GrooveBoston—Pioneers of the Mobile Club

Pack Your Events: 5 Tips For Boosting Attendance

Ben — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 11:58:42 +0000

At GrooveBoston, we live for packed houses. There’s nothing like a sold-out, energy-filled event that leaves those lucky enough to get in begging for more. We know you student activities and programming groups work your butts off to put together great events, so we want to share a few of our tips on how to get ‘em packed!

1. STICK WITH IT
You know your campus — whatever you’re already doing to promote your events is probably a good start. Take a second put yourself in the shoes of the average student. Are they really reading the flyers around campus? Visiting the school web site? Identify the promotion method that works best for you and spend twice the amount of time on it. Get rid of one method that isn’t so great.

GB can help: Want a second opinion? Give us a call and we’ll help you evaluate your promo strategy

2. GET NERDY
Facebook and other social networking tools are great for getting the word out. Be sure to make groups, post ads, and send those messages. The key is to have it all lead somewhere. Whether it’s a Facebook event, Evite, or a separate web page, always provide a link where students can find more event info.

GB can help: We’ll build a custom grooveboston.com mini-site for your event where students can get info and request songs!

3. HIT ‘EM AT HOME
Instead of just flyering around campus, post info on all the housing doors you possibly can — dorm rooms, suites, off-campus apartments. No party-hungry student will miss a message delivered ten feet from where they sleep.
TIP: Print doorknob hangers instead of flyers to make this a piece of cake.

GB can help: We can design custom branding for all of your print materials and ship right to your door. Door hangers rule!

4. ROLL VIP
Everybody loves special treatment. Create a “VIP experience” for a select group of students at your event. This could mean special access to an exclusive area, free swag, or (wait for it… ) nothing at all! Just the chance to wear a VIP pass can be enough for students to talk up your event on campus.
BONUS: Use VIP passes as prizes for a campus contest or raffle them off at the ticket booth.

GB can help: Need VIP passes? We’ll make ‘em! Super-nice plastic ones with lanyards that would get you backstage at even the most secure concert.

5. MAKE FRIENDS
Tap into social networks that already exist. Have a popular band, dance, or other performance group on campus? Offer them up an opportunity to showcase their latest stuff. Their name will help draw student fans, and they’ll be pumped to help you promote — even if their performance is just a few minutes long.

GB can help: There’s no better place to showcase as a student artist than a venue that’s packed with crazy sound and lights. Mobile Club anyone?

Print out the PDF version as a handout. It’s really pretty.

Williams College Olympic Gala

BobbyD — Sat, 20 Feb 2010 09:34:13 +0000

“You guys were amazing last night! Everybody had an AWESOME time — Williams has never seen a party quite like that! The music was hott, the lights, the projections, everything.”

- Jacquilin D., student, Williams College, via our Facebook page.

It’s nice to make new friends. On Saturday, we headed out to Williamstown, MA to make about a thousand of ‘em.

Nestled in the Berkshires, the Paresky Center at Williams College is a good spot to grab lunch and a coffee, find a cozy nook, and catch up on your studies. As it turns out, it’s also a great starting point for an EPIC dance party. That’s where we come in. (you probably saw that coming, huh?)

Williams approached GB late last year, as their first All-Students Formal was taking shape. They’re a relatively small school, so they weren’t looking for an arena-sized build. While our proposal was modest by GB standards, it was more than capable of blasting those studying kids right out of their cozy nooks. Students were pumped, and the Facebook event got a FAST response. As we watched the guest list skyrocket, we said the word that would change their world (at least for one night):

UPGRADE.

It just so happens that we are REALLY into what we do. And with the success of the Face-Rockers Tour build, we decided to throw in a bit more gear. Moving lights in the balcony? Bring it on. Six thousand watts of strobe? Hey, it’s not our electrical bill. Three walls of video around the dance floor? Sounds cool. Four more double subwoofers? You get the idea…

Williams may have made out like bandits on this one, but we can rest easy (after a long load-out of course) knowing that faces in Williamstown were properly rocked.

Welcome to the Club, Williams.

Tufts Winter Bash 2010

BobbyD — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 16:31:57 +0000

Tufts University has a serious reputation when it comes to dance parties. Past events have featured world-famous guest DJs, ultra-rad “power cube” stages, live drummers, and student attendance numbering well into the thousands. This year, Winter Bash outgrew on-campus facilities and was re-invented as “Break The Ice,” a massive college club in the heart of downtown Boston. When buses started rolling in, GrooveBoston was up and running. After all, we’ll party just about anywhere – that’s kind of our thing.

With a HUGE 40-foot-wide stage to work with, we dialed the Face-Rockers stage build up a notch, with a cinema-sized video screen to match. We had all seen Avatar already, and giant rock band has been done (at the office), so we opted for a live-mix VJ video show instead. Based on crowd response, we made the right call.

It’s true, the event saw some changes this year, transitioning to a space more suited to the enormous turnout. After a gauntlet of lines, bus rides, coat checks, and security checkpoints, students joined the masses on the dance floor, while the GB crew unleashed the craziness that Tufts has come to know and love.

In the end, we’re pumped that Winter Bash – new name or not – is alive and well.

GB Show Featured in PLSN!

Ben — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 23:07:15 +0000

GrooveBoston’s show at Tufts University last fall was just featured in the November 2009 issue of Production, Lights & Staging News. Yeah, that’s us just above the Def Leppard tour. No big deal.

