Is Venugo Just Right or Just Too Much?

By Gamal Hennessy

There are a lot of web sites out there to help the nightlife patron navigate their way through New York’s 1,200 venues. Some, like Urban Daddy, highlight the new spots. Others like Yelp and the directories on Black Book and New York Magazines provide a catalog of venues searchable by keyword. Still more sites are available to sell you tickets to parties, get you discounts on drinks, connect you to promoters and flood your inbox with invitations to parties you don’t want to attend.

Every site has their niche, but Venugo plans to be the one place that everyone goes before they go out. At first glance, Venugo looks like other nightlife sites, but dig deeper and you will find a more involved process.

That deeper level of involvement is both the good news and the bad news about the site.

Venugo has similarities to several different sites. It is similar to Lending Tree.com because once you submit your party preferences, participating venues compete to give you the best deal in order to get your business. You then negotiate back and forth with each venue (up to 5 at a time) until you get the deal and the party that you want. It is similar to Yelp because it offers official and user reviews, organizes venues together by type, location and other elements so you have the information that you need to decide what venues to work with. It is also like Facebook, because it offers (or plans to offer) social media elements such as groups, chats, file sharing and other things that nightlife patrons use.

When you combine all these elements, the founders of Venugo believe that anyone who uses the site can easily organize a party for groups from 2 to 200. It even gives people who use the site the potential to become a promoter. For example, let’s say you start a group for Knicks fans on their social site. Your friends and other random hoop fans join your group. When the Knicks win the championship (I know it probably won’t happen, but this is my example so just let me dream, ok?), it will be time for a party. At that point, you can use Venugo to find venues big enough for your group, negotiate a deal to get the best offer, invite your whole group and just like that, you are a promoter. And since you can make a group about anything, you don’t have to wait for Amare to get a ring to make it work.

All of these things in one site sounds like a good idea, but there are a few hurdles that the developers will have to overcome before Venugo becomes the be all and end all of nightlife planning.

First, this process requires both the owners and patrons to do work that they might not want to do. It’s one thing to ask two groups to negotiate a deal for something major like a mortgage, but if a few guys want to drink on their birthday, they might not be willing to put in the effort Venugo requires.

At the same time, operators often have their hands full keeping the doors open. They might not have the time, interest or staff to negotiate back and forth with multiple parties. They would rather just let the promoters deal with it. And the venues that consider themselves A-list won’t even get involved in the discussion in the first place.

That’s just one hurdle. At this point, Venugo doesn’t incorporate a venue’s music format into the selection process. The number of venues currently working with Venugo is limited. There hasn’t been much public push back from the established promoter community at this point, but it isn’t hard to imagine a scenario where they see this as a threat to their business and use their financial leverage to keep venues off the site. Finally, while patrons can review venues and share their experiences the way they do with Yelp, Venugo allows club owners to do the same thing. That means patrons who consistently book parties and don’t show up, trash the bar or engage in other fanatic behavior might not find many venues willing to host their next party.

Can all these obstacles be overcome? Absolutely. All it takes is creativity and work by people smarter than me and there are a lot of those people around. Venugo has investors, experienced network architects and advertising professionals behind them as well as prominent operators. Until the hurdles are dealt with, Venugo is still a good idea for professional corporate and charity party planners who organize events for a living. It could streamline their job and give the company the traction it needs to reach a wider market. If you want to get involved with Venugo before they blow up, visit them at www.venugo.com

Have fun.
G

Work with the Bar Crawl, Not Against It

By Gamal Hennessy


The New York Post recently printed an attack bar on concentration in the East Village, attempting to draw a connection between the number of bars in a given area and the number of AA groups in the same neighborhood. This story came on the heels of an attempt by the Murray Hill community board to limit or control bar crawls. (New York Magazine, Gothamist, DNA Info) and rumblings that Groupon and other related discount services might face legal hurdles when it comes to discounts associated with liquor sales. All these stories are separate, and none of them can shut down venues on their own, but for NIMBY’s they each provide ammunition to reduce nightlife in New York City.


