Multiple Programmers Using One Congo Jr

I just started playing with the Congo Jr at my church.  Yes I said playing.  We have roughly 6 people using the Congo Jr.  There is only one person programming at a time.  The problem we are running into is Joe may make some changes to a Preset or an Event and Mary may go in and do something different losing everything Joe had spent hours trying to figure out.  But Joe likes some of the Attributes Mary did.  He wants to put them in a Preset he has created. 

How do we utilize USB thumb Drives so Programmers don't override other programmer's hard work and how do we share attributes and presets between users or programmers?

I hope this makes sense.



[edited by: JDIDDY at 6:21 PM (GMT -6) on Sun, Aug 9 2009]
  • Well ... Depending on how close communication is.. If you had 7 in a perfect world? Then one is the main set in stone presets and all and the other ones can be for the 6 programmers? I think that's kinda your question??? 

  • One way to handle this is to use a "Standard" showfile that contains the 'master' info, and each programmer works in their own showfile which starts as a copy of this, using the Import function to bring useful Presets and other stuff into their copy.

    From time to time, you have a meeting and merge the best of the work into a new Standard show for you all to build on again.

    Obviously this method means that you don't have instant access to stuff done by other programmers. However, it doesn't require much coordination in the day-to-day running, only when deciding what to put into the Standard showfile.

    Alternatively, the way a nearby TV studio handles this is to have one HUGE showfile that everybody uses, containing pretty much all the work ever done.

    Thus this showfile may contain upwards of a thousand Presets, and hundreds of Sequences.
    - In v5, Congo supports Preset numbers from 1.0 to 999.9. v6 (coming very soon) expands this to 9999.999, so you are unlikely to run out of numbers.

    However, from time to time you will want to have a meeting and agree to erase a few hundred Presets, because the lists get very long and the showfile will get very large, taking a long time to load.

    This approach requires a lot of discipline from the programmers, because you'll need to agree suitable numbering schemes so that you don't get confused about how things are being used.



    [edited by: Richard at 9:16 AM (GMT -6) on Wed, Aug 19 2009]
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