Designed to link freelance technicians with companies looking for crew, My Tech Spec is a UK based website hoping to make life easier for production houses and freelancers. On Stage Lighting investigates.

Freelance Membership

The business of a being freelance technician is not complicated. You need work, a diary and to get paid (easier said than done at the moment ).

As a freelance member, My Tech Spec allows you to advertise your details, upload a CV, photo and appear in employers searches on the site . Your skill keywords and availability are matched up with employers crewing their next gig. You also can search upcoming job advertisements.

At first glance, the point of My Tech Spec is to be part of a database of available skill and connect you with suitable employment. Our recent article on getting work suggests that it’s unlikely you will be booked as LD for the 2012 Olympics just by being listed on a techies website. The real bonus could be features like the online diary and invoicing.

Running a diary

The gig diary at My Tech Spec is used by employers as an “availability tool”. Freelancers could also see the benefit of running a “cloud” diary to manage their time on the go. Everyone has a different diary system – Outlook, Phone, paper diary, wall planner, Google Calendar (my current favourite). All of these methods have some pitfalls (like constantly trying to sync them with other diaries, families etc) and a decent diary at a site like My Tech Spec could be the answer, particularly if it was easy to use with mobile devices like the iPhone. The 3 line “Quick Job” (Name, Start Date, End Date) would be pretty handy when trying to do the whole “hands free”, shouting at the phone thing.

My wife has yet to become a company member of My Tech Spec in order to check my availability for family events

Getting paid

Getting paid is the last piece of the puzzle . My Tech Spec enables the quick creation of invoices based on the diary – day rates (that’s a whole can of tax worms in the UK), PO numbers, company details etc. The invoice being generated from the saved details of companys, it’s spat out in PDF format for printing or emailing.

Another nice and simple touch is being able to run a quick report on paid/unpaid invoices for a period. Although the invoicing features aren’t going to magically fill out your tax return, it creates invoices and keeps a log of them. After all, who wants to spend their day off crafting hand illuminated typesetting masterpieces ?

Is Freelance Membership of My Tech Spec worth it?

My Tech Spec is very new but what struck me was the number of reputable UK production companies that are signed up. Taking into account the diary and invoicing features, plus the chance to browse upcoming jobs, the current price is a cheap for the chance to get in front of some Production Managers looking for crew. [Adopts BBC style gloom mode] If there are any.

Company Membership

I had a bit of play with the company membership side to see what the “other half” gets.

As a company member of My Tech Spec, you get to post jobs, upcoming freelance gigs and search the freelancer database for available crew. The search facility would be the real attraction for production companies, allowing them to find available crew with the right skills. The searches were successful although the initial search and subsequent pagination of results takes a little too long.

A good feature is the ability to add freelancers to a favourites list, a quick view of availability for the next few weeks. I couldn’t work out if searches could be performed on favourite freelancers only or if their results appeared ahead of others. If a company persuades all it’s freelance crew to sign up to My Tech Space, they could significantly cut down the time spent ringing around to find someone that can do a gig.

Will My Tech Spec be successful?

Cloud computing and the fragmentation of employment has spawned a lot of online sites aimed at freelance working in general

The idea of a central crew booking system a bit like National Rail might seem alien but it only takes a bit of momentum to get the snowball rolling. My Tech Spec tells us that take up is quicker with event companies, than freelancers. Running a freelancer database is a headache for companies of all sizes and being able to “compare the meerkat” in one place is great, even if you only stick to your “pet” meerkats – sorry, crew.

Production companies would love to be able to get access to a bigger freelancers list for “extra” hands when their own crew list is exhausted. For freelancers, My Tech Spec should continue to tweak their features (like the diary and invoices) and try to become a valuable tool to the busy self employed.

With the rate of full time layoffs in the industry increasing, this website could find a growing list of “converted freelancers” (ie. people who used to have jobs) setting them up with a sizeable labour base. In an improved economic climate, a site like this could become an industry hub.

Like Facebook, this game is “winner takes all” – if your site becomes the one , everyone converges in one place. Whether My Tech Spec is that site only time will tell but one thing’s certain – if you’ve got a good idea, first mover advantage doesn’t last for long.

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On Stage Lighting has a ton of stuff like this. You may also like:

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Rob is a freelance Lighting Designer and Moving Light Programmer currently lecturing in technical theatre production at Bath Spa University in the UK. He is also the Editor of On Stage Lighting and runs workshops in stage lighting practice.

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