#235 - Matthias Hinrichs

0:01 Well, hello there and thanks for joining me today on a Beautiful Wednesday for episode #235. Today is going to be a great episode and I'm really looking forward to it and I hope you enjoy it as well. Today's podcast is brought to you by our newest sponsor. I feel like I'm saying that every week right now, but RZI Lighting. Welcome to RZI, your one stop shop for all your lighting needs and more. RZI offers hassle free rentals, sales and labor services providing everything from staging to special effects for your productions with the industry's best brands and equipment.

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2:46 And once again today is episode #235. I'm pumped. Love the guy who's coming on today, really a big fan of his and I think many of you will know him as well and I'll get on to that in just a second. I don't have much to talk about today. You know, I've been talking to a lot of people since Pro Light about just some of the new fixtures and new products that came out at that show. You know Martin with the Viper I elation had some pretty exciting new stuff. Of course the big announcement from ACT, another one of our sponsors who has purchased Amber Ambersphere in in the UK, that's big news and I'm actually working on getting Ben on to talk about that a little bit, Ben from ACT to just talk about what their plans are in the UK, what they're doing over there.

3:38 So yeah, I mean I don't really have much today. Our new newsletter, I don't know if anyone has received it. Hopefully you have. If you haven't, Sarah's working diligently to try and figure out how to get people signed up to it or how to allow you to sign up for our new newsletter. I don't know how to do it, but she's working on that. You can get with Sarah, Producer at piecesofgear.com and we'll be sure to get it to you. It really is announcing new guests who are coming up. It's announcing ones that just passed. It might include some new news on any of our sponsors or on what we're up to. But you know, it's it's a newsletter. It's it's just sort of timely information.

4:18 I don't know even what the frequency is. I think it's once a month, if I am remembering that correctly, but there's a chance that I'm not. So the other thing is again, our newest sponsor who is RZI Lighting. I've known Ray Ziegler at RZI for a long time. I'm very appreciative having Ray on board as a sponsor. He's done an incredible job building a business there in probably not the easiest market in the country, New Orleans. It's it's a very unique and very special market and one that Ray's name and RZI have become synonymous with that local market. I've spoken a lot recently with Ray about just, you know the impact of of COVID when he was going through the whole COVID thing. him and I talked a lot just about, you know, survival and what that looked like and what the future might look like and and like most conversations we were probably dead wrong.

5:15 But I enjoyed all of those conversations. So I'm super happy to have Ray and Rzi on board and again, very grateful. Thank you Ray and thank you to RZI for sponsoring our podcast. Thank you to all of our sponsors. You know, again it's we're not trying to get rich. We're just trying to have a great, great product, offer a good podcast, have some good conversations and not have to pay for it ourselves basically. So we're quite grateful and and happy to keep going forward with, I would guess the industry's leading this type of podcast anyways. So we're proud, we're happy, we're excited and looking forward to the future.

5:56 So two Days guest is Matthias Henrichs. Matthias is a product designer and innovator specializing in the Obsidian control systems for Elation Professional. Matthias has a focus on user experience, usability and workflows to make complicated tasks easy and fun for the user. As a product manager for lighting control systems, he was tasked to analyze the creative process of lighting and visual design so it can be programmed into computer systems fast and efficiently. The challenge of managing 10s of thousands of control parameters in an easy to understand workflow is challenging but fun to solve as the final result is so stunning and inspiring. There is of course more to life than work where Matthias and his wife have a big heart for animal welfare and volunteering in the local Humane Society to help animals in need of Foster and care.

7:02 So there's so much more. His bio was about this long and I shortened it, but I'd rather just go ahead and talk directly with Matthias. So let's bring Matthias on the podcast now. Matthias. Hey, Marcel. Hey, what's happening, you know? Well, we've tried for a long time to to do this. I'm glad to be here. You know, I've had some really big people on here and it only took me usually a couple of weeks to get them booked. You. It's taken me Friggin. I don't know, three months or something. Like persistence.

7:42 It's been. I've been persistent. And this time, actually, it wasn't even me who got you. It was Sarah. So I think that's what it was. I had to get a a woman to go out and pursue you because you couldn't say no. There was a lot of prodding from Eric Lona as well. Really got to do this. Yeah, that helps. That helps. You know what I mean? I'm glad you finally did either decide or get forced into doing this because you're, you know, without blowing smoke up your dress Here you're you're a very interesting guy with a very interesting background and a very interesting job. And I've been wanting to, I've been wanting to have this conversation so for a long time. So I'm glad you. You're able to make the time completely voluntarily. Yeah, well, you know what?

8:27 Take the whole day off. Tell Eric that you know in preparation. And plus, the podcast was quite long and you know, so. I'm actually going to see George Masek tonight at Oh yeah, he's in town. So this will be, we're going to be talking about you, I think. I like George. George is a good dude. He's he was on the podcast and we had we had fun. So yeah. So pro light, you, I think you were probably there considering that's your home nation, I believe. Yeah, Mitch, been kind of traveling quite a bit the last few months. There's been a lot of trade shows back-to-back. Like the whole trade show calendar is kind of really mangled up ever since. COVID things are not quite where they used to be. Yeah, many things on top of each other. Yeah, well, plus ISE becoming as big as it is now has become such an important show.

9:20 So you know, Pro Light I think used to be sort of the start of the trade show season and now it's, you know, you're deep into it by the time you get to Pro Light. Correct. And it's changing a lot with the music. Massive part, which was like the music instruments and sheet music and all this. That part is all gone. So now it's really mostly Pro Light and there's very little sound. Now we can really mention the sound part. It's tinier. Yeah, I mean, So what do you think? Like do you think it it's gonna survive? Do you think it needs to survive? I know it's probably a difficult conversation to have, especially because you're German. But you know it's always been such an important show.

10:03 And I I just, it seems to me just listening to people outside the like consumers who would go to that trade show, it seems to be less and less important. It has shifted because distribution models of many companies have shifted. So seems like ISE is really where most of the people that make purchasing decisions and distributors and like. Yeah. That kind of crowd goes because there's a lot of different brands that they can meet and interact with. And maybe Frank would be more like a creative type of show, more like designers and creatives rather than, you know, purchases. We'll see. Is that, is that sort of what you what you felt this year? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

10:49 That's kind of how it felt a little bit. So what? What city in Germany are? You from coming back where people put up, you know, like an actual, I mean, that's less corporate maybe than that's. Yeah, Hey, come out, you know, hang out, have a chat, see what we do. Yeah, Well, the thing I heard was that the big companies, you guys robe, most of those booths were quite big and quite busy. And then some companies, well, even some of the big companies, your former employer, my former employer, they were quite small, like very, very small considering the size of the product launch that they had at the show, the Viper being such a huge product for them with such a successful history and now they've got the LED Viper, you would think they were going to go big.

11:35 But you know sadly I think Martin is still just sort of a a pimple on Samsung's butt right now. You know, it's like, I don't even think if you asked the CEO what industry is Martin lighting in, he'd he'd be like, I have no idea Martin who you know, so. That could be correct. Yeah. Well, I mean you're talking about whatever it is, a trillion dollar company or something. I don't know that, you know, a couple $100 million moving light brand is going to mean much to them. So who knows? Means a lot to Martin employees, I guess, you know, and some of us who were a big part of their history. Yeah, it meant a lot to me still. I mean, me as well.

12:18 Yeah, you always bleed it a little yellow. Of course. The company just always stays with you. And I have a lot of friends still there. Yeah, game at these shows. I mean, they've been on a good trajectory lately. So that's, yeah, got their footing. Yeah, a couple. Of they've done some really nice stuff, so. Yeah, a couple. Of. So, yeah, a couple of really nice launches like they. I'd actually love to get your opinion on this too because you know, I got Eric's opinion and and his and mine were a little different, but you know the the Mac one, which I thought was a brilliant move when everybody's going bigger and brighter and more intense and more, you know stadium esque and all of that stuff.

12:59 The, you know, Estera is one company that's done really, really well with the sort of small eye candy kind of stuff. And so I thought the Mac One was a was a pretty brilliant product to come up. Come out with under $2000, dealer cost under 10 lbs. Packaged very nicely with the accessories. Yeah, thought it was. A really good move to do that, yeah. I was part of the original One O 1 launch. Yeah. With also like, hey, as a small fixture, we built some like line array grits at Plaza to show off what we can do with that and yeah. Yeah, and that thing took off like. Collection to do this. I like the way the mechanical system, how you can click them together and you're just like mounting frames. Yeah, thought out.

13:48 Yeah, that's the whole thing. Like the whole packaging part of it all is, is what made so much sense to me as well, not just the fact that it's a small fixture and it's bright enough to do a lot of cool things with it, so. Several of those picture types recently like that are really good for arrays and grits. Yeah, I think people like to hang a lot of fixtures if they can, but they're kind of a big pain in the ass to rig up and wire and. Yeah, yeah. Interconnect and so let's so. I'm sure you're. I'm sure you're designing something in your brain as as well we. Want blinder type product which. Is, Yeah, I saw that. Together, the soul line which my colleague Bob's been sort of focused on, so. I was gonna ask you about that too. Elements to put together.

14:34 I think people really like that. I was going to ask you about that that product because I think it's really cool. But I remember probably 10 years ago there was a product which was a small company and I don't even remember the exact name of the company, but it was owned by David Lavinia. And I think he's he had a patent for these things that went together in this sort of honeycomb frame or shape and and became like clusters and he had some kind of IP on it. And I don't know who or whether the IP still exists or anything, but I was gonna ask if if that was something that was looked at. That one I'm not aware of.

15:19 Yeah, we don't interconnect the fixtures directly, so there's actually like a. That's probably, yeah. So which? It wouldn't even apply then. Kind of reminds me of, you know, it's like this old light organs that you can click together and you have this little controller with like, yeah, high, mid, low and some volume adjustment and you have these like little, you know, bulbs just flashing around your basement, I mean. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, many more. Like, hey, I can build all this like cool wall. Also on the small stuff, I didn't see it cuz I wasn't at Pro Light but I saw Ayrton had I think the same body or a very similar body to their old magic dot with now a a laser source in it and I can't for the life from you remember the name. It's such a wacky name, but.

16:08 Kalami Kalami or something. Yeah, yeah, no idea. You know, as soon as they got away from the Lamborghini names and stuff, I don't remember them anymore. Remarkable. Actually Paki had a picture there as well that is meant to click together where you can take the handles off or put them sideways and then you turn the pan off and then it just tilts that was. Also, that's interesting. A picture so. That's an interesting concept. More and more of this, and I think designers really like them because. Yeah, well, it's something different. It's something that you can make each one look different than the previous one, even if you're using the same fixtures or whatever. You know, it's funny.

16:50 I know you probably know Fausto, right? I do. Yeah. Quite spend quite a bit of time with them. Yeah, so Fausto, I was talking with him after after Pro Light, and I said, So what was remarkable? And he said nothing. You know, he he's very bored of of the progress, I guess right now of technology. And he just, he thinks. And I I'm not putting him down by any stretch, 'cause he's one of my favorite people. I love the guy. We're very good friends. But he thinks that every technology leap needs to be, you know, a great leap. I think sometimes, and I look at the more incremental things sometimes, you know, it's not just the number of gobos or the number of colors or whatever, but it's it's finding a unique niche in the market where you're fitting, you're hitting an application maybe that another product didn't hit, like the Mac one.

17:42 There's nothing incredible about it. It's just it's a cool little package. It's got great applications that it'll hit. You know, I could think of if I had a small lighting company and I serviced the convention business, for example, trade shows and stuff, you know, you'd be putting a dozen of those on every single booth, Why wouldn't you? And you know, to me the only thing that's missing is, is it needs to be battery and it, it needs to be completely wireless, you know, And if we can get to that point, then we've got a very useful little fixture. Yeah, I mean, I mean, look at the car industry. You know, there's not a car where the steering wheels on the on the back, like it's all evolutionary. Even Tesla on the outside looks kind of like a car. Yeah.

18:31 Very nice. And the inside has changed a lot and the UI has changed a lot. But ultimately it's four wheels in the steering wheel and you sit in the front and move the thing around. But it's a bad example because you know his a pickup truck doesn't look like a pickup truck at all, you know? It's four wheels and a steering wheel and it. Does it? Does. You're right. Yeah. Evolutionary people are quite turned off if you change stuff too much that they used to. So as much as we maybe also want to change something, you know, if you build a lighting console with no command line and no more buttons, they may not, you know. It's successful well. People may push back and say, well, we need those. We like those. You're right.

19:11 Yeah, your. Workflow revolves that way. Well, lighting consoles I think are a very interesting example of that, or a very unique example of that, potentially. Because look what happened when the MA Three came out and suddenly the syntax was different and the sort of muscle memory was different. People were so used to because of the amount of command lines and things that you're entering, They're so used to hit this button twice, go over, hit this one once and boom, everything happens. And now you hit this one once, then this one twice, and then this one up here. And it's like they have to stop themselves and they have to relearn a new language, basically. So you're still speaking a language, but it's a different, it's a slightly different language with some new vowels or something, right.

19:58 And. Interfere with people's workflows, yeah. Hurdle and that's Adobe, you know, or like After Effects, whatever this these kind of software then do they do any major changes? There's so much push back in it from the sort of creators because their livelihood depends on them, them, you know? Yeah. Well, again, I would think that, you know, and you've probably learned this as well as anyone. I would think that in controls it's bigger than than pretty much anything else. Because literally, you know you're learning an entire like this is everything for you right here. How you're programming those lights to do whatever they're doing and the actions and syntax and everything else becomes very accustomed to you.

20:46 And when that all gets changed, it's quite problematic. Compulite tried this a few years ago, maybe about 10 years by now, with when they call it Vibe back then. And there was a desk that was just a really big screen and nothing else. And everybody's like, oh whoa, wait a minute, like, where is my and where is this? And where is my? The basic was just a big screen, some faders and some encoders and everything was kind of virtualized. Yeah, it's interesting. Probably 20 years ahead of where there's going to go eventually. People's acceptance of, let's say, touchscreen interfaces and haptics is all changing. There's a whole new generation of professionals really growing up that come from a totally different mindset. So it'll get there, I think eventually. But some elements are always going to be needed to control something, even on the car.

21:35 Like they're pulling back now and say, you know, there should actually be some buttons for some of these things because it's just too much touchscreen. Well, I drive a BMW and BMW has always messed with this. I drive system and it just drives you crazy because at this at some point it's like stop making me scroll through things like just give me a damn button will you? You know, they tried to make this one knob do 50,000 things and it's just no fun at all when you're trying to drive your car, you know? So I don't know. And wasn't there a, what was that console company? I think they were from Australia or something, and I'm sure it's still out there. They were Vista, Vista, Vista. Yeah, they went a whole different. Moved over to my old colleague Paul Pelletier is now sort of that's part of the Chroma Q product. Name.

