The Raleigh Convention Center (RCC) is a beautiful facility. We were used to filling the entire building where our conference was held in the past. This building however, was so large that it dominated us! We could have easily fit two or three more conferences our size into the same facility. That in and of itself was quite an adjustment!

Raleigh Convention Center Shimmer Wall

The RCC has a much more formalized Information Technology (IT) infrastructure than I am used to working with. They had their own internal IT staff that worked with us all week. There was plenty of bandwidth for all of our attendees as well as the video streaming application and internal staff needs. I worked with the Minutes Room staff this year due to personnel changes resulting from the death of one of our staff members (and personal friend). All of the minutes for the 2011 Annual Conference were recorded using Google Docs and Spreadsheets. The system served us well and the minutes folks were able to complete their work for the week on time.

Everything is better with balloons!

There are several different ministries that take place during the week of our conference. One of these was done in partnership with Stop Hunger Now. Volunteers gathered during the dinner break one day to assemble food packets that will eventually become meals for hungry families in North Carolina. The small (smaller than you would think!) group managed to assemble 150,000 packets that will eventually become 90,000 meals! My friend, Steve Taylor, wrote an excellent blog post on this event.

Where the rubber meets the road!

One of the big parts of annual conference is the business sessions. There are at times quick votes and at others seemingly endless debate. Resolutions are offered, discussed and voted upon. Rules are changed, removed and created. People are generally civil with each other as large and small theological issues are debated.

One of the many business sessions.

Through all of this I am responsible for setting up the initial staff IT operations including the News Room, Minutes Room, E-mail Station, Registration area and all of the staff members scattered across the building. Once everything is set up and running I sit in the News Room and help out with the various social network feeds that are covering the event. I enjoy the work but using the social networks to communicate with people out in the conference is the most fun part of the week. Who is looking forward to next year already?

Conference Staff Attending The Leadership Summit

The event was nicely done from a technology standpoint. It was an interesting experience to know that we were participating in the same event with United Methodists in the Congo, Germany, Zimbabwe, Liberia and elsewhere all over the world. We all sang the same hymn and prayed the same prayer, regardless of timezones. It was a great experience. I hope we do more presentations like this in the future.

This is one of the reasons why I think that all of our churches should create a technology budget for their leadership. All of our pastors need access to modern computer equipment and smart phones. These devices will help our clergy become more connected with each other, the annual conferences and the general boards and agencies.

• Powerpoint (PPT)
• Adobe Acrobat (PDF)

The video that was embedded in slide number eight can be found here.

Additional Resources

• Achieving Your Online Communications Goals
• 50 Ways To Communicate Effectively

Grant Writing Workshop

One of the nice things about my job is that I often get to participate in events that are not always held in our main office.  Technology doesn’t always stay bottled up in the Methodist Building.  One of these remote events is a Grant Writing Workshop.  Dr. Annette Greer is hosting a workshop for people in our local churches who are interested in learning about best practices and methodologies for successful grant writing.  This event is being hosted at Westminster UMC in Kinston, NC over three successive Mondays (this being the second day).

We are responsible for providing audio/video/web streaming support for the workshop.  Derek Leek (Conference Webmaster), Steve Taylor (Missions Director), Bill Norton (Communications Director), Dennis Peay (clergy volunteer) and I are running all of the different equipment necessary for pulling off an event of this size.  We have approximately 20-25 people here on-site and another 10-15 watching remotely via the web stream.

The technology behind this event is fairly straightforward.  Steve and Derek are running our two cameras.  Bill is running the sound board and video switcher.  Dennis is running the Powerpoint laptop and I am watching over the video stream and handling incoming e-mail questions/comments.  The video switching equipment can display video from the two cameras, the presenter’s laptop and the Powerpoint laptop.  The audio board is handling input from four wireless microphones and a lavalier microphone (worn by the presenter).

640 x 480 Video!

We have also made significant changes to our web video stream.  We have been streaming our major events on-line for several years now we have always had to work around a nagging Mac/Linux incompatibility.  We were also streaming out a high bandwidth and a low bandwidth stream simultaneously.

