This morning I helped kick off the week of in-house training at Creative Stage Lighting in North Creek, NY. They are brining in a series of manufacturers and manufacturers reps to help get their staff up to speed on the latest technology and industry trends.

Everyone, it seems, has LEDs on the brain - and rightly so. They already figure prominently in our industry and we haven't even scratch the proverbial surface. Don't believe me? Check out the current Genesis tour when it comes to North America in September. They have over 15,000 Barco O-Lite LED panels - yes, that's right, there are three zeros after the 15. There are nine million pixels in total.

A few years ago, a high school theatre student e-mailed me as part of a class assignment. The subject of his e-mail concerned the tremendous amount of energy the entertainment industry uses to light a typical show. He suggested that we were not very ecologically-minded and that we should do something about it. I was highly amused by his e-mail and I sent him a reply explaining in the nicest terms I could that it's not practical to light a big show using any less energy. I'm starting to re-think that.

Over the past year or so, I've been looking at certain performance venues and I'm concluding that those that are about 15 years or older, and haven't been upgraded since then, are probably not up to current energy efficiency standards. Fifteen years ago, ETC introduced the Source Four fixture, which is much more efficient than the ellipsoidal fixtures they have been replacing since then. In addition, the lobbies and houses that are lit by incandescent recessed cans are steadily being replaced by CFLs and T5 and T8 fluorescent fixtures. LEDs are also slowly gaining ground and replacing a variety of less efficient color changing fixtures. The larger the venue, the more the likelihood that huge amounts of energy are being wasted. Ironically, it takes capital to upgrade the lighting systems to make them more efficient. But once the upgrades are completed, then it not only reduces electricity consumption, but it also reduces the HVAC load as well. Both of these improvements save money, but the best part is that it not only saves energy, but it helps to save the environment too. We need greener stages.

I wish I had that kid's e-mail address. I would e-mail him and let him know that he just might have planted a seed deep in my thick head. If you recognize yourself as the one who e-mailed me a few years ago, let me know. And, thank you.

A couple of weeks ago, Sonny Sonnenfeld - the elder statesman of the entertainment lighting industry - was holding court at the Rose Brand cocktail reception at USITT in Phoenix. Someone invoked the name of George Izenour and we starting talking about great inventors in the industry. David Cunningham (inventor of the Source Four), Richard Belliveau (chief technology officer at High End), and Gordon Pearlman (Kleigl Performer, Morpheus Light Commander, Horizon consoles) came immediately to mind. But few come close to what George Izenour did; reaching far into the future of lighting and pulling down visions and crude implementations of things to come. In the 1930s he was already thinking about automated lighting. As a professor at Yale University he made several attempts at building them, coming very close, even installing a few in a couple of theatres. But alas, by his own admission they were failed attempts. Then in the 1950s as a consultant to Century Lighting, he helped automate the Century Featherlite Fresnel fixture for an installation at Rockefeller Center in the NBC Television Studios. But opposition from the stagehands who feared for their jobs and the sand that mysteriously filled their gear boxes forced their removal prematurely.

Another one of his very visionary ideas was to automate battens in the theatre. The remnants of one of his projects can be found at Hofstra University. In the 1950s he installed an electronically-controlled line shaft system in the theatre there. It was a very flexible system where the sheaves and blocks could be moved around using a matrix of bolt holes in the beams above the stage. Several motors were mounted on the back wall of the theatre and a controller was built that could fly the line sets in and out. Unfortunately the technology was not good enough for the task - the tolerances were not tight enough - and the battens would sometimes crash to the floor.

Years later, Stoney Stonecypher of Stone Pro Rigging has the idea to automate the theatre there. When he went in to survey it, he found the remnants of Izenour's rigging system and it worked perfectly for his design. He installed multiple ChainMaster chain hoists and the matrix of bolt holes allowed him to move chain motors around as needed. Today, the computerized controller helps choreograph the battens the way Izenour intended in the first place.

Izenour did succeed in building a mechanical dimmer that is still in use today. The Wybron Eclipse is licensed Izenour technology.