22:26 Yes, Yeah, because I know. Different mindset, linear editing, sort of like. Exactly, yeah. Video crowds because they're like, hey, this looks like what I'm used to when I edit my video streams. Yeah. I really liked it and it worked well for them and still dust and still very popular. Yeah, yeah. Again, though, it's just, you know, you're trying to get people to learn a new language, and sometimes it's best to just speak whatever language they want to speak, you know? But I mean the the console that you were just talking about, the compulite console without any physical buttons or switches or whatever. You know, it's funny because Steve Jobs got away with that when when everyone said that he wouldn't.

23:07 Yeah. Yeah, I mean that's. A really fun movie on BlackBerry, on Netflix I love. It. I love it. Exactly. You watch this and they're like, well, what? What do you mean? Who wants phone without keys? For real? Don't we ever buy it? And that was a very major paradigm shift, just like Foster would like to have. Massive. Completely breaks. Massive. That's like a once in a generation thing. Of course it is. It's. Really hard to pull off. Well, it's like my friends up in Canada right now who are from my hometown, Calgary, Canada, PK Sound. And I don't know if you've seen this yet, but they have a line array system that's got motors. And so if if you do all your numbers and everything's designed and everything and the rig goes up and suddenly there's a wall where it wasn't supposed to be, or they've opened up three more rows in front of the stage and you need, you're missing some sound right in front of the stage or whatever, You can just redirect the rig.

24:06 You don't have to drop it. You can just kind of move some speakers and stuff in the air using, you know, some some science. There's actually some of the initial discussions we had when Martin got purchased by Harman because you know, hey, there's a company that knows motor controls and like precision mechanics really well and he was a speaker company, it was line array. So with the convergence here, can we build speakers that move and that are automated like and the horns tweak around and you know some software that measures it all. So there was actually discussions like that. I'll tell you what, Matthias when I when I was invited to go into their showroom in Calgary and see it last summer, it's one of those moments, like the first time I saw a moving light, I was just like, whoa, you know, why would anybody want a light that doesn't move anymore? When when you've got this, you know, it just doesn't make any sense.

24:58 But you know, like, I had an Austrian guy, Thomas, on the podcast a couple of weeks ago. He's the front of house engineer for Sarah. What's the name of the band? Pop in on your microphone here. Tell me. I forget the name of the band. What's it called? Come on, Sarah, maybe you can't because I'm recording and I got to assign you. Wait, I got it. I got it. There. You can now. Now you can turn your mic on. Still, no. OK, whatever. I forget what they're called. But anyways, he's, you know, just very, very good, very technical sound engineer. And he said, you know, it's remarkable how rarely you would need to use something like that. Like it's cool, it's a great gadget, it's a gimmick, but it it's remarkable how unnecessary that it really is. Like he said, in fact I can't really think of an application where I would need to move the rig once it's in the air. So OK, so maybe.

25:57 A lot of costs to carry in every box that you may never utilize. Cost and weight. Lots of point of failures, so there's a lot of things to. Yeah, it's it's cost and and weight is the big one that, he said. But she's trying to hold a sign up. Oh, in flames. That's what they're called. They're a German metal band. Told I'm not into German metal. Actually, no, they're not German. She's shaking her finger. They're Swedish. I just remembered they're a Swedish metal bands. Called Navy, it's about the craziest metal bands. Yeah, these guys are heavy. These guys are one of those bands that go like. La La La La la. You know, it's like that, that crazy, crazy metal stuff that, you know, the music is incredible.

26:44 I'm not so much into the quote singing. Some of those make it on Eurovision sometimes as, yeah, performers and you're like, what the what? OK, somebody must like it. They made it here. You know, there was one on on America's Got Talent a a few years ago. It was probably a 10 year old girl with like little pigtails and the cutest little girl, right. And she's singing this song. She's got a lollipop and you know, she's like. La La La La la. And then all of a sudden she starts going, you know the whole yelling thing, right? And everybody just went, what the hell just happened here, you know? Yeah. So it's quite funny. So how did you get into this crazy industry of ours? You know, again, like, I think you're probably a little bit younger than me, but not that much, I'm guessing. I don't even know you don't have. To wondering if anyone prepped for this. I'm like am IA geezer already.

27:43 What's like, you know, where's the cutoff? Yeah, Eric Loader says. 9 or maybe 50. Years of Yeah. So you're a lot younger than me, yeah? Eric Loder says it's 50. Eric says you got to be 50 to be a geezer. So. It's my pre interview to to join the. Geezer Well, we could just hold the we could hold the episode until your birthday if you'd like. But Eric recorded it on his 50th birthday, which was quite funny. Yeah, so. But you know, the older guys in our industry, a lot of them had no background whatsoever. They had no training. They didn't go in any kind of theater school. They didn't. They just kind of, you know, ran into somebody in a pub and he said hey, you want to go on tour and next thing you know you're, you know, on tour as a lighting guy or a rigger or whatever it was, right?

28:32 And more recently it's it's different because now there's real training and and a lot of school programs and special schools for this type of stuff. So but how did you get your start? Well, it's a the very first interaction I had with like anything entertainment lighting or theater lighting was that I joined a theater class in like 6th grade. Oh, wow. The teacher used to the teacher's husband was the basically the boss of the local community theater because like in Germany, every city has like a ensemble theater, full staff, really nice. You know, all the different departments work their full time and they do a repertoire like like 2-3 different shows throughout the year.

29:24 And it's all subsidized and they really care about the arts. And so my teacher's husband that ran the theater group was the guy running the whole theater. And she's like, hey, you're like really interested in this. Do you want to do like an internship for like a couple of days to just see the different departments? Actually me a little like, you know, 11-12 years old, stepped first time on a theater stage and worked into a front of house booth and saw the paint shop and the costumes and the wigs and like wow, this is like. All you were hooked? Doing great. I joined HS that class to be, you know, as an actor, but pretty much learned very quickly that that was not a very good idea. So I started building props and some lighting because we didn't have any.

30:10 So I built my soup can lights together with my dad's. Like really? Just from nothing really. Yeah, that was my first step in little. Little did you know at that time, huh? Yeah, you know. I expect with a couple of other things. And then a big thing in Germany at that time was like dance schools. We were like 1415. You go to these like accredited dance schools and do like your classes and they had a ended up being quite involved in it and being started DJ ING in this place for like basically a youth disco that was like on Saturday early evenings till like, you know, 8:00 or 8:00 or 9:00.

30:53 So I was supposed to enter like DJ ING and music. So I'm like, hey, I want to be a DJ at this. That's cool. The lighting system was not working so great and basically me starting that. That's the reason why I sit here. It really kind of evolved. Wow. Me trying, me fixing a couple of lights, finding like a local lighting company to buy some spare parts and some bulbs and some, you know, this and that, some gels. And then I'm like, hey, can I hang out in your shop and maybe try out the stuff and learn how to, you know, put some stuff together and you know, put some cables together. And I really learned from like absolutely ground up, which was more an audio focus company. So I did a lot of stacking of speaker stacks, did a lot of running of wires and pulled stuff through the muds and and really sort of, I was in the shop all the time. They're probably like, who the hell is this dude he's just ever going to leave.

31:51 That's awesome. Yes. You know it's it's. Kind of got me really into this. Do you know Jim Digby? I don't. I don't know the name, but I don't. He he's the, I think he's the chairman or something of the ESA. He's a production manager. He's done loads and loads of stuff, really smart guy. But he, he started as a DJ in a disco. In the disco era in, I believe it was Philadelphia, if I remember correctly, and I think it was his first night. I think it was the club's first night. This big club had just opened and they had this huge thing.

32:33 It was like a spaceship or something that was above the dance floor and something somebody, the owners I guess, cut corners on the rigging and he was responsible for the switches. And this story gets very unfunny really quickly. But when he hit the switches and this thing moves on these tracks, it actually went off the end of a track and killed someone. And yet he's still in the industry. Like 60 years later or 50 years later or whatever. He's still in the industry, even though on his first gig somebody actually died, you know, so you're. You're this path for the safety. Exactly, exactly.

33:15 That's what he said, he said. From very early on, I knew there had to be some standards. And I knew that, you know, you couldn't just say, hey, we're going to save a few bucks and get rid of, you know, a stopper that keeps this thing from going off the tracks or whatever. Yeah. So Can you imagine that being a lot of events in, you know, the area of northern Germany where I grew up, tiny little city. It's on the North Sea coast called Wilhelm's Hoffman. It's named after King Emperor, Willem the Second who wanted to build a Navy and play, play German Emperor. So he's like, yeah, a little naval town on here. Willems Hoffman So it's funny you you went from there to Fredericks Hoffen. I did.

34:01 It's actually not that far and that's all that's interesting. We they built a lot of local clubs. So I ended up working at you in a nightclub for two years as a light jockey with like a lot of 19 inch stuff, high end light wave research, color pro controllers and data flash controllers and learn how to program them all. Yeah, step by step. There was like old scanner controllers where they come in from Italy called Sagitta, yeah. It's still around Sagitta, yeah. The whole area like, yeah, little 19 inch controllers, but they had to step by step with a little joystick to program it. So it was really helpful to learn actually. Like had a live command that I made there. So there was like the first sort of analog desk that I used was like some of MA stuff, Yeah, yeah. And then really like I'll program scanners without any like moving light controller, actually just on faders and trying to patch them and.

35:03 Oh my. God like all play Paki like 6 channel mini scans, Hpes there like and Intelli beams like all the stuff that really didn't need much DMX and it was like very much like very basic things and everybody thought it was awesome, you know? Yeah, more of those on the gig. You're like you were the king. Yeah. You know, sticks of Parse and some Acls. Of course you know you. Wouldn't have to worry about what gels to pick and how to cross them to get like the right colors that you wanted. So yeah, a good time to learn. I mean I was a bit past of, you know, other people have seen on your podcast of probably 10 years earlier than that.

35:44 Yeah, I mean even more. They're really in the beginning of this where like what? Nothing was there. So I came in with a lot maturing quite quickly and stuff was probably a lot safer already. I'm not sure about that, but maybe, yeah, yeah, I think, I think safety in the, I think safety in the earliest days came from the fact that, you know, if I'm designing this rig and I'm hanging the rig and I'm going to be climbing on the rig while it's hung, it better be safe enough so it doesn't kill me. You know, they weren't necessary. Harbor Fest because in the city is like a harbor and it's like super windy all the time. They had this like really weird company that they hired to build a stage which was basically in just some painting, like like the scaffolding they put up for for painters on the building just left and right. And then they just wrecked a couple of medium duty trusses and some tarps and build a stage out of this. And it was super windy, it was rainy. The thing was like swaying around like crazy, and the guy had to climb up there in the storm to cut the top loose before this whole thing went flying. So I've seen.

36:53 I mean, the guy could have really died, like. One big No kidding. Ibidad. Yeah, you know, we've all done it though. I remember, I remember a race we were at in Phoenix and in Arizona. They get these things called dust devils, I think they're called or something like that, but it's basically little mini tornadoes and they just come out of nowhere. And so this just happened where it was a sunny day, everything was fine, all it was a go Kart race and all the kids were lined up on the grid. My son was on the grid at that point and all of a sudden this, you could see it coming at us and first you get all the kids basically undercover somewhere. And then tents were starting to pick up. You know, these race tents were starting to pick up. So we went and we were just holding on to a leg while it was pulling you up off the ground.

37:48 And I'm looking at another guy and I'm going, this probably isn't very smart what we're doing right now. Like we're either going to go flying across this entire paddock or you know something bad is going to happen here. And fortunately it didn't. But. Yeah, I think we're all been through some stories where you're like, afterwards you're like, that was a really, really stupid idea. Not so smart. Lucky that we didn't get serious. Well, especially I'm trying to save a couple $1000 tent, you know, as opposed to my life. Like, not real sensible, let the tent go, but people do stupid. Stuff intuitively and then only afterwards. Exactly, yeah. I think that's what happened. Running airplanes and get their laptop because yeah, the laptop is important.

38:31 Yeah. So you're working in clubs and you've by now probably decided this is going to be my career. I think I kind of like this industry. Yeah, it was kind of. That was really something that I was interested in at the how it's like my was like you do 13 years in Germany in school. We we tend to go to school for a long time. Yeah. I'm like, So what I'm going to do, and they actually just started a degree in Berlin. I was an engineering degree for event and theater technology. I was actually designed by the technical director of the German opera in Berlin. It was mostly mechanical engineering, so trussing and stage automation and, you know, seats that unfold themselves.

39:17 All this like crazy stuff that you see especially in in Europe and the theaters and multifunction halls. It's just like a ton of really interesting scenery and automation pieces there. So it was kind of more targeted around that and then had a bit of audio, a bit of bit of lighting, bit of scenery, art mix sprinkled into it. But at its heart it was an engineering degree. Like, OK, like this is something I want to do, but in Germany you have to go into the you get drafted. When at least when I was young, I was still actively done. So I had to join the military for a couple of years, ended up actually serving in the German Navy for two years.

40:02 So it's a good total break from all the event stuff, went really offline and and did that. So it was quite interesting. In action, you saw action. Sort of, yeah. Within the boat outs and was we did like a weapons embargo during the war in Kosovo back then, which is like war with dougoslavia all broke up into all these different regions. That was quite violence. And I was part of a UN peacekeeping force. So we did like potted around in the Mediterranean Sea. It was like 18 other ships and basically enforced weapons embargo and made sure that people didn't do stupid stuff. Did you have a cool role or were you just a grunt? I was with a radio operator actually. Interesting, with my little headset on. Basically communicated between all the different chips and coordinated everything.

40:55 Interesting. Quite interesting because you end up living with a lot of people you don't like, so it's basically was a good practice to living on a tour bus eventually. Yeah. You know, you're with a bunch of guys and it's smelly and awful and you don't really like each other, but you have to get along and so you have to work on a more common goal. So actually it was a good, good, good education for that. So how long were you out on the sea? I was two years. So it's actually was one year was mandatory and then volunteered for another year only a few miles away from my parents' house. Wow. In Nagle Harbor. And so it was kind of, if you did volunteered for longer, you had a choice of assignments.

41:37 I'm like, OK, I'll do this. But it was two years straight. That was two years straight. Yeah. Well, now, like, you go home in and out and you're obviously real, but yeah, you lived on a ship for two years. Wow. That had to be that had to make you go crazy sometimes. I really enjoyed it, actually. Really. Navy is probably not as tough as other ones. Yeah, we build a nice swimming pool on the front of the ship. The German Navy doesn't have any money, so we had very little expensive weaponry. Not like the US who likes to go up. Yeah, so we couldn't really afford it. I would just think the confinement though would drive like I get crazy on a cruise ship after five or six days, so I can't, like I did a tour when I was in at Pearl Harbor.

