I’m going on record here to say that I really like that LDI is during October and still in Vegas. November was always too close to Thanksgiving. It meant spending two different weeks every month away from home. As far as the town, well, it’s Vegas baby. There’s always plenty to see and plenty to eat, and you can hang out with adults. When I’m at LDI, I want to be the kid in the candy store. I don’t want to be Dad. I go to Orlando and California with my kids when I want to be an adult.
Back to LDI itself. I thought it was great. I walk the aisles, daring companies to impress me. I’m looking for stuff nobody else is doing. Not another hybrid wannabe. Show me what you really have that’s different. And, often enough, what impresses me has nothing to do with lighting or video products. After running hard for two days of doing the grip and grin with various vendors, I stopped in to see a real show. The Neal Preston photo exhibit. A.C.T Lighting did everyone a favor and gave us the ultimate place to chill and reflect. Constructed like a proper museum, the exhibit showed the history of rock ‘n’ roll in the 70-80’s time period through this artist’s camera lens. One could wear a headset and listen in peace, basically escaping the onslaught of your senses that was happening on the floor. Thanx A.C.T.
One has to peek around the corners sometimes to find the interesting stuff. Go down that quiet aisle and search for that one thing that could help your business. A game-changer, a way to save time and dough. Something of no value on a show site — but you know you had to have it for your biz. I think I found it. If I am correct in my assumptions, everyone that rents any gear could use this.
Located behind a single table, I saw these two cats representing a company called Database Works. Never heard of ‘em. Turns out they have a software program called RentalWorks that is used by 4Wall and some other companies in the industry. They were just hanging around, smiling. So I looked down on the table. They had a bunch of pieces of short cable scattered in a mess. Each cable had a little piece of plastic around it with some string or Velcro emitting from either side. WTH? Is someone really selling a silly device just to keep tie line on your cables?
“You ever get sick of counting gear in?” one fellow asks. No, I personally love paying people lots of money to spend their afternoon hours scanning bar codes and opening up every last road case after a show returns to the shop to make sure I hadn’t lost anything. “Check this out,” says the guy as he points some mobile device at the pile of crap cables lying on the table. The device, called a QuikScan, looks like his phone on a selfie stick. He presses something, activating an app. All of a sudden, his screen lights up with a list of all the cables on the table. Every one of those clamps on the cables is emitting an RF signal and just checked in with the program.
Money signs light up in my eyes. But it gets better. I ask him if he can count cables in a case. “Sure, we have this little tower type device. You roll your road cases right by it and it recognizes the contents. Slap these devices on light fixtures, wire rope, truss. Or you could simply open up a road case full of 100 mic cables and click once for your readout.” These are the types of things I call Game Changers. And I don’t see many of them.
This month, I list every cool new product I saw on the floor in a separate article. I find use in them all. But only a handful are worthy of being on my personal list of game changers. Besides the QuikScan from Database Works, I was wowed by the GroundControl Follow Spot by PRG, the Spazial strip light by Clay Paky, the EVO truss by Tomcat, the 90° curved LED tile by Roe Visual and the whole dang booth that ModTruss built and Blizzard lit. But don’t take my word —take a look and see if you can find your own game changer.
