Liam

I dont actually own a dvd player anymore.
When I do presentations I hand out usb thumbdrives. Isnt that easier? You can simply plug it in to your laptop/desktop/android box/TV/Apple TV etc.. Is there any real advantage to a DVD?

@Liam: frankly i dont own a DVD player..... so. that would not be ideal lol

Yeah a card with your Vimeo link would be better. 

just a rough little thing.. again, not the right place to share it, so you may ignore

This kinda sounds like your thing

I'm guessing you're pretty young? Building up a network is CRITICAL in this industry if you ever hope to advance in it. The old saying, "It's not what you know, it's who you know" is a harsh reality.  
Film festivals are a very good way to acheive this. At first, your network is a couple people. But then you have to imagine those people know a couple people, etc. Suddenly your web of people has grown and is growing expodentially, so don't feel it's unachievable. 
If you're shy, and lack confidence that's okay. All you need to work on is building up enough courage to start with small steps. Your confidence will grow as you get better and better at it.
It's best to intact confidence while you're young. By the time you hit full adulthood people will have fuller expectations of you. The truth is, as a naturally shy person that feeling never goes away. But how you mitigate it can blossom to the point no one would have ever guessed you are shy. 
I'm very introverted. I don't like large crowds, it feels exhausting to me. I adore my personal space and I like a small group of close friends and deep conversation rather than idle chit chat. But we live in a world that caters and rewards the extroverted. That's just the way it is.
Although introversion is becoming more accepted within western society, it's still not tipping the scale much, unless you're the troubled-starving artist type like Tim Burton.
To be succesful in my career, I had to learn to adapt to society's expectations and demands. That never changes who I am on the core level. It simply just refines me around the edges so that I can acheive success in a world that implores to exist on the surface. 
Even organizing a small film festival could also be a great confidence booster for you. 

i like that idea but i dont do anything in a week lol. each one of these POSTS takes me a week
if i wasnt in the middle of a project id be down tho!

Is this film festival a way to find film friends then?  if so, maybe social media might be a good place to reach out to people.
Especially if there's a film festival already in your area and you want to be a bit counter-culture about it, you could post on a bunch of forums or whatever saying something like:
 

Why not make it international and semi-virtual ?
Get 10 films from your local area and 10 from other countries that are submitted electronically.
Get a Skype connection to do a live Q&A with the international film maker.
Then we could all reciprocate by hosting a similar event where we live.
A whole international circuit of interconnected independent festivals at minimum expense.
 

I heard a story (no idea if it's true) about someone in the industry - maybe they were a film critic(?) - that had a large shed in their backyard that was setup as a makeshift cinema and they ran a video night every Friday night.  In summer they had it outside on their lawn.  Anyone was welcome to attend, they showed short films on any format (I think he had a collection of players for different formats, like VHS, Beta, etc).  It was famous for being a completely mixed bag - great films mixed with awful crap.  I heard that often the best ones were shot on poor quality equipment as his night was known to accept all formats so it attracted those people that either didn't know how to get access to good equipment or didn't know it mattered to film-festivals until after they'd finished.  Apparently he screened a film shot on one of those Barbie cameras (where the camera was mounted in the doll) and it was well received by the audience despite being very poor image quality.

In contrast to the other helpful and valid posts above, I'd like to challenge you a little bit around making it smaller rather than larger.
If I record a clip on my phone and then show my fiancé then is that the "smallest" film festival?  I would imagine that you would probably say that's not a film festival, and I'd probably agree with you, but what is important is WHY isn't that a film festival?  What are the minimum elements of a film festival that make it a film festival?
If I invite some mates over and we watch a video I shot, is that a film festival?  If not, what's missing?  More people?  More films?  Films must be edited?  Must be advertised?  Must be judging and a winner?
Make a list of what you think you require.
What are you hoping to get from hosting it?  Fame?  Fortune?  Gratification?  Gratification of what?  Making community?  Making a lot of noise?  Making a mess?
When you've done that, try and figure out how to minimise it - if you don't need a huge audience then you might not need a venue, which might mean you don't need insurance.  Try and think outside the box on this.  Ask yourself what you're willing to do in terms of 'breaking the rules'.  For instance if you were only interested in the community aspects of it you might drag out a an old Ebay projector (good films look fine in SD) into a park and use your mates car for sound, you'd probably be in violation of some kind of county laws or whatever, but maybe you don't care about these things.  Maybe there's a park that no-one will notice you using if you get there later in the evening (in summer it gets darker later so that works too).  Word of mouth and maybe photocopy a few fliers would get you enough audience for your own purposes.  
I think it's an awesome idea and I wish you all the success in the world, but I challenge you to think about what is important to you and have the smallest simplest cheapest least-official event that meets your expectations.
 
