Both a contact database and a set of festival planning, management and production tools, Eventival 2.0 is the world’s only film festival 'package software' uniting all a film festival organiser needs in a sleek, intuitive, and feature-packed web-based application. While the history behind Eventival spans over a decade, its latest version was released in early 2011 and took more than two years of work of festival organizers, programmers, graphic designers, and numerous advisors from festivals around the world. The objective was to simplify the film festival organizers’ life by creating a tool that would increase their control over all aspects of the event, making their job easier while making the experience more predictable, comfortable and enjoyable for the guests and visitors.

The summary below highlights the guiding principles behind the creation of Eventival.

WHAT DOES IT DO?

When asked 'How is Eventival used?' we usually answer that it stores and archives festival data about people, companies, films and events, and handles a vast number of activities done by the festival staff both year-round and before and during the event. When specific questions like 'Does it print the badges?' come, we say YES. When people ask 'Can we use it to review and select films?; the answer is SURE. When they ask about submitting films, we answer INDEED, and when hospitality and guest services coordinators want to know if they can use it to communicate with guests, we say OF COURSE. This is because Eventival is basically a festival operation system – unlike an Excel sheet or most festival software systems that usually cover only some parts of the festival work, and often require to start all over again every year.

THE PRINCIPLES OF EFFICIENT DATA MANAGEMENT

Based on thousands of lessons learnt at dozens of festivals over the course of fifteen years, Eventival gives you the best of whatever has been tried around the world when creating a successful, well-managed and cost-efficient festival. It is the vision, taste and personal contacts of its artistic directors and programmers that make a festival stand out as an event known for discoveries. It is the knowledge of film industry trends and again vision and contacts that make it an important industry event. But it is efficient data management that makes the vision and taste stand on a firm ground where plans and ideas can be followed through to a successful end. The principles below are embodied in Eventival and form the core of our conviction as to how a good festival’s data management should be handled.

• All people working in (or out of) the festival office work with the same database.
• The database is accessible to all staff members with varying access levels.
• Personal, company or film data is only entered once to minimize errors that result form multiple retyping

Eventival lets you follow the safest possible route on the precarious terrain on which most festivals stand.

THE USES OF EVENTIVAL SOFTWARE:

A PLANNING TOOL

Eventival is the festival's online source of information, storing people, companies, films and events in one place, and reflecting their relevant connections

• Eventival is the only system in the world allowing its users to import relevant personal and company (and later also film) data from Cinando (www.cinando.org)
• Eventival automatically creates statistical overviews form the previous years that need not be created ad hoc
• Archived budgetary data related to the number of films, guests etc. make it easier to predict financial requirements for upcoming editions
• Online access reduces the need for staff meetings
• The two connected Eventival interfaces (one for staff, one for the filmmakers or guests) reduce the number of incoming emails and phone calls, while improving data accuracy
• The travelling staff members have access to Eventival on the road which reduces the work otherwise delegated to colleagues at the office

AN EVENT MANAGEMENT TOOL

Festival management no longer has to rely on scattered information provided by staff, and can always verify the status of most festival-related actions

• Eventival increases transparency and highlights the inter-relations among festival staff members which may help festival management to retuning job structure
• Eventival increases the accountability of the festival towards its sponsors or grant providers: by giving the festival management a clear picture of the festival, it lets them present their needs more convincingly
• For reasons above, Eventival increases the marketing potential of the festival

A LOGISTICAL AND ORGANISATIONAL TOOL

 Eventival lets you hire people in certain positions weeks or months later by separating activities requiring a “human hand” from those that should be handled electronically

• Eventival eliminates the need for a work desk (and a computer, monitor and phone on it). With proper division of labour, festival staff gets more freedom where to work, without diminishing the amount of work they do
• By handling most actions needed to run a festival, Eventival decreases dependency on supplementary software (e.g. for printing badges) and people (those whose job is merely to transfer information between the decision makers to those who "do it")
• After the festival, most staff members leave, and many do not come back: Eventival facilitates hiring and training new staff by giving them a clear picture of what is the festival, and visually answering the question "What will be my job?"

HOW EVENTIVAL SAVES YOUR MONEY

All the above increases cost efficiency by saving costs otherwise created by:

• Unnecessary work (it reduces it by making the planning more transparent)
• Bad internal communication (it forces people to communicate via defined channels)
• Bad communication with submitters and guests (by always knowing "what we have" and "what is missing", the festival staff need to communicate less with filmmakers and guests, and only about the essential things)
• Bad division of labour (the first year with Eventival is a bit like having an internal audit; the result is a better overview of who does what, when and why, and whether it could be changed to increase productivity)
• Duplicating work (because no two colleagues can mistakenly do the same thing, as they would immediately realize this)
• Crowded offices (because it makes them unnecessary - festivals using Eventival let some staff work from home, because what matters is the work, not where it's done)
• Additional software (no installations, no additional software needed)
• Post-festival work (no more frantic collection of data for the press, sponsors, grants - it's all there when you need it)
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Eventival is constantly improving based on the feedback coming from nearly 40 festival and other companies on four continents. There is no other such festival production system that benefits from a comparably large "think-tank" of festival directors, managers, programmers, print coordinators, editors, reviewers and advisors, as well as filmmakers and guests who too give us feedback. The connection between Cinando and Eventival has been mentioned; similar discussions with IMDB are under way. It is also planned to connect Eventival to several VOD platforms in Germany, France, Denmark, Estonia and Czech Republic which contain tens of thousands of digitized the festival would be able to use for reviews purposes and jury screenings.

A proper use of any online system with an office is bound to improve internal communication and logistical work, saving hours at first, and then days and weeks of time. In film festival management, planning and organization like in any other area of human activity, time equals money. By saving money in areas where it is wasted, working with Eventival may let you put in in places where it would be needed.

The above has been proven over the past decade which was an overture to the creation of Eventival, and it is being demonstrated by the satisfaction of its users. Please see here what some of them have said:

http://www.eventival.com/clients-and-references/testimonials/