Empire Produces Largest Single Component of First Annual TriBeCa Film Festival
In May of 2002, Empire Entertainment produced the first-ever TriBeCa Family Festival, a major public outdoor street festival that was a central component of the TriBeCa Film Festival sponsored by American Express. Empire designed and executed virtually every aspect of the Family Festival, whose purpose was to revitalize economic and community activity in lower Manhattan's TriBeCa district post-9/11.
Presented in an area encompassing 10-city blocks in the heart of TriBeCa, Empire brought together an outstanding team who successfully produced the event, managing the wide-ranging issues and concerns of the community, local businesses, and over a dozen city agencies. Empire's production team designed, arranged, and coordinated all aspects of the event including permitting, tenting, staging, power distribution, sound, lighting, signage, decor, and security. The Family Festival drew over 100,000 attendees and involved the construction of 50 tents, including an activities tent (sponsored by MTV), an arts & crafts tent (sponsored by Barilla Foods), a reading room & story-telling tent (sponsored by Scholastic), a sports games tent, a carnival games tent (including displays by Madame Tussaud's Wax Museum), a community organizations tent, a community schools tent, a massive outdoor cafe area served by over a dozen neighborhood restaurants, speed chess, sidewalk chalk art, and a face-painting area among many other features and activities. The Festival also featured a main performance stage, several smaller performance stages, and more than 100 stage and street performers.
Highlights of the event included storytelling by Whoopi Goldberg, a martial arts performance by the USA Shaolin Temple, and an outdoor concert by Arista Recording Artist, Kelly Levesque. The Family Festival was instrumental in generating revenue and restoring a sense of community to TriBeCa, and was one of New York City's major event successes of 2002.
Empire is already organizing an even larger TriBeCa Family Festival for 2003.
Guests received their first taste of technological innovation at registration, where they were welcomed by name on a reactive LED screen installation covering the full width of the entry wall. A large lunch café was created with a décor scheme that incorporated custom-built, ceiling-high steel LED frames draped with foliage to create smaller, intimate restaurant-style spaces that displayed both technology and nature.
A series of breakout sessions presented content targeted to attendees’ varied interests, while imagery displayed throughout the venue showcased real-life applications of how products designed to empower developers help to unleash the power of data and reimagine possibilities that will improve our world.
Every element of Microsoft Connect(); from registration, breakfast and keynote, to lunch and evening cocktails, were custom-designed to communicate exacting brand messaging and to deliver a high-touch guest experience to this important audience. The keynote and breakout sessions were livestreamed through an onsite studio built for this purpose and content was watched online by millions around the world.
Empire is proud to collaborate with Microsoft on this annual, top-tier business communication event.
To view excerpts of Connect(); 2017, please visit https://www.microsoft.com/connectevent
