Pagan Festivals

I have never been to a Pagan Festival before.

That seems like a bit of an odd statement on a post about festivals, but it is true. Right now, I am a solitary "cyber-pagan." Any contact I have had with other like-minded individuals has been over the internet.

The reason I am talking about festivals at all is because over the past week it has been a hot topic on many blogs. When I am talking about festivals I am a talking about large gatherings of people for an event not related to a holiday.
Some people believe that big festivals are going to be a part of the community for a long time. Other say that they are on the way out and that local events will take over. Some discuss the reason for low attendance. Is it the economy? Lack of interest? Concern that long distance travel negatively effects the environment?

I think there are two problems with pagan festivals.
1) Lack of advertising
2) Lack of accessible festivals 

Lets start with lack of advertising. If nobody knows that the festival exists, nobody will attend. Sure you can go to an internet search engine an search for "Pagan Festivals." Then you are trapped in a world of outdated or broken links, outdated pages, and outdated information (that seems to be a pretty common theme on a pagan website).

Then comes the lack of accessible festivals. I live in Georgia. At the moment I do not have the money for an airplane ticket nor is it feasible to drive hundreds of miles to attend a festival. That is probably true of most people. So that leaves local festivals. Sadly (unless the have fallen victim to lack of advertising), there seems to be a lack of them. For example, according to Witchvox, there are only seven dated events for Georgia with a little bit less than half the year left to go. I don't think there is a lack of interest. I believe if they were available people would want to attend.

These are just the problems that I see from the point of view of a pretty brand new pagan. I understand that planning big events like the ones I am talking about is a huge undertaking. I also believe that I takes a special group of people to organize, plan, and staff such events. Do I have an real solutions to the problems I am talking about? Not really. The only thing that I would say is to get the word out when there are events going on.

So the questions remains... what is the future of pagan festivals?