Get tickets to some of the best arts events in Orlando by participating in ArtsFest, an annual effort of the United Arts. See this video and more at BloggingFringe.com I actually had some trouble finding all the free ArtsFest tickets, so I made this video to help folks out! http://www.redchairproject.com/redchair/orgDetail.aspx?id=236

Huge props to Denna this year for all the awesome videos she posted, and also a big thanks to Mark and the festival staff for posting the Fringe Crush videos on OrlandoFringe.org - that was a huge compliment.

I wanted to take a moment and point out some of the Greatest Hits from this year's Fringe Crush:

Iris gets some advice...

Baby Iris was in a few videos, and was always fabulous.


Logan, one of the writers of High School Queerbook, shares his crush secrets.

Rob Ward's Almost-Crush

Heather and Robyn's Fringe Crush

And then someone interrupts them at the end...?

Shovel and Bucket

The Shovel and Bucket also got crushed on a bit...


Here's what happens when a Fringe Crush is acted upon...

Logan had a Fringe Crush on me last year, and look whe're it's gotten us.

Last but not least, Nurse Gracie shares a secret with us.


What were your favorites? Who did you crush on but not admit to? Did you have a crush but couldn't find a kid with a camera? Leave us a comment.

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.

If you haven't ever seen or heard me talking about the Orlando Fringe Theatre Festival, I don't know where you've been for the last two years - I always take these two weeks and go all out for this cultural hub here in Orlando. By a happy coincidence, the third Monday of the month also happense during the festival, so I am happy to announce that Florida Creatives Happy Hour will be held at Loch Haven Park this month.

Florida Creatives Happy Hour
6:00 PM at Orlando Fringe
900 E Princeton St
http://upcoming.yahoo.com/event/631431

There are about a dozen food vendors with everything from Soul Food to a family serving a Tuscan boxed lunch set, so everyone should find something they like. The main attraction of the outdoor festival area is an outdoor stage, and there is a beer garden with frosty beverages for a small donation to the festival.

After a couple of hours of the normal meet-and-greet, we'll be headed over to the Shakespeare Festival building to watch a show by Aspen, Colorado based artist Barry Smith called American Squatter. I spoke to Barry today, and he bade me to ask you to check out the website for an idea of what his show is like http://www.americansquatter.com/
American Squatter starts around 7:45 Monday

If you're not spending any time at the festival, you need to know that a $6 button is required on top of any ticket prices, and tickets to shows are roughly $8-10, I think American Squatter is a $10, so you'll be paying $16 to get in, but you can re-use your button when you see more shows.

We've also got lots of other fun stuff happening this month - I know the Orlando PHP group is having their next meeting on the 27th - I'll actually be speaking there, about Drupal. If you check the Central Florida Tech Events calendar, it looks like there will be a Scrum meeting coming up Tuesday the 20th, as well as several .NET events next week. You can get links to these events at http://floridacreatives.com/events

For those of you who haven't heard, Florida Creatives is officially getting started in Jacksonville, thanks to Chris Wojda (who runs Likemind in Jax) and Marc Rapp (who attended the first ever Florida Creatives Happy Hour). If you're up in North Florida, you can check out what's happening up there at http://floridacreatives.com/group/jacksonville

That's all for now, please let me know if I'm missing something. See you all on Monday!

floridacreatives.com

Last night was the first day of shows for the 2008 Orlando International Fringe Theatre Festival, and I must say the Fringe has got a lot of great stuff going on! So many wonderful shows, both from Orlando regulars and some new folks as well - there's even a show that takes place in the women's bathroom! No matter what happens at this year's festival, you'll be sure to find daily updates at bloggingfringe.com

First thing you'll notice is that the size of  "The Green" has about tripled in size, with the Beer Tent remaining the center of attention. Because of the Fringe Membership drive and the special treatment for VIP members, beer/wine tickets are now $4 each, but I've seen some folks getting $1 off with their badges.I saw Voci Dance's "Perfectly Broken" at the Red (outdoor) Venue at the Orlando Shakes (the old beer tent location, and I think this is such a great use of this space! Even if the conflicts with the Orlando REP are resolved next year, I still would love to see this extra venue stick around or replace the old Red Venue, which was so tiny and hard to find.

Voci didn't disappoint either, with an all-new show - lots of solos, more dance pieces that tell short stories over the course of two or three pieces, a live two-piece band and some really amazing dancing. I also liked the "Vocitini" table they had set up outside.

