2008 Conference -October 24-26 - Phoenix, AZ |
|
Private Showcase Schedule
Submission Information |
| A note from Bill Isles:
Hello, friends. I'm happy to offer my services to compile the FAR-West
Showcase Schedules into a comprehensive guide. This format, which I
developed for the Memphis conference in 2007 and 2008 gives attendees a
valuable guide to finding artists and finding out what showcases are
happening in a time slot.
YOU MUST READ ALL OF THIS AND FOLLOW
IT CLOSELY WHICH IS EASY.
1. You submitted a name for your showcase
when you filled out the showcase application. That is the name of your
room. DO NOT request that certain time slots have different names. For
example, let's say that an agent, we'll call it "The Folkarama Agency"
has purchased a two hour block of showcases in your room to highlight
their artists. And, for the sake of example, your room is called
"Suite: Sensitive Guys". In the schedule, you will be listed in the
master list as "Suite: Sensitive Guys", not "Suite: Sensitive Guys
presents the artists of The Folkarama Agency". You will have to
advertise that somewhere else. A banner would be nice. Or an ad in the
program. Got it? Good.
2. You can send me your list one time even if it's not done. That
way, I can see how well you're following the format. I can let you know
if you've made any major mistakes for the final submission. Got it? Great.
It will be less work than getting it wrong at the deadline. However,
please read the rest of this page or I'll have to take the time to send
you an email asking you to follow the directions and try again. Just so
you know, I answered over 500 emails last year doing this project.
That's an average of 9 per showcase presenter. Oh... and remember, if
you resubmit, you MUST resubmit your entire schedule. I'll not be doing
inserts and edits.
3. It is VERY IMPORTANT THAT YOU FOLLOW
DIRECTIONS. Fortunately, they are very easy to follow, did I
already mention that?.
For those of you who are new presenters, I'm
including links to the PDF's that I did for last years schedule so you
can see how they will be listed. Here they are...
Showcase List by Time and
Showcase List by Artist.
These are the two formats that we'll use. There wasn't, and won't be, a
showcase list by showcase room. These formats are the ones that I developed
with the help of several talent shoppers. They are very easy to follow
and especially nice for developing a personal itinerary. |
| What about TBAs? The only place that a "TBA" is
useful is in your own room list. There's no use in having artist "TBA"
listed 50 times in the time schedule, or the artist schedule. Therefore,
know that they will be excluded from the final printed lists. Several
presenters have suggested this. They will, however, be included in the
final, downloadable, room list. |
| When's the deadline?
The deadline for your submission
is 11pm (CST) Friday, October 17th. However, if you send me a preliminary
submission by 11pm (CST) Thursday, October 16th, I will extend that until
11pm
(CST) Sunday,
October 19th. I can quickly open your file and
look at it and make changes and/or let you know if you're doing it right, or what changes
should be made. I know that many of you are getting used to deadlines
being extended. These will NOT be extended.. |
| Here are the easy steps for
submitting... |
| 1. Download a
template file of your choosing (see below) and
save it to your computer. The easiest one for you to work with is Excel,
but you might not have that program. You can use any word processor to do the
text formats. If you have QuatroPro or some other
spreadsheet program, you can import the file and then save it back to Excel
format. Another, free, option is Open Office. |
| 2. Download
and review our own Memphis Showcase Submission File below. It's a good example
of how to do it. When entering data, DO NOT USE ALL CAPS, but use caps where appropriate,
such as "The
Smiling Pickers" (See note under "fname" regarding "The". Remember,
how you send it is how it will look in the schedule. Please don't expect
me to edit 2500 entries. I won't know if "the smiling pickers" should be
"The Smiling Pickers" Don't leave any BLANK LINES or add
information to the top as it will create extra work for me. All I need is what is there.
Do not remove the column names row. |
| 3. Email me the
completed file. Send it to
bill@halfamind.com
If you use this link, it will set the subject to
"Showcase Schedule". You can also use this address if you have questions, or
call me at 218-340-4404 (Central Time Zone) DO NOT RENAME THE FILE
unless you rename it FAIMPORTShowcasename.xls where "ShowcaseName" is
the name of your showcase. |
| A few days after I receive
you submission, I will send you a PDF of your showcase list. Please
review and comment, IF NECESSARY. I will also publish PDFs of the soon-to-be printed reports and
a link to those PDFs will be on this page so bookmark it. Shortly after that, everyone else will be sent
a link. What you see in the PDFs will be what will show in the program. |
| Please
review the following information
regarding the templates (which follow). |
|
A Note on Artist Names |
ASK THE ARTIST HOW
THEY WANT TO BE LISTED. I had to increase the size of this due to
a SUBSTANTIAL number of misspellings and errors in the artist names in
the early entries. Make no assumptions. I get a lot of
variations on names which I either have to edit (and take the time to
contact the sponsors or the artist website). For example, if I get a
Thursday listing for "Dakota Smith" and Friday one for for "The Dakota
Smith Band", is this the same? Maybe not, perhaps Dakota Smith is doing
some solo showcases and his/her band is showing up on Saturday.
