Every single person wishes they could live life without a verbal filter.
You know exactly what I’m talking about, that time you wish you could tell off the person that cut in line at the grocery, or took your seat in church? Yeah, then your filter kicks in. Some of us have a better filter than others.
Ok I have had the Iphone 4s for less than two days but I figured I’d give initial out of the box impressions.
It’s fast.
To Be, or not To Be.
Shakespeare penned this over a century ago and yet it holds true to everything we do, copy, instigate or imitate as a church. Are we to be like everyone else? Are we to be on the cutting edge? Are we to desire to be better? Are we to be?
IMAG is short for Image Magnification or making things larger on a projection screen so you can see what’s going on far away like in a football stadium for a game or a concert.
My boss Rick and I went up to Dallas for a Church Tech Directors Round Table meet up.
It was a cool time to get together with a small group of Tech Directors, share passions, frustrations and the like and just be able to lean on each other. It really is a support group because working in a church is like a drug. It’s absolutely thrilling and addictive but it can tear you down too. It’s always good to hear other people are going through what you are currently dealing with, or have dealt with it in past whether tech wise, personality wise or life wise.
On top of the meet up Rick and I took the opportunity to go visit several churches in the area and lets just say…if it wasn’t for the highways I’d want to live in Dallas! There are some stellar churches up there. Lake Pointe Church with Jason Cole as their tech director has it going on. Several campus, a rockin system and solid teaching. We snuck in to Fellowship Dallas and had a look at their hall ways the building was locked up (yes we found an open door due to maintenance and snuck in) so we didn’t get any real cool sneak peaks but were impressed none the less. We got into Irving Bible church and loved the warm open atmosphere of their building. There were actually people WORKING and HANGING OUT in the lobby. Very cool atmosphere with lots of art everywhere. Again the auditorium was locked up tight, but awesome to look at the energy the place had and even talk to a member about how much he loves his church.
Last on the list was Gateway Church and lets just say, wow. I know that they’ve got some stellar worship with Kari Jobe who by the way we ran into at Starbucks while hanging out with Fellowship One’s Anthony Coppage. What I did not know about Gateway was just how much tech they’ve got going on, and how well put together it is. Their new Southlake campus has only been open a few months, and it still smells brand new. Not only does it smell brand new but it oozes professionalism, and tech goodness. It’s easily my favorite place I’ve visited and pretty sure it would rock your face off.
While visiting these places was seriously killer and made me drool over all of the tech goodness I walked away with some thoughts about processes for my teams, and the churches teams as we start looking into potentially starting a new campus and just try to streamline and bolster our tech process as well.
So thanks for the tours and talks my fellow techs.
Much learned and much appreciated.
Oh and if you’re missing a piece of gear just ignore it and know it is being put to good use.
“What we have to learn to do, we learn by doing.” – Aristotle
I guess the biggest thing I can say here is trial by error. You sit and dream for a short while and then regardless of whether every inch is planned out you get a move on. Unless you’re planning on using an object for a while there are lots of ways to fake the way something looks, if you’re only going to see two sides of an object, only build two sides. Build it as light as possible and reuse as much as you can to keep your costs down.
You’re never going to know whether you can accomplish something until you set out to do it and I think that is the most important part of perspiration. You can stand around and talk about something. You can get as much input as you can from people but until you pick up the hammer, paintbrush or staple gun you’re not going to know whether or not you can accomplish it or not. Sometimes you get knee deep in a project and find out it won’t work as well as you had hoped. This is the time where your ingenuity and critical thinking skills come into play. Yes those critical thinking assessments you took in middlschool and highschool and on the SAT and ACT were not in vain.
If you don’t ever have challenges to your critical thinking skills then you need to start stepping out on some limbs. If your projects don’t leave you scratching your head for a good long time at least once then maybe you need to start stretching yourself more. Develop yourself so if you end up hitting a wall you can break through or start heading in another direction with what you’ve got.
These are sweat inducing situations because if most creatives are like I am, a lot of what we do is up against a tight time frame and if it doesn’t work out exactly right it can get a little hairy. This is where you need to be on your A-game.
So be ready to jump in with both feet, be ready to fail, be ready to try something new, be ready to stretch yourself, be ready to perspire, but also know your limitations and surround yourself with people who can compliment what you do!
