I physically attended the Association of Performing Arts Professionals (APAP) conference in New York City in 2016 and met and spoke with a lot of super-nice venue directors and the helpful folks from APAP.
Slide on into 2021 with COVID still knocking on our doors, and the conference became ‘virtual’. Can you imagine trying to showcase 3 different bands virtually instead of having them appear on stage at the beautiful Hilton in NYC? Sure, it costs less, but ironically, it was a lot more work!
David Victor spent at least 6 weeks preparing, prepping the promo for David Victor formerly of BOSTON, as well as goading the guys from Bohemian Queen and the all-new Stevie Ray Visited for a 20-minute showcase video, a Pitch Session video, a 1-minute Roll Call video, square photos, rectangular photos, write ups on each band.
In addition, David had to set up a brand new ‘Live Streaming’ page on the DVP website as well as a ‘Platform Page’ through APAP within 2 weeks of the conference, with all kinds of info, photos, videos and documents uploaded to said Page.
Next, we both had to learn to use the Platform Page to its fullest effect.
During the conference, each day, David went ‘live’ for a few of the 30 showcases DVP purchased, and introduced the band and the video that was about to play…30 times in 7 days!
It sure was an experience as I watched each showcase, rode rough-shot over the Platform Page for comments, any meetings that venue directors wanted to set up, wrote to folks that watched our showcases to thank them, calls into APAP tech support, etc, etc.
It’s all kind of a blur now, but I could see the exhaustion setting in on both our parts toward the end of the conference.
The bottom-line in the live entertainment biz is that you have to keep your name out there and in front of everyone, at every step, and the APAP conference is just one way to do that.
Here are a couple pics for ya, one from the 2016 ‘physical’ APAP Conference and the other from staring at a computer screen for 7 days or 6 weeks.
