Hello! Artshow Jockey is a application to assist in the management of a convention-style art show.
If your show has the following basic arrangement, then you'll find that Artshow Jockey does exactly, or possibly more, than what you need:
- A number of artists bring their works to a show for display and sale.
- A number of bidders that register to place bids, obtaining a "Bidder Number" to do so.
- Bidding is first in a "silent auction" process, where bidders mark on a bid sheet associated with each piece of art.
- Bidding may progress to a traditional voice auction if some condition is met.
- Bidders then pay and collect any pieces where they are the highest bidder, and possibly other unsold pieces.
- The artists receive the winnings, minus any commission that the show chooses to charge.
Artshow Jockey contains a number of other features to make management of larger shows easier:
- Pre-show reservation of different types of display spaces: panels, tables, and others can be added.
- Bid sheets can be pre-printed with information from the piece database.
- Bid information can be entered into the system through several means, including barcode scanning.
- Printed reports for various information, including a "winning bidders report", all in PDF format.
- Support for both "staff collects" and "user collects" processes.
- A cashier application to collect payment, and print invoices and pick-lists.
- Automatic cheque printing and account management for payment to artists.
- E-mail can be sent to artists "en-masse" through a template system, and include information about their contact information, pieces in the show, winning bids and bidder details, and full accounting information.
Artshow Jockey is written in Python using the Django application framework. It can be installed as a standalone application, or integrated into a larger Django project. Most screens use the Django "Admin" application, with a few customised screens. Customised screens are currently "ugly" but functional, just like this page.
Artshow Jockey is currently in development, and has been used and refined at Further Confusion every year since 2009. Other conventions are highly encouraged to use it too. A polished "1.0" release is expected in March 2012. You are invited to download an try the project now; any recommendations and requests will be happily considered. Use github to download the "master" development branch, or to download a zip file or tarball. Stable releases will be given distinct branch names.
Visit the Wiki to get documentation, or go straight to the Quickstart page.
Artshow Jockey is currently actively developed by Chris Cogdon chris@cogdon.org.
Development assistance, especially for HTML/CSS/Javascript, is eagerly welcome.