Presented by Church Production magazine, the conference includes workshops and hands-on training in the areas of audio, video, and lighting for houses of worship. The expo show floor hosts equipment manufacturers, dealers, and consultants, and allows pastors, worship leaders, and technical directors the opportunity to see the latest trends in technology, compare products and services, and voice their questions and comments.

Among the keynote presentations was “Tech Talk,” a panel discussion moderated by Bruce Smith, former technical director at Willow Creek Community Church. The panel included technical directors from churches of various sizes, discussing topics including how they manage their budgets, how to effectively handle and utilize volunteers, and how they interface with their pastors and others ministries within the church. This discussion was a great example of how networking among those involved with the technical side of ministry can help technical directors learn from and build on others’ experience.

Among the notable products on display:

• ETC’s Award winning Paradigm Architectural Controls. Building on the highly regarded Unison architectural dimming and control, Paradigm is a new architectural control platform for use with Unison, Sensor, or third party dimming systems. Along with advanced integrated control of stage lighting systems, new advances on the architectural side include energy efficiency options like daylight harvesting and occupancy sensors, and the ability to work with building controls from other manufacturers over the same network.
• Leprecon’s aris Architectural Interface System, including a wide array of control station options, user configurable LCD control stations, and DMX interface.
• Elation Lighting’s Impression moving head LED fixture, with amazing brightness and controlability, and the new Tri-LED PAR can. Elation’s Tri-LED technology mixes the red, blue, and green within each LED lens, eliminating the tricolor shadows often associated with other LED fixtures.
• AC Lighting: The new ChromaQ Color Blade LED is an ultra slim, high power wall washing and cove lighting fixture, which can be configured for indoor or outdoor use. Also on display were the Color Split and Color Punch LED fixtures, two favorites for their high output, color consistency, and flicker free operation. The Color Split includes an amber LED for true white light output that can be dialed into the exact color temperature required, making it ideal for broadcast facilities.
• AC Lighting also had the Jands Vista on display, in configurations ranging from laptop control with a small M1 control surface up to the T2 controller. While this is not a new product, it continues to be a favorite among church users for its scalability and ease of programming and playback, even with volunteer tech crews.
• Rosebrand’s Stretch Shapes, three dimensional spandex scenic elements including snow flakes for the holidays, drew a lot of attention. Many of our church clients also like the two dimensional spandex stretch shapes for use as scenic elements and projection or lighting surfaces.

This is just a small sampling of the great products on exhibit at WFX. For more information about any of these products or other lighting and staging equipment for your church needs feel free to call us!

The big announcement at Workshop 2008 (though not a surprise to any of us) was the retirement of the beloved Expression line of consoles. Thursday evening’s reception at ETC Headquarters was themed as a retirement party for the revered console, complete with cake and a museum of every model Expression line console since the very first “Epcot” board designed by Fred Foster (founder and CEO of ETC) for Disney in 1982. In those 26 years ETC has produced 27,367 Expression line consoles, including the Concept, Idea, Microvision, Insight, and Express.

ETC’s new lineup of consoles, including the Eos and Ion family, the Congo line, as well as the SmartFade are well positioned to fill the needs of any users, from touring to theatre to houses of worship.

The Eos and Ion provide advanced moving light as well as conventional fixture control in a programming language that is comfortable for board-ops and designers alike. These consoles have been designed from the ground up, with attention to detail for the needs of the theatrical, broadcast, high school and college, and church user (recently reviewed in Technologies for Worship Magazine). Their modular design offers a great degree of flexibility in system layout. Multiple facepanels, fader wings, and remote video interfaces can be incorporated, allowing, for instance, a conventional lighting programmer, moving light programmer, master electrician, and designer to all work on the system simultaneously without interfering with each other. At show time cues written by both programmers can be played back by one board op (no more need for the Whole Hog board op sitting next to the Obsession board op!). In studio applications presets can be recorded by a programmer, while the lighting director can simply use faders on one of the remote fader wings. And in churches cues and moving light routines can be prerecorded for simple playback by volunteers on one of the fader wings.

The Eos and Ion line also incorporate features such as multiple cue lists (great for dance or concerts where the same cue lists are used venue after venue, but never in the same order), and effects engines for faster moving light programming.

The Congo and Congo Jr have been designed with live events in mind, with the programming concept centered around “presets” rather than “cues.” This is helpful for the designer to be able to design looks or moving light routines that can be used multiple times throughout a show. Like the Eos, the Congo offers fader wings that give the user options of playback through the keypad or multiple faders.

Both of these lines of consoles are based on the new ETC Net3 control system. More than just a new ethernet protocol, Net3 is a complete control solution that makes control system layout easy, flexible and affordable, while providing even more control options. Net3 is built on the ESTA ACN protocol (Architecture for Control Networks). While this protocol establishes a standard to be used by all manufacturers (like DMX512), the actual networking code used by ETC goes far beyond the basics established by ESTA. Mindful of the existing installations with ETC Net 2 in place, most new Net 3 devices are are backwards compatible and can be used on either type network. This enables users to migrate their existing systems to the new protocol without having to do a complete one-time replacement. Also mindful of users’ changing needs, many of the new Net 3 products are modular, such as the new Net 3 gateway, which can be configured for any combination of ins and outs with removable connector modules, and be reconfigured in the field.

Building on their reputation for being the industry leader in innovation, this Workshop demonstrated to me that ETC is not resting on their laurels but taking another step into the future of lighting controls.

Next entry I’ll tell you about the all new Unison dimming, with Smartlink or Paradigm architectural controls, and the Pharos show controller.