DBF Meets 75,000 Goal
September 3, 2008 | 8:04 amAccording to a blurb in this morning’s hard-copy of the AJC (can’t find it online), the Decatur Book Festival attracted a total of 75,000 attendees this past weekend. That’s up a good 15,000 from last year.
Funny thing…that was the EXACT number the DBF publicly hoped for before the festival began. FREAKY. Good thing that last person showed up on Sunday. Can you imagine if they only attracted 74,999? Disappointment! 75,000? Success!
But seriously, how are such open events are measured?
UPDATE: The official DBF release is touting 70,000 attendees. I guess the AJC just rounded up.
I was there twice, so I may be to blame.
It sounds weird, but I’m pretty sure that the DBF (as well as other free, not ticketed festivals) relies on estimates from police officers who have some sort of training in crowd estimation.
You know: to serve and protect …and estimate the number of people in a given space.
However the number was derived…we owe a big thanks to Lee Ann Harvey , Darren Wang, and so many other volunteers who made this possible. The results were amazing…and I don’t think ANYONE missed that dorky Ty Pennington.
Lain – thanks for the info…weird.
Jim – indeed you are correct. What always strikes most about the book festival is the obvious complexity of it. Now I’m not saying our other Festivals aren’t complex organisms too, but this one has so many pieces, its amazing how smoothly they all move together.
All the organizers and volunteers are to be commended!
And while its certainly a good problem to have, I wonder if organizers are at all concerned about the number of events this year that reached capacity and had to turn people away. I would think that the festival is somewhat limited to an attendance cap (not yet reached) based on the size of venues.
I spoke to several people who were at the DBF. For the most part, they know that the venues for popular authors are going to fill and plan for it. If they didn’t get in, they generally accepted that but they were able to see others that they wanted and were overall happy that they had come. I’m sure there were some folks upset that they didn’t get the experience they wanted, but I didn’t talk to any. IMHO, one of the really attractive aspects of DBF both for participants and attendees is that it is a community festival, not one in a convention center somewhere. An Atlanta Book Festival at the World Congress Center wouldn’t have the same ambience and I don’t think the same popularity (I think someone told me that was tried once anyway).