Each week follow along as we document the trials and tribulations of a festival organizer. In this behind the scenes look we share what it takes to organize and produce one of the largest and best craft fairs on the east coast. To read entries in the series click here.

As a staff member and co-founder of Hello Craft, I am automatically involved in the running and organizing of Crafty Bastards. My main focus is helping to maintain Hello Craft’s work through the fair and specifically how we present our organization at the fair and how to implement our signature Make Something Awesome area. My diary entries will focus on these tasks as well as the miscellaneous tasks that come up during the planning and implementing of such a large craft fair.

Wednesday, July 7, 11:00am
I meet Kim at the Washington Convention Center to check out our shared incubator office space provided by DCCAH. We were offered a spot along with several other festivals produced in the city to use a languishing retail space along the outside of the convention center as an office through Crafty Bastards. As we both work from home having an office space both intrigues us and annoys us. We don’t know what to expect of the space so we’re anxious to check it out.

One of the doors screeches loudly every time it’s opened. That will be annoying. The space is modest with three work areas with two desks each and a small conference table in the middle of the room. There is lots of natural light which is great. We rifle through drawers and laugh when we find old 3.5″ floppy disks. Clearly the furniture are cast offs from some dank basement. There is a printer, but we search in vain for the cables, and we can’t find paper.

We quickly realize that this space can provide a nice work environment, but many questions about how sharing the space will work going forward and who else out of the other festivals are actually going to use it.

Saturday, July 10, 9:05am
It’s raining and I’m running late for the Crafty Bastards jury. Today is the day where we hunker down for two days and review each and every application to the show. It is fun but tedious work. There are six of us stationed around the table and one on Skype (welcome to the future). Kim sits at the head of the table with her computer hooked up to the projector. Each application is shown on the wall as either myself or Sara read the applicant’s name, business, location and vendor statement.

The morning starts off well, everyone’s spirits are up and the first batch of applications have great photos. I try and coax some gut reactions to how to make applications better on Sara’s Flip cam for some blog content. I get a couple of good comments that will hopefully work well when compiled.

Sunday, July 11, 8:30pm
Phew. We’re finally done. Two long days, fueled by coffee, beer and lots of stretch breaks, we’re managed to go through over 450 applications. Scores have been given and sent off to be tabulated, which is a huge data entry headache.

There are a lot of opinons on how the weekend went and some disappointing trends that started to emerge. It was easy to feel downtrodden by the really bad applications (blurry photos, poorly written vendor statements) and when they all collected together, the day started to drag.

Remember! Bright, clear photos! Clear and concise writing!

We’re all ready to go home and not have to think about scoring applications, at least for another year. I try and get some more opinions on how to make a good application and I think these clips will make for an even better video, if I ever find the time to get it all together.

Wednesday, July 14, 2pm
I meet Kim at our “office”. We hang up a Crafty Bastards banner and some fun wall hangings. A printer power cord has turned up, but still no usb connector. The wifi works and we get excited about scheduling Hello Craft meetings at the conference table. I try and bang out this blog post and get distracted by other work. It is hard to time manage between various projects and competing deadlines. You’ll see when this actually goes live.