Festivals, flyers, early websites
The first Boom in 1997 is one Portuguese expression of that expansion. During the same decade, outdoor parties and festivals consolidated networks in Germany, Australia, the Czech Republic, the United States and elsewhere.
Flyers carried more than aesthetics: phone numbers, ticket shops, maps and line-ups. Early websites and mailing lists reduced dependence on geography, but much of the memory remained in fragile formats.
Network nodes
Technology in circulation
The first festivals, verified
The first Boom is August 1997, at Herdade do Zambujal in Águas de Moura, with around three thousand people — that is what the academic research on the festival says, and the date the organisation confirms.[01]
In Australia, Rainbow Serpent — now Rainbow Spirit — dates its founding to 1998 on its own site. In Brazil, Universo Paralello starts as small parties in 1997 and 1998, and the first multi-day edition is at New Year 2000 with around seven hundred people, founded by Juarez Petrilho.[02][03]
In Hungary, what exists in 1999 is not the Ozora Festival but Solipse, the solar eclipse gathering held at Ozora from 9 to 15 August that year. The Ozora Festival brand itself only appears in 2004. Conflating the two is the commonest error about this period.[04]
In Greece, the Samothraki Dance Festival has party listings from 2001 and ends after a police raid in 2003; the Aurora Festival, which many people confuse with it, only reaches the island in 2008. The distinction is made in peer-reviewed research.[05]