So we are one week away from “launching” our new facility. We will have a worship service for our body next Friday night, the 29th, and then our first services in our new home on Sunday the 2nd. On my end of things we have been working with mainly 2 companies, Baker Audio (who also is doing our video systems) and Mainstage Theatrical Supply. I was reading through our bid package with Baker to check and see if we had in fact gotten everything we paid for. I stumbled across an astonishing number (besides the price). In our facility in just the A/V systems (not power or house/theatrical lighting) we have run approximately 40,500 feet of cable. This is made up of speaker cable (Speak-on for the nerds out there), Cat5e network cable, and mostly mic cable. There is 7.56 MILES of signal cable in the floor of our three main rooms. Holy cow. Like I said, does anyone have money invested in copper?

We have had two rehearsals now in the new sanctuary and a partial rehearsal in our children’s ministry’s Clubhouse Theater. Rehearsals in the youth’s Rooftop will ramp up next week. I have to say I am pleased with the outcome. We have three very clear and clean sounding rooms. Two of them are very tight acoustically with almost no natural reverberation and one room definitely has some reverb but nothing abnormal or unfavorable. I posted a while back about getting our new soundboard in hand for training purposes and how much of a difference it had made acoustically the moment we plugged it in. Well, we hadn’t seen anything yet. When we patched into our Meyer line arrays, subs and front fills it was a beautiful thing. Once again we were hearing things that we hadn’t heard before with the same people and instruments passing through. (I want to stress that while I AM an audiophile and LOVE great sound, that is not the drive of these systems. It is our desire to create a space where the Word of God and the Worship of God can go forth clearly and warmly. We want to make people long to come back again to worship Him.)

We also have gone to wireless in-ear monitoring systems for up to 11 people on stage. We have 8 transmitters and 11 receivers. Our plan for now is to have vocalists share mixes. It DID seem like a little bit better plan that it actually is but it still works well. We have one male and one female vocalist sharing a mix with the vocals panned left and right in their ears. I thought this would be a perfect solution but it seems when your voice is in your head and your ears are plugged at -26 dB, you tend to hear the OTHER voice in your ears more than your own. I am confident with some level and balance adjustments we can make nice though. The HUGE plus of the in-ears far out weighs those hiccups though. We are able to get very clean & crisp mixes because there is very low stage volume with no monitor wedges firing at any of our sources. Also, the stage doesn’t look like a disorganized warehouse with boxes strewn about everywhere.

One other big factor in our clean sound is the drum shield we built. I got an idea for it at another church and did some research myself. I’ll post on it separately later because I really think it will be helpful to other churches and theaters trying to control stage volume and not look wrapped in plastic.

Well, thats all for now, kind of a tech update on the new facility for the four of you that care (my parents, my in-laws). Actually, I don’t think they care THAT much, its more of, hey, where have you been the past 3 months and what have you been doing… update.

-Travis

Guitar heros beware, there is a new kid moving into town. Game Tank is far along in the development of “Guitar Rising.” Rising is similar to Guitar Hero & Rock Band in that the players try to play along with the game’s songs in order to score points. Where Rising sets itself apart is that its real.You plug a real guitar in to your computer and play real notes to real songs. Points are awarded based on accuracy, as you would expect. Apparently its as fun as Hero for beginners AND it teaches guitar at the same time.

I have never played Guitar Hero or Rock Band myself, I have to admit, I am excited about Guitar Rising though. I’d love to think I can learn to play like with a method like that.

Anyone else excited about the potential here?

-Travis

A big discussion arose today in the hall outside of my office with 6-7 coworkers today that lasted about 20 minutes. It was centered around whether we should have tryouts for a “team” that was reconfiguring as we head into our new facility. Do we do something as the Church like that, knowing that some people who try will probably not make the cut? Is it wrong for a church ministry to make people audition for something? I was (rather strongly) suggesting that we “pursue excellence” and that individual involvement should not supersede the quality of the service for 250 or so people in this instance. Let me say this now, I am NOT suggesting that I am right, I may be right or wrong, I am just telling you what I think. I am curious what the world thinks. (By world I mean “the seven people who read this blog.” Unfortunately, three of you were in this conversation.)