You can download the whole issue here if you want to put it on your fridge. We did.

Thanks to our peeps at East Coast Lighting and Production Services for submitting their badass lighting design!

What We Do

Ben — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 23:07:05 +0000

BU 121 Days Party

Ben — Sun, 17 Jan 2010 22:13:09 +0000

Boston University 121 Days Party

Ben — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 21:33:28 +0000

Ask anybody in the Boston University Student Activities Office (SAO), and they’ll tell you: it’s tough to get BU students to attend school-sponsored events.

Why? Well… they live smack-dab in the middle of one of the greatest cities in the world. Hey, if somebody told us there was a RAGER going on in the student union building, we probably woudn’t believe it either.

The 121 Days Party is a different story. BU brought us in to transform their Metcalf Ballroom into a crazy club for this all-senior-class, countdown-to-graduation blowout. And, we did the crap out of it. Maybe the stars aligned just right, or maybe we were just pounding enough bass to hear clear across the city, but there was a line out the door before opening and over 1,500 kids PACKED the venue by 11pm. It, as we like to say, was on.

While tearing through a killer DJ/VJ tag-team mix, we blasted over 2,000 feet of streamers over the crowd for the first test of our GB Party Cannons. Dope. Keep an eye out for those bad boys.

By the end of the night, even the Dean was jumping around on stage taking pictures. Just saying.

BU Seniors, thanks for taking a chance on the student union for a night. Good luck finding your socks.

Jobs @ GB

Ben — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 16:29:12 +0000

Time to party… like it’s your job.

GrooveBoston is a unique, young team that specializes in creating a “mobile club experience” in any setting. Our high-energy events ROCK crowds of over 4,000 people and are fueled by a serious arsenal of production gear, professional experience, and passion for a great party.

We are currently recruiting and training a new generation of the GrooveBoston team.

Production experience helps, but is not required… just enthusiasm.

A lot goes into making an event successful. DJs and AV techs make it happen on-site, but all the planning, management, marketing, and design that goes on beforehand is critical as well. We need people that are passionate, versatile, and focused on the big picture.

THIS IS IMPORTANT:

We are not hiring professional DJs.
We’re not hiring full-time cubicle junkies.

We’re looking for people who are driven and ready to help create an AMAZING party environment on a contract (part-time) basis. Oh… and you’ve gotta have a car, too.

Ready to go? Email jobs@grooveboston.com and tell us why you are a good fit.

Rest Up

BobbyD — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 19:05:20 +0000

With a nice long Turkey Day weekend approaching, I’ve got to admit that some down time will be nice. The GB crew has their mobile-club-o-meters at ELEVEN since the September launch of our current tour. We’ve carried TONS of gear, driven THOUSANDS of miles, and rocked at LEAST a hundred billion faces. …OK, at least ten thousand faces.

It’s been an AWESOME run of back-to-back shows, but energy drinks can only take you so far. It’s time to sit still for a little while, to wrap up a couple of days before 4:00am, and to re-charge our dance party batteries.

This fall, GrooveBoston is stronger than ever. And to everyone who has been a part of the GB experience, THANK YOU.

Rest up, enjoy the holiday, and we’ll see you next week.

NACA Northeast – Be The DJ

BobbyD — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 00:37:01 +0000

Happy birthday, NACA! We got you — you guessed it — a dance party. Go ahead, open it!

For 50 years now, the National Association of Campus Activities (NACA) has been the go-to resource for finding college entertainment. Kind of like Van Wilder, Party Liason. As a faithful member organization, we took it upon ourselves to make sure there was a sweet party on the agenda for last weekend’s Northeast regional conference.

But before the face-rocking, it was time to turn the tables— the figurative ones. For our booth in the NACA Marketplace, we decided to put students on the other side of the mix, exposed to the awesome gadgetry that makes the club go BOOM. Add a little green-screen magic, and we’ve got ourselves a Facebook album full of honorary DJs rocking some familiar past events.

But our down-time wouldn’t be spent lounging in the booth on our swanky GB couches. As fate would have it, we needed to make an excursion to pick up a camera cable. No problem, right? We’re right smack in the middle of a major city; we can just head over to Radio Shack. But that would have been too easy.

Closest store: Staples.
Google Maps says: 9 miles.
Crap.

Really Downtown Hartford? Really? After running a quick marathon in the rain — over the river and under the highway— we returned invigorated, with cable, and ready to take back the GB reins. See what we do for you guys?

On Thursday and Friday nights, “hotel room service” meant pizzas and pitchers of soda. On Saturday, though, it was face-rocking time, and Pitbull reclaimed the term with that killer riff that forces your hands into the air. Students hit the closing party ready to rock, and we made the last hour of the conference count. We did cross paths with one group who elected to get some sleep instead, to which Hamma solemnly replied “Well, I hope our face-rocking doesn’t wake you,” as a single tear fell down his cheek.

Thanks to LED fixtures from our friends at ECLPS, we kept our carbon footprint a little smaller than usual (to honor NACA’s “green” theme) without sacrificing intensity. The compact one-hour set meant an aggressive night on the mix, and some extra push-ups to get the sweat going a little faster than usual. In the end, it was one hell of an hour.

And you know what… if our face-rocking woke you, we’re not sorry. Sleeping is for parents and Sundays.