42:28 You can tour a submarine and that to me, like, I don't have claustrophobia, but I felt so claustrophobic, like just thinking, could I live on this thing? Hell no. Get Me Out of here, you know. Like I've been in a couple of German submarines and that two I'm 63 so that is not that doesn't work. No no had everywhere the ship no kid that we're on was the largest one that the German Navy had at that time and it was quite helpful comfy. Yeah. I really I thought it was a great time. Yeah. Around when I went to really cool places around the world and. And you didn't get shot at and sunk. So that's good. Yeah, that's. I guess that's the tough part. If you're in the Navy when somebody bombs you and you sink, you know, that's probably probably a bad, bad day in the Navy, I'm guessing.

43:17 Luckily it was fairly safe what we did back then. Yeah, so when you came back off that ship, you just jumped straight back into what you were doing. Yeah, went back into this university degree they they made you do a six month internship on for mechanical things. Like you learn how to use you know a lathe and CNC machines and you have to basically go for six months until like a really practice working with in a metal workshop. Really. Yeah. I did it at a power plant in in the city where I'm from there's this big 700 MW coal-fired power plant that's just dominating the skyline. I'm like go there and did, did like 6 months there and learned a lot of, you know, handy things. Yeah, a bit of electric, bit of hydraulic. So it's kind of actually lots of different things. So yeah, to try out.

44:12 And then I had to move to Berlin, So I left my little small city of 90,000 people went to like a really big metropolitan area. Why did you have to move? Because the university was. In oh, oh, I see. Yeah. So left my small city and all my friends and just sort of packed up and left. So 5 hour drive and then moved into the dorm. Started studying there pretty quickly. This was the time where Berlin was really changing a lot was in 1997. Yeah. So it was only like a nine years or eight years after the war came down. Yeah, it was a major turmoil, like the Pottstormer plots if you ever been there looked was just Norman's land. I was just like was just like Norman's land between East and and West Germany.

45:04 And that got built up in like 3 years from nothing to elicit like massive center hop of Berlin. It was really interesting. A lot of companies moved there. A lot of embassies were building their places, like German government was building stuff everywhere. So there was tons of work in fancy parties and TV events and met a couple of rental companies there and quickly got very busy and not so focused on my degree. Yeah, yeah. So did you quit school or did you finish? Yeah, I actually didn't finish. No. Skipped out about a year before I was finished because I was too busy. Yeah.

45:47 Oh, you were working while you were going to school? Yeah, I was doing a lot of freelance gigs. I started working at a television show. I worked on the German version off Top of the Pops as a. Jesus. Yeah, basically as an electrician. So yeah, it wasn't even in like programming, but like, you know, sitting there for like 3-4 days a week watching people program 20 songs. It was very cool, you know, learning a lot about hole hug, probing programming back then because that was kind of really prevalent at that time. Yeah, yeah, it hit hard when it came. Buck bucked All the programmers that were there, probably annoyed the crap out of them. They're like, why does this guy not leave me alone and ask me all these questions all the time but you?

46:30 Were very curious. I had a kid who just wanted to know everything. She was absorbing all this, yeah. And then started doing a lot of, you know, little programming gags and design gigs on my own. Yeah. Got involved in Expo 2000 and Hanover back then versus like World Expo. Worked with a design company and supervised a couple installations and then ended up working on the maintenance crew for the German pavilion, which was just like, you know, exhibit of the host country. Had tons of studio. Color and stuff, yeah. Every night of eight hours with the whole wreck and nothing to do and just had all the time in the world to like study programming and fix lights and take them apart. So it was really good school.

47:16 Really. Yeah. Know all the insurance and outs of everything. Did you get to know Jean Larvier at that time? Because he was the the guy inside high end. Later on in the US. Oh, OK. Yeah, yeah. Because he was the studio, studio color support guy for a number of years. I think when it came out was probably around 96, maybe 9596 and he was the high end support guy for that. Yeah, I remember I read all about the stuff all the time. You know, it's a big Metallica tour where they were on for the first time, I think. And.

47:58 I remember that deal that was with Obi's. I that was right when John and I both started at high end, John Wiseman and I both started and we did that deal with Obi's for I think it was 2 or 300 studio colors at the time, which that was a big rig at that time. Like now, what show doesn't have 1000 lights? You know, it's crazy. So at the same time, while I was there, this maybe not many people remember this anymore, but there used to be this online forum called the Light Network. Yes, I do remember cuz I was always getting, I was always getting torn in half on those light networks. So I remember it well, yeah. So there was a good way to get to know people from like around different parts of the world. They had you know, there was support forums there from HOG programming and for like fixture questions. So it was quite active in it for a while. Yeah, I remember.

48:52 And through that, what then really changed my trajectory a lot was that flying pick was designed the hog three at that point. And from you know what I gathered, maybe ran bit into some money problems while they were doing it. In the end, High end purchased flying Pick. Yep. And that set of everything that I'm doing nowadays still. So the reason why I'm sitting here with you is that, yeah, that event's totally changed my life, even though it had nothing to do with me. Yeah, So what happened? So what they did is actually also John Weissman a little bit there. So it's kind of funny how this all goes full circle. So flying pick gets sold to high ends and then high end decided to put up like a hawk programming, lighting, design, lighting, direction, school.

49:53 They're like, hey, we really want to do something with this new control system that's part of the family now, and they designed this thing called the Automated Lighting Academy. I don't know if you ever heard that term, but. It was, yeah, I was there. I I was there right before I left. I think I left a few years before they started that, yeah. But I remember. Once unfortunately. But it was driven by Niels Thorson who expect them still involved in this by. So it was something that they actually did in LA they used the high end shop that was at the brewery back then out there and and Van Nuys so that was John Weissman Randy Rena like all these guys that are working there.

50:40 The shop wasn't even that old from where I started going there. Yeah. So they advertised this thing you even had to like have a little quiz and get a proof to do it and you had to pay quite a bit and I'm like yeah this sounds great. So I really like hawk programming. I want to get, you know, better at this and applied for this, got accepted. And then I'm like, oh, I guess I'm moving to LA for six weeks. So it wasn't like a week class. I was like a real commitment to like leave Berlin, move to like a temporary, you know, time apartment that I found like a room share. And it happened that the friend on my roommate is not my wife. Oh wow, you met your wife through the person who's house you were staying in.

51:31 High end but purchased Flying Pig. This is really. Amazing. Crazy. Crazy how little things come together in a whole life. Happens around those little things. Yeah, there's this couple from Sweden. They're like, it's too hot in LA In the summer, we'll get the fuck out of here. We're back to Sweden for the summer and then we hate Sweden in the winter. It's too cold. So we live in LA and they're put up there. Yeah. You know, bedroom. Yeah, in Studio City. And I was in Sherman Oaks. They're like, oh, it was early days of the Internet still, too. It was kind of not so easy to find stuff. Yeah. It was like LA rent thing. I don't know what it was called back then.

52:11 I'm like, OK, found this place and then this. My roommate's friend came in from Minneapolis for a couple of days. Didn't even know that some German dude was staying there. Yeah. And we kind of hit it off. She's she's an American. Yeah, yeah, she from Minnesota. Oh, so that's why you live in Minnesota? Because I was always wondering, what the hell is he doing in? Yeah, what the hell is Matthias doing in? We, we met, I was at the same time while I was doing this Academy, I started actually my first touring gig which I got through a German company and I was like sort of B level version of River Dance.

52:55 So there basically was like all this really this Irish dancing was this huge thing. And then there was just like been of companies that you know you play in New York with River Dance but then somewhere in the suburb you put up you know a show with basically the the B version of this unrelated to that but you sort of capitalize on them and all the marketing And then he's playing a, you know place was 2000 seats and you tour with a bus and two trucks and we did that around Germany. It was really popular. I took it over from a guy. It was all programmed. They just need a lighting director you're interested in doing this. So A toured with this.

53:36 They were just starting AUS tour back then was with Christie Lights, was doing all the gear. Unfortunately right before we're supposed to start that tour, 9/11 happened which through the whole thing completely apart obviously. And I ended up being stuck sort of. I was actually prepping a tour in Toronto. Oh, and you couldn't get back here, or you couldn't get back to Minnesota? So it was back and forth a little bit, ended up the tour got postponed, ended up being in the States a lot, and basically I ended up any time I could find or spend the Minnesota with her. Yeah, yeah.

54:22 So as you do. As you do. So then you got married when you're still with her. Actually, I was touring on an artist visa and the tour was on again, off again, and they ran out of money and then we're back on. It was kind of turbulent, as many things were at that time. You kind of like didn't really know what, you know, happens the next day and what promoter goes out of business and yeah. It was brutal. Yes, at the end of the tour. So I was touring in an artist visa, which made the whole get married here a lot easier because it's actually not so easy to just move to the US and marry somebody. Yeah, that's really quite involved as a foreigner, I told. Her.

55:06 I did it. I did it too, by the way. You know? Yeah, I moved from Canada and and married an American. Unfortunately mine has a less happy ending than yours though. But. I proposed to my wife on the last day of me staying in the US on top of the Empire State Building. Jeez. Always a bit special, maybe a bit corny, but it was. I thought it was really cool. Well, no. But if she says no, you throw her off. That's easy. Yeah, perfect. I never thought about it that way. I wasn't prepared for. This is, this is my sinister brain. I just go straight there, you know?

55:46 I go straight there. You did? That's a nice story. So when was that? When did you get married? 2002 so. Wow, 20 years already? 22 years? Yeah, it happens. Quickly Doesn't. It very low key, just in a courthouse. Yay, couple of people, some real dear friends. Are we still really good friends with as witnesses and that's it? And you got a green card. And some, like, you know, you live in Berlin. I moved to Minneapolis and I'm like, you know, I really want to move to Hollywood. So I'm like, I want to work in Hollywood. This just sounds great. As a German say, yeah. I'm. Moving to Hollywood?

56:27 Yeah, so I did that. Like packed up everything, sold everything I have and I'm like I'm out of Germany let's try something completely different and but the only thing I brought with was most my record collection of being a DJ back then so. That's cool. Everything else. So she moved with you to LA? Yeah. Oh, wow. She's a travel agent. She must like you through. Our friend who was a travel agent worked in, she still does that. She's got the CMT awards this week in Austin, so she just doesn't get payment. Travel for television, huh? So she found a job right away back then at Warner Brothers in the travel department, and I started freelancing around town. So I'm like, yeah, let's see what happens. That's really cool.

57:14 That's one of the trainers in the Lighting Academy. So we had Brad Schiller was one of the guys who did a lot of that and the guy that really got me into this was Michael Nevitt. Yeah, I don't know if you had him on your. I haven't yet, no. That's a good, good idea, though. We should get Michael Nevitt on. Michael Nevitt? Sarah, write that one down. He's actually the reason that I met Eric. So that's that's oh really Circle started. Yeah. So Michael used to work for Flying Pick in in the US like she was the first employee outside of England and did all the Hog One training originally, then Hog Two, then worked for Bob Gordon for a while at AC.

57:58 So, you know, it's all kind of interesting how small the world really is that we're in and how you keep coming across. The same and now he's is he light switch. He's one of the. He's with the Was it crossfade design? Crossfade. That's what it is. Yeah. It's Crossfade. I knew it was one of the sort of collaborative businesses, but yeah, it's it's, it's Eric Wade's company, right? Cool. And so that was actually, at the time where Martin decided to get into the console business, a bit more serious. Yeah, yeah, I wanna, I wanna dig into that one with you because that's an interesting story like so. I don't know that people know the the history of this beautiful Obsidian line that you have.

58:44 But you know, from what I understand and you could either confirm nor or deny this. But from what I understand, the M series from Martin Martin decided they didn't want to be or couldn't be in the console business anymore or whatever. They worked out a deal elation, took over the M series and then ultimately changed the name to Obsidian. But even before the M series it was a company who actually I believe I found at might have been Pro Lite. It was either Prolite or I. Think it was Rimini, Maybe I heard it. Was Rimini. It was Rimini. So I found this little obscure console company and I took Peter over to meet them and I said, Peter, we need to do something with these guys.

59:31 They seem really smart and and enthusiastic and you know, I think we need a control line because you know, let's face it, yours are junk and you know all these rack mount things and stuff that they had and and we had tried to work a deal out with Compulite. I'm sort of happy that never happened. And then you know this case thing just all came together quite quickly. So is that sort of the trans transition or whatever? Elaborate a little bit on that. So there's a company called R&D International Belgium company tiny lot fit. They actually came out of the PC building business where they built like business PCs and somebody in that, you know back then you you bought your 10 PCs for your accounting office.

1:00:17 So if you're engineering office and those companies that put them together for you because it was all not so easy like buying a laptop, you have to you have companies that service them and change your graphics cards and configure all the little dip switches in there And it was really quite, it was an actual business. We still work with some of the guys actually like the hardware designer that I work with is still from that original company. Is Mark still around? Mark Coleman? No. He actually owns a video production company now. Oh, does he really? Yeah, because I remember when I met them at Remini, it was it was this really, really nice guy who was sort of smart engineer, ish kind of guy. And then this relatively obnoxious used car salesman named Ferdinand, and it was basically the two of them. And then I think Ferdinand's wife or something was involved as well or some other.

1:01:11 There was a woman involved as as I recall. Yeah, that was before me. Yeah. But then they built this. Mark was really the guy who comes from the, you know, entertainment sites, and he got them into like, hey, let's try to build like a console. Then they went to Remedy to show it. And then sort of this connection with Martin happened. So they built him together with Martin. Martin sold it under their own name. Yeah. Within the case console, there was multiple iterations of that. Yeah. And then they decided to migrate this to like a more. It was a bit maybe disco and the way it was set up and fast like the way it did scenes, it wasn't, it didn't have really like a queue structure per SE. So it wasn't really quite the way most people were starting the program.

1:01:59 They decided to evolve that into a really a Martin product line which became Maxus originally. That was in 2001 when that happened, Eric, Loaders like, you know, we really, you know, have to build like a bit of a department around this and you know, take this a bit more serious and you hired Michael to to do this. Yeah, I remember that. How I got into this to do some support and training for them. Oh, Michael brought you along. Yeah, he's like, hey, do you want to like freelance a little bit? And we need somebody to just go around and demo these things and you're really good with consoles and you know all the different other ones and you know, pictures being easy, you just you. Always seem to meet the right person in the right place and everything just falls together for you. I was pretty fortunate.

1:02:44 Many coincidences really led me to sit here with. You right now. Yeah, it's interesting. That's probably true for many people you talk to. They're like, you know, if that wouldn't have happened and this wouldn't have happened, I met this guy or. If I didn't miss that bus, and yeah, if I didn't miss that bus that one time, you know. Yeah, no, you're totally right. People's lives get shaped by coincidences. Yeah, it is. They're not. Coincidences. We don't know. Maybe there's some math plan that works. True. Who? Knows it's all true. We don't know. Maybe it's. Destiny. The universe when it's all happening. Yeah, or somebody's sitting at A at a computer or some AI computer on some other planet right now going, I'm going to make, you know, this happen to Marcel and this to Matthias and this guy over here. We're puppets.