Regarding alphabetizing, if your artist's name is Adolf Zimmer, he will
show up in the "Z" section. Don't ask me to change that. If your band's
name is Adolf's Dog, they will show up in the "A" section. I'm getting a
list of artists from FA and this will be the final determining factor. |
|
fname |
The first name of the main showcase artist.
Leave blank if it's a band, unless the band starts
with "The". Then, put "The" here and the
band name in lname. For example, "The" here, and "Smiling Pickers" in
the lname field. For couples, put both of their first names here, as in
"Bill & Kate" and the last name in the lname field. IF THE
ARTIST GOES BY A SINGLE NAME, LIKE "CHER", PUT IT IN THE LNAME FIELD
and leave the fname blank. Put TBA in the lname field. USE
"&" instead of "and". |
|
lname |
The last name of the main artist and,
then, any other artist. For example, I'm did one showcase Saturday night
where April Verch backed me for the whole showcase. I entered "Bill" under first
name and "Isles & April Verch" under last name. If it's a
songwriter-in-the-round (ITR), enter a separate row for each
participant and see the note below regarding "Format". Note
the use of "ITR" in our sample. REMEMBER! THIS FIELD
WILL DETERMINE WHERE YOU ARE ALPHABETICALLY IN THE PRINTED SCHEDULE. |
|
Room |
Enter the Showcase Room Name (NOT the room
number). This MUST be the same as the name you entered on your
showcase application. Just put it in, and cut and paste it into the
rest. I'll enter the
room numbers once I get them. If you have multiple showcase applications
then you should submit separate files. If you have sponsors for
some of your showcase slots, you will NOT be able to enter those here.
You must advertise that elsewhere. |
|
Day |
This is the "waking" day, the day
when you woke up last. You know the deal, you're up until 2am on
Thursday night (which is really Friday morning) but we're using Thursday
in this case. You don't need a time code anymore as I've
programmed the database to understand folkies. Therefore, the Thursday
1am showcase will be two hours after the Thursday 11pm showcase and will
sort accordingly. DO NOT ABBREVIATE, Put "Thursday", not "Thur". |
|
Time |
This is the start time for the showcase. It
should be entered as ##:## am or ##:## pm (the leading zero is optional). You can alternately use
24-hour time, but it's not necessary. The system will convert it. So,
enter 1:00 am for 1 am shows. DON'T ENTER "1am" or "Midnight".
This is VERY IMPORTANT. Here are some examples... 10:20 pm; 1:00 am;
3:00 am. )include a space before the "am" or "pm". |
|
Format |
Enter either SS for Standard
Showcase, or ITR, for In-The-Round |
|
Download Template Files Here - Fill
them out, send them back |
|
Microsoft Excel
(.xls) (also compatible with Pocket Excel, Appleworks and OpenOffice) |
Simply fill out the cells
and send it along (note that anything that's not in the marked columns
will be discarded. Don't write notes to me in the margin without sending
a separate email explaining that you've done this. While I'll be opening
the files, to look for easy-to-edit items like blank lines, I won't
really be paying attention to notes.If you have notes, just send me an email.
Don't have Excel? You're
in luck...If you would like to install the FREE OpenOffice.org
software (Think Microsoft Office, but free and open sourced, like Linux) please visit the following link.
This is a full Office Suite,
but when installing, you can select "Custom" and turn off features you
may not want. The "Calc" component is the Excel-Compatible Spreadsheet.
There are Mac & PC Versions. |
|
SAMPLE
Microsoft Excel
(.xls) (also compatible with Pocket Excel, Appleworks and OpenOffice) |
This is the completed
Memphis file
for "Bill & Kate Isles Present". Please review it so you'll see how it's
done. |
| |
PLEASE TRY TO USE THE EXCEL FORMAT. If you absolutely can't, use one of
the following. |
|
Plain Text
(.txt) |
Enter the information in rows, as indicated.
Put commas, but DO NOT PUT SPACES between the field values. Spaces are
ONLY OK
inside the values. For example:
Joe,Johnson,Artificial Hip 1,Friday,3:00 pm,ITR
One row per showcase, except as noted for the ITR's. Be sure to keep the
headers in the first row: fname,lname,Room,Day,Time,Format |
|
Comma Delimited
(.csv) |
This is the same format, actually. However,
you may have a program that will save to CSV and you won't have to type
in all the commas |
|
Plain Text Mac
(.txt) |
Same, but for Mac |
|
Comma Delimited Mac
(.csv) |
Same, but
for Mac |
|
Date |
Additional Notes |
|
|
|
|
|
|