Leeds Digital Festival

So the first full week of November 2010 sees Leeds’ traditional digital week taking its training wheels off and becoming a fully-fledged “festival”… or at least that’s the hype. The reality is with 5 weeks to go there are only 5 events planned over only 3 days of the “festival” – which leads me to ask a few questions.

1. Who is this festival actually aimed at?

Because as a digital marketer who has been working a few clicks back from the front lines of digital development for over 13 years, nothing that has yet appeared on the list of events appears to be there to cater for me. Is this me? Possibly, but no one that I know is exactly getting excited about the events that are at the moment hogging the limelight in the calendar at http://www.leedsdigitalfestival.com/?page_id=379

2. Timing is everything, and is there a reason that Leeds Media chose the days it did?

With Leeds already having a whole host of digitally focused events, from the traditionally nerdy GeekUp, through to more developer orientated fares such as the PHP user group, onto the more general Open Coffee (Does that still run actually?) and even my own snZero event for all in the digital industry it seems that this event has been planned to intersect with none of them – which means that these events will either have to run “special Festival editions” or as is more likely the Festival will run with less events – again, 5 at present. With a little bit of thought Leeds Media could have brought this event back 3 weeks, hit GeekUp and other events AND been able to have an event for The Social Network – a movie based on arguably the biggest thing that’s happened in digital this side of the millennium bug failing to destroy life as we knew it. It’s kinda like there was a free slow in someone’s calendar and they just chose to drop this festival in because they had nothing else to do.

3. Are the organisers actually interested in making this thing a success?

A site which sat as a holding page (and an ugly one at that) for way longer it should have, only then to be replaced with an ugly looking site which looks to have sat un-updated for the last week; a bare minimum of events; not a great amount (any?) of industry interaction; hardly any events… You can’t have a festival without involvement, it would be like the Leeds Film Festival showing 10 movies over its 2 week run – the events should have been SOLID and PLENTY before this thing was announced.

I’m not as a person, and the company I work for are NOT members of Leeds Media which are behind the event, but I wonder if the Festival is in itself a stretch at them trying to appeal to an audience they traditionally alienate (IMO), and also justify their funding. When I set up snZero last year I politely asked Leeds Media if they could help me and would be willing to send out an email to their members telling them about the event; I was harshly rebuked and told that I as an individual could spend hundreds of pounds on a membership to do that, or I could take a hike – I do not for a single second believe that Leeds Media give a damn about the digital scene in Leeds; they are short sighted and money focussed – and for a group that is supposed to be helping us in the media, that to me just seems to be the wrong philosophy.

4. Why do I care?

Probably the best question of the lot, but as someone who’s lived in Leeds for over 10 years and seen some excellent agencies, and some amazing people come and go it really makes me sad that as a city the best festival the digital community can come up with is what sits up at http://www.leedsdigitalfestival.com. Granted, we’re all busy people, and with the economy the way it is we’d all be better served doing that pitch work or writing that piece of code, or designing that next killer app; but if were to think like that then we’d never have fun, and the people of London, Manchester and those other great UK digital metropolises would be right in thinking Leeds a backwater city which didn’t measure up to them. They are wrong and I would love Leeds to shine as a bright digital star in the North of England – but under the watchful eye and guiding hand of Leeds Media, I do not believe it will ever happen. And that’s why I care.

I really do hope that more events turn up soon, and I hope that Leeds digital people get behind what I dream and hope and pray will be brilliant; but I’ve always been a realist unfortunately, and for every hope and dream I have, I _know_ that it will be another digital disappointment.