[ Irish KC ]
Kansas City Irish Festivals, Music, Pubs, & Events by an Artist in Ireland

This is a sad announcement.

I’ve enjoyed the Kansas City Irish Festival since its beginning, whether you count that beginning as the Labor Day weekend festival in Berkley Park, or as the neighborhood Irish festivals of Brookside and Westport that were to merge and form the city event that ultimately ended up at Crown Center.

A city festival takes a huge number of people to organize it and such is the nature of a website that when I was responsible for the online presence of the event I worked with a very large number of those organizers, all bar one of them completely unpaid.

I enjoyed very much working with those people just as I enjoyed the event itself in all its manifestations.

Last year, 2006, what has turned out to be the final year for the Kansas City Irish Festival being covered on Irish KC, was my first festival as a punter, and I enjoyed the event.

Just like when I was one of the organisers, along with my enjoyment I would have had many criticisms, but unlike when I was an organiser I chose not to voice them for fear of misunderstandings. In general Irish people - actually from Ireland that is - tend to be negative creatures, which certainly includes me, and American people - particularly those in the Midwest - tend to be very positive people. I wouldn’t be the first person to note that cultural difference.

Therefore there have been hundreds of entries on Irish KC promoting the Irish Festival in KC without criticism or even questions being asked that maybe should have been. I don’t know that I need to apologise for that as this is a personal blog and with that comes personal opinion and bias. And I saw no problem in being biased in favour of the festival and the people I knew personally who worked hard and voluntarily to put the event together, just as I see no need to apologise for pointing out inconsistencies that I believe is present in how Irish culture is represented in the greater Irish-American world.

If somebody else had started Irish KC when I was running the festival website I would have been absolutely thrilled. Free quality publicity, frequent and far-reaching? I would have been happier than the odd mention on About.com or IrishAbroad.com would have made me.

In a similar vein whenever the biggest events and news blog in KC - Tony’s Kansas City - gave a mention to the festival (as it still regularly does, but now without reciprocation) I was delighted and shared publicity for Tony in return. So had Irish KC existed back then, as the festival webmaster and committee member I would have rubbed my hands with glee. Indeed if you had let me I would have rubbed your hands with glee.

So I don’t know what caused certain people to react to Irish KC a certain way, and I no longer care. I’ve been working on Irish and Oirish websites since I moved to the US 8 years ago, so I started Irish KC knowing there was a gap in the market for what it has provided. Years of studying search queries that brought people to Irish websites in America has taught me what people are looking for - and what was not being provided for them.

I’m aware that many readers, including many regular readers, do not agree with many of the sentiments expressed here on Irish KC. I think that’s normal and I don’t take their readership as an endorsement of my views. But only one group has continually criticized how Irish KC is run, always in reference to their event and always mistaken in the underlying beliefs expressed that fueled those criticisms. And never once have my explanations been accepted.

Despite the ongoing inaccurate criticisms received I have continued to make the festival the most promoted event on Irish KC with hundreds of mentions - and not because I was trying to, as I was accused of, steal the event’s thunder. Trust me, I know Irish event web traffic and what I was doing was a service - there is no thunder to steal.

So I continued to provide this service of free publicity without receiving a free admission ticket or a free t-shirt. I did it without receiving reciprocal links or being designated a “Friend of the Fest”. I did it without being thanked or being acknowledged for the favours I was doing. But I won’t do it any further for an event that lets any of its organisers phone me and threaten me with legal action while invoking its name.

There is a healthy online presence for the festival out there - many of its occurences put in place by myself. I won’t be taking those down. For those who have enjoyed the festival you know where to find any information you need, but it will no longer be here.

Unless provoked further I’m unlikely to have anything else to say on the matter.

Here then are some memories of the festival, as I’ll choose to remember it:

  • Top Ten Irish Fest Memories pre-2006
  • Online Reactions and Reviews
  • More Blog Reactions and Reviews
  • Photos of KC Irish Fest 2006
  • Videos of KC Irish Fest 2006

But Then There Was Also:
   • David Shaughnessy and Referring to the KC Irish Festival
   • Shannon & the Board, and Linking to the KC Irish Festival

This entry was posted on Saturday, July 7th, 2007 at 5:55 am and is filed under Events, Festivals, Housekeeping, blogs. You can follow responses via my RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your site.