I couldn\u2019t find, after a few days, any negative feedback about ICEEfest 2014. I don\u2019t think it\u2019s 100% deserved: we still have some things to improve, but fortunately there\u2019s a certain amount of gentleness inside the industry. I appreciate it.<\/p>\n
My colleagues and I are obviously pleased about that, but nevertheless fully conscious the avalanche of good words obliges us to do a better work at future editions.<\/p>\n
By the way: during the days to come, those who attended the festival will get a link to a survey where you can tell us, anonymously, 101% honest opinions about what was not so great at ICEEfest 2014, so we can improve it in 2015.<\/p>\n
Besides, it\u2019s adequately to say here I feel blessed to make ICEEfest [I couldn\u2019t find another rhyme]. And to make 2-3 remarks, though I won\u2019t start, predictably, with thanks for the event\u2019s sponsors.<\/p>\n
I appreciate what they did, of course, and I am grateful some of them are with us [as a team, not necessarily as a company] since 2008 [remember RoNewMedia?]. Yet I would like one thing to be crystal clear: both the media exposure and the benefits we offer exceed, as a rule, the money the sponsors disburse to cover the event\u2019s costs. And the costs are, as the years pass, bigger and bigger.<\/p>\n
If we only had the sponsor\u2019s money, ICEEfest would have not been possible.<\/p>\n
It would have been just another indistinctive conference in a hotel ballroom where we would have rotated the same people [me, for the instance] that couldn\u2019t have all the time something new to say, so we would have ended up chewing the same ideas and jokes.<\/p>\n
So for the sponsors it\u2019s a fair deal. Win-win. Business. I thank them all \u2013 but not only them, and surely not in the first place.<\/p>\n
1. The first ones that deserve my thanks are those who pay a ticket to attend. That is you, the public. It\u2019s the 1.420 people who were there during the festival\u2019s two days.<\/p>\n
The money we made selling ICEEfest\u2019s tickets significantly exceeds the combined contributions of all sponsors.<\/p>\n
If it would be a content platform \u2013 as it actually is, at a certain level \u2013 this project could live comfortably in an \u201cadvertising free\u201d model. This is the biggest win of this year\u2019s edition, as far as I\u2019m concerned.<\/p>\n
The growing independence from the advertising money brings a clear and direct benefit, and you can see it in the presented content (we decided to completely drop out from scene 1, for example, the sponsored presentations unmarked with a \u201cP\u201d [coming from \u201cPUBLICITATE\u201d, the Romanian word for \u201cadvertising\u201d]; its a beginning).<\/p>\n
2. Secondly, thanks to my colleagues from the media and also from the blogosphere which, regardless of the competition between us on certain areas or of the various sympathies, intensely promoted ICEEfest with articles, news and good words (more valuable, often, than any \u201cfree PR\u201d).<\/p>\n
And no, we haven\u2019t paid to become a news story neither at the ProTV News, nor at Antena 1\u2019s main news broadcast, The Observer. Generally speaking, except for some special partnerships [tickets for media exposure], we haven\u2019t paid for coverage in the content area. ICEEfest was covered according to journalistic criteria and got the media exposure it deserves.<\/p>\n
3. Third, but not last, I want to thank to my colleagues at ThinkDigital that made this project possible again, through their long hours and relentless effort.<\/p>\n
Gabi Bartic \u2013 general coordination and planning;\u00a0 Dannos Tsakalos \u2013 research for speakers and content; Dan Duminica \u2013 production, logistics, lights, sound [Sunday Production]; Stefan Georgescu \u2013 technical assistance on location and web presence; Cosmin Voicu and Mihaela Petre \u2013 ticket sales and registration desk coordination; Andreea Munteanu \u2013 location organization; Ciprian Ailenei \u2013 social media content; Andrei Ursuleanu + the sales team; Mihai Dragan \u2013 art work [MetroMind]\u2018 Athina Radoslav, Andreea Adamescu + the 40 volunteers \u2013 for the essential help given \u201con the last hundred meters\u201d.<\/p>\n
Bottom line: THANK YOU ALL!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I couldn\u2019t find, after a few days, any negative feedback about ICEEfest 2014. I don\u2019t think it\u2019s 100% deserved: we still have some things to improve, but fortunately there\u2019s a certain amount of gentleness inside the industry. I appreciate it. My colleagues and I are obviously pleased about that, but nevertheless fully conscious the avalanche […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-567","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-business","category-life"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dstanca.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/567","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dstanca.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dstanca.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dstanca.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dstanca.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=567"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dstanca.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/567\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dstanca.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=567"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dstanca.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=567"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dstanca.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=567"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}