Texas Christmas Lights

Day two of the Spring 2007 Christmas Lights Workshop began with the always-interesting topic of dealing with the media. Hank Stuever, our special guest speaker from Saturday, Washington Post staff writer and two time Pulitzer Prize finalist gave us some tips on dealing with the media.

Two questions he suggested asking any reporter is, “How much time do you have?” and, “How much to do you want to see.” If the reporter has no interest in talking to neighbors or visiting guests, then your segment is going to be very short. One idea was to have a ‘spec’ sheet ready with details about the display. This helps the reporter get some of the basic facts out of the way, and also helps reduce some errors. Regardless of how the story turns out, you should contact the reporter and thank them for doing the segment. If they made an error in the story, this is the time to tell them. If they made an error in the story, this is the time to tell them.

Chris Worthen gave us a very nice demonstration of “Leaping Lights.”  The original design was by Ken Maxwell and Chris showed us what modifications were made to it. This was largely a visual demonstration, and those who wanted to come up and ask more questions were able to do so.

Up next was Frisco, Texas resident, Jason Reynolds who gave a very informative Coroplast demonstration. He showed how he made his animated singing reindeer that was used in his display last year.

Mark Picklesimer has some information for us with regards on where to get Coro. http://www.regal-plastics.com and click on Specials. They have branches in Dallas, San Antonio, Houston, Austin and Forth Worth. If they have an item you want that’s in another part of the state, they can transfer the product to your local store. This saves you the shipping on the item.Paul Smith, of Animated Lighting spoke to us again today, this time about LED lighting. He explained quite a bit about how LED’s are sold to vendors in the US. This also explains why some companies are higher in price than others, and why we won’t see a price drop any time soon.Our final presentation(s) were about video editing and DMX control. Of course, we spent more time talking about fish than anything else, but that’s how these things work out. Ken showed us some DMX equipment, how it’s controlled, and some of the caveats of programming with DMX. He then followed that with a segment on adding video to your display. Ken believes this will be the next big then when it comes to Christmas displays.We closed out the day with the awarding of door prizes. The grand prize winners were Bret LeFevre, who won an Animated Lighting Monster Brain, and Scott Ballenger, who one the LOR fully loaded 16 channel controller. (It should be noted that Ken Good then went and bought the AL-MB from Bret.)At the end of the day the Dallas folks stuck around for clean up duty. In just over 90 minutes we had cleaned the entire area, and removed Bryce’s tree from the lobby, and had it loaded into his trailer. Special thanks go out to the following members for helping out; Jeff Trykoski, Greg Trykoski, Fabian Gordon, Bret LeFevre, Jason Reynolds (and daughter who kept us from getting locked out), Bryce Kindla, Harrison Ward, and Don Teague. (I think I got everyone.) Without their help, Michael Gardner would have been stuck there for quite a while cleaning up.This was a great event, and we look forward to holding another one. Remember, these are your events, not our events. The founders and event planners don’t just think these things up, we try to incorporate your suggestions and ideas into these workshops. If you didn’t turn in a survey, you are encouraged to get the results to Jeff Trykoski as soon as possible so that we can have as much feedback as possible.