Do you remember the episode of Scooby-Doo, Where Are You! when Scooby refused to tie in the electrical feeder cable for the rock show because he felt it was unsafe? Of course not. Stopping the show for safety reasons takes a lot of courage, self-confidence, and maybe even a little bit of madness. And that’s just not the big, bongo-playing Great Dane we all know and love.
That giant fluttering sound you heard last month was the sound of 600 million American eyelids opening at once. Such was the reaction to Mike Wallace’s report on 60 Minutes highlighting a study from Leicester University in Leicester, England about happiness. The study reported that Denmark was the happiest country in the world. In fact, it has ranked first in Eurobarometer surveys for the last 30 years.
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.
Don’t look now, but your boss is looking over your shoulder. More and more of them are.
Let’s not kid ourselves — you may think your boss is a moron, but you’ve got to give the guy credit for starting and running a business. It’s not child’s play — it’s tough, and it’s getting tougher all the time. But then so is being an employee, especially in these exponential times when technology is changing faster than Hannah Montana concert tickets are selling. And now employees have to take even more responsibility for their own productivity.
I don’t know if it will get you money for nothing or chicks for free, but I want my ACN, and so should you. ACN is the latest control protocol developed by the ESTA Control Protocols Working Group and was published late last year. It stands for… never mind what it stands for. It could stand for Another Cool Name or Artificial Canadian Nickels — it doesn’t matter. What does matter is what it will do and where it will eventually take this industry.
I was once on a gig where, for no apparent reason, the power distro went snap, crackle, pop. Really, it was more like crackle, big snap, bright flash, little pop, smoke puff. That’s not a sight and sound you want to experience first thing in the morning, not even when you’re having cereal. The dimmer tech who energized the PD, just before the impromptu light and sound show, went looking for the house electrician who had just tied in the feeder cables. He was nowhere to be found. Then he went looking for someone more qualified than himself to resolve the problem before doors a few hours later.