I am wanting to share a type of schedule that I base my show off of. No, it’s not the run time of the display, this is the planning and execution of the display. Too many times I see people fall behind schedule and they have to run around trying to complete everything in just a few weeks’ time. Trust me, that is NOT what you want to do; speaking from experience, it is way too stressful and it takes the fun out of the hobby.
So, I created a basic schedule that I try to stick to as much as possible. If you follow this schedule, you’ll keep yourself on track and you won’t be taking a full week vacation at the end of November just to try to get your display ready to go. So here it is:
Layout Budget | January – February |
Begin Making Purchases Setup xLights (or your preferred software) Begin Sequencing | February-April |
Hardware Set up Small Prop Set up Testing Props | May-August |
Begin Minor Set up Test, Test, Test | August-October |
Setup large items (pixel trees) if not already done Run test shows- more than once Tweak your sequences Set up your show schedule and publish (Facebook, Website, etc.) | November |
Run your display but constantly make small changes even though no one will ever notice but you Make a list of your hardships-use this list to make changes for the following season | December |
Some of these tasks seem pretty obvious, others not to much. No need to worry. I am going to go more in-depth with each of these topics within the next couple of weeks. I’ll be starting a video series to help explain my madness and give real-world examples of how this schedule works.