re: iain simons

We’ve been having lots of meeting about the show. I mean, lots. I’m not really a big meeting lover so usually this would be particularly difficult. This last few weeks though, have been fantastic as a whole lot of new names have entered my address book. This week alone there’s been stadiums, olympics, design, editors and much fun. One of the recurrent questions in the conversations about the show however, and often posed by people on a first meeting, has been, “what are you going to do for the anniversary?”

Honestly, it hadn’t even occurred to me.

The project is going to be five years old this year. Just thinking of the stress, new friends, risks, amazing talks, stupid mistakes and general adventure makes me come over a little nostalgic and slightly sick. I think what’s surprising me most is that it doesn’t feel five years old at all – not just in a “we’re so young and fresh” kind of way – but in a “we still don’t really understand *exactly* what it is” kind of way. We’re getting a lot closer, but there are still a lot of elements of the show that remain wilfully, stubbornly obscure and long may they remain so. Which isn’t to say we’re not trying to formulate parts of it…
I sat down with Allen this morning for breakfast to start to try and model what a more robust, transferable foundation for the show might be. Not terms of the spirit & feelings it might inspire, I think we more or less have that down, but in terms of how we make the right structure to allow others to play too. Every year the event has grown more and more complex, and whilst it hasn’t felt especially bigger in scale (from my perspective, anyway) the challenges have kept shifting with every new invention.
So, over coffee we started sketching out how we could best create easier ways for third parties to use the show if they wanted to – be they audience, developers, students, parents, whoever… What would an a.p.i. for a festival look like?

Notes.

T-shirts are interesting.

Don’t ever, ever, ever write work emails late at night.