Photo: John Shaw, left, general manager of Lilly’s Bridge Marina, and Mark Scott talking about Montgomery County on MyFox8 last week.
By Mark Scott, executive director of Market MontGOmery Chamber & Tourism • Though the 10 Days of Uwharrie: The Official North Carolina Outdoor Festival – which officially ended Sunday – was not a Market MontGOmery Chamber & Tourism event, the chamber certainly helped stage it. So, when asked recently if the festival was a success I decided to alter the oft-heard quote about beauty being in the eye of the beholder and said, “Success is in the eye of the event holder.”
I continued, “I thought it went well and the amount learned to make next year’s event exponentially better is what has many of the committee members excited.”
Nearly 1,000 people attending the off-road Uwharrie Summit as part of the festival seems like success; but they normally have more than 2,300 people. However, it was a rainy Saturday and the organizers were pleased. One street festival had rain while another did not. Numbers up, numbers down … you can kind of see where this is going.
Bottom line, the measure of success of the 10 Days of Uwharrie can be debated, but the fact that people in Montgomery County and the Uwharrie region came together to put on nearly 35 different events in 10 days and there was mass media coverage, social media coverage and participants from inside and outside of the Uwharrie region makes it a great start by any measure.