This year I thought I’d employ a bit of science to my Blogging of Fringe - I was worried the site had turned into all Fringe Crush, all the time, and completely about local acts instead of National and International. I was mostly right.
Here are some handy graphs to point out why we suck:
Here we see Text only posts at 10%
VoiceMail Reviews and audio at 13%
Any non-Fringe Crush videos at 37%
Fringe Crush takes it home with 41%
My second criticism is that we favored local, and the numbers don’t lie:
International 6%
National Acts 13%
On the Fringe 38%
Local Artists 43%
This scale is even graded on a curve, because I counted Bric-a-Brac as national because they’re from Austin, but they all used to live here, and they were produced by Beth. And the only things in the “On the Fringe” category were folks who were not in shows, but many of them have been in the past.
That means we had a distribution like this:
I guess 19% isn’t bad for Long Tail content. I’d like to do better. It’s a mission of mine to keep that number above 20% all the time, so I guess we did pretty well this time.
The Videos and Audio did have some categories we threw them in:
The new Fringe Moments were 11%
The VoiceMail Reviews at only 13%
The favorite Fringe Crush with 41%
Everything else this year with 35%
Also, I was very proud of us when I found out Beth would be presenting a Fringe Crush award for the show with the most crushes. Denna counted up the results, and by no surprise, VarieTease won! I think that’s a challenge to the cast of Oral to do some more campaigning for next year.
One last statistic, of the 32 shows I saw, 55% of them were not local.
Again, we’re counting Bric-A-Brac and Parlour Games as National, because they are… sortof.
I came across this Canadian improv troupe somewhere in my web surfing this year, and this week I saw their videos on the Montreal Fringe’s Facebook page.
Some of our friends from previous Orlando Fringes will be there, like Barry Smith (Jesus in Montana, American Squatter), TJ Dawe (Totem Figures, Slipknot), and Greg Landucci (Dishpig, Mr. FOX), and Influx Dance (Goals for 2002). Also, some new friends from this year’s festival - The Cody Rivers Show (Stick to Glue) and Andrew Connor (Boom), will be there too.
If this information is wrong, sorry. Iwas having some trouble finding info on the Fringe site. If I’m missing anyone, I’d love to include them too.
Funny thing about Montreal and Blogging Fringe - if you search for it, we come up on the first page, from my post-fringe show last year where I was Seeking Updates from Montreal Fringe. My offer from last month (and last year) still stands - anyone who wants to can do whatever with Blogging Fringe - we have set up some conventions - Fringe Crush, Voicemail Reviews, and Fringe Moments - do with them what you will. If you send me links I will post them here, or I will give you an account and plenty of attribution on the site.
We will even import your blog posts word-for-word, but a warning that MySpace blogs are not very good for that purpose, since the feeds only include a few words for each blog post.
If you’re in Montreal or any other Fringe City, get in touch. I’d love to just know you’re out there.
Trevor Frasier reads a commissioned piece from the Poetry Vending Machine entitled “Just About the Annoying Beatles Cover Band”. At the 2008 festival, patrons could have an artist compose an original piece for $5 or a haiku for $1.