1:03:29 Yeah, that's company that basically were independent for a long time. Eventually, they decided to buy this Friday night guy out because he was a bit of a, you know, pain in the butt. He was a pain in the butt. He was a nice guy, but God, he was a pain in the butt. But it's that they did the engineering and software Mountain did the manufacturing in Frederickshaven in Denmark. Yeah, they did all the engineering on hardware, on the assembly. That was all done by Martin. You know, the original front plate of the console was actually done by the same guy I did, the MEC 2000. So it had very much the same sort of flow and that kind of plastic that they used, which was all very kind of related.

1:04:11 Yeah, interesting. Then this whole financial crisis around 2008 happened that kind of let this company, you know, it was a bit difficult because I only had one customer, Martin. You know, when they weren't buying consoles, there was money coming in. Yeah. It was also at the time where media servers was a bit of a thing, so that this Maxidia server, and that was part of what they offered when, but they're basically their cash flow ran out and they're like, Yep, yes, Martin decided to, instead of letting it die, buy the company out. And I thought they bought them earlier than that. That's that's interesting. I thought it was much earlier. Yeah, I thought. I thought they bought them like in the late 90s, early 2000s. I didn't realize it was 2000.

1:04:56 Eight. No, it was really they ran independent as its own and they basically paid a fee for the, you know, software design and development. Interesting. So they bought it out at the same time they restructured their product management setup in Denmark and I moved from. So at then I worked at Martin for several years as sort of the support person for consoles and media servers. Did a bit of interesting things like working on big lights, you know, that's something that they tried all lots of different things to sell. Was like these big searchlights. Did some support for that, but then really wanted to get out of the sort of trainer support thing into Was always interested in the manufacturing side.

1:05:41 Yeah. And you know, was a, this product management role was a really good opportunity. Yeah, it's really kind of fun. Yeah. So I ended up working in product management in Denmark from 2008 or 9 onwards. Specifically for the Maxis stuff. In Maxi, yeah, but that actually moved from Maxis, which was so, so was you know, had a bit of a peak in the beginning and then kind of didn't live quite up to its expectations, let's say. Yeah, we rebranded this into M series and got rid of the plastic parts and made it like a metal front and that became like Gray console that we've been sort of carrying through. Yeah.

1:06:24 That some some modular stuff was really quite interesting, Martin, and eventually got sold to Harmon. Yeah. So it became part of the Harmon Group and we continued on with these different developments, our state and product management. Eventually when Samsung came in, as he mentioned, it was a tiny part of the huge. Corporation, yeah. Yeah. Samsung bought it mostly for the car business, actually. Yeah, I know. Yeah. For the Harman technology and cars, well, it wasn't even the technology. It was just to get in the car, you know, because Harman owned such a big part of the car market.

1:07:08 You do your I drive, that's actually meant made by them. Everybody's fighting over who controls the automobile. You know, we got to get past the cell phone, into the car because people spend so much time in their car. And I don't think that's worked out for a lot of these guys. But who knows? I don't know. So we're part of that group for a while, which is difficult to getting much done in a big corporation. There's too many, there's a lot of design by committee and let's just really you get disconnected more and more and more from the people that actually make decisions. Yeah, that's tough. That's hard. It just has happened to many companies in our business like I am a micro or yeah, very light with Philips.

1:07:51 Play Paki and Osram. With Osram, so anything. Still very different. You know, Samsung being this big and Martin being this little tiny bug down here, you know, such a vast difference. So, Osram. Now they kind of seem to be kind of being able to do what they want and they just sort of paddle along with that. Yeah, when I would say it was really quite difficult to get much done decision wise. The other scary thing is like, you know that you're such a small part of their business that they could just any day decide to shut it down and just say, yeah, we don't want this lighting thing. It's a painter. Ass like we're done with this. So there was this huge layoff that Harman had in 2017.

1:08:34 Yeah, I remember. Which happened the day I was on vacation with my parents on Lake Superior. I was literally driving along the lake enjoying the day and getting a phone call. And you're like, there's a conference call for you and you have to be in it in one hour. And we didn't know, like it was super secret, but they laid off like 700 people, closed 30 different field offices. So they're basically the, the, this R&D group that we worked with, They were still in the same office. Yeah, they were. When you met them originally. Yeah. Crazy. They somebody showed up and you know, some lawyer from the Holland showed up, gave them all the envelopes and said you're done in four weeks. So packing up.

1:09:16 Wow, Unreal. No, there was no continuation of anything. It wasn't. You couldn't even figure out like how to handle any warranties or like you know and nobody knew like it's just sort of happened. Yeah, I know for a while there they were a tough company to do business with too, because it was just like, well, what does that look like? Like, where do I get service? How do I get this? How do I get that? Like, and they were just trying to push their sales teams together. So speaker sales people were now selling lights and it was just so messy how they handled it and they just didn't care. It was such a small part of their business. So ended up losing my job that day, which was tough of the 14 years because you know, kind of felt, you know, it was this is kind of a job that you really identify with because in it, it's not like a nine to five gig and you're like for work, don't work at this bank. I work at a different one tomorrow doesn't matter so much. Put a lot of, you know, effort into that. So that's been really my career there. It was tough, quite difficult for a while to. I I understand it very well because when, you know, I left Martin because it's a long story and I won't tell you exactly what it was because.

1:10:31 But I I just was in fear of some bad things happening because of the way that the company was being run at that time. And there were just some, there were some funny business going on, let's call it, from Denmark. And I was, I was afraid that I was actually going to, you know, go to jail for for, you know, some kind of crazy maneuvering that was going on over in Denmark. And so I left and and went to high end and I was only at high end for a short time. But I felt like a trader, like almost the whole time I was at high end as much respect as I had for that company because they were always the number one and we were always a distant number two or three. And you know, I just want to be as good as high end, you know? So I had just tons of admiration and respect and I loved all the people who work there.

1:11:21 But I always felt out of place. I always felt like I was wearing the wrong team's clothing, you know? And so, yeah, I get it. I understand. Especially high end Martin, that fight with the 600 studio color, there was a MEC 600 NT like new technology or something. They had to like redesign the MEC 600 to not violate some studio color patterns. So there was a lot of. You know, it's crazy. You know, trolls, God rest his soul, It's crazy. The stuff that they were doing, 'cause I was already out of there by then, but I knew of the dealings that they were, 'cause my office, the new Trackman, was right down the road from the Martin Building and we were, we were importing Comar at the time and but I knew what was going on with Martin and they weren't allowed to sell any lights, but there were hundreds of lights going out of that building every day or every week or whatever, you know, lots and lots of lights were shipping still. And how they got away with that, I have no idea, but they did. They somehow got away with it.

1:12:25 They got past the injunctions and stuff and we're able to continue doing business. But it was an interesting time. That was a tough time for I think the industry because I don't know patents. Patents are good and obviously you have I'm sure some very serious thoughts about that. But at the same time when patents get in the way of the industry moving forward or technology advancing or whatever, I think it can become problematic. And I think, you know, companies have to be maybe a little more willing to do licensing agreements and stuff That makes sense. I don't know. The business matured quite a bit, so there's a lot of cross licensing going on nowadays in companies, so.

1:13:07 Yeah, it's true. Yeah, it's true. Everybody has grown up a bit and it isn't quite so like very light. There was a lot of issues with them, with patents back then, POG Stuart Martin back then for lots of things, so. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's interesting. So you were now out of? Work I dropped down and went back to Eric who you know in the meantime left. Martin was very successful was building up elation. Yeah really from the ground up. You know back then, Roby built built for them as an OEM actually and true. Yeah, for me as well at Calmar, Calmar, we had a bunch of Roby fixtures as well.

1:13:50 Yeah, quite interesting how that company like where they started from, you know, they built for like in future light like in Germany, Yeah, like now look where they are, it's amazing. Well, and it's funny, I remember having a conversation with Joseph in at Rimini, and he was in a tiny little corner in a tiny little booth. And I was with Fausto and we were Calmar. And Fausto was pissed off because Joseph was there and had lights on his booth. And Fausto's like, you know, how can you have the same lights on your little tiny shitty booth here that I have right across the hall in a big booth And we're buying thousands of these things from you. How can you do this to us?

1:14:33 And so a little bit later I went over and I was talking with Joseph and I said, you know, Joseph like you're not going to survive as an OEM sort of white label builder because it's all based on price. And as soon as pricing moves down, whether it's in, you know, Latvia or China or whatever it is, as the price moves down, people are not going to buy from you. You know, you should have your own brand. And he says, yes, we've been thinking about that a lot. And there you go, well, no, it's definitely not my fault. He was doing it. He was, this was the start of it, this little booth. Because I said are you doing your own brand? Like that's if I were you, that's what I would be doing.

1:15:14 And he goes, yes, that's that's the direction we're going. So, yeah, that was sort of the beginning of the end of his OEM business or white label business. What, So yeah, Eric basically said, you know, hey we're we're expanding, we're growing, you know, elation was really on a really big trajectory 20/17/18. I'm like, this is actually really interesting. So met with Toby, who's President and Eric and like had a really good report with both of them and decided to actually move on from the sort of console thing because it wasn't part of that discussion actually.

1:15:56 Yeah, start doing the product management for them on the fixture side. Yeah, with a lot of ideas and things that they told me that they were working on and had coming up and we're thinking about. And I was like, wow, this is like super interesting. I can, you know, be really part of shaping this. That's interesting though, because you had no experience designing light fixtures, did you? I was involved at Martin in a lot of things like DMX control. I took over some stuff when a different product manager left with the first China factory they had and I helped them build some of the architectural fixtures and finish the design on that. So at the end, in the end my work at Martin was maybe 60% consoles and 40% fixture related. So OK.

1:16:41 Transition kind of made sense, yeah, for me. So the console thing wasn't even part of it. That was kind of debt that was like, but at the same time in that year, high end bought now ETC, bought high end. And while elation back then was distributing Hawks and did quite well with that, they lost that console line and they're like whoa, like now we got, we just put all the work into starting to sell desks and that was actually quite good business. And then I got pulled away from them and I'm like, well, hey, so the, you know, there's this console line that we had and Eric knew it. Obviously it was a part of the original launch of that. And I'm like, maybe there's a chance all these guys aren't gotten Leaf.

1:17:27 So if you fire all these guys in Belgium, they're not going somewhere else the next day, they'll get a big chunk of money depending how long their works. And then they're just busy. You know what they tend to their garden, which is why it's called garden leave in Europe. So they're. All still, you know, on the payroll but couldn't work anymore and you have to pay them for a certain amount of time. So it was an opportunity to basically take this entire team and sort of buy the IP out of Harman, which took several months and was actually in something nobody's ever done with them before. So it was really difficult and big company with lots of lawyers, but in the end they kind of realized that the liability and servicing and basically also the the way that appeal appeared to their distributors and customers basically leaving them in the, you know, with worthless desk really wasn't a great and they're like much better to just you know sell it off and making some of the problem. So that felt nice.

1:18:28 I could, you know, help get all these guys to drop back. So it was actually a couple of months of really intense negotiations making sure that these guys don't move on. So we're able to keep about 80% of the staff. And then elations offers in Europe was only 40 miles away from the development office. It a coincident with so many and we're like, hey, do you maybe want to restart this on the, you know, people that made me care more Chris Martin In the end, the management dead or harm and management didn't really care for it. That's why they cut it loose. So I ended up bringing that console line with me.

1:19:10 That wasn't the original idea. It was really for me being focused on the fixture side. But was so but the the Maxis or the M series was basically gone at that point, no or or was this? Frozen, basically. They kept selling it. They didn't tell people that they actually stopped all the R&D and that they laid off everybody. They kept selling the product. That's crazy, but the the question I'm trying to ask is is so did Obsidian? Was Obsidian just the next progression of M series? Or was Obsidian a completely new line? It's a progression of it. So we basically bought the IP rights tooling when they basically said, hey, let's build a new brand from scratch.

1:19:53 And we took basically we started selling M series consoles here at Elation for six months or so. And basically part of the deal was that we could use the name for a while, but then you had to rebrand it. So Eric worked with a marketing agency and came up with this whole compute complete new. Identity and rebuild it from scratch. So that's how the city and control systems was launched. Yeah, interesting. June, I think June 2018. So it took about six months to really chew through all the legal things and get everybody rehired and build a new office and move manufacturing over. So, so.

1:20:35 Where manufacturing moved from where to where? From Martin in Denmark. And then not an OEM that we work with. OK. Interesting. Yeah. And you know, from everything I hear and I don't know anything about consoles necessarily except how much they cost and and who buys the most of them or whatever, because that's my world. But everyone I know who use them, love them. And you know, I always told Eric that I thought it was such a great market to be sort of underneath where the real shit fight was going to happen, like the MA and AVO and ETC and Flying Pig or whatever.

1:21:19 Like to be just one jump down from all of those guys And you know where there isn't a real clear leader. You know, some people buy the small AVO stuff, some people buy Campsis, some people buy, you know, whatever. But it just seems like, you know, that's a market that's very ripe to be, you know, dominated. And you guys seem to be doing pretty well. We are. We're really quite happy when the guys have finally, you know, have more control of what they do. And it's not such an uphill fight with a management that really doesn't believe in it, but it's sort of kind of, you know, dragging it along. So yeah, no, it's nice. We're really committed.

1:22:01 We hired actually recently, Corey, he worked, he was a salesman from table lights. He would also be a great one to talk to, by the way. Yeah, except I wouldn't be able to talk. I like to talk every once in a while too, and he wouldn't let me. Yeah, he's great. I really enjoy working with him so much, yeah. Coy's such a nice. Guy all these console companies but high end DTC all this being like one thing now and then campers and Chauvet then Robbie just bought Avolites isn't? It crazy. All these like lighting companies have been have these bolt on acquisitions now to put control systems into the portfolio so. Well, I think it starts when you know like maybe it was act and and MA lighting being together that started to cause the problem.

1:22:52 I don't know. But like I think it starts when you start like when you have a competitor who can offer a whole package and you can't and you need to use one of those competitors products, it becomes very uncomfortable obviously. So it's nice when you can spec an entire package into a school or a church or a whatever and the console company isn't going hey, but by our moving lights, not these elation ones, by our airton moving lights or whatever. Yeah, my etc does this really well. Well, that's basically a full. Turn of course, yeah, yeah, of course the. Rigging part and the Power Distribution and you pretty much don't have to leave the ecosystem and now when you start like hey, but I also can sell you something here for maybe a bit better price.

1:23:36 I think it's not as big a deal now that dimming is sort of out of the picture because dimming systems, you know we're very complex and and you know there was a lot to it and they were all these custom systems that ETC was building out or whatever. Now that that's gone, it's really down to a fixture and and a light, you know, and you can use anybody's lights and any or I should say a console and a light and you can use anybody's lights or console and you know, of course still rigging in power systems and everything else but our power. I think the. Console background has really primed me well for the job I do now. And there's so many other guys that I know that come from the console side.