 

The novelty of getting farmer to let you do it in his cornfield or next to his cornfield would be pretty great.  Gonzo the thing and make the craptacular-ness of it all part of the fun.
Accept film only under 5 minutes so you can watch a bunch of 'em in 4 hours.
Suggest charging 5 bucks a submission if only to offset the costs of throwing a halfway decent party with snacks and beers for one night.  I'd imagine you might get around 200 or so submissions on FilmFreeway.  Maybe at that low price a few more.  Maybe give a 50% discount to regional filmmakers.
The film festival I'm part of runs a 25% discount during the 1st week of "early bird" submissions.  Basically, it's a $15 submission fee 'til Monday.  Pretty cheap.  If any of you want to submit, it's a great festival simply because the location is awesome.  Here's the festival:
https://filmfreeway.com/BorregoSpringsFilmFestival
And here's the code: "25WORMS"
Any festival, especially a small one, takes a bunch of work though to make it special for the filmmakers.  If you're wanting to make it nice for those accepted in the fest and those attending, pretty much assume you'll be working a full time gig for a few months before the event.  Just wait 'til you're on the other side of the curtain and you'll get wise to why festival do things a certain way.  Don't feel like you can't break the mold though!

@Liam uhhh yeah, @mercer and @Mark Romero 2 make some v good points coming from the perspective of......... uhhmm reality lol
i was kind of picturing a lil more CZW than WWE ?


make everything as easy and cheap as possible. to paraphrase robert rodriguez, you dont need a good venue, you need a SHITTY venue. do it outside! summers coming

Seems like a cool idea. I'd focus on staying small at first, and maybe even having it be informal. There are lots of generic local festivals, but few that are that interesting. Something small, a starting place to find collaborators, could be cool. If you're going to accept everyone, maybe put a tight limit on how long each short can be. I agree with that.
I've heard similar things about Channel 101 being a more insular and self-serving community than it once was. It's sort of turned into what it was a reaction against. But I wouldn't let that sour you on submitting to other festivals entirely! If you like Channel 101 stuff, make a Channel 101 show.
The difficulty with being really really creative is that your ideas exist BECAUSE they're unusual and innovative. And so if there are non-creative criteria for entrance somewhere, and the more established the venue the more established the criteria generally, the least creative stuff is valued at the low end or entry level (it ticks the boxes) and the most creative stuff at the high end (it innovates). So you won't be at the level of high end stuff, but you're too creative for the low end stuff, and it's going to be unduly challenging and you wonder what's wrong with you. Well, the question is also what's wrong with the world. 
Really creative people often never get past the entry level. This is a real problem with companies, the visionary CEO eventually gets replaced with very conservative thinkers. You need to learn to think like your audience, and meet them half way.
If this is a problem for you, or you've faced rejection, what to do about it is up to you. Making a festival on your terms is a good idea–it's where Slamdance and Channel 101 were born, even if they later sort of turned into what they began as being defined against.
But if you see stuff you like coming out of Slamdance and Channel 101, maybe meet them halfway, and once you break into those communities, be even more and more creative. Once you get in, then you can push the boundaries more and more! Either way, look for other films you like, and find collaborators. Don't be myopic.
I'd start small either way! Five-minute run times aren't a bad thing. The challenge is to pack all the creativity into it! Or hone your idea down to the best, smallest version of itself. Your next film won't be your best unless you let it be your last. So keep creating! And don't look (too far) back.

I have work in several film festivals, even created one from scratch. Mostly when there were 10% of the festivals that now exists. 
Main factors:
Public: You need people watching the films, besides the boy/girl/friends of directors. Maybe you can sync your festival with some other event that assures you people. All the festivals that survive do so because they have a public. 
Selection: Local short-films are a good start for easiness, but most will probably suck (sorry for the lack of optimism). So either accept only short ones (less than 5 minutes) or comedies, you can't accept ALL unless you hate humanity and your public. Most directors of shortfilms that suck probably won't be happy to talk about their work. You can embrace "suckness" (?) and do a trash comedy festival. Or a 24 minutes to do your trash film competition. 

Nice idea. Start small. Limit sublissions to like 20 short films initially. And the shorter the films the better (I went to a short film festival recently, where films were upto 30 mins long, and some were very difficult to watch).
Get some alcohol company on board (it could be your local brewery) or some food guysè. So that for the submission fee, you get a free pint Free, along with the ticket. People always want freebies. And for non film audiences, shorts are initially a little difficult to sell.
I used to attend a large film festival almost religiously and do a marathon watching like 5 films daily, for 5-6 days (I bunked all work during the festival week). I have relocated cities since, but TBO after the festival got all political and stopped giving early bird discounts and discounts to filmmakers I stopped attending. Also, their fee like doubled. I felt they were just mismanaging or scaming people after I discovered how much funding they were getting.
I guess the most important thing for a festival is to connect with the audience. 

