The Bar

VenueWiki news — what’s new in the manual and the calendar sync.

Ship notes, new connectors, new venues, and the occasional war story from the crew. Pull up a stool.

Connect your AI to VenueWiki

Connect Claude, ChatGPT or Grok to VenueWiki. Your AI can onboard whole tech packs, add photos and specs, and answer questions about any venue.

You can now connect Claude, ChatGPT or Grok straight to VenueWiki. Hand your AI a venue's tech pack and it will read it, split it into suggestions and send them in for review, or ask it anything about a venue already on VenueWiki.

More info →

Connecteam calendar sync: shifts into Google Calendar or Outlook, your busy time back into Connecteam

Connecteam now syncs both ways with VenueWiki: published shifts land in Google Calendar or Outlook, and your calendar's busy time appears in Connecteam as unavailability — times only, no details. Hourly, or instant on plans with webhooks.

Your company rosters you in Connecteam, but your life's in Google Calendar or Outlook — so the roster manager books you on the day you told everyone you were away, because Connecteam never saw it. VenueWiki now syncs both ways: Connecteam shifts land in your calendar, and anything you're busy with in your calendar shows up in Connecteam as unavailability, without you typing it in twice.

More info →

Rooms with their own Google listing now file under the venue

Google lists big rooms like the ivy ballroom as their own place, so venues ended up with two pages. VenueWiki now files those listings as rooms inside the venue, and search takes you straight to the room.

You're rostered to the ivy ballroom. You search it, and you find two pages: one for the ballroom, one for ivy, each holding half of what you need. Google lists the ballroom as its own place, so adding it made a second venue. From today, a listing that's really a room inside a venue we already have gets filed as a room, automatically.

More info →

Shift change notifications: know the moment an AV company moves your call time

An AV company changed your shift without telling you? VenueWiki's two-way calendar sync now emails you the moment a Rentman, Humanity or Deputy shift changes time, date or gets cancelled — and logs what changed and when.

Occasionally an AV company changes a shift without asking you, or telling you. You said yes to a 10am start — but you can't make an 8 or 9am start, and nobody checked. If a company does the sneaky on you like that, VenueWiki now emails you immediately, and keeps a log of what was changed and when.

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Rigging plots, schematics and spec sheets on AV manual cards — now in the manual, the Files list and the card

Link a rigging plot, patch schematic or spec sheet to a suggestion card and it now appears in the venue's AV manual under the right section, in the Files list and on the card itself — with the same voting as photos, and a way to add links straight from the suggest form.

Link a rigging plot, patch schematic or spec sheet to a suggestion card and it now appears in the venue's AV manual under the right section, in the Files list and on the card itself — with the same voting as photos, and a way to add links straight from the suggest form.

More info →

Spec extraction from venue PDFs: dock heights, lift sizes and room dimensions read straight into the AV manual

Upload a loading dock policy or technical advance and VenueWiki reads the numbers — dock heights, lift dimensions, door widths, room sizes — and shows the exact line each one came from. Also: AV manuals never silently drop a contribution, and venue-wide cards finally reach their pages.

Upload a loading dock policy or technical advance and VenueWiki reads the numbers — dock heights, lift dimensions, door widths, room sizes — and shows the exact line each one came from. Also: AV manuals never silently drop a contribution, and venue-wide cards finally reach their pages.

More info →

PDF onboarding for venue AV manuals, a Rigging category, multiple lifts and loading docks, and files on cards

Upload a technical advance or dock policy and it is sorted into AV manual cards for review. Rigging gets its own category. Record every lift and loading dock a venue has, with dimensions. Attach PDFs and CAD drawings, or link Dropbox, Google Drive, OneDrive, SharePoint and Sync documents, to any card.

Upload a technical advance or dock policy and it is sorted into AV manual cards for review. Rigging gets its own category. Record every lift and loading dock a venue has, with dimensions. Attach PDFs and CAD drawings, or link Dropbox, Google Drive, OneDrive, SharePoint and Sync documents, to any card.

More info →

Self-polaroids: put your own face on the wall

Turn it on from your profile — your polaroid appears at your venues.

You can now add yourself: flip on self-polaroid from your profile, pass the photo check, and your card shows up at the venues you work — supplier badge and all. First one went live at the MCA the same day it shipped. Faces on walls, the proper way.

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Your calendar, your rules: sync exclusions

Keep personal events from marking you unavailable — by tag or colour.

Not every event in your calendar should tell a roster you're busy. Now you can exclude them — by tag, or by colour — and they won't mark you unavailable. Recolour or retag an event and the sync respects it retroactively. Your calendar, your rules.

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Meet the crew: polaroids on venue pages

Faces on the wall — know who you're working with before you load in.

Venue pages now have a staff wall: polaroid cards of the crew who work there, added by venue managers. Walk into a venue already knowing who's who — names, faces, roles. It's the green-room corkboard, except it's there before you are.

More info →

Humanity connector is live

Third roster system connected — your company links once, your shifts flow.

If your company rosters through Humanity, they can now connect it to VenueWiki once and every matched crew member's shifts flow to their own calendar automatically. That's three roster systems live — Rentman, Deputy, Humanity — with Humanforce next on the bench.

More info →

A colour per company

One glance at your week tells you who each gig's for.

