[Daphne's last blog from the ETC CUE event. Here are the rest of her posts: Welcome to Cue, ETC Introduces Gio Lighting Console, ETC Debuts LED Source 4, Daphne Goes on an ETC Factory Tour. --Jacob]

Hi everyone! I am back to my assistantship at Oregon Shakespeare Festival from ETC's first end-user conference CUE. My favorite part of any theatrical conference is seeing my friends from all over the world and meeting new ones! CUE was of course, no exception.

However what was different about CUE than any other technical theatre conferences I've attended was the sense of community. All CUE attendees were people who were part of the Electronic Theatre Controls team, whether employees, interns, end-user designers, programmers, electricians, riggers, &/or professors in these areas. There was significantly less of the excitingly overwhelming competition between booths by different manufacturers, replaced by an omnipresent friendly excitement. Any ETC employee giving a class had a set of trading cards featuring themselves, a nickname, and some humorous statistics about their jobs. Collecting all of the cards allowed each CUE attendee to choose any swag of their choice. The process enabled conversations with each new employee about their different areas of expertise, which was my favorite part of the task.

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CUE's pre-sessions started Monday with 5 different levels of console trainings for both Eos and Congo family consoles. Anne Valentino asked me to be a teaching assistant for the trainings, and I spent the morning in an EOS fundamentals training course, where I enjoyed getting to meet some of the other CUE attendees and learn about their histories of programming different consoles, as well as how their theaters are run. I was curious about this both as a theatre-maker, but also as the TA so I could answer their questions in understandable, and engagingly relevant ways. We had a native Hungarian speaker and two native Chinese speakers in that class! Monday also included the jaw-dropping factory tour I wrote about about HERE. That night, the Control Lab opened: a large room full of many awaiting consoles, visualizers, and trainers. Between classes and after a long day of learning CUE attendees could visit the lab test out their new skills they learned, as well as the new features in OS 1.9.8, which the consoles were running a beta of. There was also a welcome reception, located in front of the many large windows overlooking sunset at Lake Monona. It was at the reception that ETC REVEALED THEIR NEXT LIGHTING CONSOLE, GIO.

The next morning, CEO Fred Foster gave a fascinating keynote speech to kick off CUE classes, featuring the product reveal of the SOURCE FOUR LED. I started the morning with one of my favorite classes, Anne Valentino's "Eos Behind the Scenes: A Look in to the Console Family's DNA." Anne spoke in depth about the history of how piano boards, single-scene preset consoles and track sheets have led to the Eos family's methods of storing, editing, and playing back data. While I wish there was more time to go even more specific and technical, it was fascinating. There was an Eos Family Q&A lunch, as well as an attendee showcase lunch, and following I took the Eos Family Advanced Tips and Tricks class, which covered some higher-level macro ideas, programming organization, snapshots, and busking. Next I took an Eos Family Effects class, where our professor, a lab-coated evil boy genius (think Doctor Horrible, except able to execute evil plans flawlessly as well as clever command lines) translated other evil villain's requests for effects in to the many different options for building the requested effects. While I'm very familiar with effects on Eos, the villainous designers' requests kept my programmer gears whirring. After that, I took the Funding Your Theare's Future class, taught by a professional grant writer, and visited the control lab to try out a few ideas combining the Advanced Tips and Tricks class with my own curiosity.

After exercising our brains through the first day of specialized classes, CUE attendees visited the headquarters to relax with a summer barbecue and performance by the Sons of Sunset, an band made of ETC employees. Fred Foster himself rode a bicycle ice cream cart, bells ringing, white uniform welcoming, smile beaming.

Wednesday, the last day of CUE, Jason Lyons gave an amazing keynote speech to start the day. Afterwards, classes were in full swing again! Bryan Palmer's Net3 class enchanted its second audience with a humorous skit featuring ETC employees in production roles such as house master electrician and assistant lighting designer, all giving a fun yet insightful set of scenes as to how a networked system can benefit a production throughout the tech and design process. I attended Designing a Hybrid Theatre" class, a strong in-depth review of ETC Selador LEDs and how they blend with an incandescent rig. In my experiences, especially with their calculated amber drift dimming, I've been impressed with the way they blended, and David Hilton did a good job highlighting this. The rigging courses debuted ETC's new Prodigy control system "Foundation."

That lunch, I gave a presentation at the attendee showcase lunch, amongst some other inspiring theatremakers. Following, taking a leap out of my comfort zone, I took my first ever class on ETC Congo, "Congo Effects". While I expected to be completely lost, having never programmed even the most basic level command line (I did, to my credit, know the syntax was [1] [chan] not [chan] [1], thanks to some Jedi training with Yoda) Sarah Clausen's class was easy to follow! I now feel very confident in V5 Congo effects editing, and inspired by a few features that are less streamlined on the Eos system. I also attended Program Like a Pro, which was a beyond excellent class. Victor Seastone and Jason Lyons co-taught, and Anne Valentino contributed to the session as well. Victor and Jason's dynamic, having worked together as designer and programmer on many shows fascinated both sides of my brain. My last class of CUE was a fast-paced Virtual Media Server course, which was a refresher class for me. I closed the conference with more Control Lab open hours, where a group of students were using the Virtual Media Server to map BOBBLEHEAD FRED (Check out a video featuring Bobbled Head.) on to a visualized rig.

CUE was an amazing experience. I hope ETC's first end-user conference becomes a model for both information sharing and community building between all manufacturers.