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This week I wanted to give all of our loyal readers an update on what’s going on here at Creative Conners since our last update in November. It’s been a busy winter, and with temperatures in the 60′s today, it looks like spring is almost here!

We have some new customers that I wanted to welcome to our community. University of Michigan, Flint has jumped in with the purchase of Spikemark and an OEM board. Interestingly, Creative Conners now supplies automation to 8 of the 12 Big 10 schools!

In other University news, Appalachian State University rented a Pushstick setup for a turntable they needed to automate. Syracuse University also jumped in with a complete control purchase that they supplemented by borrowing CCI gear from both Ithaca College and Geva Theatre Center for a pretty heavy automation show. The University of Houston purchased some gear and borrowed some more from The Alley Theatre for a show with a moving ceiling.

University of Maryland, Baltimore County bought a Pushstick rig for the new theater they’re building on campus. Finally, Joe Aldridge from University of Nevada, Las Vegas (Also the President of USITT) purchased a Pushstick Starter Kit for his program.

In the Regional Theater world, we welcome Cleveland Playhouse to the Creative Conners world. They purchased 2 axes of control and motors for their traproom elevator project. Another newcomer is Dallas Theatre Center, who also jumped onto the Creative Conners bandwagon with a 2 axis motor setup. Welcome, Matt! With these 2 theatres, we can now claim to have Creative Conners automation equipment in 50% of LORT member theatres!

Another new face is Tuacahn Ampitheatre in Utah who rented a Revolver Starter Kit for their summer season.

Finally, a big “Welcome” to our newest friends up north, Royal Manitoba Theatre Centre, who rented a Revolver Starter Kit from us and hope to purchase their own next season.

Perhaps the biggest news of the last couple of months was the introduction of our newest winch, Curtain Call, a traveler track winch. We’re pretty excited about it and we sold 2 units to Geffen Playhouse that we’re sending out next week.

Things are really shaping up in our shop. We’ve added some fabrication tools, Gareth bought a new truck (his 12 year-old Tacoma rusted away) and we stored 8 sailboats for a week to help out our next-door neighbors, Zim Sailing.

That’s about it from here. Hope you all are well and enjoy the spring!
 

Big news today – We are extending our machinery line-up with the addition of the Curtain Call traveler winch. It’s a 1hp machine designed to mount directly to the batten or truss that holds your traveler track, and of course it’s powered by a Stagehand AC for plug-and-play compatibility with Spikemark. You can read all about it on the website by clicking here.

Email me at ian@creativeconners if you have any questions about Curtain Call. And if you subscribe to the LSA email news, keep an eye out for our ad.
 

Here’s the official press release:

Creative Conners Introduces New Curtain Call Traveler Winch

Creative Conners, Inc. is pleased to announce the release of its new Curtain Call machine, designed specifically for traveler tracks. Compact and tough, this latest addition to the Creative Conners stable of electric winches provides live performances with an affordable and elegant option for automating traveler curtains.

Curtain Call will join the Pushstick winch and Revolver turntable friction drive in the company’s line of machines, offering a comprehensive solution to theatres, schools and scene shops looking to automate all aspects of their scenery.

“Our customers have had a lot of success using our Pushstick winch to rig their travelers, but it was a little bit overkill. Curtain Call will do the same job, but it will be cheaper and smaller. Since it mounts to the batten, it won’t be on the floor freeing up valuable wing space,” says Gareth Conner, Founder and President of Creative Conners.

Curtain Call employs a 1-HP SEW Eurodrive gearmotor within a steel frame and uses a v-pulley loop to move the track haul line. The frame includes 1.5″ pipe for easy mounting with cheeseboroughs to either pipe battens or box truss. By mounting to the batten or truss, there won’t be any ropes or machines on the deck, and the traveler can be flown out.

Curtain Call comes ready to plug into a Stagehand motor controller allowing for seamless integration with Spikemark scenic-automation software from Creative Conners.

Creative Conners, Inc. is located in Warren, RI and makes scenic automation equipment for live performances. For more information, please visit www.creativeconners.com or contact us at (401) 289-2942 or by email: sales@creativeconners.

Spikemark, Pushstick, Revlover, and Curtain Call are trademarks of Creative Conners, Inc.

Our customers sometimes ask us what we recommend for a basic tool kit. We think about it, and then try to remember everything, and then recite a list off the top of our heads, which isn’t the best way to do it. So we decided to put our tool kits together, take some pictures and tell you a little about what we like. Because we like tools.

We’re starting today with Gareth’s setup. He describes this as the kit he would put together if he needed to work on either control or machinery, but didn’t know exactly what.

He’s got a great selection here. On the control side, he’s got the Fluke 117 multimeter, which has 2 nice features: The screen is backlit, so it’s great in a dark theater, and it also has an ammeter, for checking current. Also check out his probe assortment- they don’t take up a lot of room and they improve the quality of his life.