They also provide ammunition for advocates of nightlife who want to push for more support from city agencies. Real estate costs in Downtown Manhattan are among the highest in the country. The only businesses that can afford to operate there (besides Chase, Duane Reade and Starbucks) are ones that cater to people from outside the city.


That is where nightlife comes in. Nightlife is an industry that caters to people from the neighborhood, around the city, around the country and in some cases, around the world. If nightlife is a source of jobs, tourism and tax revenue in good economies and bad ones, which it is (Nightlife Economic Impact Study), then it is something that the city needs to support. If there is a number of venues in a certain area that facilitate bar crawls and happy hours but causes distress and concern with local residents, then the city needs ways help nightlife work with rather than against the local residents.


There are several ways the city can help. Increasing police presence during times of peak activity (Where are the Cops?) can limit the noise and fanatic behavior (The Four Residents of Nightlife) that causes complaints. Increasing sanitation services can limit the waste left behind by a spike in patrons. The solutions are there, but it is unlikely that City Hall will spend more money to support nightlife during a time of continued financial crisis. There seems to be money to create bike lanes and enforce a nanny state but none to create an environment where nightlife works better with the residents (Bloomberg's Nightlife Record). Perhaps it is easier to paint nightlife as a villain than to take on the challenge of creating a solution for both the industry and residents. But since that hasn't worked so far, it might be time to try and find ways to work with the nightlife and the bar crawls, instead of against them.


Have fun.
Gamal

Show Some Love: How to Appreciate the DJ

By Gamal Hennessy


Music defines a scene and a venue more than any other aspect of nightlife culture. A good DJ is often the difference between a good party and just another club. In the past few years, digital technology, celebrity DJs and the economics of nightlife have transformed this urban art form into a mass market business. There are some people with nothing more than two iPods and a gimmick claiming to be a DJ. But if you want to tell the artists from the pretenders, consider three things the next time you go out…

Selection and Style: A DJ is often under a lot of restrictions when they play out. The venue has its format, the promoter is trying to satisfy his niche market and the random drunken requests all night impose limits on what they can spin. The challenge for a DJ is to transcend those constraints to express their own style. You can tell a lot about a DJ based on the songs they select and how much of themselves they reveal in the booth. A bad DJ plays the wrong songs for the event and the crowd. A decent DJ can stay in their lane and play the hits. A good DJ can take you back to great times in your past or expose you to gems that you’ve never heard before. A great DJ has a signature sound that builds a following and redefines a genre.

Transition: The artistry of a DJ isn’t really in the creation of new music. It is in the combination of music that already exists. One of the main technical skills that a DJ has is moving from one song to another in a way that is interesting and pleasant to the ear. Whether it is the seamless mixing of house, the scratching and beat drops of hip hop or the genre bending of mashups, the DJ flows from one song to the next. A bad DJ sounds like iTunes on shuffle. A decent DJ brings together similar songs. A good DJ can manipulate and maintain the flow in a room for hours. A great DJ combines songs that you like into a completely new song that you love.

Connection to the Crowd: Several DJs have told me that spinning at a party is an exercise in group psychology. As they play, they try to get more and more of the crowd to react to the music. As more people respond and the energy moves through the room the DJ can influence patrons to talk or drink, relax or go crazy, nod their heads or dance, stay or go home. A bad DJ ignores the crowd. A decent DJ is ignored by the crowd like background music. A good DJ can maintain a crowd for a couple hours. A great DJ can keep the crowd going all night so no one ever wants to go home.

Music Matters: There is one thing that I have learned from the DJs that I’ve known, listened to and played with; You can determine a good DJ from their set. It’s not about the technology they use, the genres they spin, the number of people at their parties or how many celebrities they know. It’s about the music. If you’re out somewhere and the boy or girl behind the turntables makes you feel better about being in the venue, that’s what matters.

When you find a good DJ, step up to the booth and let them know . They are often surprised that someone is listening to what they do and a compliment is always better than a drunken request…

…just don’t interrupt their transitions when you are saying hello.

Have fun.
G