Glastonbury Goes (even more) Digital

In case you hadn’t heard, it’s the annual pilgrimage to Glastonbury Festival of the Performing Arts next week. And it’ll be my 7th visit. It is the largest green field festival in the world and has over 175,000 visitors.With that many people, there’s a lot of infrastructure to put in place – sanitation, water, waste, food, parking, camping, entertainment, power, connectivity… those last two are important for the administration of the festival but also to us lowly festival-goers.

Even though one of the delights of the festival is going back to basics and, if you spend your time in the permaculture garden, the green fields, or the tipi fields, then it’s also rather lovely to spend time in nature and living ‘off-grid’. However, you still need to find your friends, find out what band is next on your ‘to see’ list, when and where your woodworking workshop is on, or when your appointment with the reiki healer is. We also use our phones for telling the time. When you don’t have a mirror, the front view camera is also useful to check you don’t have mud smeared across your face! Over the last 15 years or so, our day to day behaviour has been subtly and not so subtly changed by the mobile phone. And because of that, at the very least, we expect to be able to power up and to have connectivity. We also expect our favourite festival to supply us with an app to fulfil all our festival line-up needs.

So connectivity – it’s always been an issue at Glastonbury. So many people, in a small amount of space, all wanting to connect at the same time. It’s fair to say that coverage has been flaky over the years, SMS turn up days later, if you get a call, you can’t hear what people are saying anyway as there’s always a lot of noise, and if you get a text or email, and it’s sunny, you can’t read it anyway. Still we try. And we expect it. How else are you going to find your friends?! We are so unused to saying ‘I’ll meet you at 4.30pm by Gandhi’s Flip Flop (it’s a rather good veggie curry stall) and sticking to it. We’re reliant on SMS and other messaging services to keep our friends and colleagues updated as to where we are and how far away we are from them.

The festival has had on-going sponsorship from Orange, and now EE since the merger with T-Mobile, so for me, connectivity has never been much of an issue. And EE does have exceptionally good coverage on the site, including 4G and also, there’ll be Wi-Fi too. We allegedly had Wi-Fi last year but I never spotted it in action. I can’t say that coverage for O2 or Vodafone customers is as good.

Then there’s battery life. Oh what a joy to have the very basic phone last year with a battery that lasted for several days! At best, you’ll get a day out of your smartphone. A lot of phones these days do not have replaceable batteries so you have to either have a charged up battery pack (extra weight in your backpack – albeit small) or you have to queue for hours to sit by your phone that charges up way more slowly than it ever would at home.

This year, there’s a solution. You can buy an EE Festival Power Bar and swap it for a fully charged on on the site each time yours is drained. Well, you could… they sold out a while back. Hopefully people will be nice and share theirs around but who knows. Fortunately, I’m volunteering this year and at our camp we’ll be able to charge up our phones without queuing for hours. I’ll still be taking my extra batteries and battery pack.

And now for apps… there’s a Glastonbury app. There’s been a Glasto app for at least 7 years and it’s never been much good. It has improved somewhat, but there are still usability issues with it. I think they’re probably trying to get too much into one app. And the app is only any good if you have a higher-end smartphone with plenty memory left. It’s a chunky old file. And it’s only Android and iOS. So for BlackBerry or Windows Phone users, erm, tough.

There are a couple of new digital innovations this year. First up, the 100 page programme is now available as a free PDF download or as an interactive app for iPhone or iPad. I can’t imagine the PDF rendering particularly well on a small screen but we’ll see.

Download the programme here.

More interesting is the fact that they’re using contactless payments on site this year. This can be with a contactless card or with the Cash on Tap app. Of course, this will only work if the connectivity holds up for the terminals and you haven’t drained your battery or lost your phone in the mud on your way home from Shangri La at 4 in the morning!

More about EE’s Glastonbury services here.

Last year’s post in the same vein: 2013 is the year of Glastonbury Mobile.

Right, must dig out my wellies and give them a bit of a clean before I head off next week!

2013 is the year of Glastonbury Mobile

Well, at least according to the BBC, and the monster coverage they’re planning of Glastonbury Festival, they believe this will be the first Glastonbury that will be viewed more on mobile than any other device. It will be no mean feat to cover the festival and to deliver the content to the right people at the right time on whatever device they choose. Having delivered on the Olympics last year, this should be more straightforward – well apart from the conditions – there’s no newly-built, state-of-the-art media centre at the festival. Nevertheless, it’s still a big job.