We toss around terms like pursuing excellence, usually not knowing what WE really mean when we say it. I have decided that pursuing excellence for me is: doing the best you can with the resources that you have. Excellence is relative to culture and resources especially. Think about the widow’s mite or the parable of the talents. Its not HOW much you have that matters, its how well you use WHATEVER you have that matters.

So I guess I should rephrase the question now. In a churches pursuit of excellence, where should it draw the line with involvement? Is it right for a representative of Christ to potentially really disappoint someone who is really excited about participating in something? Also, is the same thing true in all situations? Do you treat vocalists for your adult centered service with the same care that you might with volunteers in a different ministry in the church?

I was discussing this later with one of our AWESOME ministry directors, something that worries me is the potential that the church is being dishonest in the name of compassion & grace rather than being truthful to people. I think about at least three American Idol tryouts I saw where he/she told a story of their church being super positive, loving their voice and encouraging them to even pursue careers in singing. Now these people, who clearly couldn’t sing, stand in front of these judges thinking, “well, my church lied to me, these pros think I am horrid.” Isn’t it the role of the church to help people find their spiritual gifts and talents? That defineitly would look different from just letting people do what they most wanted to do.

Anyway, this could go on forever, each question leads to another question….

So, talk amongst yourselves, what do you think? What do you do?

-Travis

While these stories are not technical and not DIRECTLY theological (Thanks to Rob Bell we know everything is spiritual), I had to share them.

First up is:

…a rare dolphin beating. Yes you heard me. A group of fishermen came upon a Ganges River Dolphin, “had never seen a creature like it” and beat it. They had second thoughts and tried to sell it as a rare fish, when that didn’t work, they left it on the steps of a museum. I guess they realized they were onto something just a little to late in the game.

I just want to say, who does that? Really? Its stinking 2008 people, who does that? Who finds a rare enough creature to potentially instill awe and wonder and just beats it to death? Also, know that this picture is not of that specific dolphin or one of those fisherman, I just got it on the web to be all illustrative of my message.

Second in our story is:

…a baby is thrown from a 4th floor balcony during a fire and survives. This one undoubtedly caught my attention because I have a little girl about this size. But seriously, WOAH. Can you imagine being the parents, having to throw their child to the people on the ground? I don’t know about that one. Like I said, the child survived, no word specifically on the parents, but some people were killed in the fire. I will let the pictures to the rest of the talking.

I noticed this a couple of weeks ago. Continental airlines is starting to roll out DirecTV, IM and limited web access on their US flights as early as January of next year. At first I thought, AWESOME, something to do on my next long cramped flight. (As if magazines, my laptop WITHOUT web access, my iPod, Sudoku, the Mensa test in American Way or even, as crazy as it sounds, conversations with whoever I am traveling with aren’t enough to fill a few hours.) But then I realized there are hundreds of thousands of business travelers who have the airways as their only solace from work. No cell phone calls, no email, no interwebbing… ahhhhhhhhh. But that is no longer going to be the case and I am sure other airlines will follow suit. Multiple manufacturers are also working on land and sat based cell phone coverage in planes as well.

Which leads me to my second life-and-death question. What happened to switching off all your cellular and wireless devices that may interfere with integral flight electronics? LIES I tell you, its allllll a lie!

Fortunately I like my job. Doing a little graphic design or something like that isn’t the end of the world for me. But seriously, I bet there are a large contingent of air travelers who will AVOID web savvy flights as long as they can. Work is finally catching up to the final frontier. (Well, besides outter space, but, they have the web their. I read an email from an astronaut once. Pretty stinking cool I tell ya. He sent pictures to a coworker of mine WHILE he was on the shuttle.)

So what do you think? All cheers for you, or is it a little less rest on your next trip?

-Travis

Found this story on Gizmodo (the picture will take you there). Checked it all over the web, so it seems for real. Some guy made a 38 million candle power light that shines 4 miles. Oh yeah, and it burns skin.

As I write this I can’t think of anything I NEED that light for. But still, I need that. Who here can think of the best potential use?

I know its not a real news source, hopefully you know that too. Now that you DO know that. Read this blurb on The Onion, its funny.

Travis