Today I travelled through to Maryville, TN for a wrap-up meeting after the 2018 Smoky Mountain Fiber Arts Festival. We met at the Vienna Coffee House (http://viennacoffeehouse.net/) a great coffee shop/eatery. We had a meeting room booked and were treated to a great picture show (it helps that the chairperson is a photographer) along with details of costs, statistics, and some of the feedback received. For my part we had 11 more vendors than last year, and 60% signed up on Sunday for 2019, to ensure they get the same spaces. With representatives from all the festival committee areas at the meeting today we quickly moved on to gathering ideas for the 2019 Festival.
Next year the Festival will be held from April 12 through 14. This is slightly earlier to avoid a clash with Easter. I will be volunteering as the Vendor/Volunteer co-ordinator again and already have some plans on how to streamline some of the interactive work with vendors. I received positive feedback on the planning work for 2018 and approval to start work on some more minor changes. The big highlight was that we received lots of positive feedback about the upgraded map I prepared (although it still needs a little work!).
The 2019 Festival will be the 10th, and because of that we are considering some special efforts to recognise loyal vendors, regular instructors, and committed contributors. I will add links to this blog and the kiwiweave web pages as we get them set up. It should include the slide show we watched.
This year I will be working on creating a database for the many vendor/space options and will have to improve my graphics skills to improve the map. Perhaps one could populate the other, although I suspect my IT skills may not stretch that far.