Gathering Hotline Gives Good Vibes

Gathering of the Vibes in Bridgeport, Conn., has implemented a system to ensure that no patron, volunteer, staff member or security officer is ever left wondering where the nearest bathroom is, what time VIP meals are served, if security can help quiet down their neighbors in the campground, or when their favorite band is taking the stage.

The Vibes hotline, now in its seventh year, is staffed 24 hours per day during the four-day event, which runs this year July 30-Aug. 2.

Promoter Ken Hays explained that about 50 staff and volunteers typically answer around 4,000 calls the week of the festival. “It’s a busy system,” he told Pollstar. “We have 12 phone lines that are active and communication is everything – not just the emergency communications that are critical, but that overall sense of having immediate, accurate information at everybody’s fingertips.I really don’t want any of our staff or volunteers to be asked a question and not give an accurate response, or worse yet, to give inaccurate information.”

Staff and volunteers are asked to program the hotline number into their cell phones and attendees are encouraged as well, keeping everyone connected in case of minor emergencies – running out of toilet paper in a row of portable toilets, say – or bigger ones, like someone needing medical attention. In those cases, Hays said a hotline worker will immediately conference in emergency dispatch and help deploy appropriate resources.

Of course this is the Gathering of the Vibes, which developed out of the spirit of Grateful Dead shows, so the calls aren’t all serious business.

“Some of the more humorous ones would be, ‘I lost my left Birkenstock and I still have my right one. I was wondering if anyone turned it into the lost and found,’” Hays said. “Just crazy, ridiculous stuff that not only makes it fun for the attendee but also for the hotline workers.”

He also recounted the time a camper called in to say there was a dead squirrel where they were trying to set up a tent. “We sent someone out to take care of it, and later that day we received a photo of a chalk outline where the dead squirrel had been,” he said. Artists do PSAs promoting the hotline on radio station WPKN that serves as Radio Vibes during the fest and members of the Vibe Tribe even held an informal contest on the Gathering of the Vibes message boards last year for a hotline jingle.

For the younger generations who may not be so accustomed to making actual calls with a phone, there’s also an app for the festival that contains a lot of the same information available via the hotline. But Hays said that given the enormous amount of information to weed through, most people would rather just pick up the phone and talk to a live person on the hotline.

“It’s the concierge service approach that I think has made the hotline so successful over the past seven years,” he said.