For a couple of years, I have enjoyed writing this blog.  At first, I posted frequently and often found inspiration for what I was writing about.  But for some time, it has become more of a chore, and it hasn’t come as naturally.  After much consideration, I have decided to stop updating this site. One thing that has helped me make this decision is the abundance of really good church tech blogs out there. I’d like to refer you to one of them in particular: ChurchTechArts.  Mike Sessler is a talented technical director in southern California, and a great writer as well.  He keeps his blog updated, has interesting and helpful articles, and I can’t think of another tech blog I would rather read. I’ll leave this blog here, on the chance that a post could still be helpful to someone.

For me, I still love what I do.  I am at Highland Park United Methodist Church, heading up all technology.  I also have one child in college, one on the way to college in the fall, and one about to be a junior in high school.  So it’s a matter of focus and priority for me.  I do still blog, but not about worship technology.  I have a fishing blog at fishingjournal.wordpress.com. If you’re a fisherman, then I welcome you to join me over there. I blog there as a way to unwind (I’ve found there’s nothing more low-tech than a light fly rod and a sunny afternoon on a favorite pond).

Finally, thank you for reading.  Thank you for commenting.  And if you’re actively involved in church technology, thank you for your service to the kingdom of God.

Blessings,

Brian

We follow industry standards, in part, because we’re learning from others who have gone before us, who have learned as we are learning, what works best in most situations.  All in all, Industry standards are a good thing.  Sometimes, though, industry standards can be restricting and limiting.  When should you NOT adhere to an industry standard? – When it doesn’t work for YOU or your organization.

Here are some industry standards that in my opinion are up for grabs . . .

• Wireless mics – let the user power them on or lock power on before hand?  Conventional wisdom says lock it before hand, but how necessary is that, really?  is it worth jacking with the comfort level of the user?
• Rechargeable batteries – the pro audio mantra to this point has been ‘never use them”.  But with advances in rechargeable technology, does that still hold up?
• Over/Under wrap for mic cables –   Uh . . . Let’s keep that one!

The bottom line is – Do what works for YOU.  Do what works for YOUR ORGANIZATION.  Do what makes things easier for your volunteers.  Don’t adopt methods simply because they work for someone else’s organization.  There are too many factors contributing to the success or failure of another organization to clone specific methods.  More importantly, find out what works for YOU, and make that part of your own organizational standards.

Question – What are some industry standards that you have chosen to ignore or have modified to fit your organization?

Hello Staff,

I want to take minute and update you on how Technical Services is contributing to the greening of our fair church.  We have just completed the transition to rechargeable batteries in all our worship venues.  Each of our venues (Sanctuary, Wesley Hall, Cox Chapel and the Great Hall) have from 4 to 10 wireless mic channels.  All these require batteries on a weekly basis.  This includes production of worship services, weddings, funerals and the other many events produced here at the church. Our transition to rechargeable batteries means that we are contributing to the elimination of approx 70 alkaline batteries in a land fill each week.

For some, this might beg the question:  “Rechargeables have been around for a long time; why just now the switch?”  The answer is that for as long as rechargeables have been around, they have been unpredictable and unreliable in professional wireless microphone systems.  The chance of failure was high, and the risk of disruption of a worship service was not worth the benefits of the rechargeable batteries.  In the past few years there have been significant advances in rechargeable battery technology.  Now, not only are they as good as alkaline batteries, in some ways they are superior.  So, we have made the switch.  The benefits are less pollution and a significant savings in our battery purchases.

I’ve attached a screenshot from a poll on my blog, asking people if their churches use rechargeable batteries.  The 50 responses are primarily from technical directors of other churches who read my blog.  As you can see, more than half of those who responded do not use rechargeables.  It is an idea that is slowly gaining traction in the professional audio community.

The RM3 has two 1/4” line inputs on the front to record any vocals or electronic instruments, as well as a combo XLR/1/4″ stereo jack and a stereo RCA input on the rear. It has 2 BALANCED XLR OUTPUTS on the rear panel, and a stereo RCA output for pass-through ability. You can also monitor your media thru the 1/4” phono/line output provided on the front of the RM3, with its own dedicated volume adjustment.

The deck will record on a standard SD card (up to 4 GB) or up to 32 GB with an SDHC card.  It will also record on a USB flash drive, which inserts on the front panel next to the SD card.

What gets my attention is this device sells for $199.

Products – iKey Audio.

