In anticipation of the (probably) hectic goings on next weekend, I don't plan to overexert myself in the next two days. Because, next weekend, I'll be undertaking my own training programme as I head to Shambala festival in Northampton to help train a group of 15 to 17-year-olds on how to use various video/audio/written blogging tools like cover-it-live and twitcasting. A former colleague of mine has set up a website called Mashed Festivals (still in its infancy, I hasten to add), which aims to bring a more integrated social media approach to the festival experience.

The rise of the boutique festival has meant that the one-size-fits-all ethos is no longer fit for purpose; if you want to go to a festival to listen to nepalese folk music and eat sun dried tomato quinoa all day, you can. So, why not completely personalise the festival experience with a website that can guide you round the grounds, let you know what's going on right at that very moment, let you post content for everyone else to see, be it video, photos or microblog posts, and that will post its own content too so you can catch up on acts and performances that you couldn't attend?

After all, you can't be in two places at once, so why not let a team of proficient social media practitioners be in two places at once for you?

I will be mentoring teenagers of a variety of skill levels about the best way, content-wise, to make short films that are easily uploaded to the mashed festivals server 'as live'. It will be a face-to-face, fairly instructive and didactic experience for many of them, although equally for the more tech-savvy members of the group there will be ample opportunity to take the reins and go and create for themselves. All of this relies on many factors, many digital planets aligning, but with the minimum of technoglitches it takes to set the operation up, this remains a very potent template. It could be translated to live documentary of events, seminars and conferences, as we see much of the training industry knowledge base increase its use of social media channels, for example.

I will report back on it in a couple of weeks.