I walked into my first ESTA Technical Standards Committee and quickly surveyed the room. Situated around the conference table were some of the brightest minds in the industry and some of the most dedicated people upstage of the proscenium. I felt like a Ford driving onto a Mercedes lot.
One of these things is not like the others…One of these things just doesn’t belong…
I was completely blown away to be sitting in the same room and working side-by-side with some of the keenest intellects the industry has to offer. Mike Wood is sitting across from me, the same Mike Wood who developed the first PC-based lighting control system in the mid-1980s. Steve Terry, Ken Vannice, and Mitch Hefter are seated next to Bill Groener. Steve and Mitch were both instrumental, along with several other people on the Engineering Commission of USITT, in creating the very first DMX512 protocol in 1986. Ken, Steve, and Mitch all helped write single-conductor feeder cable into the NEC. Louis Bradfield, Jerry Gorrell, Bill Sapsis, Larry Schoeneman, Eddie Kramer, Lori Rubinstein, Mike Garl, Karl Ruling, and several others are seated around the tables. I idolized Karl as a technical writer in the 1980s when he was the technical editor at Lighting Dimensions and I tried to emulate certain aspects of his work. Now I find myself trying to emulate most of the people in this room. It’s an uphill climb but I’m not easing off the accelerator even though I know my four-cylinder brain is chasing some V-8s.
Can you tell me which thing is not like the others… By the time I finish my song…
There is some heavy-duty talent in the room. They represent some of the most active gears and cogs in the industry. Along with all of the other volunteers in the organization — the Technical Standards Program, the ESTA Committees, the ETCP Council, the ESTA Board of Directors — they are steering an incredible amount of work through a maze of industry hoops and chutes. They are setting the standards in our industry for the sake of the industry. Things like DMX512-A, RDM, and ACN don’t just happen – they are forged from the sweat of the many volunteers who collectively swing a mighty hammer to pound together the words that are eventually recognized as a protocol or standard. In the end, these standards are annealed by ESTA’s American National Standards Institute accreditation, which means that they have to pass the scrutiny of the ANSI requirements for due process in a standards-making body.
There is a common misconception, I am told, that ANSI writes the American National Standards, but they don’t. They simply bless the standard after all the work has been done by these fine men and women who volunteer their time, knowledge, and resources. There is only one ANSI standard that counts for standards work, and that is ANSI’s “Essential Requirements: Due process requirements for American National Standards.” It is their standard for what constitutes a “fairly written” standard. All the other standards are actually written by organizations, such as ESTA. Once they are approved, the standards are given an ANSI designation indicating that they were developed via a standards-drafting program that ANSI certifies is fair and is in compliance with ANSI’s Essential Requirements. They are simply a third-party certifier.
All of the industry standards represent work done to benefit the industry. If there is a problem which can be resolved with a standard, a group gets together, works together, and writes the standard to help take care of the collective problem. It’s real people within our industry who do this. There is no group called “ANSI” in Washington or New York or anywhere else who will tackle our problems. So don’t be lulled into thinking that there’s nothing you can do about industry problems. There is something you can do, and it’s called volunteering with ESTA.
I’m honored to get to work on the TSC, but I keep thinking that one day I’ll awake from this dream. In the meanwhile, just let me keep dreaming.
