Team Updates

Webcast Updates

Other Stuff

Westhill Live – Sundays

Thanks to Lance and the team for covering things off while I was away.  JOB WELL DONE!  There are a couple of other areas that we need to work on as a team.

• Sunday planning is continuing to be strong with minimal last minute scrambles.  There you got their attention Jason!

Webcasts

Unique viewers:
- Feb 24 – 18
- Mar 3 – 17
- Mar 10 – 22
- Mar 17 – 30

Response to connection card requests continues to vary from Sunday to Sunday.  We did have one comment about poor quality this past week which I will be following up on.

Other Stuff

• Just prior to me leaving, the organ decided that one problem wasn’t enough and stopped working again.  This past Saturday I was finally able to isolate the problem and determined that one of the voltages off of the power supply was out of spec.  I’ve taken it out and it will be going to Winnipeg for repair.  I don’t have an estimated return date as yet.

There were some problems with David’s mic a coupla weeks ago.  Trevor and I have run some tests on it and with some fine tuning it seems to be back where it should be.  Still not really sure what the root cause was, but we have some possibilities!

Over the next coupla weeks we will be transitioning to a new Webcast service provider.  I’m expecting a smooth transition, however, this is technology we are talking about!

…Randy

Westhill Live – Sundays

This past Sunday was a great morning in @thetechbooth.  It was great to have Nicholas Rendle join the team!  Thanks to the platform team for being good stewards of time.  A couple of weeks ago we were scrambling to get things set for the 11:00 service to the point of having to delay the start by a bit.  The last coupla weeks have been waaaay better.  THANK YOU from the Tech Team!

There are a couple of other areas that we need to work on as a team.

• Rehearsal for 9:30 service - I’d like to see us wrap up rehearsal by 9:05 to give the tech crew a chance to go through other components of both the 9:30 and 11:00 services.
• 11:00 Soundcheck – Somehow we need to find time to do a soundcheck for the second service.  This past Sunday I found myself scrambling to adjust vocals and accompaniment during the welcome and opening hymn.  At least you got their attention Jason!

Webcasts

We’ve continued to see good attendance on webcast since the beginning of January.  Averages seem to be around 20-25 connections.  There has been a good response to connection cards.

Other Stuff

• New projector installed in Fellowship Hall
• Puchased a loaner laptop computer (Leighton is the first borrower!)
• Setting up accent lighting for Lent/Easter on platform (need to get some DMX cables this week)
• Vacation Alert – I’m going to be away March 3 and 10.  Please try to get as much into planning center as possible this week for those services
• Easter’s coming – as is Good Friday.  We need to start getting some meat on those services especially if we are expecting any additional lighting / staging.

Westhill Live – Sundays

Other than the usual assortment of minor glitches, Sunday mornings have gone very well.  A lot of this is to the credit of those planning out Sunday mornings.  We’ve been able to get the service plans finalized in good time which allows the tech crew to set up the projection and audio configurations well in advance.  Thanks!

We are experiencing some intermittent issues with some older components (primarily compressors) and will likely be having to replace some of these in the next while.

Webcasts

Here’s a look at webcast attendance during January.  Last Sunday we had 36 unique connections which we guess could translate to 40 to 50 actual viewers.  Thanks to the platform team for including the the online congregation in your welcomes and the blue book and “Connect” link.

It’s been great having Jordan Erickson join the team.  He’s been running webcast the last couple of weeks and will be training on audio over the next month.  I’ll be working on an annual summary this weekend.

Other stuff that’s happening!

• Organ update  - The repair has been approved and I expect that the processor board that failed will be repaired and back in service some time in February.  Until then, the maintenance spare is working well.
• DMX Lighting - I’ll be ordering some control equipment and DMX spec cables later this month to finish integrating the colour LEDs into the system.
• Easter’s Coming - I’m going to get the communications happening on this soon so that we can be ready with equipment and special technical / staging needs.

Blessings!
…Randy

Westhill Live – Sundays

December 9 - Children’s Program

It was great sharing the message of Christmas through our Children’s ministry team with Sunday morning congregations.  Everything went great despite.  There seemed to be a disconnect during the 11:00 service with kids and accompaniment track being a bit out of synch on one song.  Elizabeth and I have identified an opportunity for improvement that should help out on this in the future!

