Mid By Midwest: These 4 Events Should Combine To Create A Super Festival In Omaha
Now that Maha Music Festival has acquired the tech/entrepreneurship conference, Big Omaha, and is running both events in conjuction with one another, it’s a great time to start thinking big. Really BIG. Like best cultural festival in the entire Midwest, BIG.
Omaha needs another big multi day event. Omaha needs Mid By Midwest. Let me explain…
For years Omaha has made its living in large part from big-huge-ginormous multi day events. The College World Series has been an Omaha staple. It is still strong and it was recently announced that the MLB Draft may be moving to Omaha along with an annual KC Royals game at TD Ameritrade Park. This is good news.
The other major event that happens in Omaha, Berkshire Hathaway’s Annual Shareholder Convention, has been exceptionally strong in recent years but the future of this event is uncertain as its iconic founder, Warren Buffett, ages.
Will tens of thousands still flock to the 402 from around the world after the Oracle of Omaha passes on to the great shareholders convention in the sky?
If they stop flocking to Omaha from around the world what will this mean for Omaha’s economy and the recent above average hotel growth?
We’re not looking for Uncle Warren to get his credentials to the heavenly convention anytime soon but Omaha should have another event up its civic sleeve to ensure that we can still punch above our weight in the events department. We need a backup plan. We need a fail-safe.
The South By Model?
Austin’s South By Southwest event (SXSW) is conference tha unifies festivals and conferences. Composed of official parties, trade shows, conferences, festivals and conferences, SXSW has done A LOT to catapult Austin to its current status as an arts/culture/tech juggernaut. The festival of festivals started way back in 1987 and has grown steadily year over year to become the apple of every festival lover in the world’s eye. The three main portions of the festival are film, music, and interactive (basically technology) with several subgenres featured such as gaming, education and comedy.
In 2018 the SXSW festival was 10 days long and had approximately 432, 500 attendees and participants!
No wonder Austin is so happening, so relevant and experiences so much brain gain!
The estimated economic impact of SXSW in 2018 was $350 million.
If Omaha creates a super festival that gets as many attendees and participants as SXSW did in 2018 the city would double its size instantly. It’s probably out of the question to be as successful in absolute terms but we can match the relative success of SXSW…possibly. The conference’s attendance and participation measured 21.6% of the total Austin MSA. If Omaha got 201,750 attendees and participants it would be as successful as SXSW adjusting for population.
Omaha will need to bring out the big guns to create a festival that can attract anywhere near 200,000 participants and attendees. We already have some great events but the events attract mostly locals and regional visitors. None of the cultural/entertainment events in Homaha have demonstrated the ability to attract thousands of attendees from outside of the Omaha area. Perhaps this could be possible if they all joined forces?
Big Omaha and Maha have already teamed up. Who else is in? Will a sort of gestalt take place wherein joining forces results in a super event that is much much more than the sum of its parts?
I think so.
I’ve identified four very popular festivals with attendee counts in the thousands that can get us closer to that figure. It’s likely that we’ll need a couple other events (not listed and maybe not even in existence yet) to join forces with the events on this list to make Mid by Midwest a hit.
- Maha Music Festival: the premier music festival in the Omaha area was the brainchild of Tre Brashear and Mike App of Leadership Omaha’s class of 2000. Now in its 10th year the festival has become a date that many Omahans have circled on their calendars and an event which attracts music fans from the entire Midwest. The festival is usually a Friday and Saturday affair with popular national acts as headliners. Registering around 9,000 attendees each year in recent years, the festival has been so successful that they’ve recently been able to acquire Big Omaha.
2. Big Omaha: Many people know Big Omaha as the conference with the cool cow logo which is what intially picqued my interest, tbh. Registering around 1,000 attendees (if you round up) the conference was founded by Dusty Davidson and Jeff Slobotski in 2009. The conference has become the pride of Silicon Prairie startup community becoming one of the Midwest’s premiere tech/entrepreneurship conferences.
3. Omaha Film Festival: Established in 2005, the film festival has grown into a very selective festival recently with over 900 films being submitted annually. In its busiest year, 2017, the festival had 125 films which were viewed by about 7500 attendees at a single theater in Village Pointe.
4. Omaha Fashion Week: As the name implies this is a week long celebration of fashion. Omaha’s Fashion Week event is suprisingly well respected for its breadth and quality. Entering its 11th year, our fashion week event has ballooned into the fifth largest fashion event in the nation with over 65+ designers showcasing their work yearly.
What would be the multiplier effect if these events coordinated to form a 10–14 day festival?
SXSW has an estimated $350 million impact on Austin’s economy. If Omaha truely embraced this idea and saw an all hands on deck effort our local economy could see upto a $150 million dollar annual economic impact once Mid By Midwest reaches maturity.
Separately, the four aforementioned events barely reach the 20,000 attendees + particpants mark. Separately, these events seem sporadic and lacking context. It’s possible that a super festival could top 30,000 attendees in its first year and gradually build from there. Granted, there are several coordination/organizational challenges but once those are sorted out I believe that the result would be a stronger Big Omaha, a stronger Maha, a stronger Omaha Fashion Week, a stronger Omaha Film Festival and so on.
Having one unified front, one unified marketing effort, one sponsor packet, one major reason for creatives of every ilk from around the world to visit Omaha — what is this worth?
What would Mid By Midwest look like?
When: Well…since Maha, Big Omaha and one of Omaha Fashion Week’s events are already going on in mid August it might make sense to have Omaha Film Festival and other festivals who join also change their schedules to August to get in sync. I can imagine the initial event kicking off around August 15th and the final event or after party ending on September 1st.
Where: The venues would almost certainly need to be located throughout Omaha with several events going on at the same time possibly. During SXSW there are over 3200 events/parties/conference sessions taking place throughout Austin. A distributed festival of festivals would be a great way to showcase different districts and venues within Omaha. Just imagine in a 10–14 day period attending events taking place at venues like Slowdown, The Pella, Sokol Underground, The Waiting Room, Memorial Park and Aksarben Cinema!
Who (else): Besides the four organizations that I already listed we’ll definitely need a few other big time events to join forces to make up Mid By Midwest. Tradeshows, art festivals, urban design or transit conferences, a sneaker convention, a medical conference, a culinary/restaurant conference and an improv/comedy fest could also join in on the action and unify under the Mid By Midwest umbrella. Perhaps a new music festival held on a farm called Cornchella??????The trick would be to create new events and not just move the dates of existing events around. One idea might be to form the Omaha Olympics and have this event run alongside or as a part of Mid By Midwest. The Omaha Olympics could pit competitors representing different Omaha neighborhoods against one another not only in athletic events but also in challenges that can benefit the city somehow.
How: I would think that the individual festivals that would make up Mid By Midwest would remain as independent entities for tax purposes but that the purchase of a single ticket would grant you access to every event. Tickets to individual events in an a la carte manner would be a smart option to consider. Organizers would need to reach a revenue share and work share agreement to pull off all of the event coordination and unified marketing efforts.
Why: If we do this, the city would have something it created together to share with the rest of the world and I know that the world would take notice.
I started a petition on change.org to track support for this idea. Sign the petition here.
My goal is to collect 8 signatures by the end of the month!
