Principles P1–P4
Festival Season Network is a coordination library, not an event owner. These four principles are the shared design constraints any organizer can fork, debate, and apply — for Lunar New Year & Autumn Festivals in Greater Sacramento, or adapted elsewhere.
| Principle | Question | One-line test |
|---|---|---|
| P1 Roll-up calendar | When? | Does the season tell one story across weekends — not one isolated flyer? |
| P2 Group attendance | Who shows up? | Do named groups arrive together, with a place to land? |
| P3 Right-sizing | How big? | Is capacity honest and matched to the groups you can actually bring? |
| P4 Stakeholder sustainability | Who else wins? | Can vendors, sponsors, and partner orgs repeat next year? |
P1 — Roll-up calendar
Problem: A region runs many cultural events in the same season. Without coordination, families see a pile of competing flyers; organizers see date collisions and sponsor fatigue.
Approach: Treat the season as a roll-up path — a sequence of arcs that build toward one capstone, then release.
| Tier | Role | Examples (LNY season) |
|---|---|---|
| R0 — Warm-up | Small gatherings, church fairs, chamber activations | Iu Mien New Year (Jan 24); ARI celebration (Feb 6) |
| R1 — Bridge | Cluster events one week before capstone; cross-promote, don’t compete on product | Feb 7 cluster: Creative Space, SCNCCA, Arden Fair × Chamber |
| R2 — Capstone | The flagship weekend the season is organized around | EGLNY — VACOS, cPALSs, NVCC (cPALSs leads; Feb 14–15) |
| R3 — Afterglow | Post-capstone dinners, concerts, parish fairs, twin-season bridges | Rice Bowl Tết dinner (Feb 20); Cache Creek concert (Mar 7); Mardi Gras parades (late Feb–Mar) |
Roll-up mistakes to avoid:
- Two capstones in the same lane and same metro window (e.g. two “main” Tết fairs the same weekend)
- Scheduling a direct competitor on capstone Saturday without talking to the network first (see LNY market landscape)
- Treating warm-up events as substitutes for the capstone — they feed the capstone, not replace it
Assets: market landscape sheets (who’s in the season), calendar rules, roll-up arcs (Autumn), season reports.
Greater Sacramento note: The 2026 Lunar New Year Season one-pager listed 12 dated events Jan 24–Mar 7 with the Elk Grove capstone centered — a roll-up calendar in flyer form. Those rows now live in the LNY market landscape Sheet.
P2 — Group attendance
Problem: Anonymous crowds are hard to retain. Discovery fills a weekend; relationship channels (PTAs, parishes, school clubs, repeat families) determine whether the season grows year over year.
Approach: Design for named groups — crews, home bases, anchor hosts — not isolated individuals wandering a field.
| Concept | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Named crew | A PTA, parish youth group, lion-dance troupe, or friend cluster that plans to attend together |
| Home base | A marked zone where that crew can regroup (table, tent, activity booth, parade muster point) |
| Relationship product | On-site design that creates weak ties on purpose — fixed activity booths, group games, regroup moments |
Practices:
- Publish group-friendly CTAs (“bring your school club,” “claim a home base”) alongside individual discovery listings
- Put home bases and group activations on the map, MC script, and schedule — not only in ops docs
- Partner events in the roll-up path can host cross-promo without merging brands
Anti-patterns:
- Picnic “group space” with no schedule and no host → zero uptake
- Sprawl so large that groups cannot find each other
- Assuming social media reach equals family retention
Assets: group activity kits (Autumn), shared kits, case studies tagged group-attendance.
P3 — Right-sizing
Problem: Organizer marketing claims drift upward; planning math drifts with them. Vendors over-order; sponsors feel misled; trust erodes.
Approach: Size the event from committed groups and on-the-ground attendance at comparable events, and separate claims from evidence in every public-facing number.
| Signal type | Use for |
|---|---|
| CCSD / district counts | Official public-scale estimates (e.g. LNY 2026: 5–6K weekend) |
| Field estimate | Someone attended and counted (or reel-based read) |
| Internal planning | Finance and vendor caps (e.g. MAF 2026: 2,000 / 2,500 stretch) |
| Organizer / press claim | Marked honestly; not copied into planning without verification |
Honesty rule: If attendance is unknown, log it in Data gap on the market landscape sheet — do not invent a number to fill silence.
Practices:
- Market landscape Attendance source column on every non-empty attendance cell
- Right-size vendor count, parking, and sanitation to planning band, not marketed ceiling
- Compare across product format (free fair vs ticketed night market vs church dinner) — not raw headliner followership
Assets: LNY and Autumn landscape schemas, right-sizing playbook, case studies tagged right-sizing or honest-scale.
P4 — Stakeholder sustainability
Problem: A free festival can still lose money for vendors and burn out volunteers. One bad year for sellers or sponsors shrinks the ecosystem.
Approach: Ask whether each stakeholder class can repeat next season — not only whether the gate looked full.
| Stakeholder | Sustainability check |
|---|---|
| Food / merch vendors | Net proceeds vs fees; inventory match to actual attendance; comped booths tracked as real cost |
| Sponsors | Clear deliverables; honest reach numbers; path from transaction to patron relationship where appropriate |
| Partner nonprofits | Value beyond booth rent — programming, parade, promotion, year-round tie-in |
| Volunteer / staff org | Workload bounded; debrief captured; no single coalition carrying the whole season alone |
Practices:
- Post-event vendor reconciliation before declaring success
- Separate coalition capstone economics from network member events (different P&L, same season story)
- Debrief templates that include a P4 check (vendor/sponsor/partner)
Assets: stakeholder sustainability playbook, pilot debrief template, case studies.
Neutral convener
These principles do not require a central membership org or enforcement body.
| This library is | This library is not |
|---|---|
| Shared research, calendars, schemas, playbooks | An event producer or permit holder |
| Forkable assets any organizer can use | A brand mandate (“you must use our flyer”) |
| A place to document ecosystem harmony | A replacement for existing coalitions (VACOS, cPALSs, NVCC, chambers, parishes) |
VACOS, cPALSs, and NVCC co-host the coalition capstones within Lunar New Year & Autumn Festivals — cPALSs leads EGLNY; VACOS leads MAF — with other coalition partners. Festival Season Network stays neutral: the same roll-up logic should work for California Is My Home, SCNCCA, Creative Space, or a new anchor host without adopting cPALSs governance.
Convener role in practice:
- Publish honest market landscape (Sheets + schema)
- Propose open calendar slots and roll-up paths
- Offer kits any network member can adopt
- Never block independent events — coordinate by value, not authority
How principles connect
Market landscape (Sheet) → who is in the season (P1, P3)
Roll-up calendar / arcs → when each event sits (P1)
Ecosystem graph → relationships between hosts (P1, P4)
Group activity kits → on-site product for crews (P2)
Playbooks + case studies → tested patterns and cautions (P2–P4)
Simulations (future) → what-if before committing dates (P1, P3)
Agents: see AGENTS.md for load order and machine-readable conventions.
Applying P1–P4 to your season
- Inventory — Add or verify rows in the LNY or Autumn market landscape sheet.
- Place — Assign each event an R-tier (warm-up / bridge / capstone / afterglow); flag collisions.
- Mobilize — Pick one group-attendance pilot (home base, squad CTA, or partner cross-promo).
- Size — Set planning attendance from field evidence; mark claims separately.
- Debrief — Run P4 checks with vendors and partners; file a case study if the lesson generalizes.
Contributions that change a principle should update this page and AGENTS.md together so humans and AI agents stay aligned. For wording standards, see tone of voice.