What is the relation between Eventival and Datakal?

Between 2000 and 2009, the life and work of Tomas Prasek and Pavel Kalenda were synonymous with their joint project the film festival community came to know as "Datakal".
Tomas and Pavel met at the Karlovy Vary IFF (KVIFF) in 1997 where Pavel was responsible for IT support, while Tomas was the head of Guest Services department. After the crash in July 1997 of an accreditation database and ticketing system called Wild Dance built for the KVIFF by a software company HTC, and failed attempts to purchase a third party system, Pavel began creating a system of his own that gradually began to be used as the festival's main hospitality database. Several years later, Tomas thought it was high time to give the system, usually referred to just as "the database", a proper name, and his then girlfriend Julia Szanton suggested calling it "DataCal". Since a company of that name already existed, Tomas altered it to "DataKal". DataKal gradually became the main software tool used by the KVIFF. In July 2000, Pavel was approached by Tor Fosse, director of the newly established Bergen IFF in Norway. Pavel spoke no English at the time so he asked Tomas to see what Tor wanted, and it turned out that Tor was interested in using a system similar to the one that impressed him at the KVIFF. Following a series of discussions, Tomas convinced Pavel to embark on a risky journey, implementing DataKal in Bergen. Tomas translated it into English, in September they went to Bergen to set the system up, and in October they returned to assisted in the successful launch of the 1st BIFF.

Encouraged by an enthusiastic reaction of the Canadian filmmaker Ron Mann who persuaded Tomas that this is not a project to abandon and offered selfless help in promoting DataKal (which he indeed did), Tomas began looking for other festivals interested in the same adventure, and set his mind on working with the Pusan IFF in South Korea which had just begun gaining in importance as Asia's primary film event. Tomas travelled to Asia and made connections with several other festivals besides the PIFF.

In November 2000, Tomas registered the name DataKal at the Industrial Property Office in Prague. Because DataKal s.r.o., the company he set up together with Pavel had not yet been officially registered, he temporarily registered Pavel as the owner of the trademark. DataKal s.r.o. was registered a month later, and Tomas and Pavel planned to work under its name. However, for practical reasons they finally decided to work as licenses individuals rather than a company. The DataKal trademark was therefore never transferred to the DataKal company, and Pavel Kalenda has  continued to own it, thought both he and Tomas have equal shares in the DataKal company. For a decade, Pavel and Tomas talked about transferring their intellectual property (software, documentation, website and the name) to their company, but there was never the right moment.

In September 2008, Adrian Johnson offered Pavel and Tomas a share in Eventival Ltd., a company he planned to establish. They both agree, but a month Pavel suddenly announced he would quit the career of a computer programmer and go to work for Shell. Adrian subsequently offered the partnership to Tomas, and finally also Dawna Cha.

In Berlin in February 2009, Pavel made a shocking announcement that he would in fact not be quitting programming, but rather the contrary, as he had established his own software company. He informed Tomas that he would take advantage of the fact that he was still the sole owner of the DataKal trademark, and he would use it as his own. The same went for the DataKal website and, most importantly, the DataKal product.

Tomas is currently writing a full account of the history of the "Datakal project".

Do you provide user support for the Datakal software?

Tomas did this for many years and wrote all User Manuals and documentation related to the Datakal software in the past decade (later on with the help of Jana Ptackova). Due to the current situation, he is no longer providing support to the users of the Datakal database.

Why was Eventival established?

Despite the success of Tomas's previous festival database project, it became clear that for many festivals it will simply never become possible to afford a server-based software system which would involve having to purchase additional hardware and software and often also hire an IT specialist to support the server. Adrian and Dawna had since long been proposing the idea of creating a simpler web-based system. In winter 2008, the project turned into reality when Eventival was established, and Adrian began creating the software. In the summer 2009, a larger team of programmers was assembled in Prague in response to the interest in Eventival, and began working a new, improved version of the Eventival system.

Is Eventival an online film submission system?

The correct answer would be "Yes, Eventival is ALSO a film submission system, but it is more than that." Several film submission systems exist that help connect filmmakers with festivals, but what they do is that they merely gather the data and pass it on to the festivals. Film submissions made through Eventival, however, bring the data directly into the festival's database.

How do I install Eventival?

And why would you want to install it? You need not install anything, just as you do not install any application to get access to your online banking. The Eventival application and the data stored in it are installed on secure servers hosted with professional hosting companies. All you need is a web browser and login, and you can use Eventival as if it was installed on your computer - except it need not be.