Autumn Market Research
Market landscape (live)
Source of truth: Greater Sacramento Autumn Season - Market Landscape — edit All only; browse 2026 section bands and 2025 on year tabs.
Seeded from coalition field notes and the internal Greater Sacramento Autumn Season — Market Research narrative.
Column schema: Autumn market landscape schema (in the festival repo — clone for agents).
Season coordination (essay)
Same calendar, different story — cross-season lane assignment (autumn 2026 worked example). How crowded calendars look like competition without intention, and what changes when each host owns a role and market.
Weekend booking
Decision engine — moon-relative Saturdays, draw-based collisions, heat vs rain, Saturday-only product.
2027 example — five candidates · provisional recommend Sep 18 · venue still open.
Venue factors — parking, buildings, shade, procession route; EG Regional Park GPF blackout.
Schedule confidence — three tiers
The 2026 season is split by how sure we are about each occurrence:
| Tier | Definition |
|---|---|
| Confirmed | Calendar steward verified the date for planning |
| Tentative | Spoken to organizer; they gave a committed date but event is not finalized |
| Estimated | No organizer contact yet; date projected from prior held occurrence (see below) |
How to estimate dates
Do not copy last year’s Gregorian date. Mid-Autumn moves on the solar calendar.
Lunar-aligned Mid-Autumn / Moon / Lantern events: measure the prior held occurrence as MAF Saturday ± N weekends, then apply the same offset to this year’s lunar Mid-Autumn. Preserve day of week and typical hours. Record the offset on the row (e.g. Est. MAF −3 weekends).
MAF Saturday = Saturday nearest the lunar Mid-Autumn date (15th of the 8th lunar month) — Saturday on or after when lunar is Fri–Sun; Saturday before when lunar is Mon–Thu. 2026: lunar Fri Sep 25 → MAF Saturday Sep 26.
Non-lunar / venue-driven autumn fairs (civic fall fests, first-weekend-of-month retail, late-November craft fairs, 2nd weekend of September District 56 / CAIMH): keep the prior calendar pattern, not MAF-relative. If lunar offsets disagree across held years — or venue availability is the real constraint — prefer the calendar pattern.
Full algorithm and 2026 examples: Autumn market landscape schema.
Confirmation rules (Confirmed)
- Primary gate — human confirmation: A row becomes Confirmed when the calendar steward explicitly verifies it.
- Auto-signal — public listings: Event posted on Facebook, Eventbrite, Sacramento365, organizer website, or equivalent with firm dates → treat as Confirmed (steward may bulk-accept or spot-check).
- Pre-public confirm: Steward may set Confirmed before a public post when an organizer gave a final committed date in conversation.
Audit columns on All tab: Confidence source · Confirmed by · Confirmed date
Sheet tabs
| Tab | Role |
|---|---|
| All | Source of truth — edit here only |
| 2026 | All 2026 rows on one tab — Confirmed · Tentative · Estimated section bands (like Krewe Subunit Contacts) |
| 2025 | Last held season |
Re-run view tabs after editing All or changing schedule confidence:
cd Festival\ Network
node scripts/add-landscape-view-tabs.mjs
node scripts/seed-autumn-landscape-confidence.mjs # if updating confidence on All
(Scripts live in the coalition cPALSs monorepo — not published on this site.)
Season report (narrative)
Full competitive landscape, three moon lanes, and honesty rules live in the coalition internal Greater Sacramento Autumn Season — Market Research report.
Stakeholder involvement (who produces what): Community Activity Calendar → Stakeholder event involvement tab. Charter: season stakeholder charter (coalition internal).
Producer brief
Coalition-facing mission + sustainability framing for autumn hosts: MAF Season — Producer Brief (coalition internal). Questions: contact@cpalss.com.
Director recruitment: Staff recruitment checklist
Planning with AI
Agents: clone festival and follow AGENTS.md for column schema, sheet IDs, and MCP load order.
See Using market research for methodology and contributing.