I spoke to George a week before his 93rd birthday. He was living in a nursing home outside of Philadelphia and his mind was still sharp. I asked him questions about his automated lighting and his automated rigging, and his standard reply was, "That's all in my book, 'Theatre Design' on page 268." He quoted chapter and verse and still had something to add each time. He was amazing.

Izenour passed away about a week ago. He was 95. He was an amazing man, and there will never be another like him.

I have a lot of respect and admirantion for Keny Whitright, the guy who invented the color scroller and started Wybron out of his garage in Dallas. But Keny has relinquished the day-to-day operation of the company and brought in a new CEO, Larry Turner, who in turn is building a management team and making significant changes to the way the company operates. Among the most interesting of the changes is a slew of new products, one per month, that they are introducing before LDI. I had the good fortune to visit that factory last week and among the first people I ran into there was Miles Dudgeon. The last time I saw him he was introducing me to Rosco's Keystroke. Now he's in Colorado Springs running the marketing department there. Ken Fasen, the longtime Wybron employee has moved to tech support, and a new VP of engineering, a new VP of manufacturing, and a comptroller are in place to kick start the new era at Wybron.

If there's one thing I've learned over the past 20 years it's that new products are the life's blood of the industry. The color scroller is one of the most enduring products in the industry but eventually the demand for them has to slow, if for no other reason because everybody already has one - or a thousand if you're PRG (okay, a thousand per location?) It wasn't that long ago that Martin was a fog machine manufacturer before they started cranking out new products at a serious pace. Now they are one of the kings of the industry. I attribute that to strong R&D and new product development. After talking to the management at Wybron, I don't know that they want to be the next Martin, but they are definitely eyeing expanding their market and they are looking for new products to help them do so. And I like the ones I saw, especially InfoTrace.

I've seen other companies fail at trying to make the transition from a small, single-owner-run company to a more business-like company run by a management team, particularly when the management is from outside the industry. On the other hand, Martin followed that scenario and they've done pretty well. Wybron has all the pieces in place and they have a plan that looks very good on paper. It will be interesting to watch them the next few years and see how that plan unfolds.

Miles Dudgeon (L) and CEO Larry Turner

Wybron offices

Optical sensors for InfoTrace data management

Finished color scrollers waiting for packaging and shipment

Wybron keeps a huge inventory of gel to make scrolls

Making the scrolls

Wybron keeps much of the manufacturing in-house to control quality. This is their powder-coating booth.

Operator at CNC machine - one of several

Wybron rewards innovation by recognizing employee ideas

Wybron manufacturing facilities - 35,000 square feet including offices

Plenty of companies talk about being innovative, but how many really walk the innovation walk? I'm in Colorado Springs at the invitation of Wybron, who is rolling out a number of new products over the next several months. That in itself is interesting, but even moreso is the little product demonstration they did with their RDM solution called InfoTrace.

Infotrace is a very cool tool that ties into the data distribution system and allows you change the DMX address remotely and monitor the status of devices like say, oh, I don't know, a color scroller. It can tell you about the voltage, temperature, useage, and a number of other parameters. With their own products and an RFID chip, they can do even more very cool tricks.

But here's the head scratcher. The automated lighting industry is about as competitive as they come. Manufacturers scratch and claw for every sale, beat each other up over market share, and look for every competitive advantage. Why haven't any of them jumped on the RDM bandwagon? It seems that it would be very easy to drop an Infochip in a moving light and write some software to take advantage of the RDM capabilities. Even if the only features were remote DMX addressing and tracking useage, it would be well worth it. How many times have you flown a rig and then discovered that one of fixtures wasn't addressed properly? Okay, maybe I'm the only one who's ever done that. But being able to track the number of hours on a lamp would be great. Nothing bugs me as much as renting a lighting system where two of the lamps in the fixtures have a pale brown output. How cool would it be to be able to check the lamp useage of the entire rig from the front of house before you fly the rig?

Consider the possibilities. Throw in some diagnostics, some remote monitoring, a few other cool tricks and you have an instant competitive advantage. The industry is talking back. Is anyone listening?