As the Live Design editors plan out our content for 2024 and get excited about what is to come, we thought we'd take a quick look back at 2023 and the stories and events that were most popular with our readers. Our Super Bowl Halftime Show coverage always gets the most traffic each year. Not surprisingly, as it is the most watched live event in the Americas and involves some of the most respected professionals and exciting tech. This year, though, U2’s residency at Sphere Las Vegas attracted almost as many readers and produced a record-breaking audience for production designer Willie Wiliams’ live webcast, which you can watch on demand here.
You can expect more Sphere coverage in 2024 as several high-profile performers known for extraordinary visuals have signed up for residencies, including Phish, whose flying, remote-controlled whales and dolphins at Madison Square Garden made for one of the most popular stories this year.
Our Folio award-winning Plot Of The Week series https://www.livedesignonline.com/keyword/2023-lighting-plots showcased the work of designers from Indiana to London and everywhere in between. Here is the first one, Plot Of The Week: Rick Fisher—An Inspector Calls, and we finished with the '12 Plots Of Christmas.' Contact us at [email protected] if you would like to be part of our 2024 Plot Luck.
Unfortunately, 2023 was also the year we lost several giants of the live entertainment industry. Tina Turner put on some of the most incredible shows of the last several decades, we wrote a retrospective here, A Tribute To Tina Turner. And December saw the huge loss of Richard Pilbrow, who had a long and extraordinary career as, among other things, a producer, designer for stage and screen, and consultant for theatre design and planning.
Despite —or maybe because of? —new dates, LDI 2023 at the Las Vegas convention Center, November 30 to December 5, was a spectacular success. From keynotes and an exclusive backstage tour of Las Vegas venues, to a custom drone show and Battle of the Busk lighting and video competition, the show attracted a massive attendance and a lot of business.
Watch Elation Professional's Eric Loader talking about the number of designers at LDI on the Geezers of Gear podcast.
Here are just a few of the numbers:
- More than12,000 attendees
- LDInnovation increased the number of courses by 68%
- Registrations for conference and professional training up by 23%
- Three keynotes
- One drone show
And don't forget next year's dates:
- Conference: December. 4-10, 2024
- Expo: December 8-10, 2024
Here's some of the highlights. See you next year!