SELEM 9 - August 12-16th 2015 - Sign up now!

[buffo]

i will exchange arcane LSX knowledge (i.e. mash buttons until pretty light comes out) for lattes.

I will have the Keurig machine in the hallway by the loading dock again this year, along with plenty of French Vanilla Cappuccino and Mochaccino K-cups.

The mexican place some of us ate at last year (Tiff and I ate there twice it was so good) has plenty of room for large groups.

Where is this Mexican place? Do you remember the name?

I'm down with Mexican food. If they can handle a large group I say let's give it a shot!

Adam

[hitekvoop]

Where is this Mexican place? Do you remember the name?

I'm down with Mexican food. If they can handle a large group I say let's give it a shot!

Adam

El Paso Mexican Restaurant
719 Conover Blvd W
Conover, NC 28613

Note there are two El Paso Restaurants in the area and they are unaffiliated :P We like this one.

[dkumpula]

This looks like a great start, Adam. A couple additional ideas if folks are interested:

Is Patrick Murphy attending this year or don't we know? If so, I think it would be nice to have another 'what's happening in the world of ILDA session'.

Swamidog and I made it to ILDA in Las Vegas in November and there were some great sessions there as well. My favorite was an "Artistic Seminar" that began with Alex Hennig from LOBO walking us in detail through a Las Vegas virtual reality experience which incorporated artistically placed laser effects, followed by Gabe Letourneau from Dynamic Lasers walking us through his approach to artistic beam-show design, and ending with an open discussion from all of the content creators present describing their real-world challenges and learnings. If we have professional/award-winning content creators at SELEM such as Mike Dunn, Gabe, and others, I would really love to hear what they think of the current state of the industry and perhaps provide some guidance for hobbyist content creators to make more really fun, artistic content. Chris (Swamidog) has done this the past two years for abstracts and I'd love to see this extended even further for beams, graphics and lumia (DSLI Jon did a great job describing some new lumia tricks for us last year, and I'd love to hear more.)

Another thing we have done in past SELEMs are new technology introductions. X-Laser, Pangolin and DZ/EKeefe have done some awesome sessions for us in the past, so if we have any more opportunities than what you've already captured below, I hope we can encourage anyone who has some interesting product or technological insight to share it with the group.

'Not-New Technology' Discussions or Tutorials: For example (and just shooting from the hip here), are there people like myself who know almost nothing about gas lasers that would like to have one of the many 'gas gurus' who will be at SELEM (DZ, MixedGas, RGB-Gas) pass on some of this gas laser knowledge to those of us who came into lasers after DPSS and solid state lasers had taken over for the most part? Not to mention, we'd have the added joy of naming the session "Long-time Laserists Passing Gas" or something equally rude.

One final idea for scheduled events; for a bit of fun competition or simply demonstration if folks are interested and willing, perhaps some of those live-performance gifted folks could show us their live skills in Club SELEM one evening. ILDA does this formally with a Lase-Off which is voted on by the audience. I'm not suggesting that we copy the competition per-Se, but it might be fun to throw a random song at some folks to see what they can do with it in real time.

Regarding timing of the talks, I agree with you and the others about starting them in the late morning (at the earliest) and continuing through the afternoon. Instead of cramming them all into one day, perhaps we can start running sessions Friday afternoon with the biggest crowd-drawers running late Saturday morning until 5 or 6PM at the latest. Exceptions for the sessions that need to occur during set-up or the late-night type fun, of course.

Just some thoughts.

-David

<edit> Apologies for the repetition of parts of Brad's, Randy's and Adam's suggestions. I wrote my response before reading the rest of the responses. . .

. . .let's run down that list and see where we stand:

Audience Scanning - At the moment Greg Makhov will be unable to do this. He will still be available to teach the LSO class the Monday after SELEM (assuming we have enough people sign up), but he is not prepared for an Audience Scanning presentation. He will probably be able to do this next year though. So unless we can get someone from X-laser to do this, or else maybe convince Casey Stack to attend, I think this topic will not be on the agenda for this year. EDIT: There is one other possibility... There is a *highly* knowledgeable laser safety expert who is seriously considering attending SELEM this year. If he can make it, I'm sure everyone will be thrilled. (I already warned him that he'll be treated a bit like a rock star if he can attend!) He is also very enthusiastic about coming to SELEM and meeting everyone. But it's going to be rough to squeeze SELEM into his schedule. Details to follow as they become available.

Pangolin Beyond Training - This is looking very promising. For one, Anthony Garcia will be in attendance, and I know several people have already made plans to kidnap, er, I mean corner him and beat the information, er, I mean, ask a lot of questions about how he uses Beyond in a live environment. However, Pangolin is looking into sending one of their experts to SELEM to do some more Beyond training. This has not been fully approved yet, but the initial response looks quite promising. So I'd say that we will definitely have some training on Beyond, and we might have a whole bunch of training on Beyond. (A whole bunch being defined as several sessions on different days.)

