Raising the Curtain

CHAPTER 1Getting on the Same Page: Efficient Internal Communication + Project Management

Technology is a tool, a collaborator, that supports business operations in a significant but subtle way. While it would be wonderful to simply add on a technology to the workplace and have it magically solve our problems, that is rarely the case. Yet, when intentionally selected and implemented, technologies in the workplace have proven time and again that they can save time and headaches, therefore increasing the impact of our work.

In our experience as artists, freelancers, and arts administrators, the technology we use has often saved the day, but to be honest, it has also sometimes created massive headaches. This chapter will share our experiences as well as those of several theater, dance, and music companies. These success stories of creating and using institutional systems will reveal how they decrease “one more dead‐end email chain” and increase clarity of purpose, priorities, and workflows.

The chapter begins with the frameworks of how our work systems and environments have changed over the years before we dive into knowledge management and how to increase institutional memory, efficiency, and job satisfaction day to day. The arts are a people business, so we'll also discuss how we can create better models for communication. The technology solutions that we'll investigate are software‐as‐a‐service (SaaS) models for workflow management. None of this works independently or is adopted ...