So I kind of want to start the smallest film festival ever… I’d be curious to hear feedback
I like the idea of starting something as a way of meeting people and getting somewhere for myself, but also as a way of doing something for others that I wish was done for me way back when. I also think we’re just due for a revolution… and I don’t know if I’ll be able to start it, but I’m so sick of every other option right now.
Channel 101 is a bit of an inspiration for this maybe, though I don’t love their format, and maybe that has become slightly too big now anyway and lost a little bit of its original charm.
I want it to be entirely inclusive, no submission fee, not one gets rejected (unless they have a budget etc and know that they’re too big for us).
So it would have to stay small but still be fun.
If we get too much interest, we’d have to rent a big venue, maybe get a sponsor, charge a submission fee, turn people away, which all sounds like what I’m trying to avoid… And if no one is interested, it can’t happen.
I’d probably want to keep it kinda local, which could help make it only filmmakers who are actually going to show up.
Maybe I could get some guest speakers. I do know a couple people…
Filmmakers could talk about their films.
And it would just be one night, so people wouldn’t be tempted to only show up for their own films, which is the worst.
Anyway, does this sound like something any of you would be interested in? Just trying to gauge reactions. Like maybe it’s actually unappealing that no one gets rejected?
The idea probably needs a lot of work. Please let me know if you have any input.

I'll save you a seat just in case, @kaylee!

i like your idea @Liam! i think the fundamentals are there... one night, more of a party than an awards show (?), sounds like fun!
what i would say is, find a venue, get some pricing, see about guest speakers (not the ones that antifa shows up for unless youre going that direction), and see if this event can be produced for little to no money. stuff adds up!
if youre trynna keep it frugal, an informal BYOB thing could be cool! feels very grassroots-y  
and although ofc in ohio you dont have the filmmaker base of LA, in SoCal youre competing with EVERYTHING. fookin EVERYTHING. virtually endless options for entertainment. so, rallying ppl to go to a "happening" is a whole different story... and its a huge accomplishment to get any attention at all. so theres a major silver lining there!
additionally: make it look sicc. the graphic design of channel 101 dot com had me clicking away in .25 seconds... if its the irony/comedy channel then ok, but you want to LOOK professional in your advertising... the only way you rlly can with no money right lol
anyway, i say go for it! i might go if i was around and thats saying a lot bc i hate doing things  

So I kind of want to start the smallest film festival ever… I’d be curious to hear feedback
I like the idea of starting something as a way of meeting people and getting somewhere for myself, but also as a way of doing something for others that I wish was done for me way back when. I also think we’re just due for a revolution… and I don’t know if I’ll be able to start it, but I’m so sick of every other option right now.
Channel 101 is a bit of an inspiration for this maybe, though I don’t love their format, and maybe that has become slightly too big now anyway and lost a little bit of its original charm.
I want it to be entirely inclusive, no submission fee, not one gets rejected (unless they have a budget etc and know that they’re too big for us).
So it would have to stay small but still be fun.
If we get too much interest, we’d have to rent a big venue, maybe get a sponsor, charge a submission fee, turn people away, which all sounds like what I’m trying to avoid… And if no one is interested, it can’t happen.
I’d probably want to keep it kinda local, which could help make it only filmmakers who are actually going to show up.
Maybe I could get some guest speakers. I do know a couple people…
Filmmakers could talk about their films.
And it would just be one night, so people wouldn’t be tempted to only show up for their own films, which is the worst.
Anyway, does this sound like something any of you would be interested in? Just trying to gauge reactions. Like maybe it’s actually unappealing that no one gets rejected?
The idea probably needs a lot of work. Please let me know if you have any input.

There is a local one here called The Rocket City Film Festival that has a very low submission fee ($15, i  think) and is only one night with mostly local-ish films. They have a very cool small venue but i don't know if they turn any submissions down. They accepted a couple of mine. The thing they are missing from what you mentioned is discussion. I was pretty disappointed that every one split as soon it was over and the groups there with a film clustered together, not much networking. They didn't even introduce the filmmakers in attendance.
What you're talking about would be great. Go for it.

Nice Short Film Keep on going 

I got one.  Indy film festivals are a dime a dozen.  There's thousands of 'em.  There's not all that many that are hardwired directly to Hollywoo.
You know how it is, big name festivals earn the luxury of advanced screening of studio films.  It happens when the brand and event goes corporate.  SXSW is now an industry event.  You ever been?  I was there once 10 years ago and it was already pretty much big biz'ness.
Actually, I should give all y'all here a submission code discount for the festival I'm a part of.  What do you think?  You want an indy fest, let me tell you, we're definitely an indy fest.

I think my monitor might suck. let me know if this looks horrible

So... if I switched to youtube, my biggest concern is I feel like I'd never be able to get my videos even close to the right audience or be able to discover other decent filmmakers in the same way. Tips on how to use youtube more like vimeo in that sense? Is there an equivalent to "groups" that I'm not seeing? On youtube I just always feel like the views I get were accidental clicks by people looking for.. you know, bad videos.