Event Management Software

POSE is a comprehensive event management program designed specifically for event planners who organise festivals and events.

The purpose of POSE is to make it far easier, less time consuming and more efficient to plan and organise festivals and events.

To accomplish this it aims to provide all the functionality required for event management within a single program. All related data only needs to be entered once. That data can then be viewed by all those authorised to do so. Data exports and reports can be generated for invitations, letters, labels, name tags and analysis.

This has the benefits of:

• Eliminating duplicate data entry by
• Having a centralised database thus
• Reducing the necessity for manually communicating changes and
• Minimising mistakes and frustration by
• Allowing faster access to always current information so you are
• Spending less time on event administration and
• Handling fewer flaps and disasters

Prior to 2006 Syndey Festival were using a very nice piece of software called Festival Works. The Festival Works program enabled Sydney Festival to plan and schedule activities for the festival events but there were a great many other areas that needed to be coordinated. In 2005 the Sydney Festival commissioned Just For You Software to design and develop a new event management solution. POSE was the result.

A product of careful planning and continuous refinement as a result of user feedback, POSE replaces seven separate systems used by different groups of employees with a single integrated solution used by the organisation’s entire staff.

Just For You Software delivered a production management module within four months, and modules for event planning, people management, VIP management, organisational contacts, and sponsorship management followed within a year.

Two other modules, Proposals and Submission and Travel and Accommodation, were added in 2007.

The Sydney Festival had previously evaluated an off-the-shelf solution. However, its customisation cost alone to meet the Sydney Festival’s requirements would have been more than twice as expensive as Just For You Software’s custom solution.

It was also part of the brief that the new software could be used on the Festival of Sydney’s existing three year old hardware infrastructure and maintained by a non-technical person.

POSE is running without the need for a database administrator or additional hardware costs.

Subsequent to its installation for Sydney Festival the Perth International Performing Arts Festival evaluated it. They were quick to see its advantages and are now running it too.

POSE contains the following:

• The ability to store data for multiple festivals
• The ability to enter events not yet linked to a festival then later assign them to a festival
• A visual event planner that allows you to see at a glance what events are on over a calendar, colour coded by theme or genre
• The ability to assign posts or roles then people to an event
• A production scheduler that allows you to assign and schedule resources per event or performance
• Provision to store contract data for performers and staff
• A calendar style venue booking display
• A business development module for sponsorships and VIP events
• A VIP module for multi-categoried invitation parameters
• A PRM (Patron Relationship Manager) module
• A Travel and Accommodation Module
• A Proposals and Submissions Module
• A booking history for individual patrons linked to promotions
• A slew of built-in reports as well as
• The report generator iReport® so you can build your own custom reports

Probably the best way for you to get an appreciation of the benefits and advantages of using POSE is to hear it straight from the end users. So here is a testimonial from Ian Marks at Sydney Festival:

“The software has given us the ability to plan a festival from conceptual stage through to delivery. Previously we could only plan for delivery.

“The biggest outcome POSE gives us is improved information communications across the organisation.   It is very much an enter once, use many times system.

“Staff can see the overall flow of the festival in a graphical way now, so they can identify things like potential clashes early on. Our production staff, for example, can get a feel for the festival much earlier than before and start work earlier.

“There is increasing pressure on performing arts companies to manage and assess risk, particularly from government funding agencies.

“Not only do you have to deliver high quality art, you have to have strong governance and corporate control. POSE enables us to have much better quality control over things earlier in the planning process. We can identify pitfalls in the early stages and avoid significant budget blow-outs at the other end.”

Ian Marks, Manager of Accounts and IT Services for Sydney Festival. http://www.sydneyfestival.com.au

POSE has a menu tree that sits down the left side of your screen.
One advantage of this to you is that you can see where you are in the menu structure at all times. Another is that you have instant access to all menu options without having to navigate back if you are in an option several levels down a menu tree.

The right side of the screen has the data entry or data viewing panel. You can open more than one panel at a time and switch backwards and forwards between each open panel.

If you look closely you can see the tabs at the top of the viewing panel. Each tab is an open panel.

This feature allows you to interrupt whatever you may be working on to do an urgent action, complete that, then return to where you were. All without having to close what you were in the middle of doing.

Screenshot 1 click to view larger image



Screenshot 2 click to view larger image

If you have a need for functionality not yet in POSE we can add it.

Our background is custom software development so we are well used to adding functionality for specific clients. We can use the same program yet tailor a look and feel completely different to separate organisations, user groups within the organisation or even individual users.

Whether or not you wish to use POSE “out-of-the-box” or have it modified to your requirements, we can accommodate.

Now that we have attained the first goals set for POSE we have two immediate objectives, to expand both the number of users and the functionality POSE delivers to them.

Putting aside the custom requirements we may be asked to add that we don’t yet know about, the major additions on the agenda are a document storage and retrieval module (now available) and a data import module.

There’s another possibility, with potentially enormous benefits, that we are able to offer to those larger organisations looking for an even more consolidated view of data from multiple programs. A very cost-effective solution would be to use Ensemble® from InterSystems to view consolidated data from say, your existing ticketing and accounting packages together with the data in POSE.

For more information, here is a link to the Ensemble page on the InterSystems web site:
http://www.intersystems.com/ensemble/index.html

We have a copy of POSE hosted on one of our servers. We can walk you through a brief orientation demo then allow you time to play with the program at your leisure. If you would like to have a no obligation tour of the functionality currently available just call Tom Grimshaw or send him an email here.

In New South Wales dial 9552 3311.

Interstate enquiries can be made for the cost of a local call on 1300 JUST 4U (1300 587 848).

International callers please dial your international access code then +61 (2) 9552-3311.

The Spare Parts Puppet Theatre Inc http://www.sppt.asn.au/ in Perth Western Australia adopted POSE as their festival management program for the Unima 2008 program. http://www.unima2008.com/

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The New Zealand International Arts Festival became the first overseas organisation to adopt POSE as their festival management program. They were especially attracted to the Travel and Accommodation functionality to better track the comings and goings of their artists. http://www.nzfestival.nzpost.co.nz/

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We are very pleased to announce that the Perth International Arts Festival became the second organisation to adopt POSE as their festival management program. http://perthfestival.com.au/

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POSE hit the headlines at Computerworld here:

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POSE was engineered to be as accommodating as possible by allowing you to install it on almost any desktop\laptop and hardware\operating system combination.

It is written in Java so any operating system that has a JVM (Java Virtual Machine) will run POSE.

POSE uses the Cache® database from InterSystems so will run on computers running operating systems from Apple®, Linux® (Red Hat® and SUSE®) Unix® (HP-UX®, IBM AIX®, Open VMS® and Solaris®) and Windows®. If you have a question mark on whether or not your particular flavour of operating system is supported, the long list of systems Cache caters for can be found here.