Gaff's thoughts from the show floor

gafftaper

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Well I just spent the last two hours giving the floor a quick wander through. My initial reaction is that there must be a lot of money being spent on "Ultra Lounges" and other really expensive night clubs because there is a lot of that stuff here. Lots of rigging and truss... but not from manufacturers we know. The non-moving LED fixture is in EVERY booth. LED fresnels, profiles, and other strange little fixtures in all sizes and shapes. ETC has an amazing booth that looks like a theater... pictures coming soon. The Apollo print scenic gobos are really cool. $90 for a custom color gobo (must have an LED fixture). Gotta go... the PARbecue at Baxter controls is just about ready to eat.
 
Some pictures for you...
The ETC booth
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And the coolest Swag ever... and LED S4... USB drive
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More random shots
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More photos.

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Derek's favorite thing at the entire show:

Osram's 60W, 3000K, 40000 hour LED worklight, equivalent to (to my eye brighter than) a 300W, 2700K T-3 floodlight.
Non-dimmable, non-colorable; but it's a worklight, for Pete's sake. Sprinkle many of these around your facility circuited into non-dims and STOP WASTING EXPENSIVE STAGELIGHTS AS WORKLIGHTS!

[-]Not on Osram's website yet.[/-] Press release.

.
 
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I only had about an hour on the show floor today due to other obligations, but one of the great things I saw today isn't glitzy and glamorous, but will help many facility managers. The company is called Ascension and they create mobile wheelchair lifts. Here's the LDI info if you are here and want to check them out.

Basically, it's a great way to help your space be ADA compliant without major renovations. Also, it could be very useful in portable staging to avoid the expense of adding ramps. Runs on a 120v 15A circuit.
 
Thanks to a CB friend who must remain nameless, Dave and I had an awesome time at Ka last night. We unexpectedly ran into the TD backstage after the show and stayed there until 1:30am talking with him. A lot of it was about the show's technology but more importantly about the idea of building a culture of safety in theater. The level of commitment to safety from everyone on the staff is amazing and a true role model for us all.

Now, barely awake, I'm about to attend the Cirque: production techniques seminar. I'll take notes to share with you later.
 
I only had about an hour on the show floor today due to other obligations, but one of the great things I saw today isn't glitzy and glamorous, but will help many facility managers. The company is called Ascension and they create mobile wheelchair lifts. Here's the LDI info if you are here and want to check them out.

Basically, it's a great way to help your space be ADA compliant without major renovations. Also, it could be very useful in portable staging to avoid the expense of adding ramps. Runs on a 120v 15A circuit.

We have had one of their lifts in our building since the early 90's. It's worked great for us every time we've pulled it out to use it (usually once or twice a year). It's very easy to setup, just turn a couple of bolts to drop the feet and set the height sensor on the upper surface so it knows when to stop, plug it in and it's good to go. While updating our inventory a couple of years ago I called them to get some details about our lift and their customer service was great, they were able to pull up the details about our specific lift and get me what I needed even 15 years later.
 
It's a good thing Chase wasn't here.
 

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Just curious, how long do they have for the load in for exhibits. Love the ETC swag, how about a pic of all the swag you got. Who has the best swag bag.
 
Our glorious webmaster filming the ETC presentation "Layers of Light".

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As far as I know, Load in started on the 15th, and show opened on 19th. Must have been pretty crazy. Also, If anyone was wondering about the little s4 flashdrives, I believe you can email ETC and buy one from them for a really decent price. But that doesnt beat getting one for free because you came to them and showed them love... So make it out to USITT! (I hear they are also giving tours of their facility during Usitt.)
 
Were they openly giving out the flash drives? I got one at another conference as secret swag and my wife was jealous when I got home. After working my summer gig, one of our stops driving to my brothers house was in Madison, WI. Cleveland, OH wasn't too far of a drive so we decided to drop by the factory in the morning and were able to get a tour of it. They sold these for I think it was $7 in their shop, which they said was cost, so we had to pick up a second one for her.
 
Attend a training course. It's more than $7 but for the fee you get one with all the courseware on it, lunch and snacks, and maybe you learn something too. ;)

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Were they openly giving out the flash drives? I got one at another conference as secret swag and my wife was jealous when I got home. After working my summer gig, one of our stops driving to my brothers house was in Madison, WI. Cleveland, OH wasn't too far of a drive so we decided to drop by the factory in the morning and were able to get a tour of it. They sold these for I think it was $7 in their shop, which they said was cost, so we had to pick up a second one for her.

Yeah they were openly giving them out.. but from what I hear they always bring far to little of them and they go really fast cause everyone wants them.
 
Dave and I are heading home today there will be a lot of great content headed your way soon. I filmed a bunch of short interviews with dealers around the show about their cool new products. Plus we will have the entire Steve Terry presentation on planning for future power needs. As well as the entire "Layers of light" presentation about where LED products are now and how to best use them. Dave has to edit it all, so it may take a while until it's all up.

But lots of good stuff is coming soon!
Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using Tapatalk 2
 
The effects of the economy on the dealers was VERY clear. Many people had significantly smaller booths than in previous years and the cool factor of publicly available swag was significantly reduced. ETC's S4 USB drive was by far the coolest thing available. Most of the booths were simply giving away some sort of candy. There were cool things available under the counter for those who had a serious conversation about buying a product but the stuff available to the casual browser was meh at best

The most memorable other swag I saw was: I think it was HES that had luggage tags. Martin had 25th anniversary buttons and light weight grocery store style tote bags (actually several booths had the reusable tote bags). The X-laser people were giving out those folding paper "glasses" with the crazy lenses that makes everything look sort of kaleidoscope-y. Robe had little logo key rings and the best chocolate at the show. Doug Fleenor had sunglasses. AMDJ had glasses with blinking LED's in them. OSRAM had these triangular blocks that are sticky to hold your cellphone in place. There were a lot of Lanyards, but none of them were particularly unique. The rubber duckies at the Seachanger booth have been downgraded from blinking internal lights to just a ducky. There were several in booth bars/end of the day booth parties... perhaps more than previous years. But that was about it for memorable swag available to everyone who walked by the booth. Our CB pocket reference card at the Apollo booth was definitely one of the better things on the floor and they gave away a lot of them.

Let's see if we can get Dave to post a picture of the cool shirt he got from ZFX (but it wasn't available to everyone).
 
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