The Santa Barbara Mission Section of the Illuminating Engineering Society held their first lighting controls expo at the Murphy Auto Museum in Oxnard on November 29th, 2018. The section encompasses the counties of Ventura, Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo with engineers, lighting designers, lighting representatives and other trade professionals as members.
“Traditionally our tradeshows have been centered around LED fixtures and lamps,” said Norman Russell, section president. “What we felt would be the most beneficial for our members and participants of the electrical construction industry would be a tradeshow focused entirely on controls. With so many companies entering the marketplace, the choices between wired, wireless and the different layout schemes are numerous and confusing.”
Eighteen manufacturers were in attendance for the show which ran from 3:00 – 7:00. Two areas of the museum were set aside for the expo; the tradeshow area which was setup between the museum’s cars and antique travel trailers, and a classroom area which was set up in the museum’s car vault. Here, short twenty five minute seminars were conducted and presenters would show Powerpoints and tabletop their demos. Manufacturers which conducted seminars were Philips, nLight Air, ETC, Lutron Electronics, B.E.G. Controls, Hubbell Control Solutions, Eaton and Cree SmartCast.
A local food vendor setup a table with gourmet snacks and desserts. A little later during the expo, Blake Whitney of Primus Lighting setup a hospitality area where everyone from customers, representatives and manufacturers could enjoy wine and beer at no charge. This served as a nice meeting place for friends and associates to network and relax.
Although rain moved in midway through the expo, there were quite a few customers who braved the weather to attend. The furthest traveled customer attending were some electrical contractors from Los Alamos, about 83 miles north. Although admission was free, manufacturers were charged per table to help offset expenses and to help the IES with education and outreach. Somewhere between 50 – 75 people attended.
Manufacturers on display were Philips, nLight Air, ETC, Lutron Electronics, B.E.G. Controls, Hubbell Control Solutions, Eaton, Cree SmartCast, Intellimax by Maxlite, Echoflex Solutions, IR-Tec, Audacy Wireless, Leviton, Osram/Encellium, Wattstopper, Crestron, RAB Lightcloud and Douglas Lighting Controls. Besides the manufacturers which displayed, The Santa Barbara Mission Section wishes to thank the following representative agencies which were present with their manufacturing partners; Mar Vista Sales, Neel Lighting & Controls, Forman and Associates, MPA Lighting, Prudential, Agent’s West, CAL and CLS. Also, the section would like to thank Lance Bennett, current IES National President, for attending the show.
For more information about the Santa Barbara Mission Section of IES, please visit their website http://www.iessantabarbara.org.