He also carries a full soldering kit with a mini Pana-Vise clamp. He’s tried to get by with the smaller (and cheaper) standalone irons, but when it comes to soldering encoder wires, a full setup is the way to go. It’s heavier, but Gareth decided over the years that the extra weight was worth it.

He’s got a couple of custom items, too. There’s a brake testing light, a couple of limit jumpers, a 24volt wall adapter for bypassing the Showstopper and even an Ethernet crossover adapter. With these, he can reduce the control down to the minimum to help troubleshoot.

In the lower right is a Gareth classic- the pipe-style vise grips. The ends work like regular grips and he can also grab pipe or (when it comes to that) machine shaft.

The orange bit case has a right angle driver with ratcheting 1/4″ & 5/16″ sockets so you can use with screw & allen bits or chuck up 1/4″ drive sockets. That little driver is a life saver when working in cramped machines where the last set screw is stuck between a rock and a hard place. Then there’s the usual assortment of wrenches, pliers, nippers, nut drivers, allen keys, and a flashlight.

Rounding out the kit is the red bin, which he keeps stocked with small mechanical parts like master links and keys.

That’s Gareth’s kit. But we want to know about what you guys keep around. Is there a special tool you can’t live without? We want to hear from you, and we want to see your setups. Take a picture, tell us what you got and email it to me at ian@creativeconners.com. If we get anything good, we’ll post it here. And who doesn’t like to look at tools?

Our very own Gareth Conner was interviewed by Lighting and Sound America for the January issue of their monthly “People Worth Knowing” feature. (It’s on the back page if you have a hard copy)

You can read the article in full-color by checking out the very cool LSA web-based magazine by clicking here. (registration required, but totally worth it)

If you haven’t received your issue yet, here’s the transcript of the interview:

People Worth Knowing: Gareth Conner

Gareth Conner is the founder of Warren, Rhode Island-based Creative Conners, which has carved out a unique place in the industry as a supplier of scenic automation for markets other than Broadway. Below, he discusses the company and its services, and where he hopes to take it next.

Lighting&Sound America: When did you start Creative Conners?

Gareth Conner: In 2004. I started working at Mystic Scenic, in Dedham, Massachusetts, in 1996; I was in their automation department. After a while, I wanted to do more with automation. I had the idea that we could create a system that could serve the regional theatre—the places where they always have a closetful of gear and a Rube Goldberg system of switches and knobs where any time they want to do automation they’re basically starting over. My thought was, if you could buy the control portion and use your own gear, then you could make it work.

LSA: This is an unusual approach to this market segment.
GC: Everyone else was interested in Broadway, and I was aiming at schools and regional theatres.

LSA: So what did you do?
GC: I pitched the idea to Mystic, but they are a scene shop and didn’t really want to be an automation manufacturer. So I quit my job, double-mortgaged my house, and started the business.

LSA: How did it go at first?
GC: It was definitely a slow build; the phone didn’t ring much for the first six months. Luckily, at that point we got our first couple of sales, and we’ve had a nice steady increase in customers.

LSA: What is your product line?
GC: Our flagship is the Stagehand motor controller, which, tied to Spikemark software, is our big seller. We also have two machines, Pushstick, for basic automation, and Revolver, for revolving effects. The bulk of our business involves selling control systems for machinery our clients already have. They may already have a revolve system, and, with our products, they can use them in a new way.

LSA: Isn’t automation a tough sell to smaller companies and school theatres?
GC: We chose early on to make our products modular. You have to keep it universal. We made many choices, including taking on control protocols that are easy to use among many technologies and picking connectors for the boxes that can be found anywhere.

LSA: Did any particular project put you on the map?
GC: I don’t think there was one breakthrough sale, although we’ve had a few milestones. For example, we sold a turnkey system to Geva Theatre in Rochester, New York. We’ve done some work with ShowMotion, providing custom machinery for the Broadway shows Good Vibrations and Jersey Boys. We did Manipulation with Centerline Studios, which was recently staged Off Broadway at the Cherry Lane Theatre.  It’s interesting—we’re not like a traditional automation shop. We don’t go directly to the producer; we supply gear to the scene shop.

LSA: How big is the company?
GC: There’s just three of us—myself; Ian Donahue, my sales guy; and Royal Marty, my engineer. We’re all theatre guys. There’s also my wife, Emily. These days, she’s mostly a full-time mom to our two kids. But she has been key in terms of support. She does our books and helps in terms of big-picture design-making. We met at the Alley Theatre, where she was working as a stitcher in the costume department, and I was a draftsman.

LSA: Where are you looking in terms of new markets?
GC: We recently did a large job in Korea, on a show called 200 Pounds Beauty. It’s a musical and had been done in Seoul, and was going to tour around Korea and Japan. A company there called Show Tech Line bumped into us online and called us—about two weeks before they needed to load in. We sold them controls, and I went over to help them install the gear.