As for the punters, like myself, who make the annual pilgrimage to the Pilton Pop Party, I wonder if there will be much improvement to mobile communications or to the festival experience via mobile? The app has never been much use to me – what we need is a really good map (where’s the Google maps version of the site?) and the mobile version of the marvellous Glasto Clashfinder. But instead, we get features that the sponsors think are a good idea but are of little use to us paying customers. Maybe this year will be different now that we have EE and their proposed investment in improved coverage for 2G, 3G and 4G…? (More on that here.)  Hey, the app sounds like it will be better too (I live in hope).

Any anyway, it’s almost impossible to see your mobile screen in the sun, or in the rain for that matter. You can’t hear your phone ring and even if you could, you can’t hear what anyone is saying. Battery life is still rubbish and mobile signal is flaky and SMS, probably the most useful feature, can be delayed by hours or even days! I will probably be leaving my fancy Android smartphone at home anyway and revert to my trusty N95 and bits of paper. I don’t want to lose a good phone in the mud as

Still, bring it on, I say. Find me dancing in my wellies to Portishead, Kenny Rogers and The Rolling Stones!

Orange Glastonav review

Yes, I admit it, I'm overly interested in mobile gizmos and when I heard about Orange's Glastonav mobile service, I thought I'd give it a try. The blurb says:

"GlastoNav, the must have mobile application for you and your friends at Glastonbury

• view the complete line-up from The Guardian Guide
• build your own schedule and share it with friends
• find your way around with a detailed festival map
• broadcast your location on the map and send alerts to find friends"

It was promoted heavily before the event via email (neither the URL nor the text in to the shortcod e worked - FAIL) to everyone who was on the Glastonbury ticket database. I finally managed to download it (why I was still trying to do this, I don't know!) and on taking a look, it showed all the bands and which stages they were on which was useful. There was also a map which was handy too I guess.

The option to add your location and the time you'd be there didn't work for me. It wasn't precise enough and there was no interactivity around it to confirm to your mate that you would meet them at that point at x time.

The gig finder was marginally useful, but what would have been more useful would be to set up reminder s so that your phone went off 30 minutes before you needed to be at whichever stage you wanted to be at - either linking in with the calendar/alarm system, or using SMS alerts (provided they could be timely). As it stood, it was confusing so I reverted to using the old skool paper guide. I also spotted typos on times and some bands which didn't exactly inspire me with confidence.

There was a news feature included in the app, but this was dependent on you having the app open at all times and checking it for news. As I only opened it from time to time (it was a real battery drainer), it meant I got the news that Hot Chip were dj'ing up at The Park 2 hours after they finished their set and that Franz Ferdinand were a replacement for Pete Doherty the day after they played. These alerts would have been much better done via SMS and actually, I probably would have paid a nominal amount to be included to get those alerts.

The service was promoted very heavily on site - it seemed to be on everything - the cups, posters and everywhere Orange was, they were promoting the application.

The biggest bugbear about it though was that it was a memory hog and a battery hog. As a memory hog, it meant I couldn't have anything else open at the same time on my T-Mobile Nokia N95. And battery life is critical at a festival the size of Glastonbury for your mobile phone. I took a spare battery with me *and* I got to charge my phone every day at a pal's market stall on site which meant I didn't have to wait around the orange tent for 2 hours every day to charge up. Most people won't bother to charge their phones up unless it's an emergency, and they're certainly not going to use up the battery on an iffy mobile application that drains your battery quickly to boot.

I hear along the grapevine that they got about 15 to 20k downloads which isn't bad going. I wonder how many of those were actually on site rather than armchair viewers? Let's say they did get 20k requests, of which, being generous, 65% successfully downloaded so we're down to 13,000 and of those 40% turned it on more than once which is now down to 5,200. And this is out of a total audience of around 178,000.

It seems we still have a long way to go with this kind of service. Firstly, don't rush a mobile service - do it right or don't bother. Secondly, make it easy and ubiquitous to charge your phone up on site. Thirdly, make data cheap/free so that there's no fear about downloading and using it.

10/10 for concept. 6/10 for implementation. Verdict: Could and should do better.

Technokitten's back from Glastonbury

And it was quite an experience. Arriving earlier was a good thing as it allowed time to settle in, but the lack of sleep really got to me by the end this year at which point I was exhausted. It was good to catch up with some pals from last year and to make some new ones too. And having less mud was a bonus on one level as it made for much easier movement around the place, but on the other hand, I think it made the crowd lazier and I missed the 'Dunkirk Spirit' or was it just that I didn't have an excuse to sip hot cider with a brand in it?!

