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The San Diego Festival of Books Virtual Experience
August 21, 2021
The Genesis
Now in its fifth year, the San Diego Union-Tribune Festival of Books, presented by the University of San Diego, connects readers, booksellers, authors and businesses through a common love of the written word. The festival partners with San Diego libraries, independent booksellers, universities and community organizations to produce the event.
In 2021, the ongoing pandemic required us to shift our strategy and pivot the festival to a virtual experience. To keep the festival momentum and reconnect our community, we developed a user-friendly, interactive and, most importantly, accessible website that builds off the core components of the in-person event—to bring readers and authors together in a new way.
Our Goals
The Union-Tribune's most important goal for the Festival of Books was to shine a light on diverse voices by blending audiences, age ranges, and interests through a user-friendly streamlined virtual experience that provides easy-to-use functionality.
Development
The planning began with selecting notable authors for a series of live virtual events leading up to the Festival of Books, including several "Meet the Author" interviews and a "Children's Storytime" with local celebrities.
The event website allowed our attendees to easily navigate and access their favorite festival content in English or Spanish. Users could scroll through sections of the site or use the floating menu bar to navigate to areas of interest. The master schedule was sorted by genre and linked to each associated video session.
For those coming to see their favorite author, the directory provided a fast way to view their session and purchase a book. We added even more goodies with a sponsored activity hub and a photo booth to create and share images from the event.
More than 55 interactive panel sessions, poetry readings, writing workshops, family-friendly activities and music and entertainment performances were pre-recorded and prepared with sponsor trailers to publish on the event day.
Results
The festival's bilingual website launched flawlessly with 58 on-demand sessions, eight live author interviews and interactive activities for all ages. To date, the website has received more than 5,800 visitors globally. Our national and local media coverage doubled from previous years with new publicity from C-SPAN, NBC Telemundo and Fox.
By going virtual, we expanded our audience and secured authors worldwide. More than 75 award-winning authors were featured, including John Grisham, Britt Bennett, Ilia Calderón, Jasmine Guillory, Joe Kenda, Marie Lu, Ziggy Marley, Viet Thanh Nguyen, V.E. Schwab, and more. We also discovered new opportunities we didn't have with our in-person event. For example, we showcased two celebrity chefs cooking right from their kitchens.
Our event sponsors and partners also delivered engaging content including musical entertainment provided by Taylor Guitars and a performance by Grammy award-winning singer Kenny Loggins. For IDW Publishing, we created an activity hub for their audience and a kid's activity book for our young readers.
The virtual festival was born out of necessity but blossomed through creativity, collaboration and a commitment to connect diverse audiences who share a love of the written word. Due to its success, we’ll most likely add a virtual component to our in-person event.
