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Tools of the Trade / Re: Paperless World

« on: Jul 23, 2010, 12:05 pm »

You might check out using DropBox  (or referral link as a referral link from me) for your "file server." Dropbox automatically syncs files between multiple computers. I'm not sure how well it would scale with many people involved.

I'm currently the Assistant Production Manager for my university's summer theatre season, and we're test running Dropbox. It seems to be working really well; we've gotten a lot of positive feedback from the cast and crew. To give you an idea of how we're using it, we're producing three shows in 10 weeks. There's a lot of crossover casting and the production staff is the same, except for a few designers and the directors. There is still a paper callboard in the rehearsal space, but we wanted to be able to efficiently distribute information to people who are not on campus or may not have convenient access to the paper callboard. (Rehearsals take place on the other end of campus from the main theatre, so most of the production staff is only there for production meetings.) Stage Managers are also still emailing daily rehearsal calls and rehearsal reports.

General feedback has been that the production staff loves the easy access to rehearsal reports and tech schedules, especially since many of them have phones with internet. Dropbox was especially helpful for making updates to documents. The shared folder meant that I could make changes on my computer at the theatre, and the stage managers would automatically have access to it in rehearsals. Not all of the actors liked Dropbox, but those in multiple shows have said it is really helpful having all of the information they need for the different shows in one place.