Old Picture Showing The Tower At Munger Place Church

At my church we have a set of 48 bells, called a carillon, that are played manually.  The smallest bell weighs just 26 pounds, and the largest weighs in at just over 5,100 pounds.  So when asked by our worship leader at Munger Place Church if we could have some chimes playing for the neighborhood on Christmas Eve, I knew I wouldn’t be hauling 2 ton bells into our tower.  Instead, we went the modern route, using a Mackie mixer and a JBL Eon.  It was a pretty simple setup using an Ipod, mixer and the powered speaker, so I won’t go into detail here.  It was a project that took less than an hour for me and a co-worker.

The recordings I’m using were purchased from iTunes, and played back from an Ipod.  I can’t believe how good this sounds.  Can’t wait for Christmas Eve when the bells will be ringing in East Dallas once again!

In case you need carillon bells in your non-bell-equipped-tower, here are the links to the recordings I bought.

John Klein

Christmas Bells

We recently updated our digital signage at HPUMC.   I asked the two team members I work with (Big Props to Dexter and Ryan) who implemented our new solution to walk us through the process.  I’ll include the design process in this post, and link to the back end process.  Check the end of Dexter’s information for the link to Ryan’s explanation of the scripting for xml.

History

• We have been using a proprietary system that included a server housed on-site, and required pretty pricey tech support for design / layout changes.
• Our event scheduling system will output an xml feed, but they changed they way they did that, and it was a very cumbersome process to get an xml file containing our parsed data into our signage.
• We needed an easy to use and inexpensive system to handle our signage needs.

Here’s an explanation of our process from Dexter Evans, our video producer:

Digital Signage for the Masses

THE GOAL
For the past three years we have been using a third party to help provide signage to our distributed televisions in the church. The recurring problem we had with this option was the amount of money being put in for this and level of difficulty to keep it maintained.
So we laid out a goal of finding something that would play our calendaring system (eventu), cheap, easy to maintain, and available for any platform.

THE BEGINNING

About three months ago we stumbled upon Eric Granata and his awesome vision for Digital Signage for cheap. Working in the church world the word cheap strikes the finest of tunes when looking for an option. So with a couple of emails and some phone calls with Eric his knowledge was passed on and I started running.

Let me give you a heads up on my knowledge of flash and digital signage; it doesn’t exist. So when I say I started running I meant to say I was an elephant running through molasses.

THE NEEDS

Here is what we needed for making this Signage a reality:

• Flash Professional (to build and edit the signage)
• Flash Player (a free download from Adobe)
• Arsa’s Flash News Ticker Component ($50.00)
• Slideshow Director ($60.00 and we are letting them host us also ($80.00/yr))
• One computer w/ desired output needed (we are using both a mac mini and a dell hybrid)
• Feedweaver (Free- we used this to display multiple rss feeds, weather, news on the lower feed in flash)
• Scripting for Automation (“Free” (with some help Ryan Overton)

Realistically this can all be achieved for an upfront payment of under $1000 but if you have the computer and flash already it can be done for under $300

THE WORK
After a quick learning curve for flash this was all about selecting and adding the embed coding for the three needed areas.

With all these components in place and working I added the design touch to make it our own.

THE CONCLUSION
This is just a snapshot of my side of everything is made to the certain point were I handed it off to Ryan Overton and he made the automation of our calendaring system (eventu) to take a file from the Internet and turn it into a XML file were it works with the finished product (click here to see how he did it).
Eric on the other hand uses google calendar for his event list and it is much simpler than our eventu process (for more information click here).

On a side note all of us our more than willing to help with making your church/non-profit get a solution for digital signage. If you are indeed interested in making this a reality find me on twitter @dexdexterdex …

>Dex

Yesterday was another banner day for us at Munger Place Church.  Attendance was pretty low due to the White Rock Marathon, which closed off the neighborhood in every direction around the church.  It was pretty tough going for many people trying to come to church.  What made it a banner day for me was the all volunteer tech crew.  I sat back and observed for most of the morning, while our production manager coached the crew (FOH audio,  ProPresenter, and Lighting) and produced the service.  I even left a little early to head back to our main campus.

We don’t have a  lot of depth to our volunteer crew – and I’m thinking about keeping it on the small side.  I like for crew members to be able to have lots of time on the gear.  It’s the only way I know to build / keep technical chops.

One lesson from Yesterday:  Be flexible. We had to change the service order right before we started because our pastor was having trouble getting through the marathon to the church.

I hope your Sunday was good.