Vow for 2012: No More Foofy gigs!
We want to feel the love at all of our events in 2012 and are willing to let some event opportunities go if they are shaping up to be foofy.
Foofy: Excessively frilly or frou-frou, typically in a manner calculated to attract attention to an otherwise unremarkable person or event. Source: Wiktionary
In the context of Pedal Powered events, foofy is synonymous with greenwashing, needless burning of Fossil Fuels to get there, or huge expense of resources to amplify a vague message.
For 2012, we vow: No More Foofy or Unattended Gigs!
We’re grateful to everyone who has reached out to us about event opportunities. And we don’t want to point fingers. But those on the crew who’ve been there week after week know we’ve had some foofy gigs in the mix this past year. We took almost all the events that came our way in the past year, turning down only an employee event for a major oil company. In 2012 we want to apply a stricter standard to avoid taking gigs that waste our time or use our Pedal Power to further a lame cause. This will hopefully save our team’s energy and resources to give our all to the products and events we believe in.
If several of the questions below raise a flag , that’s a clear sign this gig is likely to be foofy. Avoid it!
- Would we be proud to announce it in our newsletter?
- Are we comfortable doing it? In order to get the gig, do we need to promise something we’ve never done at an event before?
- Does this event producer / client have a message? And is it a message we can get behind?
The message doesn’t need to be the focus of the event. For example, our music events don’t always have a strong message, and they’re still worth doing. - Do we respect the planners / organizers and their work in the community?
- Do we need to burn fossil fuels to get there? This is a big one. We did a lot of truck and airplane gigs in 2011. Using Fossil Fuels to get to a gig raises the bar on everything else. We need to reach a good number of people in a real way to make up for burning
- Do we get to work with kids? Major trump card! Working with kids makes almost everything else passable.
- Does the client care about the event enough to want to be there in person? Enough to pedal? At many of our events, we are left to hold it down and the event contact / client is busy doing something else. Not a deal braker on its own but if 2-3 other flags are up, then this might make the gig unworkable.
No more unattended gigs. We will work to get our people there!
OK, so we are only going to do events we believe in. Now we want to avoid another pitfall: unattended gigs. There were too many events in 2011 that had awesome music, a great message, and not enough people! We will use every tool in our bag to get our friends and people out. If you want to make sure you hear about these events, join our Facebook page, and our newsletter using the icons above.
Bike Fair at Sproul Plaza. Awesome event, great music and dancing, but only 5-10 people from our community showed up beyond our crew who were working the event. Let’s grow that number next year so that we can have more great dance moments like these at our Pedal Powered events.