Since our dial-up usage has fallen to almost zero, we decided to do away with the low bandwidth stream altogether.  We changed our outgoing video stream from 320 x 240 to 640 x 480.  We also changed the streaming coded from Windows Media version eight to version nine.  Mac/Linux users should be able to use this newer codec without any of the issues that they encountered when we were using the older one.  We upgraded the audio output to 192 kbps (cd audio quality).  All of these changes were squeezed into an extra 100 kbps or so of upload stream bandwidth.  Today is the first day that we have tried streaming live with these changes, so we’ll see how it goes.  I’m looking forward to great results!

What if this works?

During our annual conference I was heavily exposed for the first time to the new Rethink Church campaign coming from United Methodist Communications (UMCOM).  Being on the conference staff I have heard rumblings about this initiative, but this was the first time I a full presentation.  The communications folks started talking about this months ago when they came back from their big annual meeting.  I watched the presentation on the floor of conference, watched the DVD movie that was passed out and read the fliers.  I met with the UMCOM representatives and discussed the project.  I even discussed it with our own Communications Director.  I realized after doing all of this research that this project may be leaving our people in the local churches wondering what the heck this is all about.  Here’s a summary of the different resources I used to research this big project called Rethink Church.

The new campaign doesn’t seem to be just one website.  It appears to be three different websites and directions.  UMCOM has done significant work on some of their older and more established websites as well as launching completely new ones.  Let’s discuss each one in turn.

Rethink Church
I first started at the Rethink Church website.  The website address redirects to the umcom.org web template.  This site contains the majority of resources for the Rethink Church project.  It fully explains what the advertising campaign is and how it is carried out.  I found the Rethink Church 101 page to be particularly helpful.  The What If video is worth viewing.  How can we propagate it via the social networks without the ability to embed it?

Find-A-Church
My search then brings me to the Find A Church website which had been completely revamped.  This domain name also redirects to the umcom.org web template.  It looked almost nothing like the older site that I was sending people to.  This appears to be a major thrust of the new campaign.  The site has been updated with a new Google Maps widget and links to the appropriate Conference/District websites.  As before the information is as up to date and helpful as the individual church enters into the system.  As long as they enter the information the site is very helpful.  If they don’t participate (or maintain updated data) then the site isn’t very useful.  That’s not a knock on the UMCOM effort however.  The old adage about garbage in/garbage out definitely applies.

Ten Thousand Doors
The last piece of this new campaign is found at the Ten Thousand Doors website.  This site seeks to match up interests with United Methodist churches in the visitors immediate area.  You can pick from a list of multiple attributes such as Advocacy, Hobbies, Family Life and Volunteering.  You then enter your zip code and a mileage radius for the search criteria.  I’m not sure how these attributes are assigned but they are certainly interested.  If I had to guess I would say it was when the church updates their Find A Church information.  This site also integrates with Google Friend Connect and the major social networks.  You can also read news updates from various sources.  Some of them are pulled from United Methodist sources.  I’m not sure where the other news sources are chosen.  They don’t seem to have a whole lot of relevance to UMCOM or Methodism specifically.  The most interesting parts of this website are the comment forums and the ability to find volunteer service opportunities via Google Maps.  These are possibly the two most useful features of the entire campaign.  These sections allow people to communicate with each other as well as easily match up their skills with nearby service opportunities.

Social Networks
You can follow along with the major social networks as well.  These areas are fairly self explanatory for seasoned social network veterans.  I recommend them all.

• Twitter feed
• Rethink Church Facebook Group
• 10 Thousand Doors Facebook Group

I wish all of the different domain names were built into the Rethink Church website.  It’s a shame that they redirect away and lose some of the branding.  That may be a technical issue with the back end system but it’s still a shame.  Overall I like the new tools available on the Rethink Church website as well as the revamped Find-A-Church site.  These changes are encouraging.  They seem to be designed for people who are not already exposed to the United Methodist Church.  We’ll see how it goes long term.  I hope the outcome is positive.