My favorite season is here and my favorite festival is right around the cornerâ€"the 8th annual Waterfront Film Festival starts tomorrow. The joke around here is that I go to film festivals because I LOVE LOVE LOVE inflatable movie screens. It’s true, I do really love them. But there are a few other reasons I love film festivals, like the energy and the vibe, and the chance to talk to people and share stories... OK, the parties are great, too.

The festival is kicking off Thursday evening with the perfect combination of at least two of my favorite things: a street party and an inflatable screen. Spout is sponsoring the opening night film (shown outdoors on that beautiful inflatable screen)â€"the Midwest premiere of Pittsburgh, starring Jeff Goldblum and Ed Begley Jr., who I'm told will both be in attendance.

Last year's WFF was the first festival we were ever involved in even before we were know as "Spout" so I've been doing a lot of looking back over the past year, amazed at how far we've come. Last summer we had offices and our core team of five on board, but Spout itself was just an idea still developing in our minds. Now our beta site is three months old, and we've implemented our second set of improvements. We've also been getting some good media coverage, as Bill highlighted in a recent post.

Of course, I can't ignore the fact that we have a long way to go, too. I look forward to kicking back with old and new friends at Waterfront to talk about what we've been doing and to gather some ideas about how we can make Spout better. But most of all, I'm looking at this weekend as a good time to just celebrate the past year and get excited about the next one. Hope to see some of you at the festival.