Shakespeare Does Software

The Oregon Shakespeare Festival puts on more than ten shows a year in three theaters over a season that begins in February and ends in November.  One reason this respected theatre company can do so much is because their IT department has developed innovative software for stagecraft.  The Festival wanted to share their technology advantage with the theater community and decided to take their software to market, with the goal of launching the first application at USITT, the largest theater stagecraft conference in the US.  The first solution to be packaged as a product was lighting software that controlled the moving lights (intelligent fixtures) on stage.  But they had never launched a software product before.

I took on the role of product manager pro bono.  It’s good to support the arts, and it was also a chance to do something totally different.

Working with a small team of developers and one IT manager, we defined a list of deliverables to have ready before USITT.  They had decisions to make about pricing, licensing policy and product road map.  They needed marketing communications materials to take to the show, a product demo, and a website. And very importantly for a team that felt nervous because they had never worked a trade show before, they needed booth training. 

We did all of this on a shoestring.  The team went to USITT in March 2009 and caused a sensation.  Reports are that the novice booth bunnies did a great job at their first trade show. 

The next challenge: setting up a sales organization!