Industry Insights – Episode 6

Welcome! FEP Presents: Industry Insights is a recurring podcast that dives into specific areas of event and festival production.

Hosted by Mike Hanley, founder of festivalandeventproduction.com and a 20 year veteran of the industry, each episode will feature a recap of current events as well as interviews and discussions with other industry professionals.

The podcast is a source of event industry updates, branching out and understanding different departments and roles within the industry, and highlighting various ways we can take our industry skills and help others by volunteering in our communities and beyond.

Have any questions or suggestions for future podcast episodes?  Reach us at podcast@festivalandeventproduction.com. 

Listen here:  https://anchor.fm/industryinsights 

Episode 6: Restarting Your Roar with April Harbour

Featured Guest: April Harbour, Director of Festivals and Public Events, LEO Events

Find April at https://leoevents.com 

Episode Notes and Summary:

In episode six of Industry Insights, we give updates on all of the new festival news, most of which is quite positive as we continue to see the progress from vaccinations.   We touch a bit upon international travel, vaccine stats, and event reopenings including a full house at the first Texas Rangers baseball game in 2021.  

We also dive into a really solid list of job openings, including several managerial or director level roles nationwide.  We expect this trend to continue as the year marches on and festivals gain more confidence in their ability to move forward.

The episode also revisits several different training options, including our local Production Workshops here in Austin, new COVID-related safety training, World Health Organization training, and more.   Links to all of these are below. 

And our special guest this time around is April Harbour, a longtime industry veteran who’s seen everything from wild country music camping festivals to high-end VIP activations at racing tracks to fortune 500 virtual events. 

The current Director of Festivals and Public Events at LEO Events, a Tennessee-based, woman-owned event production firm, opens up on how she and her team transitioned over to virtual events for 2020, how they are moving back toward in-person events for 2021, and what the future looks like both for her and LEO Events.   

We also catch up on current festivals and events happening in the coming months, thoughts on current COVID restrictions, and, as always, what her three must have items are onsite (comfy Adidas shoes!).  


Finally, we end this episode with our highlighted non-profit: Musically Fed.   From April 15-17th, they spearheaded a food drive for local musicians and crew in Austin, which was quite a success.   In addition to this, they also help ensure leftover catering / food from events, concerts, and festivals makes it way to local food banks or those in need.  It’s a fantastic, well-run organization, and one in which you can help out in several ways, be it volunteering, donating, or partnering up with them.