LSA: Do you want to be more international?
GC: We’re still trying to drive deeper into our basic markets. From a product perspective, we’ve done a good job of making automation less mysterious and more approachable. We’d like to grow into an ETC for automation. I’d like to make it so ubiquitous that buying it would be like buying a Source Four.

Last week we had a theatre that ran into some trouble with their turntable. After a few days of tech support on the phone and late-night emails, we decided it was time to send out our Product Engineer, Royal Marty, to huddle around the gear with the on-site crew and get to the bottom of the problem.

After some group diagnostics, the problem wasn’t with the CCI control, but a stripped-out drive shaft on the sweet turntable machine that they had fabricated in-house. Royal took a quick trip to Grainger and after couple of hours of hand-to-hammer contact the show was back in business.

Here’s the reason I’m telling you this story: We want to let our customers know that we are here to help. Our gear is pretty user-friendly and usually you can set it up and get it running in an hour or two, but if you find yourself in the weeds, we have a lot of experience solving electro-mechanical problems. As most of our regulars know, the first line of defense is the phone, and 99% of issues get solved that way. But if things are going south, tensions are rising at the tech table, and you’re stumped, we offer on-site support as a service. Maybe you don’t have an automation department- and that’s why you chose Creative Conners. If that’s the case, we can play the role of your in-house automation ninjas – just give us a call. We’re happy to help sort out any issue to get your show up and running. We’ve got your back. Like the A-Team. Of scenic automation.

Last week we finalized the process for ETL certification and soon our control equipment will carry official ETL labels. ETL is a nationally recognized testing lab, much like UL, and their listing is proof of product compliance to North American safety standards.

By having ETL certification, CCI is now authorized to make listed industrial control panels, which is helpful when the equipment is being inspected by local electrical inspectors.

As an interesting side note, we did not have to make any electrical changes to any of our products to pass the inspection, which is a nice validation of the high quality work we do here.

The sales department here at Creative Conners was researching regional theatres and we discovered an interesting metric: Of the 75 theatres listed on the LORT website, 36 are rocking Creative Conners gear for a market penetration rate of 48%. Not bad for a small manufacturing company in Rhode Island. The market penetration might be the result of Gareth’s experiences at The Old Globe and The Alley Theatre, figuring out exactly what a regional theatre automation system should be.

If we can sell  to two more LORT theatres (might happen this month!), we can say that more than half the regional theatres in the US have Creative Conners automation. That would be cool.

2011 was certainly an exciting year in the history of Creative Conners. We’d like to take a moment and recap the high points of 2011 before moving on to 2012.

It was early summer when Gareth made the decision to expand the company. First order of business was a new shop space, which was found in historic Warren, RI, walking distance from Gareth’s front door. With 3300 square feet, dedicated manufacturing stations, an office and a break area, we now have everything we need to build the awesome gear that bears the CCI logo. We also have room to store our rental equipment, take on custom work and still have room for an energetic mid-sized dog to run wild.

The next big change at CCI was personnel. We added Royal Marty, Product Engineer in August and a full-time Sales Manager (yours truly) in September. Having more people around has really changed the way things operate here. More energy, more people for bouncing around new ideas and more capacity for quick turn-around jobs. It’s a good group of people.

During all this, we hired a marketing team, Tribal Vision, located in Providence, RI. They were great at defining and shaping the marketing goals for the company, consolidating the marketing efforts and bringing fresh branding to the company. But mostly they taught us how to craft our marketing message, something we don’t always think about, but should. During the expansion, they were definitely the fourth man in the shop.

We got our new website up in October. It’s hard to overstate how great the new site has been. Our customers have an easier time finding out about the products, our product line is presented in a clearer manner and it’s a lot easier to update the site.

Of course, we’re still building automation equipment, and business has been good. Besides our usual stable of software, controllers and machines, we now sell Starter and Add-On Kits for Pushsticks and Revolvers. We’ve also done some great custom work.

So, what do we have in store for 2012? At the top of Gareth’s list is the next version of Spikemark. It’s a big job and we’ll keep you up to date on the project as it moves forward. If you have any feature requests, now is the time to get your vote in by emailing me at ian@creativeconners.com.

Royal is starting the research and development for a Stagehand Remote. That’s a project that we’ve been talking about for a while, and now that we have someone like Royal in the fold, we’re going to give it the attention it deserves.

Thanks for staying in touch with us in 2011 and we promise to keep the posts coming in 2012. Happy New Year!

As promised, the new Overview Video is now up on YouTube and on the website. You can see it here.

This video is a quick and easy way to see what the Creative Conners automation system is all about. We show what components make up the system, how easy it is to hook up and what cue creation looks like.

So if you’re telling your friends how great the CCI gear is, tell them about the video and they can see for themselves!