Working for more than one company? You can now give each connected company its own colour — AV1 in one, Scene Change in another — so a glance at your week tells you who the gig's for. Works on Google Calendar and Outlook. And yes, one of the yellows is called "JJ Yellow" in the picker. The crew know why. Colour per company is part of VenueWiki's Calendar Sync.

More info →

Specs you can trust: crew corrections

Two crew flag the same fix, the page updates — and unverified specs say so.

Every spec on a venue page now carries its provenance. Anything unconfirmed wears an UNVERIFIED badge, and when two crew independently submit the same correction, the page updates to the crew-sourced value — no committee, no gatekeeper. What you read is what the room actually is, because the people in the room said so.

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Outlook joins the party

Google Calendar or Outlook — your shifts land in whichever you actually use.

Not everyone lives in Google Calendar. Calendar Sync now writes to Outlook too — same automatic sync, same updates and cancellations, pick whichever calendar you actually look at.

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Founding crew: 10 contributions, free for life

The deal we ran for the crew who built the first pages.

The early pages had to come from somewhere. The deal was simple: invite-only beta, and anyone with 10 approved contributions before July 31 locked in membership free for life. The founding crew who took it built the backbone of the manual — and they never pay. That offer's closed now, but it's why the good venues already have good pages.

More info →

Calendar Sync is live: Rentman and Deputy → Google Calendar

Your shifts, on your calendar, without you touching anything.

If your company rosters you through Rentman or Deputy, your shifts now land straight in your Google Calendar — new gigs appear, changed times update, cancelled gigs vanish. Rentman runs two-way: block out a day in your personal calendar and your Rentman availability updates itself. No screenshots, no double-entry, no "hang on, i'll check the app."

More info →

VenueWiki opens its doors (quietly)

What this is, who it's for, and why it exists.

VenueWiki is a shared field manual for event venues — loading docks, patch, power, house rig, room by room — written by the techs who actually work them. It's in closed beta now, with venues across Sydney already documented. If you know a venue like the back of your hand, this is where that knowledge stops walking out the door every time someone changes jobs.

More info →

Want the news without checking the bar? It lands in VenueWiki News when you're signed up.

The Bar — Article 2 / 17

Connecteam calendar sync: shifts into Google Calendar or Outlook, your busy time back into Connecteam

Your company rosters you in Connecteam, but your life's in Google Calendar or Outlook — so the roster manager books you on the day you told everyone you were away, because Connecteam never saw it. VenueWiki now syncs both ways: Connecteam shifts land in your calendar, and anything you're busy with in your calendar shows up in Connecteam as unavailability, without you typing it in twice.

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Full story

Setting up Connecteam, or weighing it against Connecteam's own calendar sync link? Read the Connecteam calendar sync guide.

The problem with Connecteam's own calendar sync

Connecteam can already push your shifts out to Google, Outlook or Apple Calendar. It's one-way, and it's slow — their own help centre says changes can take "anywhere from a few hours to 24 hours" to show up.

And nothing goes the other way. A Rentman gig, a dentist appointment, a week in Bali — if it's in your calendar and not in Connecteam, your roster manager can't see it. You're meant to open the app and mark yourself unavailable by hand, every time. Most of us don't, and then the phone rings.

Sync Google Calendar or Outlook to Connecteam as unavailability

Switch Connecteam on at venuewiki.net/calendar-sync and every busy block in your calendar becomes an unavailability on your Connecteam row. Move the event, the block moves. Delete it, the block goes. Shifts from your other companies count too — a Rentman call at another company blocks you out in Connecteam automatically.

Connecteam gets the time and nothing else. Every block carries the same note — "Synced from VenueWiki Calendar Sync" — no event titles, no client names, no who-you're-working-for. Same rule as our Rentman, Deputy and Humanity connections.

The first time you turn it on, VenueWiki fills in the last 30 days and everything forward. There's a re-sync icon on the row if you ever want to run it again.

Connecteam shifts into Google Calendar or Outlook

The other direction is the familiar one: shifts your company publishes in Connecteam land in whichever calendar you actually use, in that company's colour. If the company's Connecteam plan includes webhooks, updates are instant. If it doesn't, we check every hour — still a lot quicker than "up to 24 hours".

Shift change notifications work here too. Turn on the bell next to the company and you get an email the moment a start time moves or a shift disappears, with what changed and when.

One thing to know about speed

Connecteam caps how fast other apps can write into it. On their free small-business plan that's about a hundred changes a day, so if your calendar's busy, the first fill trickles in over a day or two — VenueWiki queues it and keeps going until it's done. Paid Connecteam plans allow thousands a day and the same fill takes minutes.

How to set it up

  1. Your company connects its Connecteam account to VenueWiki once — same as Rentman, Deputy and Humanity. Ask whoever runs your roster.
  2. Go to venuewiki.net/calendar-sync, pick Google Calendar or Outlook, and switch on the Connecteam row.
  3. That's it. Check your availability in Connecteam a few minutes later.

What it costs

Calendar Sync is $55 a year — five schooners a year, or less than $5 a month — and the first 90 days are free, no card needed. You'd be mad not to get it.

Walk into the week already knowing your roster manager can see when you're busy. Leave it better than you found it.

Setup guides: Rentman · Deputy · Humanity · Connecteam · When I Work (coming soon) · all connectors