December 16 – “Out of the Wilderness”

It was wonderful to see the amount of teamwork among our youth, young adults, tech team members and pastoral staff.  This was one of the bigger productions that we’ve done in some time, and it came together beautifully both on and off platform.  It was pretty cool to have all but one of the channels on a 32 channel sound board in use!  Jared promises me that next time he’ll make sure that the last one gets used as well.  There were some absolutely outstanding vocal performances and the drama team was excellent! Good work everyone!

We had an opportunity to put our lighting software to the test, controlling the production lights.  We were able to program all scenes / cues into the system and very effectively step through the service.

December 23

It was nice to have a straight forward single service Sunday on the 23rd, especially with Christmas Eve services the next day.  Other than a bit of audio feedback due to a residual setting from the production on the 16th, all went well.  I enjoyed being on platform and it was great that the organ seems to be up and running again!  (more on that later)

Christmas Eve Services

Once again, it was great to see all the hard work by the team come together in a wonderful evening.  The staging with the trees and lights was great.  The whole movement / sequencing of the music and spoken word was powerful.  Although we ran into some technical issues with the coloured lights, the overall impact was wonderful.

Webcasts

Our webcasts continued to be well attended during the season.  Here’s a glance at December:

Other stuff that’s happening!

• Organ is back up and running  – In the midst of the preparation for “Out Of The Wilderness”, the Allen organ tech from Winnipeg happened to be in Regina fixing another organ.  He was able to take some time on Saturday afternoon to take a look at ours.  One of the main processor boards was dead as well as another component.  He had a maintenance spare along which he has loaned us.  It behaved just fine on the 23rd and I have been trying it out every opportunity that I have.  The problem does seem to be resolved.  I will be making arrangements to have our board repaired and then re-installed some time in the new year.
• DMX Lighting – we have been working to extend out remote control of platform lighting.  For the most part it has been going well.  I did manage to exceed the technical specs on Christmas eve which resulted in going back to manual for the blue lights on platform.  I’m going to be ordering some new cables and amplifiers in the new year to take care of the issues.
• On-Platform cabling – we’ve been working to simplify cable runs and further provide more flexibility for on stage configurations.
• Planning – It has been a great December.  One of the opportunities that we’ve seen is to become even better at planning things well in advance.  I truly appreciate all efforts by worship services to provide as much advance information as possible.  Eliminating last minute scrambling gives us a chance to plan out technical support for our services and provide the best support we can to the on-platform teams.

I hope that you have all had a chance to sit back and pull away from the busyness of ministry to truly enjoy the Christmas season with family and friends.

Merry Christmas!
…Randy

Pray for our fellow tech leaders, worship pastors and pastors…

…to not lose His perspective of this season finding margin to experience Him deeper this Christmas time and be ministered by the services we are going to serve in this week.

…for protection during this season that the enemy’s attacks would not affect focus, relationships, health, people, systems and spiritual health.

Pray for those that attend will be open to the Word, and that our services would go unhindered and technological issues would not arise so that people may clearly hear and engage with the Gospel and begin their journey or move further in their journey with Christ.

Westhill Live!

It was a great Sunday morning as we began Advent.  All things tech went very smoothly.  I actually had some time to visit other areas of our campus.  It was great to see all the parents that came to the Westhill Kids Parent’s day. 

Webcast

December 2, 2012 – 28 unique viewers (number of unique computers connected)

Other stuff that’s happening

• Children’s Program – Most of the details are in place for this.  This year the program will be part of the Sunday morning services.
• Out of the Wilderness – Although there are a lot of details that we need to sort out, plans are falling into place.  I’m expecting a very busy next week!
• Sound Room – I’m finally getting around to cleaning up the deck.  Last night I pulled out a bunch of cables that we out of service and rebundled things under the desk.  We’re going to be re-arranging the racks later this week to improve access to the cabling and airflow. 

Hope you’re having a great week!

Blessings,
…Randy

Welcome to the last day of November!  Grey Cup 2012 is done and its now countdown to … oh wait, this is the technical blog! 

Lots of things going on @thetechbooth.

Westhill Live! – Sunday

We had great morning services.  I was really pleased with how smoothly the IMAG transitions from video to live cam went during the baptisms.  I was hoping to be able to project the actual baptisms from the 1st service for the 11:00 congregation, but didn’t have enough time between.  Still on my list for future services.

