only know of Andy Thomas who still has a shop, but as we know, his home trade is good enough for him not to want to do festivals any more. We've had some really good festivals in the past in Kent but there seems to be a bit of a decline of late although Teston still thrives well. Mote Park was good but a bit marred by the weather, Dover was great but only a one-off. Margate (KSGB not one of ours!) always attracted big crowds but even that seems to have gone west now.
I can't believe that there is a lack of interest in kite flying in this area given that during that 2 hour part of the Whitstable Oyster Festival, Tankerton Slopes will be full of kites (most bought from Andy on the day!) and the fact that we also have good kite surfing beaches in Kent. Trouble with most power kiters is that it's more to do with the thrills and the surfing. The simple joy of flying single line would be beyond them. But then I doubt some surfers could handle anything other than the LEIs they fly!
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Post by flyingfish on Jul 1, 2015 10:39:27 GMT
What I meant with dual/quad-line kite flying was a specific arena slot dedicated to either dual-line trick flying, or 'how to fly a quad-line kite' (similar to the intro I did for flying dual-line kites). So not in a corner to avoid the single-line kite lines, but with full focus on them. If there are a few dual-line trick-flyers within KKF, or a few can be invited to come, you could arrange a trick-out, letting the public vote for the winner of each round. Way to get the public involved ...
I guess this comes back again to what KKF wants the festival to be and do.
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Post by rokbottom on Jul 1, 2015 12:06:00 GMT
I guess this comes back again to what KKF wants the festival to be and do. No, It is what the KKF can afford or get Sponsorship. How do Flying Fishes Club find the funds to put on a Festival?. Tim mentioned that Teston is still going strong, only because a couple of KKF Members have donated monies to enable it to continue and the KKF make up the shortfall, so it means that Teston runs at a large Loss. Getting Sponsorship is nigh on impossible, No it is impossible!. Len.
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Post by flyingfish on Jul 1, 2015 12:28:59 GMT
How do Flying Fishes Club find the funds to put on a Festival?. We don't put on festivals. We fly at festivals when the organisers invite us to fly and be part of those festivals.
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Post by malcolmf on Jul 1, 2015 15:44:40 GMT
Thanks for all the comments so far, which are really useful feedback some of which KKf can adjust themselves and others are down to HBCGP obtaining enough volunteers for the day and funds to make the barriers better.
Lex you are not interfering in anyway with KKF with you suggestions. Last year we did have a couple of slots where members showed off trick flying and also rev flying. Unfortunately some of those who contributed to these slots last year were unable to attend, and Bill who was trick flying on the far side of the arena, has problems with his knees and feet so was not sure if he could put on a performance in advance.
Len I do apologise I did misunderstand your point about 4 members and workshop as they had booked for the Robert Brassington workshop which was announced after we had booked our date and put on the kite calendar.
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Post by flyingfish on Jul 1, 2015 15:56:17 GMT
One other thought: how about having a dedicated slot in the arena to allow kids who have made kites in the workshop to fly them in the arena and the centre of attention for 15 minutes? With expert kite flyers on stand-by to help them if necessary? Great way to get the public involved, and it really worked in Malmesbury and Weymouth last year.
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