As the resident ALD at a major regional theatre, I have the opportunity to work with a whole bunch of varied designers - most (if not all) of whom have been using the ETC Obsession for years. Since we've switched to the EOS/ION (ION right now, EOS to come next year I think) - all of them have invariably been frustrated with the fact that they have to manually page their own channel screens.
Now personally, as a young designer comfortable in "thinking" the way the ION does, I love the ability for the designer to have their remote monitors configured differently from that of the board operator. I think it is infinitely flexible and the way of the future - BUT, and this is a big but, all these designers (old and experienced hands) just aren't used to it and do get frustrated when they say to the operator "page down" and I or the board op has to explain to them (hopefully before tech) how this works.
There is inevitable fumbling for the keyboard and time lost - especially during tech, where they want to see something spread-sheeted in blind and I often have to move over to the other side of the tech table and hit the right F-Key on the keyboard to go to spreadsheet view for them. Most designers honestly want to tell the operator "blind last cue and go to spreadsheet" and see that on their consoles - not to have to do it themselves when all they want to do is look at the stage.
My question is wouldn't it be fairly easy to include an OPTION in desk setup that would allow designers to see exactly what the board-op sees on his/her channel screens (at least formatting and paging - so if on the ION, our board op has direct selects open, the designer wouldn't have to see those). Heck, give us more options, so we can choose exactly which functions will be duplicated on the designer's monitor and which won't. I understand that for some people/setups, this would actually be more of a hinderance than a help, but for a certain generation of lighting designers, I think this would alleviate much frustration.