1:24:16 And then our product managers or product developers for fixtures. Yeah, JP, a friend of mine, Michael Marcus, who was at Martin is not Airy. He was actually the support guy for Max's in Germany. Interesting. So we all tend to come, you know, being able to talk to the like programmers and understanding how they interact with fixtures makes you really, really, really good. Yeah, lighting fixtures, I think. So your your work day now like you started, you were hired to head up their their lighting fixture design or whatever, which I guess means that you're back and forth to China quite a lot. Do you guys have engineers positioned in China or are all the engineers positioned in the US and have to go over there to communicate?

1:25:09 With we have engineers in Europe and. In the US, yeah. And we have the QC in that deals for the factories and basically approves shipments and make sure that stuff is, yeah, on the way we need it to. So everyone needs to fly over there is the short answer everybody needs. To go spend lots of time, lots like. Yeah, yeah. I assume well, and these aren't short flights either. I mean, at least well, no, you're in Minnesota. I was going to say at least you're in Lai. Wish it. Would be 4 hours. It's 15 hours. Yeah, yeah. Well, and of course I know Eric and and Toby and you're flying first class, you know, not even not even business class.

1:25:49 You're flying in first class. You know you have your own suite on the plane I. Wish. Yeah, Toby's jet. Toby's jet doesn't take you over to Guangzhou. Yep. That that one got sold off a few years ago. Jesus. Oh, Jess, No helicopter, No. Martin used to have a boat I heard in. Yeah, yeah, that was Harvey Hazelwood. Harvey Hazelwood. That was after I left. But yeah, Harvey and Woody went out and bought a company boat and got fired not too long after that, I think. Yeah, we that was ugly. We're very reasonable. It's priming economy for me around the world and then well, you get upgrades, but yeah, it's a lot of travelling, it's a lot of time away from your family. It is.

1:26:35 It's hard. It's not as glamorous as it seems. Yeah, yeah, no, it's hard. It's, you know, people say, Oh my God, it's amazing. You get to go to all these places and it's, yeah, it's nice to travel until you're going back and forth like a, you know, like a milk run back and forth to China. You know, it's that's real travel at that point. Like, that's tiring. China in March I was home for two days, watched my laundry and then went to Germany for 12 days and then meetings afterwards and. Then that's what I did. 21 days in March so. I did that in my heyday of Martin, where I'd be going, you know, from here to Denmark or or Comar as well, especially when we bought Comar. But I'd go to Denmark and then back here and then to China for a couple of days.

1:27:22 Back to the LA office, back here, back to Denmark or or Italy or whatever. I mean, I've done it probably not for the length of time that you've been doing it, but I loved it sometimes and really just couldn't stand it at times. Like when you just really wanted to be able to see your kids baseball game or whatever, you know, not that my kid ever played baseball, but, you know, sometimes you just want to be home. You know, like, like, probably you ain't much. You know, it's a bit of a unique job, you know? Yes, I mean, I'm fortunate because I really love what I do and maybe only 7-8 people that do what I do around the world. It's kind.

1:28:03 Of Yeah, that is cool. We all know each other too. Like most people think we all hate each other, but it's actually quite the opposite. We have really good relationships. There's a lot of work behind the scenes that people that you don't know and like protocols and picture libraries. So I just had a very long meeting with a competing company about copyright things and software getting hacked and how we help each other to prevent it and better learn from each other. And it's like, we know like, hey, we've seen this, you know, somebody trying to hack your software and then we tell other people how, what they're trying so everybody can be better. So there's a lot of behind the scenes that people don't see and they all think we're really tough competitors on the front, but we also can go and have a beer at the bottom after.

1:28:51 Work. Yeah. What about the counterfeiters? Like, have you seen this now infamous post that was on one of the lighting groups on Facebook over the past couple of weeks? Where I almost feel sorry for the guy, some guy comes out and says, hey, I just have a question for the group the church that I go to is asking me to work on. You saw that? They have constantly those polls and then people get just like decimated by like, Oh my God. How good the guy was torn. What? Kind of church, are you? In that case, it was kind of interesting. Yeah, because. Morality of. You know, a church basically buying stolen, you know, IP. But the people that bought it don't even know.

1:29:33 I don't think so. And they're like. Oh no, they knew it was clear. They knew it was contentional. Yeah, I mean it was, it was very clear on that one. And again, I felt sorry for the guy because he was just a bit naive and and gullible I guess. Perhaps, but. But is that a real problem for you? Like, are you seeing elation? Branded counterfeits. No, we haven't really seen that too much. I mean, we see products, we see ideas taken over. That's actually the counterfeiting is maybe not as prevalent where it's like, hey, it's exactly a MEC 2K that looks like MEC 2000 with a fine art stick on it that that doesn't happen as much anymore. Yeah, it looks like the Mario 2000 or Mario 3000. Yeah, total knockoffs, yeah.

1:30:23 That that kind of moved on even like the Avalite copies are not really Aval lights anymore. They're actually starting to have their own software on their own designs. So the market over there that was very much into copying everything also matured I think quite a bit now. Yeah, they'd be designing a lot of their own things these. Are the. Consultation from but then you could say BYD maybe takes a lot of inspiration from Tesla and then sort of does their own thing. No, there's always, yeah, there's always gonna be some of that. But when you're blatantly calling something an MA two or a grand MA two, and you know, it's basically the same thing, it just is a little cheaper, but it's the same basic thing. It does the same basic functions. And you know, from what I understand, it's even closer than that.

1:31:13 Like it's pretty much identical. But you can tell, you know, So yeah, I mean that's that's. Gotten a little less like it's not quite as like there's a trade show that we go to which is like for all the purchasers and buyers and it used to be a whole booth of MA 2 clones and another booth of complete able like clones and they were identical, could not tell them apart and you really have to like start looking at very small details to see a difference. That's brutal. It's less of that now. Like it. There's a lot more own designs and less of this blatant cloning. Well, even on the fixture side, like I, you know, Sharpies were the big one for a long time where, you know, just these companies and again, they didn't even try to call it a barpy or a farpy or anything.

1:32:01 They just called it a Sharpie, you know, by our Sharpies. They're only $300 or whatever. And yeah, I'm not seeing it quite as much right now, but like now you're getting more, you know, just goofy branded stuff that's being sold on Amazon that looks a lot like other things, but at least it's not called the same thing anymore. Yeah. So I wanted to, I really wanted to ask you one really big topic, which is AI. And you know I'm I'm super like I think AI is something where you're either afraid of it or or you embrace it and you have it.

1:32:47 It's you have to make a choice. Like you really do have to make a choice. You either embrace it or you fear it and either way it's coming. So you know you either you either have to find ways to get ahead of it like get on the bus or get run over by the bus. Basically is is how I look at AI right now. So I've really been doing a lot of research on my own end and using it daily for different things. And you know, in some ways it's become my best employee recently, believe it or not. Like just I will sit and have long conversations with ChatGPT and end up with a very solid legal agreement or you know a marketing plan or whatever it is and you still have to read through it and you still have to tweak it a little bit here and there but pretty close And you know, so I love talking to different people who I think are really smart and and getting their ideas and thoughts on it, especially as it relates to our industry.

1:33:49 And you know example a couple weeks ago I had Richard Cadena on I'm sure you know Richard and Richard said one of the very first uses that he found for it was he writes these JavaScript things for figuring out electrical. I forget what it is, but and he says it takes him a long time to write these JavaScript and he said that's the first thing he did and he can do what took him weeks before or at least many many hours he can do now in 1520 minutes. But there's two sides to that. One of us for me and my workflow. I've been starting to look into other Copilot and ChatGPT. Yeah, especially automating, like the daily barrage of emails and basically triaging of things and starting to automate some of that stuff.

1:34:45 So that's one thing where I've actually just yesterday I've read through a lot of the new Outlook that Microsoft has been promoting. There's a lot of AI type things in there where it just creates events automatically and calendar things and it reminds you like, hey, you didn't reply to this e-mail that you read two days ago and then you didn't do anything with that, so oh, that's cool. That kind of stuff was really helpful. Yeah. Because, you know, we all get. Well, it's life hack kind of stuff, yeah. And then I had also discussions with especially on the like console site where you know this is like maestro thing that's been popping up over and over like you know, better sound to light kind of thing and people like yeah you.

1:35:25 Don't. Need a designer? Got away and will never be as good as a guy. I'm like, my opinion is that these are tools and used right, that they're huge advantage. I think for us because there's so many mundane tasks that you do every time you build a Rick and program and patch and build presets and colors, There's so many repetitive tasks that you could actually automate away and help the creative sites to actually actually spend. So right now, maybe 7080% of the time is wasted just getting the stuff together and then you have very little time at the end to do actually something, the stuff that's fun. There's so many technical things that you have to worry about and deal with. There's so many tasks that you do over and over and over again, and you saw a bit on MA.

1:36:14 There's a ton of these like macros that people wrote to even deal with the massive amount of fixtures and cloning into festivals. And I think that's a really big opportunity for AI to take away a lot of that and free people up to be actually really be lighting designers again and not command line entry, right, Exactly. Who wants to type hundreds and hundreds of lines of basic code almost into a desk over and over to do something? Yeah, the amount of pictures, pixels, whatever it is nowadays you have was just so overwhelming that I think there's a system through AI type automation and bots be a major part. And I think in, I don't know, 10-15 years you're going to look back and say, well, that is like super dated. The way people work, that's crazy. And they had to 100% all that.

1:37:07 Are you, like, serious? But I think it's going to go further than that. Like I think, I think what you and I like to talk about is these things. It's a tool, it's just going to help the lighting designer. But I think it like in all other parts of business, I think it's going to go further than that. And I think that you know what used to take a designer three or four days or let's call it a week to program, you'll be able to program in a day because there's going to be a lot more AI involved. But you know, I think it's even going to go as far as maybe even breaching designer IP or whatever you want to call it where you know you'll be able to say, you know, act like Mark Brickman and and and design A show for a Pink Floyd tribute band based on Mark Brickman's Division Bell tour in 1995 or whatever it was. Right.

1:38:09 And. Opportunity designers could also, you know, sell their way of working. And hey, you buy this plugin and you you may be a crappy bar brand in Sydney, but hey, look, your lighting show looks awesome because you just have to buy the stuff and hang it and the computer will give you a perfect show on your. Well, again that's that's the concept of embracing it versus fearing it, right. And. I mean, there's so many terrible lighting things that you see all the time. You go to like smaller venues and clubs, and they don't have the money to really do it, right? So they buy a lot of gear that's kind of crappily programmed. The guys putting it in don't have time to do it, right. Yeah, if you just put your laptop over the camera and it does it all for you, you could, you know. Actually, I think stuff will look a lot better in the future than what we've.

1:38:58 Seen. No, you're right. Because here's what happens. Even if you hire a professional designer for that club and he goes in and programs it on a an Obsidian console, for example, as soon as he leaves, you're paying less and less and less and less money for the guy that's operating that desk on a nightly basis, and eventually you end up with a bartender running your lights, right? You've got a bartender who turns them on at the beginning of the night and turns them off at the end of the night, and maybe they move a couple times throughout the night or whatever. So you'd be better off with an automated system. There's actually not even enough people around. Look how many cruise ships are getting built. There's so many venues that all have events and things going on in the comedy club and they all need professionals running it.

1:39:46 There's not enough people around to really do it. So yeah, there are tools that to automate that. So you have some jazz band, the tours or casino circuit or the cruise ship circuit. Then you show up with your USB stick or clouds upload and you say, hey, you know, we're here and at all. You know, you get a show that you love. It looks great no matter where you go. There's so many opportunities I think in that. So I don't fear it. I think really embrace it. Yeah, you. Know regardless of people fear it or not, they're going to get steamrolled or they'll be part of it and they can, they can kind of choose on what site you're going to be on. Well, and I think that there's a part of our industry, you know, content creators, you know, video content or or even just still image content creators I think are going to be in a bit of trouble. You know, because you know, a creative director is going to be able to just use AI and say here's the look that I want and boom, they're going to get it.

1:40:45 And you know, a designer friend of mine just sent me some images a couple days ago of a images just content graphic stuff that was on a an LED wall for a tour and it was created with AI on site during production rehearsals. Full motion graphics, you know all being controlled from front of house while the show was being queued, they were basically sending brand new graphics to the screen. It was just incredible and it was all completely done by AI so. Yeah, I mean, you see all these like pixel control systems out there.

1:41:28 There's some attempts on like generative things now, but they're all still computer things, generating stuff. But the sort of real generative AI that you have, your pixel mapping is like in real time. Every time you play a song, it looks kind of different, but you know, has the same vibe throughout the tour. There's some amazing stuff that's impossible to do right now. Yeah, I think actually everything will look better in the future. Yeah, yeah. I mean, you know, to me, like, again, it's, you know, I don't want my kids on social media. My kids aren't going to use social media. You want to bet? You know, I mean, they're going to use it whether you like it or not. They're going to use it and they're going to spend a lot of time on it.

1:42:12 And it's like I always tried to curb my son's use of cell phones when he was younger and limit how much time he could spend. Every day they figure out how to shut those things off that limit their phone usage and limit app usage and all that stuff. The kids are way smarter than we are. And you know, and then somebody puts out an app that undoes that last app that you put on there. So they're going to get away with it. So you just have to teach, you know them good things and and create a good solid foundation in the kid and hope that they make good choices. But you know, aside from that, you can't put the genie back in the bottle. AI is. Here music business. You know when the all this MP3 downloading started and everybody's like Oh my God, it's going to I don't know if did it really you know ruin it did it you know I don't know. Nowadays seems to be more bands than ever touring around. The shows are getting bigger and bigger on a money mate and the. Life, it's just different, you know, the whole economy shifted the the music and band economy shifted. It shifted from, you know, making money on the recorded music to the recorded music creates the fans, which then create the money on the live events. And it's just shifted.

1:43:26 It's evolved into a different model. And I'm not saying one's better than the other, but we're also not going back. Well, I was gonna say we're not going back to vinyl, but we kind of are in a lot of ways. Like, I'm buying a turntable this year when I get to my house up in Canada. Yeah, I decided that months ago. When I get to Canada next time, I'm getting a turntable and I'm gonna go rebuy all the same albums that I gave away about 25 years ago. Or 30 years ago. I'm not that, actually. I'm gonna go buy them for 20 bucks, yeah. Yeah, stuff. I run CD. I'm like, I kind of want to own this on vinyl, Yeah. And actually now I enjoy just putting one. Because one thing is when you do the Spotify or even the CD player, but then you can just skip forwards on songs all the time.

1:44:08 Yeah, with vinyl, you put it in, you kind of like enjoy it the way it was put together of. Course, yeah, yeah. Well, and it's a much more. It's just a different, more kinetic thing. Like the whole putting an album on a turntable, dropping the needle in the groove, It's just a whole thing. And I'll probably get sick of it real quick and go straight back to my Sonos. But you know, I I think it's going to be really fun to just go, oh, I remember this record. I'm going to put this on and listen to the whole damn thing. Purchased an old jukebox, actually like I found an old UC book that I got for like $150.00 from somebody other garage. Wow, my restoring project.

