It’s that time of year again! Ready for your Propared Year 9 recap? We are here and ready for your questions.
Oh hi, ok, how are things going?
Things are going great!
Gimme some numbers.
Hell yea. Since Propared launched, 535 organizations have managed 21,872 projects (including 5,272 this year alone)! In 2022, we welcomed 39 new organizations.
That’s good, right?
We think so! We’ve been growing by 30% each year since 2016 which is about the pace we’re trying to keep. It’s also been encouraging to see more projects being created and managed than ever before. Plus, we saw many current organizations add additional users.
Sweet! What do you do with all that dough you bring in?
We used about two thirds of our revenue to pay salaries. Another big chunk went to what the fancy folks would call our “tech stack”. I’ll just call it, “all the stuff that makes Propared work”. This includes the hosting platform (Microsoft Azure), subscription management software (Recurly), our chat tool (Drift), and support site (Helpdocs). Operational stuff like accounting services, insurance, legal fees, taxes, email, cell phones, and design software also takes a chunk of change.
Makes sense, so what’s the story of this past year?
Ooooooo… story time. As you probably remember, in 2021 we finished up a rewrite of the entire front-end of the platform setting us up for the next ten or so years. To achieve this we employed the services of a full-time senior developer. His name is Max, and he’s responsible for nearly every bit of code in Propared. He’s awesome.
Working along side Max is Julia, our QA expert who tests all the new features that Max builds and pre-finds as many bugs as possible before we roll out updates. She’s awesome too.
With Max and Julia at our side, this year we transitioned into building new features instead of rewriting old ones. Propared’s scheduling features have given us a really good foundation, and we began expanding into other parts of the management workflow.
Sorry, I’ve kinda been busy this year. What new features?
Oh buddy, it’s a list you wouldn’t believe. You can find a every feature update here, but in short, here are the major projects we released in the last 12 months:
- Create Report Templates
- Track Equipment, Build Budgets, Manage Inventory
- Estimate Labour Costs & Book Crew
- See and Edit Tag Lists
- Timeline Optimization
- Production Book Optimization
- Related Organizations
Wow! You’ve done all that in one year?
Aw stop, now I’m blushing.
How did you decide what features to work on?
From you, silly. Every time we chat about an idea or we hop on a zoom together, you’re helping to shape Propared. Sometimes you help us prioritize a bunch of things we’ve been working on, and sometimes you open up whole new ideas that we hadn’t thought of yet. When we roll out those brilliant ideas you suggested, you’re also helping fellow managers from all over the industry!
Now I’m blushing. What else have you been up to?
We also presented at USITT, LDI, CITT, World Stage Design, taught production management seminars at several universities, and launched a new initiative called Propared User Sessions where current users can come together to talk with each other!
Not to look a gift horse in the mouth, but what’s on the docket for 2023?
After some time off with our family and friends, we’re kicking off the new year with custom statuses. After that we have plans to release some new note-tracking and task-management features, followed by new production book layouts, an expanded projects screen, and a host of other goodies that we know you’re going to love. We’re also looking at opening up an API this year.
We’ve also got our next Propared User Session coming up on January 18th. Check out this link for the details. And we’ll be at the USITT Conference in March.
Anything else you want to say?
While I’ve got you, I just want to let you know how much joy building this program gives us. We spent 20 years working in theatre and live events, and it feels really good to build something that’s helping our friends and colleagues. Thanks for all the amazing work that you do.
I’m getting all emotional here. Can we wrap this thing up?
Happy holidays to you and your loved ones. See you in the new year!
