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Event Management Software
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What is POSE?
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POSE
stands for Planning
and Organising System for Events
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POSE is a comprehensive event management program designed specifically for
event planners who organise festivals and events.
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What
is the purpose of POSE?
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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:
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- 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
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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.
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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
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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
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What
does POSE look like?
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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.
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Can POSE be
altered to your needs?
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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.
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What is planned for POSE?
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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
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How
can you play with POSE?
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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.
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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/
____________________
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.
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Copyright© 2007-2008 by Tom Grimshaw. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
Apple, Cache, Ensemble, HP-UX, IBM AIX, iReport, Linux, Open VMS, POSE,
Red Hat, Solaris, SUSE, Unix and Windows
are registered trademarks and may not be used without the permission of
their respective owners.
POSE event management software and this site created by
Just For You Software
Last updated March 26, 2008
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