1:44:49 Wow, that's so. Cool pinballs. And I have old ones because I like the mechanical things and just like I enjoy working on them. It's like. Oh, that's really cool in your spare time. Yes, in my little spare time I have. You don't have any kids, obviously, do you? I. Have no kids. Yeah, that's obvious because you'd have 0 spare time because whenever you finally do get home, they'd suck up all of your time. And you know, it's like I used to love boating on the weekends. That went away when my son started driving race cars or go karts at the time because that's where all my weekends went to him. So but back to this AI thing. So give me some ideas. And I'm not asking for any, you know, secret information or anything, but what are the types of things that we could expect to see in consoles, Not just yours, in MA consoles, AVO consoles.

1:45:41 Yeah, we had actually in that module, we had a whole project where we looked at how can we automate this huge task of focusing a show every day. So you hang it like 2 meters off and a little angled and the roof didn't fit and your process cut short. Well, now you've got to spend 3 hours of little left, little up. It seems trivial like how much effort it is to make sure with like 400 movers looked good again. And we looked into all sorts of things like sensors. And now with AI and cameras, there'd be actually what you do with your eyes, like, hey, this angle looks correct. I think there'll be a lot of automation where you don't like, you just set it up, push a button that goes, and it'll be done.

1:46:25 And you have a perfectly focused show that looks exactly the way. Yeah. Both the. Yeah, so a focusing. Scanning rig, you know, knowing what fixtures you hung and what positions and what angles. Lots of things that you have to do manually at right now. I think that'll be the first thing we're gonna see that we take some of these tasks away and basically so that is probably the first phase. And then there's gonna be a lot of connection between the manufacturers and the console side because you have to talk to each other and be aware, you know, we are at the moment, which isn't great, there's we're part of the whole group of new protocols coming out.

1:47:10 What's the one that I'm trying to think of? What's the one guy? Oh my God. I've had him on the podcast and I can't remember his name or even where he's from. He might be Dutch. Oh my God. Or German. I don't know. Maybe even Belgian. I don't remember his name. He's got his own protocol and they came out with it right before COVID. What? Cluster. Yes, cluster exactly. Well. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Such a cool guy. And he was on, I think he was on my podcast during COVID, and I felt so bad for him because, you know, you're just trying to launch this protocol at the worst possible time ever, you know? And so I don't even know.

1:47:57 Is he still at it? Yeah, 'cause that seemed pretty ingenious. And Frankfurt and actually had a quite a nice booth showing off progress on this. So yeah, yeah, they launched it by about the worst time with this COVID thing. Yeah, brutal. Just brutal. And, you know, yeah, we talked a lot during COVID. You know, just ideas. To raise for sure, you know, the interconnection between the fixtures and the console. There'd be a lot more intelligence in that, and AI will have a pretty big role, I think, in that. Yeah. The other thing is basically a lot of programming stuff was just mundane. You're like, OK, I want to have this corner in this color and I want to do something here, and it's all very mathematical right now.

1:48:43 You take a chunk of lights and do something and do another chunk of lights and do something, and you divide it by three and do some other things. And it's all very also very still this command line typing in things. I think we'll be able to just interact with their systems much more dynamically and you know, in a some sort of AI bots will help you do these things that take you hours to type in. And if you look, you talk to designers that do these old tours in the 80s where they had to like really have tables and mathematically devised up on their very light desk or their icon desk, how to write specific chases.

1:49:23 So these, like, cool circles for Pink Floyd, actually. Worked so I remember it. Crazy amount of math? Yeah. Kind of, probably like trivial for computers to do, yeah. And it's even much easier for like a generative AI bot. So I think we're gonna do a lot more of these things that help you basically create and you know. Your your. Poor judgment on what you pick. It's still going to look terrible. Yeah. So you're still involved in that process, but there's just a lot of the boring stuff that this will take away, I think. Yeah. So you're really focused on the the more tedious stuff. I I still wonder if it's going to go further than that. You know, like I I wonder at what point you know does do consoles program themselves like you know at what point do consoles not need buttons and faders on them? At what at what point does a designer just say, hey, you know the the Proteus Max on the on the, you know, upstage Truss red, you know, on the singer, whatever, you know, like or remember that thing I did back on Coldplay in 2014? I want to do that on this one right here. I want to make that look here, boom, you know, there it is. Right.

1:50:45 So yeah, yeah. But it'll happen probably slowly. I think, you know, there's probably a a lot of on the console side and and again, you don't have to confirm or deny this, but I would think from a manufacturer standpoint you have to walk easily at this point because everyone is a little bit nervous, you know, Certainly lighting programmers, lighting designers, sound engineers, everyone, everyone in every job coders, you know, again, creative people, whatever kind of creative you're making, whether it's video or whatever, like have you seen Sora?

1:51:26 Nope. So Google Sora Balloon Head, they made this video about this guy. It's like a movie trailer, sort of. But it's about this guy who has a balloon head and it's completely, 100% AI and it's wild. I mean, it is weird as hell, but it's wild. And I just saw a music video from Sora as well, completely AI generated music video. But yeah, I mean this stuff, we're we're in the infancy right now like you know we're the very first BlackBerry you know that that had the funny buttons or the what was the other one called the Palm Pilot. We're we're in Palm Pilot stages right now, but we're gonna be, you know, iPhone. 15 This search of AI over the next sort of generation of people will drastically change what kind of fixtures. We even designed what what's needed to enhance. So we see it on the movie side on the XR screens where you're it needs actually kind of different lighting fixtures almost to work with them.

1:52:29 Greens become part of the lighting that used to be you did this like process for a car. Now you have a big screen, put a car on there and it looks all super realistic and. You should get. Going away, it's like it's all everything is changing. There's a Joe Rogan from two or three weeks ago with Kurzweil, Ray Ray Kurzweil on it and you know, obviously a very smart guy and very up on AI. And he, he has this whole thing in his head where it's 2029 is, is pretty much where AI is, is past humans. And so everything leads up and he keeps talking about this exponential growth of AI. You know, it's not linear growth, it's exponential growth. And it's quite an interesting conversation. Well, eventually AI will teach itself. Of course.

1:53:22 So what's going to happen? It's doing that now. Like didn't I just heard, I just read about this a couple days ago that Google, I think it was the CEO said, you know, our AI system surprised us and the interviewer said, well why is that? And he said it learned a language in minutes that we didn't tell it to learn and and we didn't we didn't do this, it did it itself. It just learned an entire new language and then started to communicate in that language. And and you know, that's kind of frightening if if Google is going, hey, this thing did something we didn't expect it to do, that's frightening.

1:54:07 That's a little bit scary. That's that's where you get into the sort of Twilight Zone stuff where it's like, oh geez. So yeah, I mean, there is a danger. To all we're only seeing a tiny glimpse of what's really possible. Of course it'll interface with everything you do, which is fun and scary and but it's, you know, when the Internet was invented or whatever other things like car or the mobile came like this, like some big breaks I guess in humanity with certain events really shifted stuff drastically. And it will happen here, yeah. I mean, we're not, we're not back in. Gonna end up. Yeah, we're not back riding a buggy behind a horse or anything, right?

1:54:47 So you always keep progressing like once technology happens you don't just suddenly move backwards or whatever. But at the same time the good news is so far I think most of the the progress that has been made has been in very useful things. Like you said, you know ways to simplify your day and and you know clean up your e-mail or your calendar or different things like that book flights, you know you can use. There's all kinds of different AI systems out there now for for travel where you can book an entire not just book a flight, but you could say, you know what? I'm thinking about going to Italy this year and I'm gonna spend 3 weeks there and I think I'd like it to be during warm weather, but not when it's too busy and I wanna spend some time on the seaside.

1:55:39 Not too much time in touristy towns and you can have this 10 minute conversation with it and boom, it'll create you a complete itinerary along with pricing and best time of year and hotels that you should stay in where you should eat lunch. It's incredible. I've tried it, you know, it's wild. Let me know when you go on one of those trips, if that really. Works, yeah. Yeah. Well, I couldn't be much worse than booking it directly through like United Airlines or something. And you know, it's so bad. Like the service. This is the other thing. The service with airlines and hotel chains and things like that has gotten so bad that it's not gonna be hard to surpass it.

1:56:19 You know, it's gonna be pretty easy to surpass it using AI. For sure it'll affect a lot of jobs, like stuff that we do right now will all change. There will be a lot of jobs that are not needed anymore because there's probably no more customer service agents that you call. It's all gonna be some bot who's gonna be much quicker. Yeah, much smarter, knows a lot more and you know, like you're one of a flight cancelled, you're not gonna call some agent anymore who's gonna be like typing around and trying to find it. It'll be you're going to get it on your phone and you got the perfect rerouting. Yeah, go. And it will optimize it across the whole airline to distribute the load between different routings and who's going to miss that connection and this kind of stuff will help. What are what are on the, on the lighting side, fixture side, what are some of the technology challenges or design challenges or whatever you want to call it that you think we'll solve for in the next couple of years.

1:57:23 And like I I asked Richard Kadina this one time and he said we're gonna be able to bend light and you know, so any that come to mind for you? I always want to build a light to erase light of a stage. Don't be just awesome. Like to do what? It would be nice to build something to erase light on a stage. I see. Yeah, get rid of it. Yeah, that's interesting. Television. Yeah. Now I think the big challenge has been everything gotten so bright and fixtures gotten so big and heavy, so weights has been a massive issue. Yeah, so. Visibility. A lot of fixtures are really, really, really good now, no matter what manufacturer you buy.

1:58:05 Yeah, I know, I think. They have lost that five years ago elevated thing. I know, I know. So it's all how easy is it to service? What's my ROI on it? How often is it going to be in the shop having to get repaired? How difficult is it to repair? Those kind of things are way more influencing purchasing decisions than what the light actually does. And you see it on tour writers and sometimes I need a profile that's, you know, that bright as IP65 and the people don't even specify the actual product anymore because a lot of it was very, very close to each other. As much as we all think our stuff was amazing, yeah, really, really great products from all manufacturers out there. Well, one of the things that I think happened recently and I don't know if this was because of you and now I suspect maybe it was, but elation went hard on IP early other than. In the process right before I joined. And that was actually main, one of the main reasons why I thought this was a really great challenge and opportunity at the same time, yeah, they're like, you know, we're gonna go really hard on this IP range and we think that's like companies haven't done it right yet.

1:59:20 So the Proteus hybrid back then was just starting to find its footing and it was something that was used in that Burj Khalifa in yeah, yeah, I was in Dubai. Because prior prior to that, it was really just like SGM had a couple of fixtures or whatever, right? And none of the big companies had anything. Heavy. Yeah. You know, nobody has done until then did a really good entertainment fixture, which didn't have a lot of compromises. Yeah. And that's something that I think we're elation and maybe had a pretty good vision. Really good vision. Yeah. I mean now obviously everyone's doing it, but you know when you guys did it was it was a pretty big leap because you're adding cost, you're adding weight, you're adding complexity for getting into the fixture to repair it. Now the challenge is to take all this back out and make IP fixtures without the penalties.

2:00:12 So that's been that's kind of the next phase on that. Yeah, there's now people you see a cruise line saying we really want IP to not have to maintain the fixtures. Yeah, it's. Pyro and it's dust and it's just like people don't have time to maintain it and clean it. So like projectors, a lot of the projectors are fully sealed optics and you don't get dirt in the lenses, Yeah. So there's a lot of effort in R&D being done to basically SEAL fixtures, yeah. That's interesting. Reduce the maintenance without it maybe being heavier than a normal fixture and trying to get the weight out of the units. Speaking of IP technology though, what what do you think? And you don't have to answer this if you don't want to, but what do you think about a particular company who I won't mention their name, who's who's coming out with IP fixtures that are a lower IP rating than what was normally call it acceptable for outdoor use or or at least for permanent outdoor use?

2:01:13 I like 54. I know who you're talking about there. Yeah, I think it's a good idea because there's a lot of use where you you need a fixture that you can put out on a or like Coachella and it rains or whatever. It is some tour and it's in and out, but it's actually an event fixture, you know, You don't want to hang it on a theme park for 10 years. You just need a light that can take a rain shower. Yeah, it can get wet and can get snowed on for a couple of days. They survived 3 months in Chicago on some outdoor shed and then go back to the normal tour and you need fixtures like that and I think it's actually in good direction. Well, I think they've got some on top of their building, which is in a pretty rough environment and that they've had them there for a couple of years or something.

2:02:02 But yeah, I mean, I guess the trick is going to be and I've never looked it up or anything but the documentation. It depends what the documentation says, because if there's a snafu to the. Customer sales people trying to sell it for something that's not meant for us, like correct. You can hang it on you know your your roller coaster for five years will be fine and then the product isn't designed for. The product fails and now they go to the manufacturer and the manufacturer says look, it says here in line 376, it says right here that it's not meant for use for more than 12 hours, you know? Yeah. There's several fixtures out there that say that now. It was like temporary outdoor use. So they're really designed to be.

2:02:44 Interesting. Used for, you know, shorter periods, and that's debatable. What's temporary? It's like 3 months on a theater, you know, outdoors, Shakespeare in the Park kind of thing. Is that temporary? Does. It you know. There's a lot of things that are not really decided yet and I'm yeah, like maturing there a little bit, but I think there's like fixtures that can withstand adverse conditions without being, you know, so fully IP that they're really designed to be like permanent on a building. Yeah, not not everyone's gonna blast fire hoses at lights. You know, like, not everything. So, you know, I'm a big fan, actually, of the the good enough approach to to design or to products where not everything has to be the best of the best. You know, something's good enough in different areas, right?

2:03:38 But so I'm usually a pretty big fan of that. This one I thought was a little bit interesting though, when when when they were saying it's an outdoor use fixture, but not really being very specific and you kind of got to go look into the specs on it to see what the actual IP, and it doesn't even say in like the main spec. You got to dig deeper to get to what the actual IP rating is. And so, hey, you know, good on them. It's it's good. Tricky marketing and stuff, as long as you don't end up getting sued. More of this, Yeah, IP that is meant to be used temporarily. Like, really just on a show. Yeah. One day and it's fine.

2:04:19 From a fixture design standpoint, how much easier it is it to make a fixture IP54 than IP65? Like what are some of the differences? Not a lot of difference really. Really. So why bother? Once you go to IP65, there's a lot more you get like moisture and humidity management. That's a bit more difficult, just like taking the picture apart and evacuating it and doing pressure tests. Those kind of things are difficult, especially on the rental side. So that's where we see actually a demand for fixtures to be easier to service. Yeah, and not demanding this IP65 S some like Claypacki has been on IP66 right now and we've been doing a few pictures like that too. So it's gone both ways right now. So some pictures go up, interesting. Some gone to 54 IPX 4, you know, actually it's a lot like. What's?

