I remember one of the first productions I was involved with as an adult. We were blocking a scene, and the director had me move across the stage. When I got to my mark, he said, "Now find your motivation."
I wasn't sure what he meant. I worked up the bravery to ask, and he explained that I needed to find the reason my character wanted to cross the stage, because why I crossed would change how I crossed. At a subconscious level, my movements would shift based on what my character was thinking. Motivation would shape the performance.
I'll admit, at the time I thought it sounded a little airy-fairy, and I didn't put much effort into it. The results showed. My movements were wooden. Something felt off. The character never quite landed.
In my most recent show, I worked with an acting coach. She helped me approach motivation more intentionally. She taught me how to get inside a character's head, to really understand what the character was doing and why. The results showed on stage. I portrayed a more authentic version of that character.
The Same Question, Different Words
On the techie side of my life, we have a blunter phrase for the same idea. We ask, what problem are we trying to solve?
Once you can answer that, you can focus everything you do on solving it. Anything that doesn't move you toward the solution is just noise, and worse, it can become its own problem. You can't build a real solution if you're not solving the real problem. Understanding the problem is as much work as finding the answer to it. Sometimes more.
Why This Makes Odeumate Different
This is what makes Odeumate different. With both theatre and technical backgrounds on our team, we're constantly asking, what problem are we trying to solve? When we look at new features, how those features work, and how they're presented to the user, we keep coming back to one question: does this solve the problem? If a solution creates more work, more headache, or more friction than the original problem, then it isn't a solution. It's a bigger problem.
Our motivation is to deliver world-class, enterprise-grade software that is accessible and affordable for community theatres.
From our corporate backgrounds, we understand the necessity of things like barcoding, granular location support with rooms, aisles, and bins, standardized measurements and attributes, and the consistency that makes data trustworthy at scale. From our community theatre backgrounds, we also understand that every theatre has that little something that sets them apart. Our system needs to work the way you do, not force you to work the way it does.
Here are a few examples of what that looks like in practice.
Example 1: Costume Storage
One theatre company might store costume pieces across multiple buildings and rooms. They need to know which building, which room, which aisle, and exactly where on that aisle a specific pair of trousers is hanging. That requires barcodes and an enterprise-grade bin location system.
Another theatre company stores everything in a volunteer's basement, and a few good photos are all they need to know what they have.
Odeumate is built with the flexibility to handle both.
Example 2: Audio Equipment
A theatre company might have ten Shure SM58 microphones and be perfectly happy assigning any one of them to a production, or renting out five of them without caring which five go out the door. They might also have ten Sennheiser EW-DX systems, each individually barcoded, and when those leave the building, they need to know exactly which serial numbers went with which job.
Odeumate handles both scenarios without either feeling like an afterthought retrofitted by a programmer who doesn't understand why it matters. If the programmer isn't clear on their motivation, the product reflects it.
Example 3: The Membership Module
If you've read our story, you know that one of my original motivations was the pain of working with membership spreadsheets, and how awkward and clunky they were for the way I think.
My motivation has been clear since day one. We need a tool that handles community theatre the way community theatre actually works.
Ironically, the membership module was one of the last pieces we completed. It wasn't because it was particularly difficult, or because it had never been done before, or because we couldn't figure out how to make it function. It was last because I was never satisfied that the solutions I was coming up with actually solved the problem. They didn't meet my motivation. They felt awkward to me. They looked awkward. They weren't intuitive.
So we kept setting it aside, revisiting, trying again, setting it aside. We waited until we had a membership module that solved the problem we set out to solve.
So Why Does Motivation Matter?
If you've spent time on stage, you can probably explain this better than I can. Motivation fundamentally changes the performance.
In software, understanding what problem you're solving, and making sure you actually solve it, fundamentally changes the product.
We didn't build Odeumate as a solution and then go hunting for people with a matching problem. We built Odeumate because the problem existed and we wanted to build a solution. The motivation is very different, and it shows.
When you use Odeumate, you'll get it. You'll get that we get it.
Try It
Sign up for our free tier. 500 items, free forever. That simple.
We can help you migrate your existing data. Migrating from a spreadsheet is easier than from sticky notes, but if sticky notes are all you've got, get in touch and we'll see what we can do to make the move as easy as possible.
And if you've looked through Odeumate and can't find the solution for the problem you're trying to solve, head to our Contact Us page and let's have a conversation.
Try Odeumate free at odeumate.com. 500 items, free forever. No credit card, no time limit.
Have a problem you're not sure we solve? Get in touch, we'd love to hear about it.
Glenn Howard is a co-founder of Odeumate and serves on the board of Chilliwack Players Guild. He splits his time between the stage and the techie side of life, and that combination shapes how Odeumate gets built.