 Greetings friends, welcome to CTUCC conferencecast for... I'm sorry, that's wrong. Greetings friends, and welcome to the making of CTUCC conferencecast. The regular podcast of the Connecticut conference of the United Church of Christ. Whoever you are, and wherever you may be on life's journey at this very moment, you are welcome here. My name is Eric Anderson. I'm the minister of communications and technology for the Connecticut conference of the United Church of Christ. I am the host and the producer of CTUCC conferencecast. Conferencecast is a weekly production of the Connecticut conference. It has both an audio and a video edition. We are now on our 150th episode of the audio edition. We launched it three years ago, back in 2000. The video edition came along a little later. We produced that for the first time in December of 2011, so we've only had 88 of those. Video takes a little longer. Remember that. Here, my friends, is the archives at United Church Center in Hartford, Connecticut. And this is the studio that we use for the recording of CTUCC conferencecast. We start off each week with a personal reflection, a meditation from a member of our staff, and we rotate through it. And we get those authors in to read those each week. We believe it critically important to start with the spiritual reflection. I first became fully aware of my relationship with God in prayer when I attended a church conference camp in Pembroke, New Hampshire when I was 11 or 12 years old. That is what we believe is at the foundation of what we do in the church. We are here to provide spiritual resources to the people in our lives, whether they be friends, people that we know, or whether they be complete strangers to us. Each week here on conferencecast, we try to tell some of the stories of our local churches, some of the stories of the conference as a whole. Once it's recorded, conferencecast moves into the editing stage. We use Apple's GarageBand to mix the audio for our podcast. It's convenient. We're using Macintosh computers, and it's included. But there's no particular reason that you need to use this. There are plenty of really excellent tools out there for both platforms. And there is in fact a free one called Audacity, which works on both PCs and Macs. So feel free to use whatever works for you. There are three things that we're trying to accomplish when we're editing audio. The first is to try to improve the sound of the original, to make sure that it's loud enough that people can hear it. When I attended a church conference camp in Pembroke, New Hampshire, when I was 11 or 12 years old, every morning at this camp, after breakfast, there was morning watch time. We also sometimes try to even it out so that the softest sections aren't something that you have to strain to hear, and so that the loudest sections don't give you a headache. There is no substitute for a good audio source. Cleaning things up can only accomplish so much. The second thing that we're trying to accomplish in audio editing is to combine different sources, things that may have been recorded at different places, at different times, and using different equipment. In addition to trying to make them sound reasonably consistent and have the same basic audio levels, we're also trying to get the right pace for the finished show. The third thing that we do in audio editing is lay in the musical tracks. We have four major musical themes in conference cast, the jazz intro and concluding theme, and three acoustic guitar themes, one we use for the spiritual reflection, one we use for the prayer, and one we use for news and events. There are a couple of other semi-regular musical pieces as well. For example, the monthly Touchstones with History has an orchestral theme to bring those stories in and out. When the editing is finished, which is usually late Thursday morning, we export a standard MP3 audio file. We upload that to our web server and update the podcast listing on our website, which produces an RSS feed. Because we registered with Apple's iTunes Music Store, which we did for free by the way, people can subscribe there and have the audio automatically download to their computer or audio device. Other jukebox programs can automatically grab the file via its RSS feed address as well. And of course, we post the link to our Facebook page and Twitter feed. That completes the audio, but video is another step and another tool. This time, it's Apple's Final Cut Pro, which professionals use for major film releases. We're able to afford it because Apple cut the price radically just a short time ago. The editing starts with the audio track that we just produced in GarageBand. What we do is to add a video track that consists of graphics, generated text, still images, and actual video which we've recorded. Over the spiritual reflection portion, we frequently use classic artworks to illustrate the biblical story or to illustrate the point the author is making about it. We use those because we can. They're in the public domain. More contemporary works which we might want to use are not available to us. We also use photos and video that artists have made available to us through the Creative Commons licensing program. The process takes more time to complete than it does to describe. Remember, video takes time. When it's complete, we upload the finished video to our YouTube channel where we add it to the conference cast playlist. We also tweak the homepage of our website so that it displays the current video conference cast at the top. And of course, it gets posted to Facebook and to Twitter. Conference cast can look like and it can be a pretty complicated production, particularly when we're covering something like our annual meeting, a UCC General Synod, or the National Youth event. I've recorded conference cast in hotel rooms on more than one occasion. And twice I've actually recorded and edited conference cast on a moving train. What makes for a complicated conference cast is a lot of material that has to be reviewed and condensed so that it takes that 15 minutes or less. But remember where we always start. We always start with the core. We start with the spiritual reflection, which is about the way in which a loving God is interacting with us here in this world. And there is the challenge for you. You have a part of this message to convey, a unique and priceless part of the great message. You have a portion of the great story to tell. Pastors, you might, at the beginning of the week, spin out some thoughts, thoughts that might become part of the sermon that you preach the following Sunday. Those of you who are great with prayer might want to take some time each week and lift up those who need some prayers that week. But do be careful. If you mention somebody by name, make sure that you have their permission first. Tell the world about the amazing building projects that you did last week, or tell the works about the service that you're going to be providing in the coming week and ask them to come and help out. This is not going to be the only medium for your message, but it can be a new and powerful one to go out and use to tell your part of the story. This is Eric Anderson, the Minister of Communications and Technology for the Connecticut Conference of the United Church of Christ, praying that your days this week and every week may be filled with presence, the guidance, and the grace of God.