2:05:15 IPX 4 watches you know you have like IPX 4. What's X4? You only have, it's not dust proof completely. So that's one of the things, yeah, OK, so once that's for dust and one's for water ingress, so. Yeah, but that's I think that's another area though, these IP fixtures. I think that's not one that's gonna get put back in the bag. Like I think all automated lighting fixtures in the future are going to be IP rated. We have now on park ends, like we've done a new line of Paris. We're not even doing it indoor and outdoor anymore. We're just.

2:05:55 Yeah, yeah. I I just see great. Evolution, I think you don't have to work. 100%. From outside it's great. Well, you don't have to have those ugly domes or garbage bags or whatever it is you're putting on them. But no, I think why would you, if if I was building a brand new lighting company today, I would say that it has to be 100% IP rated fixtures. It doesn't make any sense. Otherwise it makes no sense. Yeah, a lot of the materials have gotten better for this. I got lighter weight so we don't get cell phones. Used to be, you know, couldn't even look at a body of water and they were damaged now. Yeah, you. Can drop your phone in a glass of water and that's fine.

2:06:37 What about what about power innovations though? Like, you know, I keep thinking like so far battery, battery has only been in sort of novelty fixtures almost. You know, you haven't seen like the core lighting package incorporating any kind of battery technology, whether it's batteries on the fixture or even remote batteries. Is that? Part of a research group on that at Martin actually. So we didn't like study how long can fixtures last on battery and the technology was not there and I don't think still not there. Yeah, it's a totally new battery technology. I don't think you're gonna hang lithium ion blocks in your in your Rick and tour with that because of weights. It's just not practical quite yet. Yeah, it'll happen, you know, with a whole lot like Richard has been doing this like solar.

2:07:34 Yeah, that's was just great. And I think we'll see more and more of that, but maybe still easier to maybe have like central battery maybe somewhere for. Us Yeah. Yeah. Or to around with some semi truck that's a big solar battery, whatever thing it is. So you're independent from any sort of power needs. Yeah, in the venue, yeah. But pictures itself, I think it's not practical yet to put all the weights. What about like Magsafe kind of thing? You know where where you can, You know you clamp onto the Truss and it gets the power. It's all. Done already, he can look back at was it Morpheus had like a. Yeah.

2:08:15 But that was a very single use kind of thing like it very much for their fixture mated to that etcetera. But I don't know, I just keep thinking like that seems to be the next real redundancy is all of this cable that's being run through the the rig. It just seems to be kind of silly that in 2024 we're still doing that. It is. But you know, it's so hard to get rid of DMX, for example, because it just works so well and that's so resilient. Yeah. It's been like the phone companies have been taking a long time to get rid of that last piece of copper. Yeah, to the house. Yeah, that's true. Works well and it's everywhere so.

2:08:58 Yeah, so even wireless DMX isn't reliable enough yet to just completely do away with DMX. I don't. Think so. Like that. But there's a lot of stuff happening with IoT and mesh networks, so eventually be able to just hang the stuff up there and your AI bot will see everything. Yeah, and it will just work. Yeah, that's what it'll. Look like and you're like, what the hell were they doing? Like, yeah, to like type in DMX addresses. Or or or dip switches. You know, you had to do the dips. I remember. Oh, those things drove me crazy. I'm like, what do you mean this plus this equals this? Like, it doesn't make any sense to me. Come on, make this make sense.

2:09:38 This was all, yeah, very much driven by engineers back then. Yeah. I think now more and more products are driven by creative needs rather than engineering ideas, yeah? Well, it was always so frustrating because the phone in our hands, the, the remote control that we're using in our house, like things that we're touching on a daily basis. Sometimes our toaster, you know, had more technology or simpler technology in it than, you know, these $10,000 moving lights did. Like, you know, I can address the microwave, but I can't address my moving light, you know? But yeah, whatever. We've just been doing NFC. That's been a big thing.

2:10:18 Yeah. So we have NFC antennas on the front, on the top of the fixtures. So even in a case you can go with your phone and go PPP, peep and address a lot of pictures. So it's incremental. There's not hasn't been like one big revolution of this. So everybody's trying little things. This cluster thing is obviously it's something where you also help with like addressing and detecting fixtures and having resilient network and you rig. Yeah. So it'll get there, but it's. Sure seems like it. Will have only a few people that are really have the time to to work on this development. Well, we're not the most heavily funded industry in the world either, you know, So obviously you're going to get technology in, in cars and a lot of other things before you ever make your way to a small industry like ours. Correct.

2:11:10 Yeah, we mostly benefit and always have, you know, like the original fixtures that came out all use technology that they found somewhere else. Yeah. So we we benefit from from whatever other developments happen around us touchscreen on the lighting console or you know the the the system inside a fixture is based on something called Canbus which is used in the car industry. It's like your HVAC and you'd see changing and your mirror changing and hatch opening in the back that's all over communications. Bus that was such, I think German cars have that first and called canvas and that's actually wasn't a fixture now. So now four wires instead of a ton interesting cable looms throughout the light.

2:12:01 So now you've separated all this processing out and so we've benefited there from the car industry. You're a car buff, aren't you? Yeah, I like cars. Do you have a Do you still drive a a fossil fuel pig of a car or do you drive an E? Actually I had a TDI that I'm still driving. Oh OK Audi and get caught in all this TDI like Dieselgate thing. Yeah, I'm actually changing to a plug in hybrid because I wanted to go follow electric, but the charging setups here in Minnesota just not really there yet. What about the temperature too?

2:12:43 Aren't you a little bit worried about that? Like the range of these cars. I had a Tesla rental in Germany and was like LR and I called it lousy range because it was just terrible. Oh, I remember seeing that post that you put up on on Facebook or something. The point I was actually really excited. It was actually Hertz. It was a very that it was a very first rental. That car just came out of the Gigafactory in Berlin and it failed. The first car failed after three days with a broken heat pump and then the car got pretty much half the range that they advertised. And I drive like a LED foot normally in Germany. I really pulled back and drove like an old person. Yeah, no fence, but normally I'm one of the faster drivers on the Autobahn, which.

2:13:27 Is fun. Yeah, of course. Tesla really pulled back and drove very mellow. Which is kind of disappointing, cuz they're pretty quick. They're. Quick, but basically you drive 100 kilometers and that tells you you use 300 of your range. So I'm like. Yeah, Jesus. I don't believe any of those numbers that they say, but. I'm not an electric car fan. And I had AI, had an Audi R8 at the time and I was looking for whatever I was going to get after that. And so a friend said, have you driven a Tesla? And I said, Nah, I don't. And he goes, don't you know, don't discount it, you got to drive one. So I went into the Tesla dealership here in Palm Beach and they gave me one for the weekend. I left my Audi there, but they gave me a Model S This was before the Plaid, but it was the fastest 1 before the Plaid, whatever that is.

2:14:23 P100D. That's what it was called. And this was probably four years ago or something and so they gave it to me for the weekend. I it was a long weekend. I picked it up Friday afternoon and I had to have it back Tuesday, I think. And so my girlfriend and I went down to the keys with it and you know, I loved how quick it was. Like, you know, you hit the accelerator in that thing and you know, I think it's zero to 60 and what is it, 2.9 or 2.7 or something? The P-100, DI know now that the Plaid is like 1.9 seconds or something, But you know, it was quick, but it was kind of boring the the drive yourself stuff.

2:15:11 Like every time I'd let go for a little bit, I was like, cool, I can check my text messages and stuff, but you couldn't do it for very long. You had to grab the wheel again. And then also things like off ramps confused it and kept getting me into trouble. So I quit letting go of the steering wheel because it freaked me out a couple times and but the cool thing was the hotel that we stayed at in the Keys had charging stations and the valet took the car every night and in the morning when I went to get it, it was fully charged every time and they didn't charge you for that or anything. It was all free and so I thought that was pretty cool. Like I never had to buy gas on a whole trip to to the Keys. That was pretty fun.

2:15:52 In the end, to me, it was cool, It was comfortable, but it was kind of boring and and predictable. And like for me, it felt like driving an iPhone. You know? It just, it felt. I don't know. It just felt. That's maybe what appeals to a lot of people that. The I guess, yeah, exactly that. I mean, I love my iPhone, but you know, this thing, it just like, I like the sound of a gas car. I like the unpredictability sometimes. I like I don't know I I. Maybe search on an electric car. But yeah, it's like the range anxiety here would be really an issue because we like to do a little Rd. trips up to, like, the coasts up north.

2:16:35 The Lake Superior. Yeah. And I looked it up and you're like, you really have to be really mindful how you drive from where you stop and for how long. It's just not quite there. Yet I'll have to let I'll have to let you know next time I'm in Minnesota because I have a a really good friend of mine who lives in Duluth. But he's got a he's got a house on Vermilion Lake or Lake Vermilion and they have a little island, you know, everybody has their own little island there. So he's got his own little private island with a house on it and a boat and jet skis and all that stuff you got there. Yeah, I was there. I went and stayed with him for a couple days. Last year we we shipped my car into Chicago, picked it up in Chicago, drove to his place and and went out on the island with him for a couple days and then drove from there up to my house in Canada for the summer.

2:17:27 But And then on the way back, I stopped. And do you know Paul Streitz? Yeah. Yeah I stopped and had dinner with Paul Streitz on the way back to drop my car off at the at the freight place again in Chicago. So, so yeah, I didn't think of you though Paul is I only think of two or three people when I'm going through Minnesota for any reason and and Paul and this friend of mine Mark who has the place on the lake and but I'll have to let you know next time I go up there if I do. Please do, Yeah, I'm actually, so I have an Audi and then the other one I have a BMW. Just full fun convertible because that's what you need in Minnesota is drive convertible.

2:18:09 Yeah, I have AI, have a soccer mom SUV. Well, I mean, it's AX5M, but it's it's, you know, it's an SUV and it's actually the first SUV I've ever bought for myself. My ex-wife used to always drive SUV's, but. Used to be a big station wagon fan in Germany, but it's not a thing here. It's just. No, not really. I mean. All the Avants in in LA and the. Avant is beautiful. It's a beautiful car. I can't get them anymore. It's just really a shame. You can't get the S6, whatever it's. Called or S6 Savant. Still that they do. I had an A4 and I've been discontinuing a lot of stuff. Because because my friend has an S6 savant that is probably 2 years old now or three years old now, it is fast as hell. It's not as prevalent in Germany. When I rent cars, most of them are some sort of station wagon. Yeah, yeah.

2:19:04 Here. It's not very common here. It's not common like even the new Mercedes one I don't think is coming here. It's not that common here for whatever reason. You know what's funny is we've been sitting here talking about all of this technology and AI and stuff, and I'm reading your notes and you put a note in that said you'd like to write a lot of things using a pen and a paper, a notebook versus putting it in your phone or computer or whatever. What's up with that? I've been trying to go digital forever and I always fail, and I think my mind just doesn't work that way. So yeah, I take a lot of notes when I'm in meetings and just the actual physical act of writing it down seems to be enough to put it in my head. Interesting.

2:19:51 And just doing it on a tablet, on a phone or laptop just doesn't. It feels disconnected. I keep trying. I'm getting a new tablet, a new mother pen and all these things and it just kind of never gels for me. Well, have you seen the new notebook ones that look like a notebook and stuff and it digitized? I saw a guy at a meeting during LDI that was using it and I'm like, this is actually kind of nice cuz it's almost, it felt like a real piece of paper. Yeah, yeah. And that might get you. There. Remarkable. That's the one. Yeah, Kindle has one now too. Looking at these things, I have a Samsung that is really good at note taking, it's just still doesn't feel right.

2:20:32 So I'm a big fan of all small Skin books and they're just writing those. I have one right here. Yeah. I I mean, you know. My workflow and I go back to them sometimes, like, well, look at all this stuff you wrote that you never looked at again, but it's actually enough for the process to put it in my. You know, it's funny because I do the same thing the. Decision making process. I do the same thing. You know, It's just like they tell you journaling is you get much more out of journaling when you actually physically write into a book. And even if it's, you know, your gratitude, journaling or whatever it is, you get more when you write into a book. It's just for me, I don't know. I always have my phone with me, so I'm always, I have to put things into notes and stuff in my phone.

2:21:18 Otherwise I lose them or I don't remember which notebook I wrote it in or whatever. And it's just another thing I have to remember. And as I get older, that's. Writing's always been easier for me. Like the whole text to speech hasn't really worked for me, even though it's really good. Yeah, I kind of forget that it's there, so I just keep typing or writing instead of talking to my. Have you tried the like the paid ChatGPT where you talk into it on your phone? Have you tried it yet? No, it's probably really good. Matthias, you have to try. It is on unbelievable. Like, you can just sit there and talk like we're talking right now. And when you stop talking, it'll create this little bubble and it'll think for a minute and it'll say, hey, Matthias, thanks for giving me all that information. So let me just get this straight. What you're looking for is a blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And you'll just be sitting there blown away by what it's saying. And you can interrupt at any time and say, no, no, no, I didn't say it's red.

2:22:15 I said it's reddish. Oh, yeah. I'm really sorry about that. Yeah, you know, I mean, it's crazy. It's it's just very commutative. Like you're just sitting there having a conversation with this thing and it just works. It's incredible. Looking at my desk, there's this pile of Moleskin books, and it's just sort of that's hilarious. And so it's somebody you have to do the same. They say it helps you. Yeah, yeah, I mean. Internalize things when you're in meetings. For me, the most I use it is when I'm on podcast because I can't really take out my phone, because it becomes distracting, because there's things popping up or I see something else on there or whatever.

2:22:55 So I always have a notebook next to me when I'm doing the podcast, because if I want to bring something up, I'll forget it. If I don't just put a little note here that says, you know, whatever. One word of something to remind me what I need to talk to you about or something. Yeah, still. Like when I start my day, I write like a punch list on a, you know, letter sized thing, just to like the kind of things I want to do during the day. And often that's the same thing. So I didn't get done yesterday. Yeah, physically putting it in front of you and keep glancing at it. That's good. I'm. Trying to go more digital with this than waste less paper, but. You know, I know some really, really smart people like Richard Branson still carries a physical notebook wherever he goes all the time. He's got one and he's constantly taking it out and handwriting notes into it.

2:23:40 Whatever works for you, you know? For me, again, my phone's always with me. And that's the only reason that I've become so disciplined about putting notes into my phone. And like I I go for a four or five mile walk every morning at about 6:00 in the morning. I'm constantly saying, hey Siri, remind me in 2 hours to make a note about this or this or this. Like I'm constantly talking to it. Excuse me, I just had to put the volume down and sneeze. So, you know, another thing I read in your notes is that you're a cat freak. You're you're not a dog guy. You're a cat guy. I closed my door. Otherwise the cat will be all over me here. Yeah, we've been always into cats, you know, but all the traveling dogs are very difficult. And I felt, yeah, that's a big burden on my wife, you know, being gone all the time.