I was asked to look over a resume by my former professor and adviser at Cedarville University. I won’t actually post his resume but there are enough specifics in the email I wrote back for you to get the gist. Coming out of college everyone has the same list of information, maybe just presented a bit differently. Communication and Tech this is how we do.
Contact Info
Degree
Honors
Skills
Work History
Activities
References
Thanks for sending me your resume! I hope that the things I have to say will benefit your job search and if you have any questions what so ever feel free to bounce them off me. Sorry it’s taken me a while to get back to you, your email got buried…with the amount of emails i remember getting in college i’m sure you know what that’s like.
My first suggestion to you if you are wanting to work in a church is make sure you are called. Working in ministry no matter what aspect is tough stuff. It’s draining and downright difficult sometimes. Things can get nasty, people can and will backstab. Church splits happen, you can get bitter and burn out is imminent and you have to learn how to deal with that (each person is different, and I’d suggest surrounding yourself with some quality people who can a) point it out when you’ve reached that point and b) refresh you when you need it).
Alright now that I’ve bummed you out 
. Your resume is solid as far as boiler plate goes for just getting out of college. A few suggestions for you though. Simplify what you’re offering to people. You don’t need to specifically state your minor. Honors are your discretion, out of college it’s ok to put those on there, after you’ve had your first job you can take them off.
Now if I were hiring for a position and I look at your resume, Skill sets are important to have at the top. good job, I’d put them in order of importance to what you’re applying for first. Remember this is your chance to wow your potential boss if he’s made it past your stunning cover letter. In your cover letter make sure you state what you’re applying for, and why you would be a good fit. Explore the mission and ideals of the church or organization and mimic it back in your goals for employment. Let them know you get them.
I want to know that you have the capability to set up and run a sound system, understand signal flow, eq, compression etc.. I want to know you can trouble shoot hardware and software issues. I want to know you take initiative and a self starter. Then i would go into all of the extra goodies that make you a valuable asset to my team. You know how to edit audio and video, you’re skilled in protools, you’re familiar with worship presentation software, you can run a camera and can direct, technical direct, run lighting and event staging. The line that says you are skilled in the MS Office suite, Easy Worship and non-linear editing systems, does not really go together. It’s good you know each, the non-linear systems are included in your audio and video editing, and If you want to lump MS office and EW into a package I would say you’re familiar with office productivity and presentation software, including Microsoft Office and Easy Worship.
Skills that do not really need to be on there because they don’t apply to what I’m looking for, running radio station equipment (that will be established by saying you worked at the student radio station). Unless you’re applying to also help lead worship in some capacity, musicianship doesn’t really help much here, and leadership experience is a very vague statement. If you can give a specific example like, I have lead teams of students in putting together a large event and was the point person for stage set up and tear down, etc. that would be more preferable.
You don’t need to have your work experience at Home Depot as it does not add to your set of skills or competencies. Lastly I’d make your list of activities more like activities/interests. Keep it semi field related but show what makes you an interesting and unique individual. Make your potential boss want to call you and find out more what you’re about.
The last suggestion I could make is just expound on some of the things you have in your skills list. Specific software is great but when you say things like *Skilled in film-style techniques and camera work, what specifically does that mean? Did you sit in a class on film-style or did you participate in a film race and experience it?
Also, Your phone and address is probably best served if it’s your home address because more than likely, unless you’re planning on moving straight out of CU to your new job, there is going to be some transitional time and you’re not going to want to have to try and get in touch and change out your information mid-stream, including a cell phone number as your primary number if you have one is a good option as well.
Everyone looks at resumes a bit differently, cater yourself to your audience. This is your first line of offense to sell yourself. You want to make you look as good as possible before they ever pick up the phone to call you back.
I figured I’d give you a couple free apps that could be beneficial to you.
The first app is Loose It!
This is a cool app that is a free calorie tracker for your day. “Keeping a food diary can double a person’s weight loss according to a study from Kaiser Permanente’s Center for Health Research.” sciencedaily.com This is essentially a food diary and an exercise diary. It takes your current weight age and height and bases a calorie intake for your day. If you work out, you record it and it adds that amount of calories to your ‘required’ intake back. Just a cool little widget to help you whether you’re trying to keep track of what you eat, or trying to lose weight.
