1. NINE THINGS YOU NEED TO
KNOW ABOUT FESTFORWARD
The Real / August 27, 2015
Stuart MacNaught and Laurie
Kirby
After a number of years helping to build events like the International Music Festival Conference,
Laurie Kirby is taking a chance on a new endeavor with business partner Stuart MacNaught.
This fall, the pair will launch FestForward, a Nov. 22-24 conference at Santa Barbara’s Fess Parker
hotel. While the conference has a music festival focus, Kirby and MacNaught curated it to include a
special series for food & wine fest organizers, a concert by artist Dave Mason, and early morning surf
and yoga sessions.
“It was a natural progression for me,” Kirby told Amplify. “I wanted to express myself professionally
in a way that was consistent with my values on a personal level, including my passion for charitable
good works, as well as sustainability and humanitarianism.”
The pair wanted to create a collaborative environment, explained MacNaught, that would match food
& wine fest organizers with their counterparts in music and film, he said.
“We believe that when you bring people together you get a much better product than when you work
on your own,” he said.
Below are nine things you should know about the inaugural FestForward conference.

2. 9. Destination Santa Barbara
“It’s the center of the universe,” joked MacNaught. “It’s on the California coast in between San
Francisco and Los Angeles and San Diego. It’s a great meeting spot. People love to go there. It’s
absolutely gorgeous.”
“There’s even a technology world happening in Santa Barbara,” Kirby interjected of the region she
describes at the American Riviera. “And there’s starting to be more incubation of new technology in
that community. They have something called the Funk Zone. It’s a really interesting artistic
neighborhood with all sorts of compatible types of businesses with what we do in the festival space.”
8. Collaborative environment
While the growth of mega-festivals shows no sign of slowing down, it’s the uptick in niche festivals
that interest Kirby and MacNaught.
“When I was running festivals I always wished that I had other festivals that I could have collaborated
with for a variety of reasons,” Kirby said. “The festival industry has a lot at stake. Every festival is
linked to every other festival because every injury or death that happens at a festival impacts us all.”
She added that FestFoward is an opportunity “for all the festivals to talk to each other about what’s
working and what’s not working.” And there are all kinds of solutions that come from smaller
festivals that aren’t utilized by the bigger events.
“In the business community they may be competitors, but here they are willing to come and talk to
each other,” she said.
7. Win a Delta Air Lines Sponsorship
Lesa Ukman from ESP Properties & IEG is leading SponsorFest during the conference, teaching best
practices in sponsorship proposals and pitching the sponsor industry. Following the session, attendees
will compete in a sponsorship pitching contest for Delta, and one festival will win a $10,000
sponsorship from the airline.
“Delta Air Lines is going to come and say, ‘Look, here’s parameters and here’s our brand needs. Pitch
us and at the end of our conference, somebody’s going to win a Delta Air Lines sponsorship,'” Kirby
explained.
6. Newcomers Boot Camp

3. As the festival world grows, so to do the ranks of young professionals who want to pursue careers in
the industry. FestForward begins with a newcomer track with panels like “Film festival survival” and
“So you want to be a Rock N Roll Festival Star?”
“Here’s an opportunity for newcomers to hear from the icons of the industry, learn how they got their
start and identify existing opportunities,” MacNaught said. “It’s also for young festival organizers and
for new people in the festival industry.”
5. Festivals Facing Existential Crisis
After several drug overdose deaths at HARD Fest in LA, the LA Board of Supervisors is weighing a
ban on music festivals on all county-owned properties including the Fairplex in Pomona.
“That’s going to impact the entire industry,” Kirby said. “Nobody wants to see that happen. Nobody
wants to see anyone get hurt. We believe through these types of educational initiatives, we
can provide attendees with the tools to create safer and better festivals. We’ll do this in food and
wine. We’ll do this in music. We’ll do this in film festivals.”
“I’ve always dealt with harm reduction in the conferences that I’ve run,” she explained, “and will
continue to address harm reduction because now there are whole organizations that are addressing it.
4. Breaking Stuff at a Hackathon
“Festivals are all about technology,” MacNaught said. “You’re starting to see hackathons happening
at festivals. We thought it would be really fun to do our own hackathon and to work on something that
helps festivals.”
“Particularly females and minorities also,” Kirby interjected, “to give them an opportunity to put their
technology skills to work and come up with something that could be innovative and useful to
festivals.”
The connectivity demands of major festivals is constantly changing, and cashless payment systems are
putting new technology demands on festival networks that often need to be built from scratch.
FestForward will host a 24-hour hackathon, with 20 to 30 people participating from universities,
incubators & coding schools prior to the event. A selected group of tech suppliers and festivals will
present a wish list to the group of developers on Saturday before the conference. At the end of the
hackathon, submissions from teams of three will be reviewed and voted on by a elected jury. Winners
will be announced Sunday evening at the FestForward Reception with cash prizes, Delta travel
vouchers and Domino’s gift cards.

4. “We’ve teamed up with a tech company in Santa Barbara and we are recruiting young tech groups and
want to make sure that it’s an all inclusive community,” MacNaught said.
3. Dave Mason’s Traffic Jam
“This is one of his last stops of the year,” MacNaught said of the “Feelin’ Alright” singer who will be
performing with his band Traffic on the first night of the conference.
“I’ve known Dave for years. I’ve seen him perform live and he puts on an amazing show. He’s as
good as he ever was,” Kirby said.
2. Mr. “Supermensch” Shep Gordon Gets Lifetime Achievement Award from Alice Cooper
“He represents the convergence. He was the fighter for convergence because he started in music but
he then went into film. Then food and wine. He really does embody what we’re talking about,”
MacNaught said of the legendary manager honored in the film “Supermensch.”
Rocker Alice Cooper and actor Tom Arnold will present Gordon with the award at the conclusion of
the event’s Best of the Fest awards, which includes honors for charity, sustainability and innovation at
festivals.
“We want to recognize the people who really are doing an outstanding job,” Kirby said. For the
charity and innovation categories, FestForward willhonor one music event, as well as one F&B fest
and one film fest that gives back to the community in a creative way.
1. Focus on Sustainability
“We’ll also do the same for sustainability because that’s so important,” she said. “Every once in
awhile you see the photographs and things of how events can make a mess of things. Festival people
really do care about sustainability. They really do care about being good to the planet and not creating
a lot of waste and trash.”
MacNaught said the conference will work with a beverage container company and give out cups at the
beginning of the conference and ask people to reuse them during FestForward.
“Our water company is also a sustainable company. We’re really paying attention to that ourselves,”
he said. “We want to highlight individuals who are making a difference. There are some great ideas
out there and we want the leaders to highlight what they’re doing and have our attendees soak all that
knowledge in and try to incorporate it into each and every festival.”
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Dave Brooks
Founder & Executive Editor at Amplify Media
Dave Brooks has over 15 years experience as a writer, including eight years as the Managing Editor of
Venues Today. He started Amplify in 2014 to give the industry its own voice and turn up the volume
on live entertainment.
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