Stavanger 2015

Memo OPAS seminar Stavanger 8 + 9. June 2015

1000 Welcome to Stavanger/presentation Eirik
1015 What is new and coming in OPAS Stefan+Katrin

Stefan and Katrin talked about OPAS in future. The new web interface to OPAS Workingname OPAS20. Microsoft stops developing FoxPro so a new programmingversion is not coming. Woelbitsch showed the OPAS-Online which developes. Stefan and Katrin demonstrated us a nice intuitive interface.

1115 1200 How we use OPAS, ecpectations for seminar all

1300 1430 OPAS-Web Arne

Arne described their websolutions for OPAS. Not as a competitor to OPAS-online rather a supplement to make OPAS easy accessible for the users. The inspiration for the developing in Gothenburg came from one of our previous seminars in Bergen where they have the schedule online. Available for musicians directly from the OPAS database. Also direct visable in the lunchroom för the musicians. Always updated. We had a discussion of to remove password protection and make the schedule more easy accessible for Bergen-musicians.

Other institutions who make linking to OPAS on the Web is Carnegie Hall and Boston (?). Carnegia Hall has its history from 1891 on the web. http://www.carnegiehall.org/PerformanceHistorySearch Arne is impressed by the design and wish to develope Gothenburgs page http://www.gso.se/sv/page/Goteborgs-Symfoniker/Arkiv with a nicer design. New on this archive page is that soloists and participiants are searched at the same time so you don’t have to know how they are registred in OPAS.

The orchestral department distribute the link http://www.gsosub.se to substitutes. The participants on the meeting commented the design on http://schema.gso.se (Arne hopes to show something nicer on the next meeting in Ålborg)

Inspired by the Danish Radio using Checklists in a efficient way on last year's conference, Gothenburg has began to use checklists. This is available on the Web so that you can type directly in OPAS from iPads, phones or computers. Arne believes that the various websolutions has popularized OPAS and the criticism that has been on OPAS that the program is difficult to use has almost ceased.

1430 1600 Stefan: Experiences from OPAS support and most ignored OPAS features
Stefan told about experiences from OPAS-education:
http://www.deriva.se/OPAS/Experiences_OPAS_support.doc
A lot of excellent tips for the daily use.

1600 1700 sightseeing Stavanger Konserthus Eirik Oliver told and showed us around.

Dinner for all of us in the evening

Tuesday 9. June

900 1030 groups

1 Schedules in OPAS, Calender
Arne showed how to set up dates for one season from a template. In real life it takes about 45 minutes to make the job. Woelbitsch have a function creating the season in 1 minute. Showed by Arne. Possible to get it from him. Just get in contact. We discussed our orchestras different way to make this.

2 Library in OPAS
Stefan told about how it’s possible to link a barcode scanner system to OPAS to keep track of materials out on loan, which might be useful for some orchestras. We also went through the budget features of the library part, and discussed the old dilemma of how to register multiple composers/authors on the same work.

3 Orchestra Management (Services and personnel handling).
Jakob ran the discussion concerning Service Attendance and Services in OPAS. We covered many subjects in this area: Payment – reports, which level of details you want in your registration of services.

After groups:
Arne showed how to make a website like http://www.gsosub.se in a simple way with Microsoft Word

1300 1500 Personnel handling in OPAS, Tour planning
Depth show by Stefan. Special for tour planning but many tools useful in different parts of OPAS.

1530 1600 Discussion. New ideas, Evaluation all

Tutorials and how-to-guides

Jakob showed http://www.dropas.dk
Arne showed http://www.opas.se/index.php/Lathundar
We talked about http://www.fineartssoftware.com/support/howto.html
Katrin told us about a new OPAS tutorial coming soon

Some ideas from the participants:

When looking for help in OPAS by clicking F1 the administrator can decided what is going to happen. More wild idea is to make a nice start when starting OPAS. For example give a random concert program. Possible for user to disable….. Or show an old program – anniversary? For example, when we had the meetingdays in Stavanger Nielsen was born 150 years ago. Show a program with his music…..

Closingdrink in the bar and many thanks to Björn and Eirik