Festivals and fairs: finding your people in a field of thousands

A festival is a town that exists for a weekend. Thousands of people arrive in a field, set up tents, wander between stages and food trucks, and need to know the same things at the same time: which stage is running late, where the water is, whether the charging tent has space. CicadaChat's 500 m room reaches everyone within 500 m of you, which at most festivals and fairs means the whole site, or at least the part of it you're in. This article is about using the 500 m room at a festival, a county fair, a food festival or any big outdoor event: finding information, finding people who like the same acts you do, and finding your way back to your tent.

How the 500 m room fits a festival site

CicadaChat's rooms are circles drawn around you. The 500 m room is a circle a kilometre across. A small or medium festival, with a couple of stages, a food area and a campsite, fits inside it from almost anywhere on site. A big festival can be two or three kilometres from end to end. There, the 500 m room is your part of the site: the arena when you're watching bands, the campsite when you're back at your tent.

That's often exactly what you want. People at the main stage are asking about the main stage. People in the campsite are asking about showers and lost tent pegs. The room follows you from one to the other, because it's always the circle around where you are now.

If you want the whole of a very large site, move up to the 1 km room. It will also reach the villages and roads around the festival, but at a remote site there's often nobody else there.

Getting started on site

1. Open CicadaChat and allow location. No sign-up is needed: a guest account is made for you.
2. Tap the 500 m tab under the header.
3. Look at the number of people in range in the header, and scroll back through the room to see what's been said today.
4. Ask your first question, or answer someone else's.

What the room is good for at a festival

Set times and changes

Running orders change. A stage is running late, a band has swapped slots, the headliner has a new start time. Announcements happen on the screens by the stage you're not at. The room catches them: "Main stage is running 15 minutes late, just announced." It's the fastest way for news from one end of the site to reach the other.

Water, food and toilets

On a hot day, "Water refill point by the big tree has no queue 💧" is the most valuable message on site. Tips about the shortest food queue, the toilets that were just cleaned and the stall that still has the vegan option all spread through the room in minutes, and the most useful collect the most reactions.

Charging

By Saturday afternoon, half the site is on 10% battery. "Phone charging tent near the food trucks has free slots right now" gets a 🔥 from everyone who reads it.

Swaps and spare tickets

"Anyone want to swap a Sunday wristband for Saturday?" The room reaches exactly the people who could help. Be careful with money, though: only swap in person, where you can check what you're getting, and never send a photo of your wristband or ticket barcode to someone you've just met.

Weather

"Rain coming in from the west, you can see it from the hill." "Mud by the second stage is ankle deep, go round by the fence." Local knowledge, from people standing in it.

A screenshot of the 500 m room at a festival. Practical tips collect reactions, and people going solo find company.

Finding your people

A lot of people go to festivals on their own, or end up on their own when their friends want to see a different act. The 500 m room is a good way to find company for an hour: "Going solo to the acoustic tent at 4, anyone want to join?" "Me! I'll be by the flag with the yellow cicada on it 🙌".

When a conversation turns into a plan, move it to a private chat: tap the person's name, and you're talking one to one, with nobody else in the room reading along. Agree on somewhere obvious to meet, like a big flag, the sound desk or the entrance to a tent. Meeting in daylight and in a crowd is the festival equivalent of a café.

Meeting up with your own friends

Festival crowds swallow people. You go to the bar, and when you come back, your friends have moved ten metres in a crowd of ten thousand. A few ways to find each other again:

• Agree a landmark. "If we lose each other, meet at the big tree by the water point at the end of each set." It works even when every phone is dead.
• Use private chats, not the public room. "I'm by the sound desk" is for your friends, not for everyone within 500 m.
• Share your location in a private chat when a landmark isn't enough. Tap the paperclip, then Location, and your friend sees exactly where you are on a map. In the public room, CicadaChat would warn you: Everyone within 500 m will see this exact spot. In a private chat, it's just the two of you.

The 100 m article "I'm by the blue door": sharing your location to meet up within 100 m has more tips on meeting up with a shared location, and they work just as well in a field.

Finding your tent

Every festival has a moment, usually after dark, when a thousand identical tents all look the same. Before you leave your tent for the day, share your location in a private chat with yourself in mind: open a chat with the friend you're camping with, and send your location from the tent. In the evening, the pin is waiting for both of you. A shared location shows as a small map with a Shared location card, and links to Google Maps and OpenStreetMap: tap one and your maps app can walk you back, even across a dark field.

Don't post your tent's location in the public room. A tent full of phones, cameras and wallets is not something to point out to everyone within 500 m.

Lost and found

Festivals lose things at an astonishing rate: phones, keys, bank cards, jackets, and occasionally people. The room is the fastest way to reach everyone who might have seen them. "Found a bank card on the grass by the second stage, handing it to the info tent." There's a whole guide to it: lost in the crowd: finding your friends and lost things within 500 m.

County fairs, food festivals and markets

Everything above works at smaller outdoor events too. At a county fair, the room is about which show ring has the sheepdog trials and where the tractor rides start. At a food festival, it's about which stall has the shortest queue and the best dumplings. Organisers and stallholders can use it too: an account with the event's name, posting set times, last orders and changes. The article on organisers and stallholders in this series covers that side.

Keeping the room good

• Keep it useful. The best festival rooms are full of short, practical updates. React to good ones so they rise to the top of Hot, the flame button in the header.
• Be kind to newcomers. First-timers ask the same questions every year. Answer them anyway.
• Don't describe strangers. "The group in the pink hats by the main stage are so loud" is unkind, and they might be reading.
• Photos, thoughtfully. Photos are re-encoded on your phone before uploading, which strips their GPS data, but what's in them is up to you. Stages and crowds from a distance, yes. Close-ups of strangers, no.
• Messages stay. There's no way to edit or delete a message after it's sent.

Battery, signal and dark mode

Festival phones live hard lives. Turn the brightness down, use dark mode (in Settings, choose Dark), and close CicadaChat when you're watching a band. Mobile networks at big festivals slow to a crawl at peak times. If a message can't be sent, it's marked not sent in the room on your screen, and nobody else sees it. Send it again when the signal comes back.

A festival day, message by message

11:00 am. You crawl out of your tent and tap 500 m. Someone says the showers by gate 2 have no queue. You go.

1:30 pm. "Main stage is running 15 minutes late." You get another drink before the band you came for.

3:45 pm. Your friends want to see a DJ you don't like. You post that you're going to the acoustic tent at 4, and two people say they'll join.

6:00 pm. "Water refill point by the big tree has no queue 💧". You refill and react with ❤️.

11:30 pm. After the headliner, you open the private chat with your tent-mate and follow the pin back to your tent.

For the headline sets themselves, the tips in concert night: the 500 m room at an arena show apply outdoors too.