It's June. The birds are singing; the lawn mowers are humming. The time of the year when the thoughts of (at least some) country music fans turn to ...
Fan Fair!
This month we're going to explore the site of one of Fan Fair's sponsors, the International Fan Club Organization (IFCO). And under New Discoveries, we'll take a first look at the site of a new Australian duo, Strum.
Update! Update! Update! - June 18When I was preparing this article, I tried to find the Fan Fair site; unfortunately all the content was missing. That has now changed. If you're stuck at home, like me, you can attend Fan Fair over the internet. There are RealPlayer video clips and live Webcasts of the events. There are also still pictures of the festivities. Check it out!
International Fan Club OrganizationThe International Fan Club Organization (IFCO) is dedicated to promoting Country, Gospel and other popular music, artists, fan clubs and fan interests worldwide. One of the ways they do this is to measure fan club performance against what these individual organizations promise to deliver for the money they collect from individuals. In addition, they organize several activities as part of the Fan Fair extravaganza that occurs every June.
The site is divided into ten sections, represented by the areas of the navigation bar on the left side of the screen. The News & Events section provides a synopsis of country music related happenings as reported in a variety of other sources. The General Store provides the opportunity to purchase IFCO merchandise online. This area is done correctly with secure transmission of your purchase information using Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) encryption. Unfortunately, the only things available are a few IFCO "signature" T-shirts and a Country Music Cook Book. The links section has several links back to various Yahoo! Country Music related categories.
There are plenty of opportunities to exchange ideas with IFCO or other Country music fans. The Talkback section provides e-mail addresses to several different IFCO "departments," including member services, Tri-Son Incorporated publications, IFCO merchandise and the webmaster. Additional IFCO e-mail addresses are sprinkled through the site. The Fan Forum section allows readers to post notes and responses in one of three bulletin boards. The main one allows notes on any general category of Country Music. The second board is limited to Fan Fair topics. The third is actually a collection of boards, each one dedicated to a particular IFCO-affiliated fan club. The IFCO Chat section is a chat room which can be used as a general chat with other fans or there are scheduled chats that may feature a particular artist or person of note.
