Back after 35 years

I have for many years worked as a video technician and projectionist. My last training or experience in the lighting area was some 35 years ago at the high school level. We had a brand new theater equipped with a 21 channel, 2 scene manual preset board. Due to an odd set of circumstances, I have inherited lighting duties at one of the venues I work in. It is a rental venue, they do not produce shows. It is not a large venue but does host high profile events. It's a great place to work, I have known the people running it for nearly 20 years, they pay decently and on time and it is a fun place to work. It has an ETC Smartfade with which I just had to figure out how to how to create a half dozen looks for some jazz concerts we just finished with. That went well but am always looking for tips. It is a "one man band" as far as lighting goes, I am the LD, ME, Board Op, and crew. The venue has a busy Holiday season ahead.

Congratulations on your New Job!
Send some photos of your venue it sounds great!

I work with smartfades heaps and they are good desks.
They lack some of the more "Hardcore" Functionality of the bigger ETC desks but they will get the job done with conventionals and also Inteligent fixtures if you have the ML model of the desk.

I would definitely recommend getting a laptop or desktop running ETC's Smartsoft. It is an offline editor and also a great tool that adds some more control and monitoring functionality you would get with a bigger console with monitors.

And I would definitely recommend getting to know the different way fixtures can be patched into the desk including:
Intensities: Great for standard conventional fixtures
Independents: Good for House Lights and smoke machines
Devices (Only found on smartfade ML) : Good for Intelligent lights or conventionals where you want more control.

The Smartfade manual gives heaps of good little tips to help you program so have a good read of that.

Enjoy!

https://www.youtube.com/results?filters=playlist&search_query=smartfade&lclk=playlist is videos on the Smartfade line. They are for older software versions (get updated!) but are still quite useful on the basics.

As someone that also spent time 'off-stage' I recommend getting to know the fixtures. The basics are the same but modern ellipsoidals are harder to blend and not all PAR like fixtures are really like old PARs. Gel has improved, the range of colors is larger, with more subtly.

And of course, stick around and ask questions! Welcome