Product Review: Online Submission Tools for Music, Video, Visual Art, and Writing

Now that websites and email addresses are as ubiquitous as mailing addresses and phone numbers, organizations that accept submissions have a new way of receiving work from artists.  Many find that receiving submissions via email can be overwhelming, and coordinating review of pieces among judges or editors can result in a lot of cluttered in-boxes and overlooked submissions.  Getting a panel together to review portfolios for a competition may be costly, and relying on the numerous moving parts and unforeseen expenses adds a level of complication that could be unnecessary. Fortunately, there are a number of products that have been developed over the past few years that are designed specifically for everything from publishers to film festivals.  These online tools enable organizations to receive submissions and have a review process that cuts out the need for endless emails or envelopes of slides or manuscripts.

All of the products below have a central place online where submissions are uploaded by applicants and stored for review, annotation, comments, and more by administrators or jurors. They each excel in different mediums, and have a variety of costs associated with them.

Submishmash

Developed by a writer, this free program was intended to enable small journals and publications to accept and review submissions in a more streamlined and organized manner.  Slightly customizable to link from and match your website, this submission tool offers unexpected flexibility and enables publishers to accept payment (submission fees, etc.) electronically with the submission.  Developers of submishmash have extended the scope of downloads to include photos, music, and additional types of media.  Submishmash streamlines the review process, allowing editors to communicate with one another, make notes on what stage of the process they are in, and enable the authors of work to check in on their submissions to see what stage of the review process they're in.  Files are downloaded to editor's computer for review.  Quick list of notable features:

• Handles word documents (automatically converts to PDF when reviewers download), images, and audio files

• Ability to email form and personal letters to author and editors with one click

• Ability to fund contests and publications by charging submission fees without setting up a PayPal account

• Streamline the editing process and eliminating the messiness and confusion of email submission acceptance by putting all work in one place for review

• Allows authors to submit word documents which are automatically converted into PDF for review

• Publisher can run multiple competitions and calls for submissions simultaneously

• Free to use (if you do end up charging for submissions, a small percentage of that is taken by developers)

Submishmash developers are working on more customizable and advanced versions that will be available for purchase, but plans to keep the current version free.

CueRate*

*CueRate is a product of the Center for Arts Management and Technology, home of this blog.

cuerate

CueRate is an extremely flexible and powerful tool for arts organizations of all types.  Designed especially for organizations "where artists or students apply for scholarships, fellowships, awards or grants," CueRate enables submissions of images, video, audio, or text, and can handle multiple file uploads at one time.  Embeddable in your website, it allows artists to submit a resume and artistic statement in addition to their artwork.  Files can be reviewed within the application itself, preventing panelists from having to download items onto their computers.  Designed to assist large juried competitions with accepting and reviewing submissions from around the world, CueRate has a variety of capabilities that can be implemented both remotely and onsite.

• Designed to accept written, video, audio, and image files

• Submissions do not need to be downloaded onto your computer, but can be reviewed in the browser

• Artist statements, resume, and responses to particular questions can be answered and included with submissions

• Customizable to match your website

• Tech support

• Variable expense based on your organization's needs

• Panelists can review from remote locations or adjucation can be moderated in one location with panelists scoring individually but experiencing work at once

• Customize your rating system

• Score entries in a manner that can be converted into excel, pdf, and online files

Entrythingy

entrythingy

Offering a free trial, entrythingy is geared toward galleries and festivals that accept only submissions of images.  Structured similarly to CueRate, Entrythingy has many of the same features, and the cost to an organization depends entirely on the volume of submissions received.  The website for Entrythingy offers many videos to step interested organizations through the process of using the product.

• Handles image files

• Entries can be judged online or by jurors downloading work to their computers

• Accepted entries can be shown in an online gallery using embeddable code

• Entrythingy pricing is based on the volume of submissions received, entrant emails sent, length of time artwork is stored on the site, and gallery sales made using the gallery widget

• Organization can hold and accept entries for multiple competitions simultaneously

• Good do-it-yourself information online with videos and screen shots to help organizations learn functionality

Slideroom

Slideroom Juror View

Like CueRate, Slideroom has proven ideal for organizations and institutions that accept submissions of portfolios of visual work.  Used most widely by colleges and universities, reviewers can make comments on images and share these comments with others who are viewing the submissions.  From a juror's standpoint, the online layout is snazzy and sharp, and access can be customized across users.  Slideroom also allows administrators to generate reports in Excel and PDF.