2:24:31 She would have to deal with it and walk with things. The weather here isn't so great for dogs in the winter, you know. It's quite miserable for the people as much As for the dogs. Yeah, exactly. What My neighbors are here. I'm like, you're brave, but you gotta go out and we we've been doing like some cat rescue stuff for the Humane Society, so. Just that's cool. I love cats. And then, you know cats are. Cool. When you rescue cats, you kind of keep them. Yeah. So at the moment we have 493 like like one that we there was one that showed up in the winter and just didn't leave. That's interesting. We call her Frosty because she's white, showed up in the snow and then she saw a little cat.

2:25:15 That's that's. Quite an original name. Matthias calling a white cat Frosty. Oh, that's out there. It showed up in the snow. Yeah, that's a good one. I. That Germans are funny. We're just. Yeah, it's true. You think you're funny, You know? To me, cats, cats and dogs are so. It's so funny how different they are, you know, like and and I just like that whole sort of cerebral, sort of genius side of cats, how they're looking at you like thinking you're an idiot, you know, and you can tell that's what they're thinking. And you know, whereas dogs are just like I'm an idiot, you know, dogs are completely the opposite of cats in that way. So it's pretty fun to watch them. I do enjoy my cats like.

2:26:02 Yeah, yeah. So what else did we miss? Here, you drive fast on the Audubon. I'm looking at your notes now. So. Patents. You've got some patents. Yeah, a few. Yeah. There was a big push to write patents at Harmon actually back then. Yeah. So we rolled up a bunch of things. And they let you. They let you keep your name on them, not not Harmon's name on them. So the way it is with a patent is that you're the inventor, but the patent is then owned by whoever you employed at. The time I see. You can invent all you want, but if you're on the payroll, yeah, you know, and that patent and that IP technology is all. They get the benefit.

2:26:48 Yeah, nobody's paying you royalties. There's no royalties coming my way. No. And in the end, you know, you do some patents to maybe protect some idea that it isn't like blatantly knocked off. Yeah, there's a lot of patents out there that are kind of unnecessary, I think, and that you stifle. Yeah. Innovation. But some are really good. And I've read some stuff that people come up with and I'm like, that was really smart. Yeah. And they're so obvious, like, why the hell did nobody else think about that? And that's a really good patterns if it's some convoluted thing where you're like somebody's just really trying to keep a lawyer busy here by writing a lot of stuff. Yeah.

2:27:30 Like, really good pens are really short, and you're like, all my. I should have thought about that. Then you know it's a good one. Well, what about PCM control, PCM modulation control on on the R, GB LEDs in color, kinetic stuff. Like I remember when they did that. Fausto said to me, Marcel, this is the most he said your Patent Office in the United States are idiots. And I said why? And he said because I was studying this stuff in the 70s, in school, in textbooks, like this is the oldest thing you know. That's a good example of something. PWMPPWM isn't it? Yeah.

2:28:12 Paul Smith with. Pulse width modulation, yeah, Yeah. But yeah, I mean some of these things that get patented and then, you know, I've lost some faith in, in the USPTO, the Patent Office because. There's a lot of stuff that gets rubber stamped that shouldn't because of like. I got a trademark. Because it costs money to challenge it too. Yeah, I have AI have a trademark hanging on my wall behind me that one of the largest companies in the world that rhymes with smoogle stole from me and began to use it and used it for a couple of years and eventually I sued them because they wouldn't communicate with me.

2:28:56 They wouldn't do anything. I was willing to license it to them, give it to them, whatever. You know, I I just I needed to change the direction I was going using this trademark and and they made me sue them and I sued them and cost me $1,000,000, cost them about $12 million. And I eventually had to settle for zero and just walk away from it because otherwise, you know I could if they were to keep crushing me the way they were trying to, I could end up liable for their legal fees which would have bankrupted me. And so, yeah, I I don't have as much faith as I used to in patents and trademarks and stuff because I think the whoever has the deepest pockets wins is what it comes to. Yeah, patents, if they are really protect like a unique idea, they're good and I support that. Then, you know, have all the admiration for people that go through that process and come up with something and really give, make, make it right.

2:30:00 But if it's just protectionism, then that's really a problem. Yeah, yeah. I also read here that you bought a hog two and a wing like recently. Yeah, yeah, I found it on eBay for like 900 bucks and it wasn't. No way. And I'm like, I kind of want to own a bit of, like my own history. That's wild that. Many around anymore, yeah. So I have a matter of rental, like a production house up here in Minnesota. Oh, that's cool. We have this whole Museum of old stuff, which somebody should actually really catalogue. They have what they have. I have a lot of mountain prototypes that stand around there. That's cool they. Didn't want back, so we put them up there just to show them off. Neat.

2:30:40 They got the virtual ozone, they got some old strand light pallets, like some really old sitting around there. Wow. You have to have you ever seen a picture of, like, barn doors out of two Avo consoles? Like for a conference room? No. So they have these old, like, I think it's QM5 hundreds. And they hung them sideways. Turn them on and they're like the doors for the content that's wild on door tracks. That's a cool idea. So tell me some of your new stuff at Adulation. Like I heard you showed a follow spot fixture, right? Yeah. So what we did, so we've seen some people that took the IP picture from us Maximus and then there's another called Brutus.

2:31:28 They are you know, very high output long distance, you know sort of fixtures and they've been used for some of the follow spot systems that are out there. And we're like you know there's probably a market for instead of us doing a new follow spot system, we actually build picture that's great for the and Zach tracks and other systems that are out there. Yeah. And basically build a fixture was an optimized optics and the ability to build a camera on in the IP chassis and have all the wiring inside and is ready to go and you just buy the light click the camera and you want. Yeah. And run it over DMX and you have full, you know it's like a purpose build fixture for these.

2:32:13 Yeah. And how was that? There's almost no more regular follow spots out there. Everything is some sort of automated thing. Yeah, you know, like Wizzywick tried those really hard. For a while it was black tracks and that was quite early, but now there's so many of these systems out there. Well, remember the Martin one? How bad that was? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Early days. Yeah, that. I mean, nice, Nice try, but Oh my God, it was terrible. We see these people building the Franken fixtures and having the wires on the outside. Yeah, it's just great. And we're like, let's build 1 where it's really put properly on the inside and you have basically a big connection panel for your camera and then you can use whatever camera you want.

2:32:57 Can be an NDI with Poe power, can be an SDI camera. We don't really care. Yeah. So how was designed? Around with seven or eight common cameras that I used out there. Was that well received at the show? Yes, very. It was popular. Yep. I mean there's obviously limited market for follow spot fixtures because you need 6810 maybe on a larger tour. Yeah, yeah, but there is a shortage for them. You know, like we're constantly at Gearsource, we're constantly getting people looking for you know robo spot fixtures or whatever and and there seems to be a shortage And then like you said, you've got they're not purpose built so you've got things with the Frankenfixture look to it and stuff. So this is safer, better, cleaner, probably cheaper in the end, and.

2:33:52 Well, what we really tried to do is also build the optics to be for a follow spot. So it's like a narrow optic in the same housing as a normal type fixture. So which was it took a custom LED engine and custom optics to squeeze that into a fixture without it getting humongous. Cuz we look at some of these new LED super trooper type follow spots. You're like, man, these things are like massive, yeah, side of the car. Yeah, yeah. That's not the direction. Kind of wrong to me. I don't think those companies will be around long term. It doesn't seem like it. This seems to be a better direction to go, especially trust spots. There's no reason to have people in in chairs on. No, I trust being allowed anymore. Like there's somebody help safety regulations. You can't just send the guy up there for 10 hours with a pee bag because yeah, really.

2:34:46 I can't see a problem with that, no. I mean, that seems to make a lot of sense. So that's cool. What else did you guys come out with? I saw a couple other fixtures that you were showing there. Stuff, yeah. We've been actually working for about four years on on trying to crack this like Searchlight Markets, you know, just sort of like Synchro Light Space Cannon. And that's actually a project we started before COVID actually and that kind of got put on hold for a few years. But we actually bought an old space cannon for 1000 bucks at an auction somewhere from a very large rental company and used it as a reference to basically replicate that look. Because there's a certain character to that beam that's coming out and all these like laser type fixtures, which is like this really perfect little light beams come out, but they just don't have the same look in the air because they're they're missing a bit of the Halo around it. Like you look at a Sharpie, it's actually not a perfect clean beam that comes out.

2:35:49 There's a lot of schmutz on the outside in a way that kind of lights up the air around and that gives the beam some. Yeah, I get it. Yeah, I completely. Understand, Perfect. And it doesn't read on camera and you have to just like thin little light sticks and they just don't have the same look as a you know that choppy or like old like Xenon type picture. So we actually looked into Xenon technology back then. We worked with a company that does a lot of the digital projection for like Christie or Barcode, but that's kind of been a dying thing and they've been all moving more to like laser type engines. But then that technology wasn't quite right. So it took a few years to really mature that and get that output and get the right beam character.

2:36:36 But now I've seen it against 7K synchros and 7K space cannons and that kind of fixtures. And let's say that we really cracked it because we're really focused on the character of the beam. So it wasn't like make the brightest fixture that can throw the furthest, but build the one that has the right look to represent. Is it a lamp or an LED? That's phosphor converted. OK. Yeah. Yeah. And it's just white or it's full color? It's a white engine. That's the only way to get that. Intention. No, no. But do you have color on it? Does it have flags or something? Or a color wheel.

2:37:16 Or actually it looks on the inside almost like a regular moving light. So you have normal color flags, Gobos, prisms, OK, hybrid that's just designed for this. Like super long throw optics has a massive 12 inch front lens. Huh. And really try to get this like fat beam look out of a picture that isn't like you don't need a pallet to to move it around and you know, 63 amps of power, but it's, you know, it takes 500 watts. So really big, big drop from 7000. Interesting. Yeah. 500 watts. Wow. And are you making like a package? Like with four on one base, 4 heads on one base. So it's actually something we did on a previous fixture like that that's called the Excalibur, which is like the Searchlight type beam that was still based on a discharge, yeah lamp.

2:38:09 And we built this little technology called Sky Motion, which is basically studied the physical movement pattern of these things because they're actually mechanical. There's a little arm that shifts some things around and they're not doing a belly here in the sky. There's an actual really distinct pattern called over leaf. Yeah. Looked at a lot of videos. I went to like some State Fair here and looked how that thing actually moves because the lights never crossed in the air. When they do this, they do this. Yeah. Do you ever rest your brain? No, not so much. Yeah. Things. Yeah. So we made this thing where you just basically tell the pictures and ID and anybody can rent these four lights and do like an opening for a car dealer if they want to.

2:38:51 Like you don't have to be a lighting person, you just plug them in. You say 1234 how big and how fast and you get this perfect Searchlight effect. So we put this into a couple of pictures now. Interesting. I'm always like this, and I think I've wrote it in this little thing I sent you. I was at the dentist staring at the light and I'm like, wow, those facets look amazing. Oh my God. Cleaning lady and that was cleaning my teeth. I wanted to start and like I've got to take a picture of this first because I. Oh my God. That's, you know thing that you look at. It looks so interesting to me. Yeah, that's crazy. I would look past, you know, the obvious maybe and see patterns or take pictures of the strangest things we'll see on the floor for like maybe a go ball or maybe it's like a background pattern for consoles for this like dialos, pixel engine we do. So there's a lot of stuff in there, content that's in there that is just some picture shot on a cell phone and then maybe stylized to the bed that's and then make a goblet out of it, you know?

2:39:50 Yeah, yeah. That's interesting. No, I mean, it's amazing where your inspiration comes from, right? Like, sometimes probably the weirdest things, like a light above the dentist chair, you know, it's it's amazing. I don't think that way at all. Like, I'm not a I'm very creative. But I'm not a I'm not an engineer, you know, I'm not a product designer. But I can come up with loads of ideas. Like, you know, I was always at Martin, even. I was always saying, why don't we do this? Why don't we do this? Why don't we do this? And some of those things happened, some didn't. So yeah, I'm always trying to break things I guess, but at the same time I don't know how to put them back together. I think most people that do these kind of jobs always been like they got a toy as a kid and the first thing they took as a screwdriver to then take it apart. Yeah, that's crazy.

2:40:40 Tink tinker with things. Yeah, yeah, I did, I did. And then I ended up with a broken toy and a pissed off parent, you know, because they just gave me that. That new toy. Yeah, yeah. Because I I could never figure out how to put it back together because I don't have any patience. So you know if it takes. Like this, I take a prototype apart and there's like a couple of screws left over. In the end, I'm like, Oh my, it still works. Yeah, luckily I have much smarter people around me that do a lot of the actual technical things. So I'm not, you know, I'm not the guy in the end who really decides where every screw goes. There's a much, much bigger team behind it. So I mean the role that we play is, you know, role was sort of that building, you know, creative instruments and very mostly what comes out the front and what choices we make to to help creative people have like amazing products. It's got to be.

2:41:37 Huge engineering team that actually makes. It's got to be hard though, when you're separated from the factory because you know, like when you can run back into the factory and say, hey, bend this, do this, do this, do this, and then you can go tinker with things. It's obviously probably much easier. In a sense, I don't know. Do you use rapid prototyping or anything? I'm guessing. I do. I have a place here that can print me a couple of 3D things here and there. So if I need something simple like a knob or like a handle, I want to see it. So I got the Frank Frontier that owns a company called Monkey Wrench and he does a lot of, yes, like a nice 3D system there where I can print out stuff quickly. Yeah, and buy him lunch.

2:42:18 And that's a really good. Deal. Yeah, that is a good deal. Yeah, that is a good deal. Seth. Seth. Is a good guy. Maybe a bit more disconnected, but then I spend a lot of time in the factories, like I'm there quite a lot. Yeah. Yeah. Like every quarter, every month. Every other months, usually. Yeah. Wow. Yeah, that's that's a lot. That's a big trip. Well, I I, I, I really appreciate you taking all the time with me today and and finally, you know, being able to do this, I appreciate it very much. You're a smart guy and I always wanted to dig into your brain a little bit and see how things work. I don't know if I'm that smart.

2:43:00 I got very lucky in many, many steps instead of, you know, there's so many coincidences that led to where I am, you know? You know. Could be a grunt somewhere pulling cables in Germany still. And you know, I just got fortunate. Well, I think luck makes up such a big part of all of our careers. You know, like I I didn't go to college to get into this industry. I I was a musician and kind of fell into this industry. So, you know, there's a lot of luck involved all the time. Usually good, sometimes bad. But yeah, no, that's a good thing and I appreciate you doing it and I love to keep you all day, but unfortunately I can't. So I am going to bid you farewell my friend. Thank you so much.

2:43:44 And thank you as well and I look forward to seeing you at one of the trade shows here soon all. Right. All right. Ciao, yeah.