NSWN 1 and 2 are over!

It's hard to believe but we're done with both welcome nights! I just want to thank everyone for all their hard work. Everything went so smoothly. I think our hard work and advanced prep was crucial and really effective in preparing for the two nights. Great job everyone!

I wanted to document our timeline of events on Wed.

12:45pm - arrive at Pauley Ballroom Garage. Sound trailer, Overflow trailer, and Davis Trailer. The stage pieces were in another trailer and unloaded on Bancroft.

1pm-1:30pm - unloaded all the equipment by 1:30pm

1:30-2:45 - built the stage, instruments on stage, attached sound pieces to the truss. put up the side screens.

2:45 -4pm - put up the large 30ft screen, most of the lights were attached and ready.

4pm-4:45pm - began run through for skit

4:45-5:30pm - began run through for praise.

5:40-6:30 - full run-through

7pm - nswn starts!

NSWN 1 is OVER! NSWN 2 is TONIGHT

So NSWN 1 is over. I can't believe it. Praise the Lord! It was an awesome night. My rough estimate put our total at over 900 people at one point. We had to shuffle our upperclassmen and even sophs out to make room for the newcomers. That's simply amazing. And all the technical aspects were just right on. I counted only like 5 or so errors. That's like nothing. It was so smooth. I'm speechless really. Here are some pics Evelyn and I took during the setup and a few during the performance. Gracepoint Berkeley will have some more up later...

Oh and for our first time using PVP. There were some bugs and kinks to work out but props to Jackson, Irene and MK for making it happen. Let me tell you there are few pressure situations like that one. AND this was Allen's first time on the board mixing for the skit. Great job all!

NSWN - WEDNESDAY

Setup for our NSWN begins at 1pm today at Pauley Ballroom on the UC Berkeley Campus. I'm excited and a little nervous. Although this is just a single event, it's a huge opportunity for us to really welcome new students and connect with them and help them connect to the gospel. This is always the most important aspect of all of our technical endeavors. From the sound to the stage, to the lights, it's all about creating a safe, warm and inviting environment to share the gospel. And doing this well and creatively is what really excites me about all the work we do. Every we're faced with a challenge to do our best AND to have greater heart and care as we do it.

In this week's devotion text Jesus talks about how we ought not to take the seats of honor when invited to a banquet/dinner. But we should take the humble seats. As I thought about this passage and some of the reflection questions that followed I had a sudden thought...Why am I even invited to the banquet at all? I don't deserve to even be a part of it. And that's how I feel and think about my life with God and even to be part of something like NSWN. No matter what part of the church I serve in, it's ALWAYS a privilege. So as I approach the work, stress and battles I face today during setup and all the possible problems we encounter, I'm asking God for constant perspective and gratitude.

See y'all tonight!

What's New at NSWN?

So, what's NEW this year at NSWN? Well, actually, not that much. We're doing a setup pretty similar to last year and in fact we've simplified some parts of it. We actually have fewer lights... But one addition we're adding is Pro Video Presenter. This is a big time software tool from Renewed Vision. I mean the big guys use this tool. Too bad we're not a big guy =(. We were able to rent one for a week to demo and see how it can work with our current setup. It's a great tool. How are we using it?

Well, if you've looked at our setup diagrams, which I'm sure everyone has thoroughly studied =), then you'll notice that we have 3 screens. The side screens are hooked up to one laptop and the double-wide center screen is hooked up to a different laptop. We want to play our new and exciting video on all 3 screens. But we ran into a few problems:

1. Center and Sides are at different resolutions - 2048x768 and 1024x768.

2. We're using HD resolution this year - 720 which is 1280x720. So the video natively will be a bit smaller to squeeze into the 1024x768 and won't use up the entire 2048x768.

3. Center and Sides have different inputs. How do you sync them?

We could play the video on the center only but we want everyone to see it well. We could play it on all 3 with smaller projector resolutions (1024x768) but that would be too small. Or we could play it on the center screen with the wide resolution and the side screens. But the different resolutions is what makes this so hard. So let's play them separately on each laptop. But how? And this is where Pro Presenter Video comes in. Using a special network protocol (yes over wifi), the software can sync itself across both laptops! It's amazing.

I'm sure I've confused some of you. Just come tonight and see it happen!

First SWS of Fall 2009 - Back at Pauley!

On Sunday, we went back to one of our favorite venues on the Berkeley campus. Few rooms can hold as many people and have such a large and great feel. We're lucky to have a room like this. We can bring in all of our gear and do the setup of our choice. It's a grand open space for us to work in and I love it. We did a similar setup as last year and our Saturday workday helped us prepare really well for the setup. Here are some pics of our setup - from the garage to the service.

NSWN Behind the Scenes - NL workday

We spent this past Saturday - from 1pm to almost 10pm setting up our potential design for the NSWN this coming Wednesday - in 2 days! We also got to setup for our SWS service at Pauley. For our first week back in a full scale Sunday Service I thought everything went pretty smoothly. I can only acknowledge the help of so many people who came out this past weekend to make it all happen. Thanks to everyone!

I'll try to describe what we did in a nutshell...We cleared some space in the NL MPR. We brought out all of our stage pieces - rentals and from Willard. Rental pieces are 4x8ft. Willard pieces are 4x4 Black pieces and 4x4 Joyland stage pieces and 3x8 wooden brown pieces. We setup the truss pieces - 10 x 3 for the main truss on the super towers. Then 4 x 10ft pieces on 4 large pass stands to be the posts for our 10ft screens and to hold some of our moving lights. The truss on the towers will support 3 projectors (2 at 5000 lumens, 1 at 3500) and 2 Ev non-powered speakers, and an array of Par 64s. We're doing things a little differently this year.

NSWN Behind the Scenes

Here are some pics of the layout of what we're doing at Pauley. It's my chicken-scratch handwriting but you'll get the idea. I'll try to post a better computerized diagram at some point.

Basic Speaker/Audio Layout

Basic Vocal/Instrument/Channel Assignment

Projector/Scaler/Screen Layout

Trailer List

Overall Layout

There's a lot more to each of these drawings and just tried to dump them out on some paper the other night. I'm starting with these to instruct/inform others.

Saturday is a major workday for us 1-6pm to do a test of all of our gear. Since all of our gear has been in trailers all summer we're just making sure everything still works as we expect. We'll also be testing out the new video on a wide screen. At one point we thought about making it a 3 screen projection system but we don't have a wide enough screen =(.

More pics to come soon.