Verdict on Shangri-La was that it's pretty good and bigger than Lost Vagueness. And The Diner is always guaranteed good fun late at night. Trash City was pretty spectacular. But neither area lived up to it's 'up all night' billing and when the plug was pulled on the power at The Diner at 5am on Monday morning it was a disappointment. Last year, the party went on until after 9am - maybe we got away with it because it was muddy last year or something? Anyway, once the plug was pulled that was it and was the end of the festival.

The music was brilliant and particular highlights for me were Crowded House, Duffy, Spiritualised, Neil Diamond and the awesome awesomeness of The Verve. Richard Ashcroft totally rocked my world that weekend and it was worth the ticket price to see The Verve alone.

On the downside, food and drink seemed more expensive this year (but maybe I just didn't notice the prices last year). Security was much more evident and noticeable and there seemed to be at least 2 security in every tent and they were enforcing the smoking ban pretty vehemently (no bother to me since I've never smoked but their presence was felt). I know they're there for our safety 'n all but not all of them were terribly friendly - although I did spot one girl in the Igloo tent swaying from side to side to the music whilst the rest of us were dancing which made me smile.

I was also unfortunately witness to several folks being stopped and searched for drugs before they got in and saw a couple of men being cuffed on Monday lunchtime. I also heard along the grapevine that there was a drugs bust at the Stone Circle on Friday night/Saturday morning. Maybe it was a rumour as I can't find anything online about it. I also saw a girl being carried off in an ambulance after falling unconscious in The Diner in the early hours of Monday morning. Tent crime was up significantly which was a great shame and maybe a reflection of the fact that it wasn't hard to get a ticket this year - in fact you could get a ticket right up until the event itself. And drugs arrests were up too apparently but that's no big surprise when police and security presence is so much greater.

Overall, there was good music, plenty to eat and drink, lots of folks having a good time and places to play after dark. Glastonbury, you did it again!

A musical interlude

A few musical bits and pieces have struck a chord with me in the last 24 hours.

First off, coming home from the lovely Oli Barrett's 'Quality Connector' do last night, I ended up sitting next to a guy who, as he read The London Paper, turned to his friends and said, 'I'm gonna be a pop star'. To which I replied, 'good choice'. Anyway, we got talking and it turns out the man who wants to be a pop star is actually Herbie Treehead, a Glastonbury regular (I was in the right field at the right time apparently, but missed them too busy doing something else!), who has an album out and is the man behind the chirpy 'Happy Song'. It put a smile on my face anyway when I heard it.

Secondly, I'm browsing through some blog feeds taking a cursory glance at some of the blogs I don't get round to reading very often and stumbled across this post from popbytes about a British artist Bat for Lashes and their song horse and i. Natasha Khan, the brains behind the outfit, is also a visual artist and was also at Glastonbury, although I didn't see her either, but never fear, she's playing the Electric Picnic in a month's time. Wahey! Anyway, I'm suitably impressed with her quirky but very appealing style and there's a video clip of her performance at Glastonbury on theblog as well as a free download of horse and i. You'll need to be quick to get the download though as it will only stay up on the site for a few days to promote the new album, Fur and Gold. You might want to check out her myspace page too.

And finally, if you haven't signed up yet, then sign up to Ade's TunAtheday.com. It's free and 5 days a week, you'll get something new to listen to to get your day to a good start. There's also a discussion forum where you can talk about what you've just heard, make suggestions about tracks for upcoming tunas and generally put the world to rights. Oh, and in true web 2.0 stylee, you'll also find Ade and his tunatheday on myspace and facebook. Go on, sign up, you know you want to!

Tune in for mobile, marketing and media stuff shortly!

Technokitten goes to Glastonbury

Well, I survived it. It's way bigger than you can imagine, even though you've seen all the photos and seen it all on the telly, it's massive. There are more people there than you can imagine and tents and stuff everywhere you look. And then there's food and drink of every kind, art, performance, music, random entertainment, burlesque and weddings at Lost Vagueness, circus and cabaret, trapeze lessons, clay-model making, chanting, yoga, dancing 24/7, comedy, political debate, rain, mud, sunshine, wellies and smiley, friendly people from all walks of life with one common theme of being at Glastonbury and leaving behind their day to day lives for just a little while.

[The picture is of me dancing at sunset at the sacred space on Friday night (I'm in the middle with the hat on) - as taken for The Guardian by Martin Godwin]

So what did I do at Glastonbury...