Thanks to Larry and Mark for covering webcast during the 11:00 service so that I was able to help out Jason on platform.

Westhill Live! – Webcast

 Webcast viewer totals was down to 18 this week, likely due to the good weather after several weeks of snow and ice.  For the first time in quite a while there were no connection cards submitted.  Given that “Church without Walls”, is part of our long term strategy, I’d encourage our platform team to include the on-line congregation in their welcomes and encourage them to check-in with a connection card.

Other stuff

• The organ is pretty much dead - I was able to recreate the problem to the point where now the instrument is pretty much unusable.  There is some nasty arcing sound happening deep in the bowels of the system.  The problem is beyond what I can likely deal with so the next step is to get the Allen technician in to diagnose and give us an estimate of what it will cost to repair.  Based on that we may have to make a tough decision!
• Christmas Programming – I’m feeling good about the place that we’re at with planning for the Sunday morning events on the 9th and 16th.  The base tech plans are in place and we’ve just got a few details left!

That’s about it for now.  Sunday’s Coming!

Blessings,
…Randy

Overall, it was a great morning.  We are slowly working to include lighting in the service plan, particularly for the 9:30 service. 

9:30 – All went well.  There were some minor gaps in planning that we were able to work out before the service.  The overall service was about 6 minutes over plan (10:41) which did result in some scrambling to get ready for 11:00.

11:00 - I had hilighted the challenge not having a sound check for 11:00 last week.  This did cause some issues for the 11:00 service with vocal balance and a live cable insert (ouch) during the service.  Trevor did a great job getting the balance in place very, very quickly!  We did experience some significant overages in the time estimates during this service.  Although the actual end was only about 7 minutes over, it would have been significantly more had Jason not cut down on the middle set of congregational singing.  Text messaging has become a great tool for the Worship Leader and Tech Director!

Webcast

November 18 - 23 Unique Viewers

We’re still not getting much in the way of connection cards.  I’m not sure if this is an issue or not.

Other stuff going on

• Christmas Production – Looks like we will have to downscale our plans to add a black backdrop and custom lighting.  A little too pricey for this year!
• Handheld wireless mic – this mic is still out of service.  I’m hoping for the repair parts to arrive this week.
• Fellowship Hall Sound System – getting this tuned is still on my to-do list as well as basic training.  Once again, stay tuned!

…Randy

Hi gang,

Just a heads up, the wireless SM58 is out of commission until some time next week.  A replacement cartridge is on order from GVAudio.

…Randy

Last Sunday it was freezing rain, this Sunday it was snow.  Although my calendar still says fall, it sure feels a lot like winter!

Westhill Live!

Thanks to the team for another good morning. The only hic-up was when we went to turn on a fan in the techbooth, it created enough of a power spike (or some other RF intereference) that knocked out the software lighting console.   We were able to switch to the manual board and had things back up in under a minute.  The culprit fan has been decommissioned!

Both services were well planned out!  Thanks everyone.  I did note a coupla’ OFIs.

1. Remembrance Video- I really appreciated the work that Darren put into the video.  It was very appropriate for the morning.  One thing I missed when I prepped it, was to drop the “Animoto” logo at the end, or at least instruct the team to pause the video before the logo (which Erica did perfectly at 11:00)
2. 11:00 Sound Check - One thing I noted is that the limited time available for the 11:00 team does present a bit of a challenge from a sound mixing point of view.  We were able to do a run-through at 9:00, however, we probably need to add a sound check for the 11:00 service.  The challenge we run into is that we are unable to clear the sanctuary to make this effective.  Something to keep in mind!

Webcast

Although not as high as last week’s 71, the weather seems to have kept the numbers up.

November 11 – 35 Unique Viewers

I’d like to see us make more of an effort to include / acknowledge our on-line congregation.  Some of the very simple ways that we can do this include welcoming them at the beginning of the service and including them in the sign-in / registration.  Each week we do get several viewers who sign in.  Should our on-line numbers be included in some way in our stats?

Other stuff going on

• Christmas Production – Darren and I are working on some options to change the look of the platform for Christmas using some creative projection and lighting.  Stay tuned!
• Webcast Distribution – I’ve begun the search for a new provider.  One of the criteria that I a looking at include smartphone / tablet compatability.