UK - The fifth annual PLASA Rigging Conference will be held on Monday 6 October 2014 in the North Hall Gallery Rooms, alongside the PLASA London Show at ExCeL London. For the first time, the conference will be delivered as a one-day package - a move that will improve accessibility and reduce cost to the delegate.

Building on the success of previous years, the programme, which is again curated by Chris Higgs of Total Solutions, will comprise seven sessions in one day, as opposed to eight over two days. The first session details to be announced are that of keynote speaker, Bill Sapsis,

UK - Arcadia took their magic mix of metal, mechanical engineering and madness to the 2014 Glastonbury Festival with the return of the giant spider - around 12m tall and 40m wide - and an even bigger and better show than previous years!

More than 50,000 party people enjoyed Arcadia's music line up each night of the event beneath the sculpture for three nights, complete with spectacular visuals created by Video Illusions and blinkinLAB, with projection supplied by west Midlands based video production specialists, Central Presentations Ltd (CPL).

The highly visual Arcadia concept - or

UK - Unusual Rigging has become renowned in the West End for taking charge of marking out, setting out and preparing the grids for some of the most famous musicals of all time. So it was not too much of a surprise when, 25 years after an Unusual team worked on the original production of Miss Saigon, the company was brought on board for the latest run of the show at the Prince Edward Theatre.

Jeremy Featherstone, design engineer at Unusual Rigging, said, "I was exactly 15 years and one month old when the show opened at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, in September 1989, but a

UK - Le Mark has produced a video with no product info or sales incentives, "just a great video to help promote a charity which aims to rid our lives of a disease that has affected so many of us, either through our own personal experiences or when supporting friends & family".

The girls at Le Mark, determined as ever, teamed up and do their bit to help the fight against cancer and the company is supporting them all the way. If you can, please support the girls at Parker's Piece in Cambridge on 20 July 2014 at 11am.

Donate:

USA - Free registration is now open for PLASA Focus: Austin 2014. Taking place at the Palmer Events Centre on 9-10 September, this will be the second time PLASA Focus has returned to Texas since the launch of the event series in North America in February 2012.

PLASA Focus provides visitors with the opportunity to check out the latest products from some of the biggest names in entertainment technology. Companies already signed up to exhibit include: d&b audiotechnik, Chauvet Professional, TMB, Altman Lighting, Drape Kings, Harrington Hoists, Lightronics, Elation Professional, and Big H

Ghana - The Gearhouse Group of Companies, the leader in the South African market for equipment rental for live events, is extending its service to the continent with the establishment of Gearhouse Ghana, a fully-stocked operation located in Accra.

The Group has seen a steady increase in demand for cross-border services in recent years, in line with the escalating interest in the African continent as an event destination. Gearhouse regularly services events in Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya, Uganda, Seychelles, Saudi Arabia, UAE, India, Brunei, Tunisia, Congo, Namibia, Egypt, Mozambique, Zimbab

UK - MTFX has recently acquired four industrial-strength Exterior Aroma Machines. These powerful machines are suitable for use outdoors or for large indoor spaces.

They can be loaded with one, two, three or four long-lasting aroma cartridges and can fill an area up to 20,000sq.m with a huge variety of smells. MTFX has over 50 different standard aromas in stock plus 12 Christmas-themed smells and thousands more are available.

All four units have already been used to great effect at the ITV 'Fever Pitch' World Cup fan park in Manchester when they released football-related smells (half

UK - Smashing their initial target by over 1000% and then beating their increased target by over 20%, the girls at Le Mark did an amazing job at Race For Life on Sunday 20 July in Cambridge. The first of the girls came across the line in an impressive 28 minutes!

With over 6,000 women taking part, the event drew huge crowds of support and is expected overall to raise hundreds of thousands, if not more for Cancer Research.

Le Mark's Sam Cooke commented, "It was inspirational to run. We were an amazing team, both during the run and working together to raise as much as we could. C

Chile - On Saturday 19 July, the President of the Republic of Chile, Michelle Bachelet, with the local authorities of La Reina (a municipality in the eastern area of Gran Santiago, Chile), led the ceremony of the renaming of Avenida Larraín by Alcalde Fernando Castillo Velasco.

In an emotive ceremony, the president praised the architect and Mayor of La Reina who died in July of 2013, Fernando Castillo, who was not only the Mayor of Regina, but was also Mayor of the Metropolitan region and rector of the Catholic University.

The overall production of the event was by G2 Events, a com

Spain - Guil has decided to highlight two of their most important product ranges: Lifting Towers and Staging, by launching two new websites.

The new company sites, now with more in-depth, clearer and up-to-date information about these two fields and a fresh design, offer an effortless and intuitive use for clients.

By widening their online presence, Guil provides, on one hand, more information on each product from both their Lifting Tower and Staging catalogues with technical specification sheets and pictures of each product; and on the other, Guil aims to interact more with their c

UK - Another month, another sporting success for Rubber Box. With the company's distro products having previously been used on such sporting events as the Commonwealth games, the Olympic games and Formula 1, to name just a few - this summer the Tour De France became the latest sporting event to utilise Rubber Box products.

"were delighted to be approached by The Technical Department (the team behind the power at the Tour De France 2014) to provide power distros to enable their services at this major sporting event to run smoothly - and of course didn't hesitate to help," the

UK - PLASA London delivered its biggest ever visitor promotion campaign over the last 3 days, generating almost 3,000 new registrations and setting a record for registrations, meaning the show is now up 10% y-o-y on visitor pre-registration.

