LinkAdelaide

About LinkAdelaide

LinkAdelaide is still in development and has been since it launched around May 2010.

The culmination of a lot of time spent thinking about the best way to counteract local perceptions of Adelaide as a small, quiet community where nothing ever really happens and anyone who’s got any talent runs away in a hurry, LinkAdelaide has undergone many transformations since it began as a loose concept thought up by a former employee of media and arts organisations on a temporary employment hiatus..

Phase one of the development, the LinkAdelaide Podcast, began strong in around June 2010 as a short test run to just ‘have a go’ at making a podcast. The LinkAdelaide Podcast stuck around for about 2 months and featured long (15-20 minute) interviews with people putting on shows and generally doing things around Adelaide. It was a good first experiment, and had, at its core, a lot of the main ideas (in terms of focussing on and getting people interested in the broad range of talent and events around them) that are at the heart of LinkAdelaide.

Much was learnt from Phase One, and the LinkAdelaide Podcast, much altered, returned to LinkAdelaide during Phase Two, which saw another original plan - to connect with and cover some of the major events coming to Adelaide - come to fruition.

Phase Two, the LinkAdelaide Fringecast, saw LinkAdelaide branch out into providing promotion for people and acts with connections to Adelaide purely through the Adelaide Fringe event. Shorter, five minute podcasts were created with interested Fringe artists from all over the country (and a few international acts) talking about their fringe events. This drove the best levels of traffic to LinkAdelaide to date, and in the end almost one tenth of the 750+ fringe events were covered by podcasts available on LinkAdelaide.

However, the lack of income generated by LinkAdelaide at that time, combined with the sheer number of Fringe events (over 700), and the late lead time given to a lot of the artists that the Fringecast was around, meant the job of organising, recording, editing, and uploading interviews in a timely fashion whilst also trying to earn an income saw LinkAdelaide come second on occasions during the Fringe. Subsequently, the end result of the Fringecast was not as strong as originally planned. On the plus side, being forced to record so many interviews and turn them around quickly enabled a very sharp learning curve to occur which stands LinkAdelaide in good stead as the site continues to grow.

As at March 2011, LinkAdelaide has entered its latest phase of development, one that sees it come closest to the original goal of promoting local pride in Adelaideans - but with a twist. After discussions with friends and acquaintances during Fringe time, LinkAdelaide is now building a directory of artists, venues and events from Adelaide, Melbourne and all over the country with the goal of become the destination for artists, venue owners and people keen to know what’s going on around them in (for now) the artistic realm and (once this is up and running) sport, community gatherings, charity events etc...

Most powerfully though, LinkAdelaide’s directories (and some other gear we’re working on) will become an invaluable tool for artists and venue managers to Link with each other; creating opportunities, which, when combined with LinkAdelaide’s other resources, will provide big benefits to:

• artists - allowing them to have their work seen and evaluated by audiences outside of their home towns
• venues - seeing them in a position to promote to and attract new hirers from out of town
• patrons - giving them opportunities to see new works from emerging artists around the country

Of course, all of this will take time, but that’s where LinkAdelaide’s been and where we’re - hopefully headed.

LinkAdelaide is a new initiative I’ve been working on and polishing for the last 9 months, and I hope it will become a valuable resource and networking tool for artists, venues and patrons of the arts around Adelaide and the rest of the country soon, so please tell your friends to check it out!

For more information on LinkAdelaide, and how to get involved, please don’t hesitate to get in touch directly with us via emailing us today.

Thanks for visiting LinkAdelaide.

Stephen Moylan

LinkAdelaide

(..and if you’re interested in my history, click here.)