One Spark 2015

[coredumped]

Just got back from OneSpark, I have to say what a great festival. I also agree it's much more organized than last year and the app is much improved.
The streets are buzzing with people and there's also a sense of safety. All and all a great time.
I agree too that without the skyway it would be a nightmare. If only the skyway would extend its regular hours to something more reasonable, especially on the weekends and art walk.

Good job to everyone involved. OneSpark seems to be getting better each year!

[marty904]

In case you are interested, I posted an article about the beers of One Spark to my blog. Check it out. 

https://sprbrewcrew.wordpress.com/2015/04/09/beer-plentiful-at-one-spark-2015/

Sorry but not sure how in the blog post, you can say "beer was plentiful at One Spark"... The beer garden had one booth and there were only 3 selections - two Intuition pours that I've never heard of and Angry Orchard. I was not super impressed with the beer offerings for a city that is known for having tons of breweries.

[coredumped]

Beer was available at many locations outside of the beer garden. Even sweet Petes had beer for sale in the lot next door, including bold city.

[One Spark]

In case you are interested, I posted an article about the beers of One Spark to my blog. Check it out. 

https://sprbrewcrew.wordpress.com/2015/04/09/beer-plentiful-at-one-spark-2015/

Sorry but not sure how in the blog post, you can say "beer was plentiful at One Spark"... The beer garden had one booth and there were only 3 selections - two Intuition pours that I've never heard of and Angry Orchard. I was not super impressed with the beer offerings for a city that is known for having tons of breweries.

Hey Marty - We have two Beer Gardens - one has our Intuition brews and the other has a larger selection. The one with the larger selection is at the end of Hogan Street next to the river. Enjoy!

[One Spark]

One Spark Update:

Over 295,500 people have attended the festival to date. Wow! Thanks for all who came out and supported. Contributing and voting goes until 3 pm, so please take a minute and make a contribution to a project that inspires you! https://www.onespark.com/festival/2015/projects

Here's our statistics from One Spark 2015: https://www.onespark.com/festival/2015/blog/one-spark-2015-statistics

We also announced our Juried Award finalists today and they're pitching on the Hemming Park stage until 4:30 p.m.: https://www.onespark.com/festival/2015/blog/one-spark-2015-juried-award-finalists

Join us for the Closing Ceremony at our Main Stage in Hemming Park at 5 p.m. today!

Screenshot 2015-04-08 17.58.50 by onesparkmmvolunteers, on Flickr

[coredumped]

Wow pretty crazy, JTA had to shut down the Jefferson platform due to over crowding:

http://status.onespark.com/

[acme54321]

Is that 295k unique visitors?  If so, impressive.

[edjax]

Is that 295k unique visitors?  If so, impressive.

We had this discussion last year.  Not unique, but total.  No real way for a free festival to determine unique visitors. Count is really no different than any multi day festival that is free.

[coredumped]

Check ins or votes from unique visitors would be interesting to see.

[InnerCityPressure]

Textbook Boomerang wants a recount.

[I-10east]

Wow pretty crazy, JTA had to shut down the Jefferson platform due to over crowding:

http://status.onespark.com/

It's very hard to get on the train at Jefferson, given that the Skyway's Northbank leg is a basically an 'express train' full of people from the Convention Center to Hemming stations' during One Spark. During the peaks, a very small amount of people can get on at Jefferson and Central.

[acme54321]

Is that 295k unique visitors?  If so, impressive.

We had this discussion last year.  Not unique, but total.  No real way for a free festival to determine unique visitors. Count is really no different than any multi day festival that is free.

I know.  How do they determine the number of visitors per day to begin with?  One thing that would be easy to see would be check ins or total number of voting apps that were downloaded.

[Dapperdan]

Wow pretty crazy, JTA had to shut down the Jefferson platform due to over crowding:

http://status.onespark.com/

It's very hard to get on the train at Jefferson, given the the Skyway's Northbank leg is a basically an 'express train' full of people from the Convention Center to Hemming stations' during One Spark. During the peaks, a very small amount of people can get on at Jefferson and Central.

Not happy how this station was handled at all. We went on Saturday and tried to board from the Jefferson station and watched three  trains stop from convention center packed full with no room. Finally, we decided to catch space on a  train heading to convention and just ride it back. When we get to Convention and the JTA worker sees that we aren't getting up to leave, he proceeds to lecture us on how the trains are supposed to be empty so they can load a full load of people. We told him there is literally no way to load from Jefferson and he tells us we are not being fair to the people waiting at Convention. Made me so angry. We refused to get up so there wasn't much he could do.
Not sure if in the future maybe an express train can run from convention to central and maybe a train just go back and forth from Jefferson to Central. Something needed to be done though.

[thelakelander]

The Skyway isn't a good system to handle big crowds. You can't add express trains and extra cars like you can do with more commonly used fixed transit modes. That's why some believe it would be a waste to expand it to the Sports District.

[jaxjaguar]

Couldn't the cars be expanded / enlarged? I noticed that all of the stations have extra boarding zones that are blocked off / bolted shut. I feel like the capacity is there, the cars are just too small to fully utilize the system. I'll try to post pictures later if anyone's unsure what I'm talking about.