Grand
Stage has a shop in Milwaukee, which is I think an hour or so from Beloit? They're the major
Strand reseller in the area, if you tell them what you're doing, you're using a
Strand, and let them put advertising or what have you up on the room, they might lend you a
Vari-Lite for a couple days. They'll also give you the
Strand mover profiles. They're a good bunch of folks that run that company - family business downtown Chicago.
Do you have the big MS trackball
mouse? That's the best way to do Intels on a 300 series. The 500s have the dual (or tri?) encoders. Make sure you have the
power to run one of these should you obtain one. You should also consider whether or not it makes sense to demo or teach the mover functionality. Does your city have the facilities or need to use them? If not, anything more than you can do x, y, and z easily with intels is too much as its useless information to your key audience members.
If you're doing a hands on,
console, table, view of the lights (only takes three or four to do this), and place for people to sit and write/watch will do the trick. If you're doing a demo,
powerpoint, three tall with lines prints from the
powerpoint do the trick.
Realize you don't have to tell your audience everything there is to know about the
console. Once you learn the concepts, you can apply them to all the features. There's a
manual and it's actually pretty good aside from the fact that the index and TOC both suck.