Response
The great thing about Twestival is that it’s a global event organised by volunteers in cities around the world. While you try to work closely with city volunteers to ensure that everything runs smoothly, it’s inevitable that there will be issues. Without knowing the full details of this case, we can’t comment on the specific problem, except to say this it would be a terrible shame if the brilliant work of the thousands of volunteers in cities around the world was tarred by one localised mix up in communication. We have contacted DNA Lounge to establish what went wrong, seeing how we can rectify it and passing advice to other organisers to ensure it doesn’t happen again.
I encourage the DNA Lounge in San Francisco to link to our response posts or remove theirs in an effort to balance both sides of the story as comments are turned off on this and the title of the post is highly sensationalized. What their post neglects to mention is how the Twestival SF team did make numerous attempts to work with the venue and without writing the full facts they are misleading.
UPDATE 2.34pm PST - Awaiting response from DNA Lounge before commenting further.
UPDATE 7.51pm PST - Despite numerous emails and direct tweets to try and have a conversation before putting out any detailed comments, there has been no response from the DNA Lounge. The Twestival SF team have just posted this response.
UPDATE 9.36pm PST - Received email response from Barry at DNA Lounge, arranging a time to meet. Waiting to hear from Jamie to clarify and link to posts.
Twestival is organized 100% by volunteers. 100% of all fundraising and ticket sales go to support the cause.
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11.34am PST. Email to DNA Lounge, San Francisco.
Barry, Jamie,
I just wanted to write to you to express my sincere apologies on behalf of the Twestival San Francisco team.
I am the global organizer of Twestival and woke up to find your blog post this morning. I am just speaking with the organizing team, who are all volunteers to get their side of what happened here. Clearly there was some miscommunication, but I can’t believe that they were intentionally trying to hurt the DNALounge.
I appreciate that you are venting with the blog post, but it is now making the rounds and as your comments are closed, we can’t respond. I am working with thousands of volunteers around the world and people are bound to make screw ups. I don’t want this isolated incident to impact negatively on the 150+ causes we are supporting in two weeks.
I am currently in SF until Thursday and happy to pop down later today or chat about this on the phone to see what we can do. Just confirm the best number and time to ring. Or you can find me on skype ‘xxxx’.
Kind regards,
@Amanda
Wow. I am so glad we have been able to find a place willing to donate their space and welcome us with open arms here in the midwest.
I certainly hope things work out in a positive manner for San Francisco. Fingers crossed. Hopefully this will just be a slight bump in the road.
Thank you @BonnieGlick
Comments are on at his blog (as opposed to the Lounge’s news site) and he’s responding to them
http://jwz.livejournal.com/1078015.html
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Amanda, it’s interesting to read in your note that you don’t believe “that they were intentionally trying to hurt the DNALounge.” Of course they were not. And no one has ever suggested that they were. The problem is that they were behaving in a supremely unprofessional manner. And it seems like they were pretty rude to boot. Whether or not there was intention, the fact is that damage was done. Please don’t set up this “intentionality” strawman; the question is, “did we fuck up?”. From all appearances, the answer is yes.
Jackson, thanks for your comment. I completely agree that things were not handling well on either side and of course I am not going to comment on specifics, as it is between the SF organizers and the venue. However, if we are going to call out ‘unprofessionalism’, I think that the DNA Lounge is guilty of this as well. To blast something like that out, especially when it impacts causes and volunteers is not cool. Sadly, they didn’t even allow comments on that post, so people aren’t getting the full story. I believe @twestivalsf has now apologized, admitted where they went wrong. I am going to see the venue later tonight. Despite my requests to link to our posts on email and Twitter to Jamie, he still has not done so. I’m told we have mutual friends, so I am holding out hope for him to do the right thing here - but I’m not getting much in return.
Hello again, Amanda. Please don’t set me up to “agree” that things were not handled well on “either side”. From what I can tell, DNA did exactly what they should have done. They have booked hundreds and hundreds of bands and events over the years (http://www.dnalounge.com/calendar/ledger.html) and presumably there have been thousands of things that didn’t work out. That your event is the first to generate such a heated response is really saying something. You also may be mistaken when you say they are unprofessional for “blasting” out that criticism. It was not “blasted”. It was written on a small status blog for people who have some interest in the day-to-day goings on around the club. Something like “wow, we really got screwed by these imbeciles” is perfectly appropriate there.