Thursday. Arrived, after a 6 hour journey, and wondered what on earth we'd let ourselves in for when I saw how busy it already was. We trekked for ages to find a spot to pitch our tent (all the maps we'd been given were worse than useless), were directed to Paines Field eventually and pitched tent, had a recce (is that how you spell it?) and some food then trekked back to get more stuff from the car. You soon learn that when someone at Glastonbury says something is about 5 minutes away, they're on Glastonbury time!

Then we went back to the tent and waited for Sarah and Lozza who were massively delayed due to National Express uselessness, I was wiped out so I skipped the Stone Circle and had a relatively early night instead awaiting Sarah's text message to tell me when she'd finally got through (it came at 5.30am).

Friday. [6 hours sleep - see I said it was a relatively early night]. Breakfast (smoothie and apple crepe for me) with Sarah, Sheila and Lozza. Sunscreen sharing with a lovely lady on the same bench as us. Found Merrell's (the trainer people where some pals were) and clean loos (oh, how wonderful that was). Then lunch and hot cider and brandy (a wonderfully warming drink when it's bucketing with rain). A bit of leftfield stage and walking on water (at least that's what it looks like inside the leftfield stage).

Then I went off and did random things for the rest of the day. Wandered over to see Trish at Youth Music. Met up with Joh and Ed from Brighton and had rum punch and mead, saw the trash city statues, had a bit of a lie-down, rocked at the circus stage and then silliness at Lost Vagueness - dancing to a fab clarinetist, the insect magic show and a wedding, as you do. Then hung with Adam for a bit (life is a miracle boy), met his mate Alex who was much better looking and spent the rest of the evening with him - dancing at the stone circle, a bit of Bjork, a wander through the Glade, very late night tea in the healing fields listening to a techno remix of Bright Eyes whilst watching the film Watership Down on an outdoor screen, catchin' up with Whatley Dude, Big Al and Caterina from Norway (Alex's sister's friend) at the stone circle, getting cold feet (I realised that at least 3 pairs of socks are essential with wellies now) and returning to my extremely cosy, more or less mud free (internally) tent at about 4.30am.

Saturday. 4 hours sleep. Breakfast with Sheila - a very large smoothie and a cake. Then off to the Leftfield and a long sit-down at Trish's as it was raining and she had deckchairs under cover. Then Sheila and I did the random thing together. A sonic art installation. The band in a caravan. Wading through mud and nearly getting completely stuck. Making clay models. Shopping for festi-gear. Lost Vagueness and another wedding and competitive wedding bouquet catching (I caught the bouquet this time!). Costume sourcing and customising for Lost Vagueness (using the bouquet). Back to Merrell's for food (all the best food stalls were near there) and then off to Lost Vagueness with Pimp Daddy, Eh Hombre and Lady Russell to see Madness (it was rammed) and The Beat and then all night dancing in mud (the mud was pretty bad in the LV field) finally leaving at around 6am.

Pimp Daddy was da man and was getting the love - the fake polar bear coat was a real hit and everyone wanted to touch the coat and the bling. And my hat was the biz - just need a better outfit to go with next year. I'm thinking I might finally get round to doing something with all the material sitting in my spare bedroom.

Sunday. 4 hours sleep. Got up around 11am. I think. Random wandering around and being very disorientated due to extreme tiredness and general dazed and confusedness. Food. Met up with Alex briefly. Watched Shirley (she was great and revived my flagging spirits for I was very very very tired by this stage), back to Merrell's for food, water and clean loo stop. Kaiser Chiefs, a walk round the back of the pyramid stage and random high fiving with Who fans. Random wandering with an off-his-tits scouser in a silly hat, helping him find Lost Vagueness via a bit of dancing at The Glade. Bought a flare and watched the end of the chemical brothers. Met up with the fab Merrell's crew and headed to Trash City where I met Random Mike, Welsh Alex, two mermaids, a very cute pirate and danced all night long and absolutely didn't want to leave.

Monday. No sleep. Finally headed off to my tent to pack it up at 7am, skipping and singing all the way. Got in, got changed into dry clothes, packed up (fortunately, most of it was already packed for I knew it might be a large one on Sunday night), trudged back to the car with Sheila. Got very wet and cold and miserable as I'd had to stand in the driving rain for what seemed like an eternity as the car was stuck in the mud and I was stuck with both our bags. I eventually got to the car and changed clothes again (not that anything was particularly dry but my Lost Vagueness PVC skirt came in very handy) and we had to be towed out of the first car park.

Waited, waited some more, waited again and one more bump later from the tractor to nudge us through another field and 5 or more hours later, must have been more like 6 or 7 actually, we finally got out of the car park and on to the road. I got home at about 8.30ish in the evening.. Happily exhausted.

