COMMUNICATION: Require cast to have an email?

[EFMcMullen]

Maybe I am beginning to show my age, but isn't a physical callboard still part of standard operating procedure?  Or is it beginning to go the way of the Dodos as well...

[VSM]

If there is no actual callboard, where will everyone go for the baked goods?

[Mac Calder]

I am currently doing crew control at my venue. It's corporate AV - so the average technician age is 25 and everyone is generally quite computer savvy - or at least technology savvy. All full time staff are provided with e-mail, the rostering system is avilable over citrix to all staff (so home access is quite easy), all staff are required to have a mobile number registered with work. At the end of each day, I SMS everyone's start times for the next two days, I print out 3 copies of the next two days schedule and pin one to the crew board, one sits on my desk and one sits on my managers desk and I email the schedule to everyone. Guess what - people still turn up late... and when I drag them into my cubicle, they pick up my copy of the schedule and say "I check it on the board yesterday. I must have miss read it."

People like hard copies and people check hard copies... Best bet is to use it to your advantage.

[nmno]

If there is no actual callboard, where will everyone go for the baked goods?

Sorry to post with nothing to contribute but... this made me laugh out loud!

[klcurrie]

I'm working on a show now where one of the actors doesn't check email regularly.  Since the hotline is not functioning at the moment, it is a phone call I make at the end of every night to her with the next day's schedule.  I will admit it took my a little time to get used to it and only once has she had to call me and say, did you forget me? - it was the first day she hadn't been called so no seeing her leave made me forget.  But it has certainly made me closer to that actor to the point where she came to me with what she considered a small concern that i'm not sure she would have had we not had daily phone conversations. 

[SMrose]

Maybe I am beginning to show my age, but isn't a physical callboard still part of standard operating procedure?  Or is it beginning to go the way of the Dodos as well...

Every show I have done (as SM) has a callboard even if I tape a section of a wall off in the dressing room/greenroom or backstage by the stage door and designate this as the "callboard".

[centaura]

Maybe I am beginning to show my age, but isn't a physical callboard still part of standard operating procedure?  Or is it beginning to go the way of the Dodos as well...

In most non-educational settings you'll still find a physical call board, but I can see in educational situations, where everyone is near the same age and near the same level of technical sophistication, where there might be a trend towards electronic notifications verses physical notifications.  Its in the current young mindset that everything is done by computer.  I think we're a while away from seeing that as the norm, though.  Once you leave the "artificial" environment of a college campus, many more variables are thrown into the mix and not everything can be done electronically.

We're heading in that direction slowly - at my road house ten years ago, the tours wanted phone lines and many of them.  We've still got a dozen that can be patched into offices.  Now its all internet.  I patch one DSL line and they have their own wireless routers that everyone feeds off of.  I've had tours that haven't even wanted one phone line patched in for them.  Just the internet.  But, the shows still all have physical callboards that the actors must check upon arrival at the venue.

-Centaura