Topics

16

Tools of the Trade / MS Excel Powerhouse

« on: Aug 27, 2013, 03:08 pm »

A colleague pointed me to a website today called Chandoo (http://www.chandoo.org) that is a massive resource for Excel instruction, tips, templates, etc...

A lot of the templates and resources are structured for the discipline of project management; seeing as Stage Management is in many ways highly-specified and industry-specific project management I thought I'd share this.  Some of you may find this useful and adaptable to your practices. 

Example:  you want to wish everyone a happy birthday, so you decide to sort everyone in your company by birth day and month, but not year.  If you filter based on date with a traditional mm/dd/yyyy format in ascending order you'll get the earliest yyyy date first, etc...  Here's a quick way to solve that.

At the very least I'd encourage you to check out the site if you come across something you want to do in Excel but you're not quite sure how to get there.

Happy browsing 

17

Tools of the Trade / Bullet Journal

« on: Aug 20, 2013, 09:06 am »

This morning I stumbled across the Bullet Journal, a journal system for good ol' fashioned analog pen and paper.  There's a video introduction here, and Bullet Journal's website is found here.  I'm giving this a shot for the remainder of August - looks simple, effective, and efficient.

Has anyone else tried this method?

How do you stay organized?  Especially interested to hear from the analog folks out there!

18

Tools of the Trade / Email Best Practices for Teams

« on: Mar 20, 2013, 08:57 am »

I found this blog post at "Getting Things Done" to be useful, particularly relevant with how much of our communication is done via email. 

Email Best Practices for Teams

Despite the maturation of email as a technology I find the etiquette to still be lacking, especially with the increasing number of mobile devices.  Is this a problem in your daily work?  How do you deal with it? 

19

The Green Room / Weird Dreams

« on: Feb 25, 2013, 08:22 am »

So I had a very weird dream last night relating to office supplies.  I was on this seemingly unending quest to mix and match my favorite pen's ink with a better housing for the ink.  Bizzare. 

What's your weirdest dream relating to Stage Management?

20

The Green Room / Life After Stage Management

« on: Feb 07, 2013, 08:43 am »

The "things we give up for theatre" thread seems to have attracted a number of us who have left the profession, but still feel the need to be connected to it in some way (we're all posting here, aren't we?!)

So - for those of us who have moved on:

What do you miss?
What don't you miss?
What are you doing now?
Do you find ways to stay connected to SMing/theatre?  If so - what are they?

21

The Green Room / 2012 Holiday Gift Guide

« on: Dec 10, 2012, 10:24 am »

Hard to believe we are already a couple of days into Chanukah, and Christmas is right around the corner.  If you're like me, you're always struggling what to get some people for as a gift.  Thankfully, this holiday gift guide will solve all of your problems - and perhaps create a few new ones in the process  

22

The Green Room / Home Brewing

« on: Sep 17, 2012, 08:38 am »

Any other home brewers out there?  My better two thirds bought me a home brewing kit this weekend and I'm quite excited to get started.  The kit is quite nice in that it's geared for smaller living spaces, and perfect for condos/apartments/city dwelling.  Looking forward to making some beer!

23

Tools of the Trade / GoDaddy Outage

« on: Sep 10, 2012, 03:02 pm »

It seems as of about 40 minutes ago that all GoDaddy services are currently down after a suspected attack on their DNS services.  This includes any websites hosted by GoDaddy and mail services associated with those sites.  An FYI if you have hosted sites - and more importantly - hosted email, by GoDaddy. 

24

The Green Room / ARTICLE: Getting What You Want In Life

« on: Apr 30, 2012, 01:10 pm »

14 Lessons From Benjamin Franklin About Getting What You Want In Life. 

Great read from one of our founding fathers on how to be a man or woman of action and achieve success in life. 

25

The Green Room / STG MGR

« on: Apr 03, 2012, 02:40 pm »

Driving through Carnegie, PA (Pittsburgh) today and saw a parked car with a license plate "STG MGR".  If this is your car, good work!

26

Employment / Career Goals

« on: Mar 21, 2012, 08:55 am »

Responding to a previous post got me to thinking about career goals and how well having goals has served me personally in my career. 

Do you have 3, 5, and/or 10 year career goals? 

Does having goals have a positive effect on you?  If so, what are they?

How does having career goals keep you focused on your personal advancement?

Look forward to hearing your responses, after we get a few rolling in I'll throw in my responses as well!

27

The Green Room / Costa Concordia Aground

« on: Jan 14, 2012, 10:16 am »

I know there are a good number of folks who frequent these forums that have worked or do work in the cruise industry.  In case you haven't seen - the Costa Concordia has run aground off the coast of Italy and almost completely sunk. 

28

Employment / Personal Branding 101

« on: Oct 06, 2011, 08:57 am »

I've been working recently with a close friend and recruiter to develop my personal brand.  One of the first articles she referred me to is linked below, it containes some helpful tips on creating a personal brand utilizing some of the social media technologies out there.  Thought this particularly applicable to independent theater professionals.    Create your brand and distinguish yourself from ordinary job seekers!

Personal Branding 101: How to Discover and Create Your Brand

29

Tools of the Trade / Personal Branding

« on: Nov 01, 2009, 11:47 am »

There are a few topics floating around about personal websites.

I've stumbled across this article on CNN.com titled "Me 2.0: Branding Yourself Online".  The article is not specific to Stage Managers, however as the vast majority of Stage Managers are freelancers I found this article to be quite relevant.  If you're a freelancer, your name is your brand.

With this in mind, how have you "branded" yourself?  What tools (personal website, facebook, networking services, etc...) have you used?  What has worked, what hasn't? 

30

Tools of the Trade / Google Wave - SMNetwork Sandbox

« on: Oct 13, 2009, 11:35 am »

This is the thread for anyone interested in participating in a SMNetwork "Sandbox" with google wave.  Assuming I am able to invite others to try the software, I will invite everyone who responds to this thread as interested.  We can then play around in a sandbox type way, sharing info and learning about the software's assets and pitfalls with each other.  

I can't guarantee that I'll be able to make this happen, but it would certainly be fun!

Please respond to this thread if you'd be interested.