Some cool things to check out are Tod Caviness' Poetry Vending Machine - $5 gets you a custom-written poem by one of the poets in residence. Also check out the Saturday night Poetry Smackdown events.Another interesting addition is the Digi-Dada Theatre - Mark Biddle from The Office Art Gallery has written a series of short skits for Fringe Patrons to perform on camera in his mini-TV studio at the Shakes Fest, and he will be compiling the clips into a longer surreal piece to show off sometime soon.

Check out both Tod and Mark talking up their respective projects over at bloggingfringe.com/category/video/



I also went to the opening night of Gemma Wilcox's "Shadows in Bloom", which feels like a prequel to last year's "The Honeymoon Period is Officially Over". I'd like to ask Gemma and see what she has to say about this. Lots more characters, and lots more Gemma!

We are just getting started, but there is one more thing I'd like to mention - anyone and everyone has the ability to get their 15 minutes in this year, thanks to Blogging Fringe. I will be syndicating blogs - it's simple and you get to keep all the publicity! Just send me a link to your blog or your blog's feed - I'll filter out posts that mention the Fringe Festival and re-post them to Blogging Fringe. When people check out the most recent posts on the site or do a search, they'll see your posts, but when they click the links, they are directed to your blog, so you get to keep all the comments and maybe make some new friends in the process. Contact me through www.BloggingFringe.com or MySpace/Facebook to get listed as a Contributor.

Last but not least, come join the Florida Creatives on Monday for a visit to the beer tent and some socializing - we'll be there from 6PM until 7:30, then we'll head to the Shakes for Barry Smith's show, American Squatter.

Hope to see you all out at Loch Haven Park this week! Happy Fringe!

I have a choice: do I take the first three days of Fringe Week off, the middle three, or the last three? I know opening weekend, the last weekend and Memorial Day will be action-packed, but I also don't want to lose too much money from work.

Blogging Fringe (or this year, my personal blog and OrlandoScene.TV) will be taking up some time, but I also don't want to take ALL week off so I can save my pennies. Any thoughts, comments, suggestions?

My Friends,

As you all know, I've done this Blogging Fringe thing for the past two years. Sadly, this year looks like I'll be pulled in more directions than ever before. I've been up until 2AM every night for weeks on end and I'm not sure when this will stop.

At the same time, I really love the opportunities the Fringe Festival presents to show off some great groups in Orlando and Internationally, and introduce the world to our potential.

At this point I have received dozens of press releases from faithful producers who would love a mention on the blog. I'd love to contact them, conduct interviews, post them to the site, get everyone excited and oh so much more, but that's not going to happen.

Some of you have contributed time to this project before, others are simply friends, but you are all tied to the theatre community and you have proven your interest in making our community something special.

My plan for Blogging Fringe this year is to write a small number of posts on my personal blog and have them automatically re-posted to BloggingFringe.com, and I'm going to open that up to everyone in the world. All the content on the site will be release under a Creative Commons license, meaning anyone will be free to re-post and re-mix the work in any medium for non-commercial purposes This includes all archived content on the site as well.

Getting your content posted is simple. We'll agree on a keyword, something like "bloggingfringe", or "Orlando Fringe", something you will only write on your blog if you'd like the content to be seen, and those posts will be re-posted with a link back to your blog. An example of this is on Liberatr.net where all the posts link to the original home instead of inside the site.

This project has never been about my own personal gain - I've sunk hundreds (thousands?) of dollars of my money into creating an environment for patrons and artists to have a conversation, but I believe I've fallen short of the mark up until now. Beth will be the first person to say that the Fringe website is not the place she'd like this conversation to happen - that's one great thing about a site like ours.

All the editorial content on Blogging Fringe - the reviews, videos, audio podcasts, will no longer be called Blogging Fringe, but instead Ryan Price Media, Orlando Scene TV and Florida Creatives. These three websites will just be other first-class citizens of the community like anyone else in the world. If I end up being too busy to post many videos, podcasts or blogs, that will show, because they'll be lost in the ocean of posts created by the blogging Fringe Faithful.

If I have to I'll paint the administrator password to Blogging Fringe on a canvas and submit the artwork to Visual Fringe. That's how open this should be. Anna, what's the entry fee again?

More news on exactly how to get your blogs re-posted to a public, highly visible website for free coming soon. I hope the Fringe itself, the Orlando Weekly, Elizabeth Maupin, Orlando Arts Blog and others will be proud to include their blogs in the list, because the point is visibility, not exclusivity.

