50 Years in 48 Pages

ETC is celebrating our 50^th anniversary in a lot of ways, including a commemorative magazine!

We’ve shared our history in a lot of ways so far, including sharing stories on our website – like the timeline history of ETC, and this video of what 50 years of ETC means in our own words – and here on the blog, where we’ve put a spotlight on 50 years of art, offices, customers, education efforts, and swag. We’ve even held special events at trade shows like USITT and at our own CUE.

Another cool thing we unveiled at CUE was a special 50th Anniversary commemorative magazine! It’s packed with stories about our history, our future, and our culture over the first 50 years, and you can download it here!

Like everything else at ETC, putting the magazine together was a team effort – and 50 years is a long time – so I go to learn some cool stories about ETC’s history. For example: Mike Meskill’s current title is Global Technical Services Manager, overseeing global technical support, but he started as an intern. Mike had some great perspective on how much ETC has grown – and how important customer service has remained.

The current size of the Professional Services department globally is about the size of the company in 1998. It’s cool to look at what we have done, to grow and succeed at this level.

Yes, that’s right, our professional services department is the size of an entire company all its own. That’s a great way to look at our commitment to customer service.

Which is not to say we don’t have fun. The magazine is full of pictures of the unique culture at ETC, but we never lose sight of using that sense of fun to help others understand and use light more effectively. In a piece about our education department, there’s a sidebar about a cool fashion choice our trainers have made to help demonstrate how the makeup of light impacts the colors people see.

If you’ve attended an ETC training in person, you may have seen a very particular, colorful piece of fabric in your session. The pattern has become so central to our classes on how light interacts with color that the education team made a special request to have vests made from the fabric. With a white interior, the trainers can easily show how light appears on colorful fabric in comparison to white—all while making a fun fashion statement!

The magazine is bookended by statements from our CEO Dick Titus and the Foster family – and both pieces get to what’s really central about ETC.

In his welcome message, Dick writes:

You’ll read in these pages about just how much the identity of ETC is bound up with the idea of being of service to our customers. This was no accident. We have built the structure of ETC to give them the best product possible and the best support once they have it … We are building our future now, with a dedication to quality and service, and a commitment to always doing our best.

Mirroring this sentiment on the magazine’s final page, the Fosters write

Our work is making things, but we don’t do it alone. You are our partners throughout the process of creation. The art you make, the tools you need, and the problems that you are trying to solve drive our innovation. We write code, develop, build and test new concepts, and bring them to you. You, in turn, take them out into the world and make magic. And that, really, is ETC’s purpose—to make the tools that you use to make magic, to make art, and to make beautiful spaces. This has been our guiding star for the last 50 years and we plan to spend the next 50 years expanding on what that means.

If you want to read more about how we’ve gotten here and where we’re going next, download the magazine and enjoy!

Thanks for making magic with us!