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NOVEMBER 2017
Teaching QLab™ 4 @ LDInstitute™ 2017 & LDI Recap
Hello Everyone!
I hope you had an amazing start to your holiday season this year and have enough leftovers to last until December!
The 2017 Live Design International (LDI) Trade Show & Conference has officially been loaded out of the Las Vegas Convention Center, with all it's exhibitors, presenters, stagehands, instructors & staff starting their planning for next year.
This year I did something new and exciting for the conference and paired up with Jeromy Hopgood, professor of Entertainment Design & Technology at Eastern Michigan University, to teach three days of QLab 4 at the LDInstitute™, which is LDI's class & workshops sessions that take place in the week leading up to the Show Floor and major events of the weekend.
The three sessions included a 7 hour Introduction to QLab 4/Advanced Audio class on Thursday, a 4 hour session on Friday on the new lighting features QLab 4 now offers, and finally a 4 hour session on projection and video on the Saturday.
QLab 4 Sessions
Over the span of 3 days, and a cumulative 15 hours of session time, we tackled not only a vast overview of Figure 53©' QLab™ 4 software as a whole, but dove into the plethora of audio manipulation features projection/video mapping & cueing techniques and an exciting walkthrough of the new lighting additions that the fourth iteration of QLab brought to the show control software.
Our session attendees were from all corners of the industry from Designers to Building Managers to those who have programmed in QLab since version 1 to people who have hit GO on QLab thousands of times, but had yet to learn how to build a workspace in the software.
After each class we offered a half hour of demo time to allow everyone to get up out of their seats and plug into the various pieces of equipment we had in the room; ARTnet node, Engadget DMX Pro, AudioFire I/O box, OWC Thunderbolt 3 dock, and see how easy it is to just plug in and start programming and playing back cues.
Trade Show Floor
I spent only a few hours on the show floor this year, but the attendance was so much higher than last year, and you could feel the excitement in every booth.
So many new product launches from the ETC© ColorSource™ Cyc, Rosco©'s new X-Effects™ LED Projector, City Theatrical©'s QolorPIX™ LED Tape & so many others.
I stopped and spoke with many of my fellow industry colleagues in the various booths, including, but not limited to, John McKernon (creator of LightWright™) to talk about our upcoming LightWright™ Masterclass, Frank Brault of Vectorworks to discuss future Vectorworks & Vision trainings hosted at TLSP, Spencer Lyons in ETC© to discuss the new and exciting things they're planning to promote the ColorSource line, and Kat Covell at ACT Lighting© to "geek out" about their new "ACT Academy" for online GrandMA2 trainings.
Overall the floor impressed, dazzled and just plain amazed me once again, and being a speaker this time around gave me a small glimpse into the hard work that goes into being a part of these gigantic events.
World Record Event
And a comment I can't not talk about is that this year's LDI was venue for the Guinness Book of World Record attempt and titling of "Largest Laser Show" with:
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314 individual laser fixtures
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12 tons of equipment valued at £2.6 million
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1,377 watts of laser power
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Set by ER Productions, which has supported The X Factor,
Zayn Malik, Calvin Harris, Metallica and Katy Perry
I really look forward to next year's conference, and I hope it out-does this years's tenfold!
See you there next year!!
Please feel free to Contact Dustin D. Miller and send over your questions for next month's entry, comments on this month's entry and any and all follows ups on my tutorials, overviews and answers.
Design & Conquer My Friends,
-- DDM
Las Vegas skyline photo & QLab 4™ session photos by Dustin D. Miller, High End Systems© Booth photo courtesy of ETC© et cetera... blog, Video courtesy of Christian Jackson.
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