The contents of this email are posted at bloggingfringe.com/2008/04/15/blogging-fringe-2008/ in order to make this information as public as I possibly can. If you'd like to contribute, you can start by posting a link to your blog in the comments! All serious submissions (and some not so serious) will be accepted.

Peace,
Ryan Price

321-441-3964
BloggingFringe.com
FloridaCreatives.com
OrlandoScene.TV

BarCamp Orlando is a weekend for all types of creative folks to come together and share with each other. The event is dubbed an "unconference", a format which derives power from the people instead of the event organizers or the presenters. Everyone has an equal opportunity to get on stage and speak, teach or lead a discussion, playing off of the idea that at any given conference, the people in the audience have more knowledge collectively than the presenter(s) on stage.

This second installment of BarCamp will be held over 2 days, Saturday and Sunday, April 5th and 6th, in downtown Orlando at the Wall Street complex, from 10AM - 6PM each day. Registration is free, and a registration promises a shirt and lunch on the sponsors of BarCamp, businesses who are passionate about the technology and media communities of Central Florida.

Saturday is the designated "Dev Day", playing host to everything from web programming to robot building and video game development and everything in between. iPhone hackers, guys with soldering irons, the latest technologies, and plenty that haven’t been realized yet. Every 30 minutes, both venues will have a different talk going on, so if you’re feeling lost in the jargon, apply the "rule of 2 feet" and check out what’s happening in the other room!

Sunday is dubbed "Media Day", and is the place for storytellers, journalists, writers, designers, filmmakers, musicians, 2D and 3D artists, podcasters, bloggers and social networkers to show off their work, share their tricks or talk about the state of the industry. From 12 to 1 we will be talking about the "Past, Present and Future of Media in Central Florida", hoping to give our community a sense of our story, and where we’re headed.

Registration is free, and the event runs from 10AM - 6PM both days with a lunch break at 1PM. The event will be housed in Slingapour’s and One-Eyed-Jack’s, with Wall St Cantina acting as our "hallway". There will be projectors and microphones, chairs and a space to speak. All you have to do is write your name on the whiteboard and you get 20-25 minutes to share your passions with a group of energetic, engaged geeks and creatives. I would not use the words "captive audience" to describe the BarCamp crowd, because they all want to get involved.

Visit www.barcamporlando.org today and register for Dev Day, Media Day or both days. Wall Street Plaza is at 18 Wall Street Plaza, Orlando, FL 32801 - barcamporlando.org/where has a map to the venue and information about parking.

Dear Fringe Freaks:

If you didn't know, my Blogging Fringe site also has a presence on the chat / SMS / microblog thing that is Twitter:

www.twitter.com/bloggingfringe

What's Twitter? The service asks the question: What are you doing right now? You answer the question by using your phone via SMS, or a website, or an instant message client (which might also be on your phone). Once you get the updates in, other people can choose to "follow" you. You can also re-post the updates to a widget on webpages, or you may see my updates in my facebook status message.

I only have one phone, so I tried to figure out how I could make a post about Fringe from my account and still have it show up on the bloggingfringe updates. I did figure it out, and I also decided to let all of my friends get the same ability.

Any updates you send to twitter containing the word 'fringe' or if you address a message to that account using @bloggingfringe will be re-posted. If this experiment doesn't work out for everyone, I will take it down.

This is not implemented yet, but I think a neat addition to this would be if you started or ended your post with an exclamation point ! that might work well to include or exclude your message.

To get started, sign up for twitter and follow the bloggingfringe account:

www.twitter.com/bloggingfringe

...then include the word "fringe" or @bloggingfringe in your message.

On Friday, February 29th 2008, Orlando's celebrated performance artist, Brian Feldman will leap off of a 12-foot platform every 4 minutes, for a total of 366 leaps, falling a total of 4,392 feet or 0.83 miles in all.

The piece was designed for Leap Year Day because it is an extra day in the year, to make people think: &&035;34;How are you spending your 1,440 minutes?&&035;34;

Brian is searching for volunteers; visit www.BrianFeldman.com for information.
Featuring the scenic and lighting design of Curtiss Lee Mitchell and sound design by Jason Kupfer. Also appearing in this video is Terry Olson, Director of Arts &&035;38; Cultural Affairs for Orange County.

Visit OrlandoScene.TV for more videos about events, arts, culture, dining, travel and entertainment.

Copy and paste to a bulletin or blog:
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