So a big up to *everyone* I met there. A big up to Sheila for getting me there and back safely. And a big up to the whole Glastonbury vibe. Yes there was mud and it's evil and really hard work but I'll be back nevertheless.

Bring on 2008.

For more Glastonbury tales, then head over to Lisa's and Whatley Dude's blogs and check out Bluejoh's pictures too

There are 5 types of Glastonbury mud (at least)

1. It's been raining a bit, so the grass is wet and getting a bit muddy but you can still see a bit of green and it's all very manageable.

2. It's been raining some more, more folks have walked on the grass and now you can't see green and looks like a rugby pitch after a match in the rain and it's a bit splashy.

3. It's been raining so much that the ground is just one large mud puddle - a bit like mud slush - and it's at least ankle deep.

4. In places, the mud soup gets a bit thicker and turns into mud slurry. Still, it's easy enough to get round as long as you have wellies as it's very sploshy and slippy. Very easy to slip on this stuff when you're trying to catch up with your mate with cider in one hand and food in the other. I survived though.

5. And then you get the evil, Glastonbury, wellie-eating mud which for many is a Glastonbury deal-breaker. Sucking at your wellie heels, forcing you into that workout you've been promising yourself at the gym for months (you get buns of steel after a muddy Glastonbury weekend), and it takes an age to get anywhere, and then some. There's no getting anywhere quickly in this stuff. And sometimes, you're just plain stuck. It brings a whole new meaning to the kid's game 'Stuck in the Mud'! I nearly went for a burton more than once, but managed to hold it together. I was only told on the last night though, very late on, that the trick is to walk on tip-toes through the mud. Which is all well and good as long as you've found some big bloke to hang on to at the same time! But even the big blokes fell in it sometimes and I heard tell of many sprained ankles and gashed knees.

Of course, there are also variations on these themes when you make the addition of straw, wood chips and gravel and various states of inebriation...

Bring on 2008!

Glastonbury Festival goes mobile

With Auntie Beeb. Great stuff - must check that out. And they ask you to type in one of the longest wap URLs you can imagine: http://www.bbc.co.uk/mobile/radio/glastonbury2007/

Why did they do that then? It's fiddly enough to type in when you're sober, dry and mud-free. But imagine drunken, muddy, damp festi-goer trying to remember the URL and then even better, trying to tell a pal what to type in, or to text it to them to check it out. I imagine hilarity or frustration or both will ensue. I guess http://m.bbc.co.uk/glasto would be too simple or more likely, just doesn't fit in with their page naming convention.

Anyway, in true mobilist fashion, I will check out the site over the weekend and see how it shapes up.

And for those of you not coming to Mudbury, I mean Glastonbury, you can join the Glastonbury Text Club and get free alerts via text message of the latest news and updates of BBC coverage straight to your phone. Just text GLASTO to 83111. All messages are free to receive, but do check the terms and conditions anyway.

Oh, and if you're interested, the weather forecast hasn't changed much but I haven't given up hope yet.

getting slightly obsessed by the weather

The latest Glastonbury mud index isn't looking good. It's gonna be squishy which might make dancing in a field a bit tricky, even if you're wearing wellies!

I'm praying we move down to showery and up to sun 'n fun - ever optimistic :)

The Road to Glastonbury

is getting ever nearer and I'll be heading off later this week with some of my mates, a trusty tent, a pair of wellies, a cosy sleeping bag and a smile to spend a few days enjoying life, love and music in a field in a farm in Somerset. Let's hope my stuff doesn't get nicked and my tent doesn't leak!

So for those of you who *are* heading to Glastonbury, some bright spark has done an excellent job of timetabling all the acts with a so-called Glasto Clashfinder so you can see at a glance who's on where at what time so you can argue with your mates as to which band you're going to see.

The weather report was looking ok-ish yesterday with showers and sunshine forecast but I've just refreshed and Metcheck's report is now not looking good at all with heavy rainfall predicted. So there's going to be mud and I'm going to need wellies and a waterproof jacket and patience.

And although I've invested in spare batteries for my phone, I doubt I'll be using it much beyond the usual texting and calling to find out where Sarah is to try and rendezvous with her. It's unlikely I'll be using it for blogging purposes as I have a feeling my mind will be on things other than mobile marketing and media, not least trying not to fall over in the mud!

So this does mean that the little burst of blogging today and in the next day or two might be all you get for a week or two whilst I play at being a hippy in the rain.