What's on My Mind at the Moment » Technology

Incredible Week – Day 4

sunnythomas — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 17:12:12 +0000

Today was the day. Six weeks ago, it was an idea. Five weeks ago, I heard about the idea. Today, Town Hall for Hope became a reality. With all that happened today, it is going to take some time to gather my thoughts and post them here. So for now, here are the pictures. Enjoy!

The day begins with the sun rising above the TV truck and the generators.

Dave Ramsey about to lead the combined team in prayer. Awesome!

Dave Ramsey's team getting prepared to take questions from Facebook, Twitter, etc.

Dave Ramsey doing his sound checks.

More sound checks.

Inside the LifeChurch.tv Video Suite

Another Video Suite picture.

From inside the auditorium.

Dave Ramsey going "Office Space" on a microphone. You'll have to watch the event to understand this picture.

Incredible Week – Day 3

sunnythomas — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 05:55:35 +0000

Big day today for Town Hall for Hope setup. The TV truck and generators arrived. The auditorium chairs were setup. There are 1717 chairs in the room, if you were wondering. One the highlights for me was getting a tour of the TV truck. It was very cool. Here are some pictures from today.

Incredible Week – Day 2

sunnythomas — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 03:42:27 +0000

Things really heated up today for the Town Hall for Hope event. Some members of the Fox team and Dave Ramsey’s team arrived today. The staging arrived. Lights started to get mounted. The LED wall was assembled. Here’s some pictures. Enjoy.

Incredible Week – Day 1

sunnythomas — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 04:28:22 +0000

The team dove into it today. They removed our cameras from the auditorium and removed the lights around the foot of the stage. Fox will be utilizing their own cameras. We’re adding some TVs in the Green Room and in another room that the Fox team and Dave Ramsey’s staff will use. We’re also lining up the electricians and a boom lift that we’ll need tomorrow. I’m told at least sixty more lights will be added to our existing lights. A larger stage will also get installed tomorrow.

We received a very detailed outline of the event from Fox today, which they call the Operations Book. They think of everything. They even had a plan for an emergency evacuation of their crew, if necessary.

I’m very excited to see things start to take shape tomorrow.

Incredible Week Begins Now

sunnythomas — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 13:25:24 +0000

If you haven’t heard, LifeChurch.tv Oklahoma City Campus will serve as the broadcast location for the Dave Ramsey Town Hall for Hope event. This event will be streamed to 6100 locations in the US and will be broadcast on Fox Business Network. It will be broadcast live on Thursday, April 23.

We’ve been interacting with Dave Ramsey’s folks for about 3 weeks and after a few face to face meetings, hundreds of phone calls, and millions of emails, it all comes down to this.

I can’t wait. I am so excited to see how God is going to use this. I am thrilled to play a very small part of what maybe the largest webcast in history.

There are a lot of people working on this event. This week, I’ll be writing on what the Tech Team is involved in. So stay tuned. If you feel led, please pray about this event and pray for Dave Ramsey’s team and LifeChurch.tv team.

LifeChurch.tv adds its 14th campus

sunnythomas — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 04:27:39 +0000

After months of planning, today, we had our first experience at our 14th LifeChurch.tv campus in Owasso, Oklahoma. Owasso is a suburb just north of Tulsa. This is a portable campus that meets in a elementary school on Sundays. The Owasso campus becomes our 3rd campus in the metro Tulsa area. It joins the existing Tulsa and South Tulsa (Bixby) campuses.

The Tech Team, along with many others, put a ton of hours in to get everything setup. Their hard work has paid off. We saw over 450 people at our sneak peek experience this weekend. What’s really exciting is we saw 9 people come to Christ today. Next Sunday is our official grand opening. If you live in the Tulsa area and are looking for a church, feel free to check us out.

Here are some pictures of the Owasso campus launch.

In Nov. 08, the Tech Team does their first site survey of the school where the campus will meet.

In late Jan. 09, the Tech Team installs trussing that will remain at the school.

Our new road cases, complete with the LC logo.

The volunteers assemble the trussing that gets setup every week.

The trussing goes up.

The completed stage.

My favorite picture.

LED Walls at the LifeChurch.tv Tulsa Campus

sunnythomas — Sun, 21 Dec 2008 23:43:34 +0000

I paid a visit to the LifeChurch.tv campus is Tulsa today. I’m so glad I did. The campus team did an awesome job with the lights. They used Martin LC 2140 LED panels provided by Integrity Lighting. Here are the pics. Enjoy!

Expanded Lobby and Auditorium Opens at the Edmond Campus

sunnythomas — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 21:18:43 +0000

One of the largest LifeChurch.tv campuses just expanded their auditorium and lobby. If you’ve visited the Edmond, Oklahoma campus you know that the old lobby was woefully inadequate. It wasn’t really a lobby; more like a glorified hallway. The Tech Team was responsible for installing sound speakers in the new auditorium sections, the lobby and outside of the building. We also installed TVs and stage light fixtures in the lobby.

Many people worked hard to make the new space look awesome. Here are some of the pictures I took this past weekend.

After the Insane Week

sunnythomas — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 03:54:40 +0000

Thank you so much for your prayers and kind words. I survived the insane week. Actually, it was a great event for me. The tech team did really well. I am so thankful to be working on a team with some very gifted and dedicated people. There were some challenges in supporting this event. One of the challenges was having to setup and teardown the tech gear in four different locations around town. The other challenge was getting a three screen rear projection system to work on a stage that was never designed for that.

As you can see from the pictures below, it didn’t just work, it was awesome. In case you are wondering, we rented a Catalyst Media Server to display the images and manage the projectors. Click here for more info on it.

Enjoy the pictures.

Setting up. Complete with popcorn and Dr. Pepper

My favorite picture.

The Insane Week Begins

sunnythomas — Sun, 28 Sep 2008 13:08:00 +0000

This week is going to be an insane week for me and my team. This week is the October Event. On an annual basis, the church brings in the entire staff and their spouses from all over the county for meetings, worship, and even a picnic. In addition to hearing from our senior pastor, we will also be hearing from Bill Hybels, senior pastor at Willow and Steven Furtick, senior pastor at Elevation Church. My team gets to make sure that all the audio, video, and lighting technology works for this event.

We begin the setup today as soon as the weekend experiences end and we won’t stop until Friday afternoon. I know that I’ll be working at least 75 hours this week. I’m sure some of my team members will be putting in more.

I’d appreciate your prayers for me and my team. You can pray that God would give us the energy, stamina, and patience we will need. You can also pray that we wouldn’t have any problems with the technology. We’re using some video projection technology that is new to us. Please pray that it would enhance and not distract.

I’ll keep you posted on how things go.