Technology has advanced, has Event Production?
The short answer is yes.
But, it gets confusing.
Over the years, you’ve noticed the cell phone in your hand get thinner. You’ve watched the camera get better. You’ve seen computers get significantly faster. All of these things that we never even thought would affect our day-to-day lives. But now you’re using these devices to plan an event. And you may have never thought of it, but has event production and its tools advanced at all?
Knowing what goes into an event can be overwhelming for some. Check out our article on that. Even more overwhelming can be finding out everything that goes on behind the scenes of your event. Over the years, our day-to-day items have gotten lighter, speakers have gotten more powerful, and lights have gotten brighter, just to name a few.
What does that mean for you, the end user. Well, for a customer of our services, it mean’s lower cost overall! All these things combined, “smaller items with more power” in a sense, saves most companies money. Thus, the end user will pay less. How often do you take apart your phone to clean and service it? Never, right? Think about our gear like your phone. The less maintenance we have to complete on an item, the lower cost for the customer.
A customer of our rentals or purchasing our second-hand gear is at even more of a leverage with the advancement of technology. These constantly used items over the years have gotten significantly more efficient. A “More output to given input” ratio. Back in the day, passive sound systems required power hungry amplifiers that may not have been best paired with the speakers. Thus, providing and sucking more power than they really need to, or in some cases, not enough. We’re in a day and age now where a full powered sound system (given, a basic system consisting of two subwoofers and two mains) can run full power on a single 15 amp wall outlet. Is that recommended? Definitely not.
The technology of LED has made lights brighter and more efficient and also reduces heat output. This is huge in a stage lighting situation!
What does this have to do with planning an event? Well, I’ve given you quite of information above that may be useless for you. But have you ever thought about this —
Old school audio/visual gear is very large and clunky. In order to provide sound for any amount of people, large or small, large amounts of power was needed for this huge power hungry amplifiers, as well as tons of power for halogen lights! With powered speakers of todays day and age, not only is less power required to run these things are full bore, but some of these new sound systems are so small, they are hard to even catch at first glance! Column array speakers are virtually invisible. With the technology of LED lighting, lights are brighter and consume less power, and are also much smaller and thinner!
Gone are the days of DJ’s carrying around crates and crates of vinyl records or CD’s! All of this music is now stored on our computers or small external hard drives. Which for the customer, means even more last minute requests can be facilitated, higher quality music overall, and still, consuming less electricity.
The future for event production technology evolution is still unclear. But, as more products are introduced to the market, the future may become clear.