Stuck in Technical Support Mode

Technical Service Manager David North is clearly 100% focused on ETC Support at all times. He is always ready and willing to provide information at a moment's notice to employees and customers alike.  He is always ready to jump in and get his hands dirty in order to get the job done.

His most recent activity was to answer a most daunting question that I had emailed out to the department: "I'm looking for any info on a Smartbar that appeared in my office yesterday???" Thank you, Mike

Mr. North got back to the entire email list right away with an answer: "It has 4 dimmers, receives DMX and plugs into a wall outlet.  Let me know if you need a more in depth technical explanation." - David

Our Quotes Manager Trisha Traut let me know "It's Black" and Field Service engineer Lin Wheeler, all the way from Atlanta, responded that "it's black might be too technical (for me)"

We will all be in a good mood today thanks to the bit of humor David got going. Of course it is important to note that maintaining little bits of humor within a support department is critical. Support departments, ETC or otherwise, sit around all day and deal with whatever comes at them.  The good, the bad and the ugly so we need to be able to smile about them all :-)

Published 09-13-2011 4:38 PM by mmeskill

Comments

# re: Stuck in Technical Support Mode

I knew someone would find my new brain! could you please send it to me!

Wednesday, November 09, 2011 1:53 PM by jhamil

# re: Stuck in Technical Support Mode

Hi David:

My community theater updated to a SmartFade 1248 a few months ago.  Our volunteer, Steve, who researched the buy and did the initial set up seemed to have no problem setting up a show via  PC interface, (though we both found it daunting and confusing to try to do so on the console itself!).

I was given a tutorial and prepared the show Sequences required.  Now, the trouble started.  When we had to edit some of the cues, all "was well" , AS LONG, as we were Online and connected to the Smartfade.  We would use the Save and/or Save As command on the "System" tab of the program to save the revised Showfile.

THEN, when we would disconnect, take the home, open the program and desired showfile, NONE OF THE EDITS HAD BEEN SAVED!  

It became very tiresome to have to reenter them each time.  Fortunately, in this case the cues were minimal and simple.  But, this cannot be right! Also, Steve did not have this problem on earlier shows, or even at first on this one. Then, the same thing happened to both of us on both of our PCs! We are thinking that either the software got corrupt or updating the software may have caused a glitch.

As not all the participants are as computer savvy and we do not want to depend on having a PC to run a show, it is very important that we be able to make edits offline and then load the revised file into the console with the SD card.

Any insight and help you can provide will be greatly appreciated.  Ruthellen

Saturday, May 11, 2013 2:35 PM by Ruthellen