LSX tricks, tips, and ABSTRACTS - Chris (Swamidog) has already been volunTOLD for this. He will be putting on a formal presentation like last year, plus he will be available for more casual Q&A throughout the event. I strongly suspect that David Kumpula will be assisting him with this. (And no worries guys, I've already got a new DLP projector for you to use!)

DZ/EK Advanced ILDA Router training - I've spoken with Ed and David about this, and they are both willing to speak about this awesome new product to anyone who is interested. My plan is to have two presentations: one in the auditorium and one in Club-SELEM. The only real difference will be that in Club-SELEM we will address some of the unique challenges of using the router in a traveling show, verses a fixed installation like we will have in the Auditorium. And of course, both Ed and David will be available to answer questions one-on-one if needed. (We plan to have several working units in place and operating at SELEM this year.)

Working with diodes and lenses - Assuming that John Murphy (Polishedball) is able to attend this year, he would be the perfect person to handle this topic. However, he has not yet registered, and thus far no one else has expressed any interest in taking responsibility for this one. I agree that it is a fine idea, and I would love to see this at SELEM, but we need to be sure we've got someone who can do it.

What's new at Pangolin - This will definitely happen, just as it has before. We may have a few new faces from Pangolin in attendance as well, if the schedule permits, but Bill's traditional presentation will go off pretty much like it always has. (There is a rumor that we might actually be able to purchase sets of the new 506 scanners at SELEM this year, but I haven't been able to confirm that yet.)

Scanner Tuning / Color Palette Adjustment - We can certainly do this, if people think there is enough interest. I've done scanner tuning before, and I'm sure that David would be willing to do his color palette presentation again. Alternately, it might be beneficial to have Bill Benner do a short tutorial on scanner tuning. (After all, he's the one who taught me how to do it...) If people would like to see this, then by all means we can add it to the schedule.

Now, this is a fine list of topics, but if we are seriously thinking about trying to fill several days from 9 am to 5 PM, then we don't have enough topics. Also, I'm worried that after 8 solid hours of presentations, people might be a little burned out. In the past, I've always tried to spread things out so folks don't get bored. But maybe that is something I shouldn't be worrying about. So what do you guys think?

Should we stack several presentations up one after the other, even if it means that we run out of presentations after the first day or two, and then devote the rest of the time to general mayhem, er, I mean watching laser shows and stuff?

Or should we divide up the presentations more or less evenly throughout the length of SELEM?

Either way, I do agree that having the presentations in the daytime hours is preferable. Once the sun goes down, most people are ready to get their grove on, be it in the auditorium, in Club-SELEM, or just bouncing around all the different areas chatting with various folks.

Adam

[Bradfo69]

Not to mention, we'd have the added joy of naming the session "Long-time Laserists Passing Gas" or something equally rude.

THAT is one of the funniest fucking things I've ever read on this forum.

And I actually love the idea. I haven't the faintest clue when they start taking about ion's and would really like to know more as well. What the heck is a pass bank? That's something I do all the time since I don't have any money to deposit thanks to this hobby, right? Or any of this other stuff. Like what are you seeing when you're zapping a tube with a coil and peering in the hole with one eye? Etc., etc., etc. Pass the gas!

[dkumpula]

THAT is one of the funniest fucking things I've ever read on this forum.

And I actually love the idea. I haven't the faintest clue when they start taking about ion's and would really like to know more as well. What the heck is a pass bank? That's something I do all the time since I don't have any money to deposit thanks to this hobby, right? Or any of this other stuff. Like what are you seeing when you're zapping a tube with a coil and peering in the hole with one eye? Etc., etc., etc. Pass the gas!

It looks like black sorcery to me, Brad! I've watched quietly and nodded several times as these warlocks discuss their dark lords bidding, but 99.9% of it goes right over my head. I assume buying some black book from a dusty antique store located down some dark alley is required, but I truly haven't a clue.

-David

[Stuka]

All booked at the HI Express ~
Arriving Thursday, departing Sunday.

No projectors -
But planning on toting 2-4 Pangolin controllers, home-brew laser media rack case , laptop, skinned APC 40, and maybe a couple of rotary-wing flying toys.

Looking forward to the reunion!!

Randy

PS -

Still looking for a good SELEM deal on a 2.5W Pluto II, if anyone is thinking about selling ...

[AnthonyGarcia]

Awesome, thanks Adam!

Not just in Rising, but in a lot of beam shows I've seen, I'm most impressed with the flat fan patterns that have bright white borders(edges) and/or white lines running through them. I have no idea how to create those patterns.. and then making them move??

Quickest way: New synthesized image, and create the shape that you want. Duplicate it. Then turn one of the shapes onto beam mode instead of shape mode, with a beam count down to like 2 or 5. Color the beam shape white and the solid shape whatever color. Dun

[HankLloydRight]

Cool, thanks! Now I just have to figure out what those things mean. :/

[AnthonyGarcia]

Ill make a video tonight while im programming ;D I assume you have beyond?

[HankLloydRight]

Yup! Thanks! .