9 of the 11 committee members were present. Absent was Debi Knight and Paul Wohlford.

Indian Summer Festival

• Two organizations interested in taking over operation of the festival made presentations. Both proposals are for Columbus Day Weekend, October 10-12, 2008.
• Jeffrey Wolfe, from Multimedia Publishing, Inc. (http://www.multimediapp.com), would like to provide a “Family oriented food and entertainment venue, which focuses on wholesome family fun.” The festival would remain at Frank Brown Park and retain the name Indian Summer Seafood Festival. Wolfe’s vision includes a cooking demonstration stage, a kid-oriented stage that would include the involvement of Bay County Schools, and a music stage. The music stage would have a unique music theme each day, such as margaritiville, country, and big band. Although the possibility of a Jimmy Buffett concert was subsequently reported by WJHG, it is my understanding that Wolfe is only proposing a margaritiville-style concert. Multimedia listed their affiliations with the Niceville Mullet Festival, the Seabreeze Jazz Festival, and Blue Angels events in Pensacola; however, I believe that they only provided services to these events rather than acting as event promoter. The presentation was silent as to what financial support they would be requesting from the TDC/CVB; however, their handout did refer to “seed money” being used for operations. Although and exception was made recently for the FSU Flying Circus, it is TDC/CVB policy to only provide advertising support to special events. Wolfe anticipates a total attendance of 18,000.

Continue reading “Notes from the April 2, 2008 TDC/CVB Marketing Committee Meeting” →