The second app is from Sound Made Simple. They have a ‘lite’ iphone app that is basically an audio and accoustics training app. I haven’t actually started trying this one out yet, but for the price tag of free I’m sure it’s worth at least a quick look to see if it can knock off the cobwebs of things learned in past or maybe teaching you a few new tricks of the trade.
Now for the paid apps. Twitterfon has recently become Echofon and has added a few new perks to their pro account. One of the newest is the push notifications which have most twitter addicts drooling. This is great, except the phone only goes out and searches for new mentions or direct messages every so often, so it is not immediate. There is at least a 3 minute lag time in receipt of the notifications and sometimes it’s even more significant. I have had better luck with a second party app that pulls down your mentions and direct messages and notifies you when they show up. It’s still delayed but it shows up quicker than Echofon’s native push. This app is oddly called boxcar…not sure where the name comes from but it also costs. If you’re addicted to twitter like me then you’ll splurge for either or both of these handy little apps (I have both…)
If you’re a church techie and you use www.planningcenteronline.com for your team management you might be excited to know that they now have an integrated facebook app for service notifications and schedules. This is especially awesome for me because I work with students and so my volunteers spend a ton of time on facebook, or check it more religiously than their inbox….which I kind of do too but that’s besides the point.
Does your pastor have a ready room? A place where he sits and waits till he goes out, preps for his message, prays, changes, etc.?
Do you pipe a live feed into his room so that he can see what is going on out on stage? An audio feed?
Our pastor has a “ready room” and it is aptly labeled. This is a place he can come and prep for the three services he does on Sundays. He has his own refrigerator, sink, bathroom, couch, closet, etc. There is also a TV sitting on a small stand where he can view the worship service so that he is not late to the stage if he chooses to hang behind during worship.
Today I had to trouble shoot that TV and the live feed. I checked all of the feed hardware to make sure nothing had come unplugged, next up was the TV. It was a Westinghouse LCD TV, my guess is a 32″. I turned it on and was met with a black screen and a squeal from the speakers. That isn’t right. I swapped inputs, squeal stayed, i turned down the volume, squeal didn’t change…yeah definitely not right. I turned the TV off…the squeal lowered but was still there. Uhhhhhhhh poltergeist? We had a storm come through last Friday so I’m assuming that we had a power surge and it took out the power supply on that TV. We had an almost identical one so I swapped it out, everything works dandy but now I’m thinking a surge protector might be a viable option on that sucker.
How do you make sure your pastor gets from point a to point b? does he know? do you have a stage manager? do you have a morning pre-production meeting? What about special speakers, how does that work? who briefs them? the production director? the worship director?
Do you have an iphone?
Are you an audio tech, an audiophile?
Then I’ve got a couple apps for you.
I’ve been stuck in a few situations where I’ve needed a way to analyze what is going on in a room audio wise. Whether just general loudness or a way to figure out why the room sounds so dang muddy or bright.
App one of two is an SPL meter.
This is a cheap app coming in at $.99 from Studio Six Digital.
It gives you the option of A or C weighted, slow or fast.
If you’ve got the gumption you can also connect an external mic up to the iphone and get a more accurate pick up.
One thing the app lets you know clearly is that the iphone mic has a roll off and so they try and make up up for it with programming. So you get around a 4-6 db difference from an actual SPL meter, but seriously, if you’re in a bind and need a ball park figure for those OSHA complainers pull out your phone and blow their minds.
The next app I haven’t gotten a chance to play with but am excited to have is Pocket RTA. It’s a little pricy ($29.99 to the SPL meters $.99) but it’s worth the investment.
This app gives you a nice real time analysis of what is going on in your space sound frequency wise. It gives you 8 different ways to analyze your room so you can tune whatever your doing and get rid of that mud. This is helpful when you know that your sound pressure levels are within an acceptable limit and you’re still getting complaints of something that is to loud. It’s generally a specific frequency or group of frequencies that are hurting peoples ears.
This isn’t a replacement for a professional room tuner, but for those of you who run audio tech consistently, especially in a church environment another tool in your pocket to make things sound better is invaluable.
