How Gatsby Entertainment, Scene Ideas, 84 West Events, Humdinger Productions, & Flock Platform are Safely Bringing Communities Together
At the beginning of May, we wrote a blog post on how three industry leaders were helping during the COVID pandemic. After that article was published, we received calls and emails from other companies in our industry that were giving back and doing good for their communities as well. So, we decided to share these heartwarming stories with all of you. Four weeks ago, we published the first edition of our Give Back Series, and now we’re back with our ninth edition.
This will be the last week of the series. If you or someone you know has been doing something to support their communities, then let us know. We’d love to continue sharing positive news with our friends and colleagues. Thank you to everyone who has contributed to the success of this campaign. Now, onto the stories in our ninth edition.
Gatsby Entertainment: Creating a Better Way to Entertain with Social Distancing
Gatsby Entertainment is an entertainment company based in the San Francisco Bay area, providing DJs, bands, live music, variety artists, lighting, photo booths, and more to all types of personal and corporate events. When social distancing became a fixture in our everyday lives, the Gatsby team knew they needed to do something a little different if they wanted to keep providing amazing experiences to people in this new landscape.
The leadership team at Gatsby came up with several initiatives geared towards their teams’ skills. The “slightly different events” they came up with included one initiative – streaming services to entertainers who still wanted to showcase their work.
They also recently launched an immersive event concept that they have very appropriately titled The Epic Drive-In Experience. The Gatsby team collaborated with their partners at Epic Immersive and Culinary Eye to create the one-of-a-kind offering: a fully immersive cinematic experience, complete with a drive-in movie, live and experiential entertainment, and food-and-drink pairings. Many businesses in the industry have started providing drive-in movies as a part of their solution offerings, but there is certainly nothing quite like this. With live bands and themed characters, the Gatsby team lives up to its namesake. The best part of the initiative is that they have been able to create tons of industry jobs for creatives, providing a safe entertainment outlet for people and donating all profits to industry friends in tough times!
Themed food and drinks are created for the Epic Drive-In Experience
After the movie, guests can enjoy a physically-distanced dance party (in your car or around it) as a DJ kicks off the festivities
Scene Ideas: Helping Businesses Reopen and Serving their Community
Scene Ideas was originally created as the necessary solution to meet the growing needs of the local events industry in Vancouver. The company was incorporated in 2004 by three founding partners whose combined experience in scenic carpentry, project management, technical direction, live stage management and design, along with a shared vision, pushed the creative envelope in Vancouver’s live event industry. This same vision has led Scene Ideas to become an industry leader, working on all of the major music festivals in Western Canada, as well as many large scale corporate and private events.
There certainly aren’t many of these types of functions as of late, though, so Scene Ideas was able to pivot their company focus. Using their fabrication shop, they’re now creating a full line of safety products to keep their staff moving forward during these uncertain times. The custom product line includes plexiglass barriers for businesses and passenger vehicles. They also carry a wide assortment of custom-branded PPE, touchless door-openers, and signage to help businesses operate as safely as possible.
Their tight-knit team of industry professionals has done everything they can to get creative and help their local community. In addition to the safety supplies initiative, they have also spent time working on a fundraising campaign for a local children’s charity. It’s inspiring to see how they have been able to keep their business going and still set aside time to contribute to noble causes.
84 West Events: Providing Virtual Graduations for Students
During the pandemic, 84 West Events based in Davie, FL got creative early on to address the number of students who wouldn’t be able to be part of a traditional graduation ceremony at the end of the year. With over 40 years of event production and over 10 years of webcasting experience, 84 West was able to help participating schools plan, pre-produce, and pre-record Virtual Graduations to help salvage the experience so many were missing out on. This crafted offering helped so many schools in their area celebrate the Class of 2020 and bring a little joy to their students. The 84 West team also handled all of the coordination and distribution of the commencement to the virtual audience so parents, students, faculty, and their families were able to safely celebrate each graduate’s achievements.
The user-friendly process they created offers featured pre-recorded welcome remarks, pre-recorded national anthem, an interactive chat, the opportunity to remotely bring in keynote speakers, and other custom options for each school.
Humdinger Productions: Bringing Communities Together
Humdinger Productions, based in Crofton, Maryland launched two different ventures to help their community. The first: https://www.infectionmitigation.com to supply turnkey infection mitigation services business to business. The second: https://yardsign.online to provide the custom printing of yard signs.
During the onset of the pandemic, they immediately began using their resources to print yard signs to help celebrate heroes, graduates, and birthdays. They have never done anything direct to consumer like yard signs. Getting to know a lot of people in their local community in a short time frame and helping to bring some sense of celebration to them was an unexpected privilege. When they launched Infection Mitigation a short time later, they also got to meet a number of other local businesses. This created new partnerships that they never would have had otherwise.
Through Infection Mitigation, not only has heir team done an extensive amount of work in getting events back safely , they have become well-versed in all the new safety protocols that need to be implemented moving forward.
In an effort to spread this knowledge, in addition to providing the products to safely hold events and open businesses, they have put a lot of effort into getting out good information and coaching others as well.
Flock Platform: Creating a Conduit for Safe Events
Flock is a fully integrated communication and sharing platform based in South Africa that helps users collaborate and share ideas remotely. To address the number of people staying at home, the Flock team came up with a solution for event planners to hold events online/virtually via an event website and/or mobile event app with live streaming capabilities and interactive features. Their CEO, Mike Lysko, has been featured on National news in South Africa (SABC & eNCA) to discuss how the platform serves remote events.
During the lockdown, they have also sponsored several pro-bono events to show viewers and event organizers the experience of virtual events done right and to keep some events alive. One such event that they were able to convert was That Fun Fit Fest. The event was originally going to be called off, but the team were open to and excited by the idea of hosting a virtual event. Flock sponsored an app for their fitness festival. Over 2,800 people logged into the live stream. Families across the globe took part in aerobics, dance cardio, and Zumba from their living rooms.
Flock was also able to start their own monthly webinar series. For each episode, they pick a pioneer in the events industry and invite them as a speaker to share their industry knowledge and experience. During the webinar series, they host competitions that give back to individuals in their local community in these tough times through donation programs.
We’d love to continue this series, so reach out if you have a story to tell. Let’s keep the spirit of community and positivity going! We will continue to provide content for the industry to help circulate ideas while we all work towards a brighter tomorrow with the values we’ve learned together in these trying times.
