CRAS is PARAMOUNT at PotLuckCon This Year

This year, CRAS participated in many aspects of the PotLuckCon, hosted by Sweetwater in Tucson, Arizona.

CRAS hosted a demonstration room, Wired For Sound with Focusrite.  Brock, one of our great instructors at CRAS was on hand to demonstrate the capabilities of Focusrite’s RedNet audio interface and how it can work in cooperation with many audio sources being passed over network systems, even sending signals out to our Mobile Broadcast Unit.

Our very own technician, Jeff Harris was a moderator for a panel on Bass Response and Subwoofers.  The Director of Student Services, Greg Stefus participated on a panel about Interns and Studios: The Role and the Reason.

We had a booth on the exhibit floor for people to learn more about CRAS.  It was great to see the students and graduates stop and visit with our Director of Admissions.  We also had instructors and our Tempe Campus Director, Mike Jones, in attendance working the exhibit floor creating opportunities with manufacturers for potential internship opportunities and future gear purchases for our campus.

Graduates could be seen walking around the event, participating as exhibitors and even speaking on panels. Darrell Thorpe, a ’97 graduate of the Conservatory speak on a panel about Freelance Mixing.  Alex Otto, a ’99 graduate, spoke on a panel about Bass Response and Subwoofers and also held a DIY workshop on Bass Trap and Gobo Building.

Fred Aldous took part in the final panel on Saturday with Craig Schumacher.  Fred has been instrumental in assisting CRAS with the content creation of our Broadcast curriculum.

But my title was “CRAS being paramount this year,” how so you ask?

Not only did we have a lot of involvement with panels and workshops, we brought our Mobile Broadcast Unit (trailer) to record the main panels and provide audio feeds for demonstrations and archive the event.  CRAS was paramount with our students being immersed in a large part of the behind the scenes of PotLuckCon.  Students could be seen:

  1. Running cables on the day before the event
  2. Operating cameras for the main panels
  3. Shooting behind-the-scene footage
  4. Assisting with the Casita Crawl Friday night
  5. Tear down of the cables/equipment after the event.

It was great to see how they were able to put a part of their audio and broadcast knowledge into a real world scenario.

CRAS was excited that this year we had the highest student count in attendance history.  We saw over 90 students attending the event on Saturday.  Many sitting in on the great panels, attending the workshops and exhibit floor to meet with manufacturers, and begin to establish their network of industry professionals.  With PotLuckCon being such a more intimate industry event, the students were able to really meet people without the rushed feeling most conferences bring.

We enjoyed being such a huge part of this year’s PotLuckCon, it was full of great information and great people.

For more information about the PotLuck Conference, visit www.potluckconference.com.

Check out this one of videos from this years PotLuckCon.

Intro of the set up of PotLuckCon 2014 using Focusrite’s RedNet and Dante