Chapter 1 · An Introduction 9 T HE L IMITATIONS OF S TANDARDS I have long been (and continue to be) a proponent of open standards. However, I have learned over the years that there are limits to what should be standardized and how much a standard should attempt to do. In the early 1990s, I was working as a systems engineer for the (now long lost and legendary) lighting company, Production Arts Lighting (PAL). PAL got the job to provide a lighting sys- tem for the showroom on a cruise ship, and it was my job to go to Italy and oversee the instal- lation of the system. Looking at the drawings, it became apparent that on the backstage wall of the showroom stage left was to be a mess of different electrical boxes: one sound box full of XLRs and some volume controls; one rigging control box for the connection of a rigging sys- tem remote; and a box of ours for house light control, remote focus unit connection, and so on. At that young age, this seemed like a stupid thing to me: Why, when the cruise ship line was spending so much, could they not have a standardized, nicely integrated and well thought out panel--especially one right there on the stage where so many would see it? Over the years, I've come to realize that not only were a group of individually constructed, wired, and coordinated panels cheaper, but, in fact, better. At PAL, we knew lighting systems, and we wired things a certain way, used certain brands and types of connectors, labelled things in a specific way that made the most sense for the lighting application, and used a specific kind of panel that was made efficiently and in a way we were comfortable working with. Each com- pany on the job had developed a similar method, and had arrived at a very effective way of