Moving is supposed to be stressful, right up there with divorce and death apparently. Which is exactly where we are at the moment, that point just before killing someone and running off to an ascetic monastery.

We’re moving office which, amongst all the other stuff, includes switching off our old phone lines and setting up new ones. This, we thought, was a simple process. Companies do it all the time, right? Placing the order a month ago should be more than sufficient warning, yeah? Well, the office has been moved and most of the boxes have been unpacked. Only issue is that it’s going to be at least two weeks before we have a phone line. And broadband.

Oh, and we can’t set-up call redirect because we’re no longer at the original premises.

So, if you need to contact us, please email. We’ll reply asap – even if it means sitting at our nearest coffee shop for the duration. And it’s not like we don’t already have caffeine issues…

So it’s Lovebox this weekend; 50,000 people watching 180 artists (Dizzee Rascal, Roxy Music, Grace Jones, Hot Chip…) on 11 stages in the centre of London. We know that everything will go smoothly, but still best of luck to Jools and all the team. Have a cider for me please.

We’re pleased to announce the launch of a major overhaul of our guest list system. The new changes provide a significant improvement in the management of guest lists, including the introduction of an approval system, the allocation of different tickets types, guest email and mass-mailing functionality, plus much more. We have also beefed up the reporting systems for both festival and performer guests to ensure that you have just the right information at your fingertips when it’s needed.

Get in touch and we can show you through the demo…

Our first outdoor festival of the year, and it’s Britain’s Greenest festival – Wood. “The event runs entirely on renewable energy and aims to highlight green issues and through participation promote an ecologically friendly lifestyle“. Thankfully the organisers aren’t adverse to using technology to make life easier and, although it’s one of our smallest events, we’re still able to help them coordinate things.

Hope you have a great weekend, you’ve certainly got the weather for it!

Good luck to the lovely Kat&Co for this week’s Great Escape festival in Brighton. They’re not only using the festival system to manage the details of some 500+ performers, but the artist biogs, photos and stage details are all being fed directly into their website (to see it in action, click here).

We know that it’ll go like clockwork – and wish we were there!

Well, it may not mean that much to anyone else, but we’ve finally built our own CRM solution (customer relationship manager), enabling us to stay in touch with everyone who’s contacted us in the past about the Festival System. Above and beyond the standard reasons for having one, it’s vital for us due to the seasonal sales cycle we’re in – we only have a limited window in which to approach prospective clients – which makes retaining a good sales team pretty impossible.

In the past four years we’ve been through five different outfits and, to be honest, it’s probably better coming from us anyway. Admittedly we’re not hard-nosed sales types (although a sales course or two might be warranted… when we can find the time!), but a decade of working with festivals and tailoring the system for multiple demands means that we can generally answer most questions on the spot. And, almost as importantly, talking to prospective clients is an incredibly useful way of looking at the software through fresh eyes. A lot of the recent system improvements have been directly related to questions posed while we’ve been demoing the software. So, if you want to stay abreast with what we’re up to, drop us a line.

Sure it gathers a lot of info and builds reports, but it’s the functionality that you may not see until you start using it in earnest that really make the difference.

The Scheduler, Messaging system and the Contract system are the first three new videos we’ve done. [We're trialing a new piece of software called Screenflow for the mac and I'm really impressed with it]

So, here they are…

We’ve just completed some changes to the production/technical forms that can be generated by the system and then sent to performers (or their management) to provide the information. This upgrade also has some knock-on affects elsewhere in the system. The changes are as follows:

• when you create the production forms, there are now four pre-prepared options that you can include. These are: performer names; crew names; performer biography; and rider. If you turn these options on, then the production form will contain the required fields for gathering this information and feeding it directly into the appropriate pages in the system (people, press and contract).
• artists will be able to edit/amend/delete any unapproved performer/crew member, but if a member of staff has checked and approved these names, then artists will have to contact you to amend them. This ensures that when the festival is approaching, you’re not having things you’ve already checked being changed without your knowledge.
• if they supply a name and include a mobile phone number, then that name will also be added to the artist’s address book/contact page
• riders (in the contract page) now have an approval system that locks down the contents of this field and adds a time stamp with the name of the person who approved it. However, performers will will be able to edit/amend any unapproved rider request, but once ‘locked’, they’ll have to get in touch with you to approve any changes.
• on the press page, if an artist provides a biog, that will appear above the festival’s “edited” biog. This allows you to take the artist’s press release and format it for your own purpose. (remember that the recent addition of the publishing function will enable you to approve this for publishing elsewhere).

Up until now, the system used the name of the performer to identify who was performing, which kinda makes sense… up to the point when you start programming spoken word elements (like lectures, discussions and workshops). It’s all very well knowing that Dolly Parton is going to be singing on the main stage, but if she’s also doing a lecture on the history of Country Music, perhaps you’d like to spell that out.

So, today we’ve upgraded the system so that each performance can have an (optional) title. These titles can be supplied in any of the areas of the site that you can enter a new performance (the overview page, the artists’ stage page, or the Scheduler). It’s also meant that the Scheduler has to reflect the titles for these elements of programming, rather than the name of the person presenting, so in the configuration page you can set the Scheduler to automatically display performance titles if they exist and, if not, to default to the artist’s name.

All xml feed content also contains this information, so that if you’re using that part of the system to update your own website (and, therefore, avoiding having to enter the same information twice), the title of each performance will also be sent.

Hopefully this will mean that it’s easier to view and understand your program.