Finally, you may want to consider whether your “it’s not our fault!” response is the best way to restore any public confidence in your abilities as a promotor. When you have a disaster like this the proper way to handle it is “The Three A’s”: acknowledgement, apology, action. In this case, something along the lines of “Wow we really screwed up. We’re sorry for the damage, our volunteers had no experience whatsoever. We’ve sent in some experienced people to shepherd the process through.” Anything less, or else, is going to look like childish, unprofessional whining.
You have a local credibility problem. Jamie Zawinski, who has done more to ensure the ongoing viability of downtown San Francisco’s nightclub/nightlife scene than you could possibly imagine, does not. San Francisco communities are very tight-knit and I would not be surprised if you or your local promoters discover that getting a venue in the future becomes quite difficult or expensive.
Thanks again for all your comments. As I mentioned, I am going to the venue tonight to see how we can rectify this.
I find it ironic that you are complaining about the lack of a comment feature on his blog and yet you have disabled comments on the “Our Side Smiles” entry you made on your larger blog.
Thanks for letting us know. The comments are enabled on our official site, sanfrancisco.twestival.com, but I have now informed the team about the external site they set up. twestivalsf.com as this should already have been done.
The comments are enabled on all sites. They have never been turned off. We have not received anything other than on the official Twestival website and all comments have been pushed through.
If a location has an issue with us, they should have reached out to us. They had all of our contact information to get a hold of us directly. The way they handled things were unprofessional and uncalled for. We had reached out to the venue several times to do our part. They could have easily taken another booking because they did not have a signed contract. All it took was a simple phone call to say “Hey, we may have someone else interested in that time and would like to know if you are still available.” End of story.
We have exhausted our efforts on this end and its sad that someone had to go out and do what they have done. Amanda is going out of her way to fix something that should have never happened. And for that, we apologize.
Just to put things in perspective, the titanic was a disaster. the earthquake of 1906 was a disaster. the tsunami a couple of years ago - a disaster.
I can’t believe this individual is even being humored.
An apology for a simple mistake is sufficient.
>”An apology for a simple mistake is sufficient.”
Definitely. But have you noticed how that’s not happening?
An apology has been made. It has also been made on behalf of the global team (see above). Thank you for your comments.
>”as your comments are closed, we can’t respond. ”
Are you honestly unaware of where the comments are?
http://jwz.livejournal.com/1078015.html
Because you keep saying that and, to everyone else on the
internet, it just makes you look more and more clueless
Hey “sanfrancisco” (is that you Krystyl Baldwin?) comments are NOT open on your site. They are moderated and who knows what’s being edited out. Don’t you know the difference?
Yes. Aware of those comments, thanks. They are not attached to the post.
You can respond on the LJ site. That’s the one that half the world is reading. Also, why are comments closed on the sanfrancisco.twestival.com site?
Comments still disabled at SF site!
They are not disabled. I tried to email to see where you were looking, but the email given was a fake.
Comments are not disabled as you will see all comments have been posted
Honestly? Sounds to me like you stuffed up, but I wouldn’t sweat the rant from jwz: he’s well known for a bad attitude, particularly when he knows he’s actually partly at fault. Have a look through his livejournal account & you’ll find very few comments at all critical of him, mainly because he’s in the habit of deleting the comments & then blocking the user who had the nerve to question his claim to deity.
Yes, you stuffed up. So did he (I can’t believe they held a booking for you when there was no deposit & no contract!). Mistakes happen all the time. It’d be nice if Jamie & his fan club could get over themselves.
(And yes, I’m one of the folk banned from his web log. I find it amusing that his little fanboys are critical of YOU for not allowing comments, when the censorship that goes on at his weblog is rather more covert.)
What I find most amusing about this whole twitter “disaster” is that the organizers had the chance to book one of the best clubs in the city, with (yes, this may be surprising given the current situation) a fantastic staff, decent bartenders, in a great location, and plenty of free parking. And instead picked this horrible little northbeach ripoff joint that exists solely to extract fantastic amounts of cash from drunk suburbanites on friday and saturday nights. Cripes, I mean have you seen their “bottle service” menu? [ http://horizonsf.com/bottle.pdf ] Awesome! I’ll take the $500 bottle of Hennessy, please.
I don’t know anyone on any side of this issue (though I have been to DNA a dozen times or so and might recognize Jamie if someone pointed him out) but I was giving some though to attending. But sorry no, there is no chance I’m going to waste an evening getting ripped off in a prefab bar surrounded by strip clubs and cops.
Noone spoke to the head of security about anything. There currently (and at the time the deposiit was delivered) is noone in that position. Not saying you’re lying. But. It would help if your “truth in twiitter admonition applied to yourself.