Yesterday, I helped run a booth at the Hollywood Farmer’s Market with my producer (OutdatedDemocracy). Our location grabbed a lot of foot traffic, and a lot of sun. Being our first time doing something like this, we were not fully prepared for the types of people we met and how to engage them. Despite this, we actually did a good job helping people to better understand our mission and we learned from their opinions and the way the day went.
My producer grabbed a giant faux-whiteboard and in a spur of the moment we created an interactive board for people to write one word that described what they thought of our political system. Here’s what it looked like (look out for the cute writing of a kid’s name who just wanted to play with the board!) –
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This drew the most attention to our booth, respectively. However, we also made a banner that made many feet stop, eyes gander and a few ask us what we were doing. Hung behind us stood this –
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It was very hard to get footage and most of it I can’t post, but I did learn that my GoPro has a pretty good built-in mic in busy areas. However, the food truck next to us had a generator running constantly through the morning so my footage was mainly rubbish unless I overlay the audio with a cheerful track or two. Also, the day was fairly grey (even when the sun beamed strongly on us).
There were some really bizarre people that made me feel a little uncomfortable who talked to me for long periods of time about things I didn’t really understand. Or this one guy who rambled on about the IRS putting us in boxes and other organizations I would rather not mention.
Apart from that – I did have a really fun time. I got a few signatures for the newsletter I’m running and then some. If nothing else came of it, I definitely learned a few things and I hope, for something else (to sell, for example), I can host a booth again.