Is it me, or was March the nuttiest month of travel ever? Am I talking to you? Maybe, but I'm mostly thinking aloud about the manner in which our staff was flung across the globe during March, checking out new products, meeting new manufacturers, chatting with young designers, learning the latest industry gossip, and returning to a more spring-infused New York, with any luck.
While some of our edit staff has just returned from Phoenix at USITT seeing new products, visiting manufacturers, and meeting the next generation — lots of students there, in case you've never been — I was left behind to hold down the fort, or at least that's what they tell you when they don't want you to travel with them. Was it my referee-style black-and-white striped jacket at LDI 2006, guys? Come on!!
Our extremely scrappy and always journalistic editorial coordinator and frequent contributor Lisa Murphy was shipped off to China to cover the opening of a new lighting facility opened by PR Lighting in Panyu, Guangzhou — more on that next month, unless you've already caught her blogs on the trip on Live Blog at www.livedesignonline.com/liveblog.
I spent a couple of days visiting the folks at Wybron in Colorado Springs in March, and let me tell you, that company is making some humongoid — made up word, yes — changes. If you didn't see our online breaking story directly from the headquarters, I'll recap a little. The company has added and promoted some personnel, etc., but the really interesting bit is Wybron's plan to significantly accelerate product output to a product launch per month (read that again: a product per month), culminating this year with some sort of surprise for us at LDI in Orlando in the fall, according to newly promoted director of marketing, Miles Dudgeon.
And many of us are hopefully home by now from Pro Light & Sound in Frankfurt, where — as I'm not actually there yet while writing this (are you keeping up?) — I'm anxious to see what new crop of products are unveiling. Word on the street is that there will be some promising product launches, and I'll have all that news for you next month.
And finally, we look forward to seeing you at our Broadway Master Classes coming up next month and promising to be another record year. Full schedules have been announced and are posted online at livedesignonline.com/broadwaymasterclasses/.
Looking forward to seeing you all out and about.