• Handles image files

• Online help and support

• Attractive layout and design

• Pricing plan based on plan level and can be a monthly or annual fee

• Applicants see a very clean and simple layout

• Applicants can upload text files to include statement and resume

• Standardized rating system where jurors can rate pieces and portfolios

Site Review - Events Marketing by Constant Contact

Constant Contact has just released its Event Marketing service, and the service meets a lot of the needs that an organization might have when gathering information about prospective attendees. The greatest strength of this new service is its use as data tracking tool. It has integrated a number of elements to allow the event's creator to gather information about and evaluate the experiences of registrants and participants. Standout features include:

• Customizing registrants' required information, so the user can decide if he wants to know registrants' companies, websites, phone numbers, etc., including customizable question--for example, "Last show you attended at our theater."

• Live tracking of invitee responses.

• Event reporting that gives a rundown of who received an email, who has registered, and registrants' details.

• Exportable Event Reports, so that information about registrants can be integrated into spreadsheets or analyzed later as a downloadable CSV file.

• Survey generator to develop a survey to send to participants to get feedback on their experience, or perhaps before the event (to figure out the number of vegetarians to carnivores, for example).

It also contains some great accessibility features for both the registrant and coordinator.

• A dedicated event page hosted on Constant Contact that is linked to from the invitation email, and has a URL that can be embedded on organization's website, sent in additional emails, included on social media profiles.

• Ability to pay registration fees from event website through Paypal. Additional payment instructions can also be included, for example, paying by check or at the door.

• Customizable, auto-sent registrant confirmation email, including "opt-out" of future event-related communication feature.

• The event coordinator can choose a date or respondent number at which to automatically close registration, which Constant Contact monitors.

• Ability to modify event details after posting.

• Ability to export event details into your calendar.

• Great suggestions for content, offering guidelines to word successful invitations and offer relevant event information.

There are, however, two minor gripes that I had with the Event Marketing tool that I wish to note. The first of these is that the Constant Contact invitations are, in structure and design, very similar to the regular Constant Contact emails. I think that this could be a drawback for someone who is skimming through an inbox: they may not realize this is actually an invitation.

The second drawback is the sheer number of steps it takes to create an event invitation and email.

The first screen prompts you to enter the critical event information (date and time/host/location/payment information/etc.) and to title the event. These values are then transferred to the invitation email and the event page.

Here I think Constant Contact should have added another screen that requires the user to fill in information that can be transferred to both the invitation and the website. Instead, the next screen the event coordinator sees is as follows:

constant contact navigation screen

Though a user can choose any of the steps, the screen encourages the user to create an email, then to decide what information registrants would need to supply, and finally to create a webpage for the event. While it's ok as it stands, I think that Constant Contact could have streamlined the process.

In its current incarnation, the email template is unexciting, similar to the standard Constant Contact newsletter template. A person can move a few boxes around, insert some images somewhat awkwardly into the designated spaces, and change the color of fonts and boxes (there aren't any nifty templates that integrate images). The text in each box (other than event location, date) much be individually edited on the screen.

cc invitation prompt

The (not pictured) final effect isn't particularly earth-shattering.  I think that Constant Contact would have been wiser to have the event coordinator next see a screen with input boxes like the basic "Event Date/Time/Etc." box, but including the prompts that it currently has on the Invitation and Page creation screens:

cc site prompt

Rather than edit information directly in the template, as the user does now, he could fill in information about the event and interesting details (see the suggestions that Constant Contact offers), in addition to adding images that he might want to integrate into his theme.   He would then be directed to the event page design screen above, where he could edit the appearance of the event page.  Instead of prompts, however, he would see his own user-generated text and images pulled from the previous page.  Likewise he would see components of his text and images pulled into the invitation template page--perhaps with some elements repeated on both, and some specific to the invitation or the page.

At this point the user could decide on a theme or template, which would be applied to both this page and the email template. In this way two major steps would have been streamlined, the look and feel of each element, as well as information provided, would be more unified.  The user could then make modifications or adjustments (moving boxes, removing images, altering wording) on the above screens, rather than entering data from scratch.

Overall, Constant Contact has created a tool that is very attuned to the needs of organizations who have events to build interest, show support, and raise funds. It enables organizations to keep track of respondents and gather information about them for further communication. It also integrates tools to measure the attendees' perceived success of an event.

Constant Contact does require that the user run Internet Explorer 7.0 or Firefox. Constant Contact starts at $15/month and the site includes video tutorials, and a subscription includes live coaching and phone support.