Rancho Tech Teams

Transparent Amplification

A Backup Mic for Scott

Aug 27

Posted by Daniel Murphy in Uncategorized | 1 Comment

Adam and I had a ‘duh’ moment last weekend that solved a problem that we’ve had for a long time. It’s a really simple solution, so I don’t know why we never thought of it before.

After the first service worship team is done, we’re going to leave RF2 on the floor of the platform, right next to Scott’s table. That way if we have an issue with Scott’s mic, there is a quick backup for him available.

We’ll have to work out the logistics on this this weekend. I’m not sure if it will be easier for the worship team to leave it there themselves, or if it should go to Gary to bring it out.

Audio Training

Aug 27

Posted by Daniel Murphy in Audio | 2 Comments

I’ve got some exciting news for the audio team. Jeff Dykhouse wants to help the team by offering training to all of us. I think it’s going to be very effective and I can’t wait until it starts.

Instead of doing a training seminar or anything like that, he’s going to provide hands-on one-on-one training with us. About once a month I’ll schedule a sound guy for Saturday night service, and Jeff will be there. He’ll be able to instruct and critique each of us specifically to show us what we could be doing better. So make sure to come with a humble attitude that’s ready to learn.

I’ll contact you all with more info as we dial in the details.

BBQ 2009

Aug 27

Posted by Daniel Murphy in General | No Comments

298987_bbq_1

Mark your calendar for September 20th. We’re doing the tech team BBQ again!

More details to come. Look for invites from evite sometime next week.

Lyric Slide Timing

Aug 24

Posted by Daniel Murphy in Presentation | 1 Comment

This is concept I’ve harped on for a while, and everyone usually does a pretty good job with it. But it’s so important that it can’t hurt to reiterate once in a while.

When you are running Song Show, make sure that every slide is up early enough that it can get through the dissolve and people have time to read the first line before they need to sing it.

It’s not an exaggeration to say that you are leading the congregation in worship. You may not be singing (and we’re glad of that), but without the slides being up, most of the congregation would be unable to worship.

A friend of mine put up some videos with examples on his blog a while ago to demonstrate the importance of slide timing. Check them out. Church Tech Arts » Presentation Cuing–Fast Songs.

The New Branding

Aug 18

Posted by Daniel Murphy in Uncategorized | No Comments

I mentioned the new branding in yesterday’s debrief, and you’ve been seeing it dropped in several places around the church. I think Scott is planning on teaching about it relatively soon so that the whole church understands where we’re at… but here’s a sneak peak.

Our old branding was the oak tree logo with the tag-line “Growing Together.” I think that as we were spiritually growing as a church, that tag-line meant more than we realized. Rancho has been changing a lot in the last few years, and has been growing into what we are today.

I don’t think that change is over yet, or necessarily ever will be, but the new branding reflects who we are. Let me explain.

Everything Rancho does is about 5 things:

Ranchos 5 Brands

Rancho's 5 Brands

When you put those 5 little boxes together you get the new logo:

The new logo.

The new logo.

Rancho is about Building Family, Connecting Lives, Helping Others, Teaching Truth, and Recovering and Restoring. Pretty cool, huh?

BTW- This was all put together by our new Communications Pastor, Alex, who is pretty much the man.

August 16 Debrief

Aug 17

Posted by Daniel Murphy in Debriefs | No Comments

This weekend was a somewhat controversial weekend. A couple people from Exodus International spoke, which is an organization that reaches out to people with unwanted same-sex attractions.

Overall, the weekend went very smooth and you all did a great job.

A couple shout-outs:

  • Jon mixed and did a great job. The mix was good, singable, and you hit the right volume second service. This is the first time since starting the no-drummer rehearsals that the first song hasn’t been too loud. Great job!
  • The speaker, Alan, moves around a lot more than Scott, and Rick did a great job of keeping track of him with the camera.
  • Mike’s wife, Traci, rocked the lights! She sent her first text message that afternoon, and ran lights that evening!

And a couple things to improve:

  • There was some confusion on the set-list because Chad prayed during the middle of Hossana, and we thought that he had moved on to the next item on the list, which was “Chad Talk.” When we were caught up by that Saturday, I should have made some notes so that the same things wouldn’t happen second service. My bad!
  • If you haven’t seen it yet, we’re starting to drop some new branding for Rancho around. With that comes some new logos and backgrounds for the screens. For 8:00 and Saturday night, we should use the background image that doesn’t actually say “Rancho Community” on it during the messages. It just works better as a background image when the screen isn’t supposed to be the center of attention. You should still use the image with the logo and “Rancho Community” on it before and after service and during the greeting.

On a side note: there is some construction going on in the sound booth right now that’s diverted some of the AC flow, which is causing the sound booth to feel like a meat-locker. So you might want to bring a jacket. I felt silly wearing my hoodie in August, but it was worth it!

Thanks for all your hard work and dedication. This was another smooth-sailing great weekend.

tech.ranchocommunity.org begins!

Aug 16

Posted by Daniel Murphy in Uncategorized | No Comments

I’ve been inspired by a few other church tech guys to put together our own tech team site. Here’s what I want it to do:

  • Help communication on new procedures and system changes.
  • Be a place to debrief the weekend services. We can celebrate the good and dissect the “improvement opportunities” (also known as trying to figure out why we screwed up and how to prevent it from happening again). This probably won’t happen every single weekend, but it should be relatively regular. (David Wilcox was the inspiration for this: http://www.undistract.com/)
  • Share interesting articles about things like lighting design and audio mixing.
  • Eventually we will get some quasi-formal training materials online. Check out http://southhillstech.com/ .

So be sure to check back regularly or subscribe via RSS. Also, please comment on posts with more info or questions. It would be great to get some good discussion going. If you have links to articles that are interesting, email them to me so we can share them here. And if you want a little more, check out some of the links in the blog roll for some good tech related blogs.