2008 To Do List

As the “new guy” at Upper Room/CPC, I’ve been tasked with coming up with a priorities list for Sanctuary Technology. After meeting with our team leaders and making a lot of observations, I came up with a list that’s some 40 items long. Seems we have a lot of work to do!

We’re a good size church, but I don’t think we’ll have the budget to do everything in one year. So this will likely turn into a multi-year plan. Still, it’s good to start planning now and figure out how what we do today will help us in two years (and more importantly, make sure it doesn’t have to be re-done). So here are a few things on the list:

1. Replace 4 broken speakers and optimize the entire audio system to take better advantage of the fairly new M7CL FOH console. I’m proposing scrapping our current speaker processing (a hodgepodge of all kinds of stuff) and going for a new NetMax processor. And a complete system tuning.
2. Replace our aging Barco projectors. We have two 2,000 lumen units (on 2 screens) that look OK when there’s no light in the room, and positively dim when we have the windows open. Time to jump up to 6,000+.
3. Install the Expression 3 lighting console and bring everyone up to speed on it. This will entail re-working some things in the booth so it will fit. And some training.
4. Clean up all the wiring in the tech booth, at FOH and in the amp room. It’s a bit of a mess right now, and a lot of stuff was installed on a “make it work right now” basis. No labels, no plan, just make it work. You know how I feel about unlabeled cables…
5. Switch over to Pro Presenter for our presentation platform. This will require an investment in computers, software, and training; and will require buy-in from more parties than any other task. Wish me luck!

There are a lot more things I’d like to do, but if we can get those accomplished I’ll feel like we’re making progress. I also want to work on really developing the teams of volunteers this year. Developing leaders in each discipline and working on regular training. And just hanging out and having fun together. I also want to spend time reminding our tech team that we are a vital part of the worship experience and that what we do impacts people’s lives.

I’ve been here a little over a month now, and I feel like a lot of that time has been spent observing and getting a feel for what is “normal” here. Moving forward, I want to build on our strengths (there are many) and work on weaknesses. Mainly I want to make sure our people feel cared for. That’s probably the thing I’m weakest at, so I have to work the hardest there. But really, if I miss that part, the 5 “big” things on the list don’t mean that much.

Peace.