How to create & manage an active events listing in the dust?

[tallbirdme]

Our Regional Burn is a fairly small festival (reached our first 1000 last year) and the daily events guide that is produced on site consists of printed paper stapled onto boards to let people know what is happening. Basic stuff lol. But we have our usual issues with the dust - printer breaks halfway through the week, paper jams, ink doesn't work etc. This paper is also distributed around the camps, and stapled to the walls in communal areas.

Last year we had an intranet system on site where people logged into a web submission form using smartphones etc. They could also submit them on paper for someone (me) to type into the intranet form and then all this info was collated with the submissions that were entered online before the festival started. The result was saved in some readable, not so pretty, format and printed out, then distributed along with the daily newspaper! Pretty cool huh!

We get more tech savvy each year, and we're looking for a way to perhaps (live?) stream the info via a projector or twitter stream onto a screen this year – but are having issues with the screen not being seen in the bright sunlight, ever under shade it might be difficult to read, plus the projector verses the heat & dust might not be a good combination!

I’d also like to drastically cut down the amount of time I spend in the office formatting & sorting out the events guide, plus the amount of paper we use.

Any ideas?

[some seeing eye]

Small distributed display solution - some ebook readers use epaper displays which are sunlight readable and illumination for dark. They have browsers, so a interwebs shared calendar app anyone can update, wifi and server or Internet connection.

[9ah]

Is this for the playa or your regional burn. Where is it held?

If you have all the data and can edit in a control space you can create a document and image or post that. You could consider using a black background and text that would be easily readable on a black background so you could project it onto a wall. Maybe create a control space to print your information if you like the printing route.