About

The Festival Management System began life back in late 2001 when The Big Chill, a ground-breaking UK festival, commissioned Midtempo Ltd to produce an online artist liaison system to help coordinate the 250+ artists and 11 stages that comprised their event. The first version of the software was built in time for the summer of 2002, with additional functionality and refinements made over the next four years.

In 2007 the software was completely rebuilt on new servers and the structure separated from the festival's configuration, enabling us to run multiple events using the same engine.

2008 saw the arrival of new clients, the biggest being Lovebox with a 30,000 capacity in central London, and the Larmer Tree Festival, for whom we built a cut-down version of the system (which has since been discontinued) during the building of their main site.

In the Autumn of 2008 we stopped accepting projects from prospective clients in order to focus 100% on the development, support and promotion of the Festival System.

During the winter of 2008/2009 we underwent a massive redevelopment phase, with particular emphasis on production under the guidance of Yasha @ Enteetainment Ltd (Lovebox and Glastonbury Festival). We also saw yet more festivals join, including the UK's largest Christian event, Greenbelt, who, with their 37 stages of programming, stress-tested the system beyond our wildest dreams!

The spring of 2009 has seen the system prepare itself for the international market, with the addition of American date formats, global time zones and multiple currencies. We've also embarked on a market research programme to acclimatise ourselves with the American and Australian festival industries.

We think our system is fantastic. We know that you will be too.

Kris Burford

Kris’ background is originally in broadcast radio, his last role in that industry was as the Head of Development for IRG plc, applying for and setting up radio stations in the North of England and Scotland.

At the beginning of the dot com boom in the late 90s Kris became the Head of Content and Design for Chrysalis Radio plc, overseeing the online development of the Heart, Galaxy and Rock FM brands.

At the same time, he was heavily involved with the Big Chill, the founders of which he’d met doing radio back in ‘94. He helped set-up the radio station at the festival, was an official photographer, DJ’d and generally made a nuisance of himself.

After leaving Chrysalis to set-up his own business in the Dorset countryside, Kris took over the development of the Big Chill website, a role he was to maintain for the next seven years and, in the process, building the site’s traffic from 4,000 pages a month to a peak of 2m a month. He also had a number of other clients, which included festivals (like The Larmer Tree), broadcasting (Capital Radio) and a wide range of other industries (travel, entertainment, retail and services).

In 2007 Kris wound down his activities outside of the festival industry (keeping a few valued clients, but not seeking any additional projects) to concentrate 100% on the development and support of the Festival System.

You can see Kris’ linkedin profile here.