Commenting on the positive news, PLASA's director of events Christopher Toulmin says: "PLASA London continues to prove its relevance as demonstrated by the phenomenal take up over the last three days. PLASA London is a must attend event for the live entertainment technology industries. The show is in great shape and on track to grow in bot

UK - The Entertainment Technician Certification Program (ETCP) will launch a new version of the practice exams for the Rigger - Arena and Rigger - Theatre Certifications this summer. Both new practice exams will be accessible beginning 31 July, 2014.

These versions are an entirely new set of questions and are available in addition to the practice exams that were created in 2009. Riggers preparing to take the ETCP exams have found the practice versions an extremely valuable tool for self-assessment. The web-based practice exams consist of fifty questions each and include score reports

UK - Brilliant Stages continues its long-standing relationship Robbie Williams and the ever-inventive Ray Winkler and Ric Lipson of Stufish by its collaboration on the design and fabrication of the stage set for Williams' Swing Both Ways tour. The dazzling arena tour has seen Williams promote his new album across Europe from April to July, culminating in four dates at London's O2 arena, before it travels to Australia in September.

The Stufish stage is lavish and multi-layered, transforming in appearance from an Art-Deco hotel, to a 20's style club and a luxurious ocean liner, a

The Netherlands - AVL has a solid track record of selling and supporting ChamSys in Belgium and Luxembourg with the highest standards of customer training and support which will be expanded to the Netherlands.

"We are confident that with AVL's skills and experience there will be a high standard of customer service, support and training in the Netherlands," says ChamSys.

(Jim Evans)

UK - Lifting equipment specialists Hoist UK are continuing with their structured growth, this time expanding the engineering and installation side of the business, Geoff Cromwell joins them as their new lifting equipment engineer. Geoff brings with him over 40 years of experience within the lifting equipment industry, having being previously employed with Aabacas Cranes, Fellow Stringer, Pfaff Silberblau / PCM and most recently with LTM.

"Feeling part of a team is sometimes daunting when you start with a new company" says Hoist UK director Paul Jordan, "but Geoff has wo

Spain - The Battle of the Flowers is the event which brings Valencia's July Fair to an end, a celebration that has been organised since 1871 and which consists of a month of events and activities focused on exhibitions of local products, music events and concerts.

This peculiar and peaceful battle of the flowers is a war in which participants throw more than one million clavellones (a type of flower) that form a huge and colourful carpet of flowers through the streets of Valencia that are part of the itinerary.

This year, the overall production of the battle of the flowers relied on

UK - After working together for several years, Hall Stage is delighted to announce that Steve Shortt is joining the business as Head of Design. His appointment is part of Hall's ongoing plans for growth in new product development, and projects and installations.

Steve has been working in the US & Canada on Hall Stage products with US partners Thern Stage Equipment, Hall Stage North America, Epic Production Technology, Gridworks and many others.

He has over 30 years' experience including theatre and entertainment rigging & engineering. Having hammered out many custom rigging designs,

South Africa - The first recorded pioneers to settle in Nelspruit - around 25 kilometers of the Kruger National Park in Mpumalanga - were the three Nel brothers. It is documented that they migrated to this tropical climate with their livestock in the cold winter months around the 1860s, and during those drawn-out travels became friends with the king of Swaziland.

Today in Nelspruit, Kyle Nel of AVS, coincidently with the same name as the Nel brothers, is making his own mark, using modern technology in a city where the main industry is forestry, citrus and tropical farming and of cours

UK - A new real-time positioning technology - Crowd Connected - was unveiled at this year's Wireless Festival, giving promoters" unprecedented levels of crowd control data and enhancing the festival-goers experience with invaluable social media integration".

Winner of a Technology Strategy Board IC Tomorrow digital innovation challenge, the technology will allow a new generation of location-aware festival apps to deliver ground-breaking features for audiences, and a new level of behavioural understanding for promoters.

For Wireless, Crowd Connected used a combination of co

UK - Star Events Group supplied structures for the BBC to produce its World War One Centenary commemorations coverage from the St Symphorien Military Cemetery in Belgium.

Working for HPower on behalf of the Department for Culture, Media & Sport (DCMS), Star provided a double-deck press centre, a screen support structure, a choir stage, and a host studio to the event.

Tez Sheals-Barrett, Star Events' project manager, comments: "The St Symphorien Cemetery is very small and the main brief from production manager Harry Guthrie was to make the structures as unobtrusive as possible.<

USA - UK motion control specialist Kinesys is opening a new operation - Kinesys USA Inc, headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia and headed up by industry veteran David Martin.

Kinesys products have surged in popularity in the US over the last two years, and the move is part of the company's planned medium-term expansion strategy to optimise sales, technical support and after-sales service for all Kinesys owners and users, both existing and potential, the company says. "It also sends a strong message that the brand is very serious about consolidating the level of support for its US cli

UK - VDC Trading Limited, the London based company distributing the Van Damme cable brand, has again broadened the scope of its online ordering system. It now facilitates the ordering of data single leads and assemblies online. Already a great success for both the audio and video cable buyers, the online 'YouSpec' system now allows web visitors to design, specify, price-up and order completely bespoke data cable solutions - 24 hours a day, every day.

Cables available include 22 different Van Damme and standard network cables. These include Van Damme Tourcat F/UTP, U/UTP and SF/UTP tac

UK - Two important sessions have been announced for this year's PLASA Rigging Conference, adding further weight to the event's standing within the rigging community. The new one-day format will host a discussion from Michael Anderson about the revised CDM Regulations and an update on the International Code of Practice for Entertainment Rigging (ICoPER) led by Lori Rubinstein.

The PLASA Rigging Conference 2014 takes place on Monday 6 October 2014 at ExCeL London. For the first time, the whole event will be packed into a one-day schedule, meaning delegates can attend the full conference

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