If your pans are in the right places based off of the other posts and pics, I would suggest using less wood to start with. Like deltadude said I think heat is the problem too. It's a trade-off.
Here's an example.
If you have a fixed amount of heat (say a match), and oxygen is plentiful, then you have to adjust your fuel to the type of heat source you have.
You wouldn't try to start a fire with a match using 12" logs. You would use kindling of some sort- fat wood, pine cone, starter cube, paper, straw, or even small pieces of wood.
Say you decide to use the small pieces of wood. You would want very small pieces that would have a lot of surface area to size ratio so that it would light easily, like toothpick size to start with.
Then after that small fire was lit with that small match, you would progressively add bigger and bigger wood to it as the fire built up and could handle it.
How does it handle it? You have "made" more heat by slowly adding more fuel to the original fuel, the match. You have to manage your heat to your fuel at all times or the fuel absorbs too much of the available heat, lowers the heat to a level that is not sufficient to burn, and bang, no more combustion. No combustion, no smoke.
With the MES you have a limited amount of heat based off of how long your coil is on and what size it is, at least to start with. That heat is divided up into going into your smoker, going into your meat, going into your water pan, going out the vent, leaking out any cracks, fighting back the cooler temps coming in from the outside through the walls, and yes, going into your fuel. So, you can see it's still a pretty limited amount of heat you have, particularly at the start when everything is needing as much heat as it can get.
So, try preheating your MES for half an hour or so, so that the water and the inside walls and air come to temperature (or a bit higher so that you have some "reserve" heat) and don't need as much of your limited supply of heat later. While it preheats, leave your meat out for that half hour to hour to get it up to 40 degrees or better. Since there is nothing inside, keep the vent shut while you preheat so you don't lose heat out of that.
When everything is preheated, put your meat in with as little time-waste as possible so that you keep as much of the heat reserves as you can and don't waste it out the door (have the meat close to the smoker for example and the camera turned on and ready for Qview shots).
Then put in some wood chips, small pieces, or small sticks and open the vent enough to let air flow smoothly, which isn't necessarily all the way open but might be (the more it's open, the more of the limited heat you have available you are losing through it). Once you start seeing a good amount of smoke, and it won't take long if you just start out with about 5 bits of small wood, you can add more remembering that the more you add, the more of the heat that is in the burning wood is going to transfer over to the new wood. Like the example, don't add that 12" log to your first matchstick sized base or the heat will all transfer over and your "fire" will go out.
After the first hour, adding more fuel say 2-4 times over that period, you will have a good base going and better yet, a separate heat source from your element. Mgworks suggested putting a briquette in there and I do that too sometimes. It "might" give you a better smoke-ring, but it also helps to keep a stable heat source after your sticks/pieces are hot enough to transfer enough heat to the briquette without getting too cold. Think of the briquette as your 12" log. Get it burning and you can have a really good source of heat that's hard to put back out. And just because 1 briquette might be good doesn't necessarily mean 2 are better. It might get too hot that way for the MES internals, or the 2nd one might not get hot enough and will keep trying to suck the heat from the first one.
Long-winded reply, but hopefully it put some "heat" on the issue.