 Again, good morning. Thank you for joining us. We've got some more folks coming in here in the waiting room So while we while we wait for those folks coming in Just to say that we I am still working on the website for the for the conference website to kind of Niche out a little section for digital ministry I know that a lot of the some of the resources have been, you know, primarily placed in the COVID section of the website. So we're working on that it's we're a little delayed I'm getting on making that happen because My supervisor your communications director Timothy Vale is out. She fell on some black ice and She hurt herself and she she broke she broke her leg Excuse me. So to that and we pray for Tiffany for healing and for comfort and and pain-free restoration and strength But know that we are, you know, we're continuing to update that that the website My plan would be to in my vision. Of course, my vision is is simply mine Would be to have those resources in that site ready for Super Saturday So I know that which brings me to my next announcement Super Saturday registration is open I am running two workshops one is The an introduction to hybrid worship, which will be interesting and the second is if you've seen the the literature is The tech deacons roundtable will be we'll be having a roundtable Discussion like we do every week Right there on Super Saturday. So So I want to call your attention a little bit here to the chat section. I Placed a couple items in the chat And again in lieu of having the website, you know kind of organized and up and running I Went and you know delivering in the follow-up emails And I know I'm a little behind on those follow-up emails to the tech to our meetings But I will place these same resources. So if you don't get it in chat today, you'll you'll see them in an email But the three resources that I have is one is a We all know that there is a site online That you can go to called unsplash for royalty free artwork and particularly You know those that again royalty free meaning that Those are photos that you can use in your live stream Do not require a license so We know that there's unsplash But there's also a bit others and the folks at the salt community That is another another resource while you're you know looking at that at those resources Look around their site. They're they come from a different tradition than we are And they focus on their their focus is on Larger churches, so you won't hear in the in the in their blogs and in their resources that they provide you won't hear things like a nave or a Sanctuary you'll hear auditorium. You won't hear chancel You'll hear stage. So, you know You'll have to do the conversion in your head But they they do offer some some really good resources another one that I just thought of is 1230 media and I'll put that in the chat as well Yeah, 1230 media has some great stuff to a lot of Videos that you can watch that pertain directly to what we you know that we're all involved in you know as Tech tech deacons and tech crew media specialists in our churches the other bit is Photoshop alternatives, so you know some of us use Photoshop some of us use Canva so that's actually listed in you know in this in this other resource and not another one from salt But there's others as well so that list is a pretty comprehensive list of of Programs that you can use in place of Photoshop Photoshop tends to be expensive and not all Not all this can afford you know to you know have an adobe subscription so these provide you that you know that a Ability to Download PSD files. That's dot PSD and I'll put that in the chat as well PSD files are files that you can edit And Change the content in the layers and individual layers And and that is important. So if you go to places, I know I plug before Church motion graphics, you'll notice that in their drop-down box when you're ready to download one of the options is Dot PSD and that makes it easy to Change the language perhaps that they you know that folks may be used other church Traditions may be using like for instance a good one is you know, it's Easter. He is risen Well, we most of us wouldn't use he in our tradition. We would use Christ as risen So with a PSD file and one of these free alternatives, you can change that Anyway, I can see that someone else had Oh, thank you Elizabeth for the free music video. So this is so cool This is exactly why we meet So thank you Elizabeth you wanted to add some Yeah, yeah, what so what type of music videos? It's something I ran across to it's Jean and John Strafty they have They're the they're a singing couple. They sing a lot of public domain hymns, but they put it to various music They've put it with beautiful slides images and it's free to use you just have you just they just ask that you report if you have one license or CCLI that you report it. That's how they make their money. So I'll put the link in the chat. Oh, thank you Thank you so much Elizabeth and again you know we We are You know aware that we even though we have these free resources that we have to put the you know The the reference to the creator in our attributions. So include that at the end of the You know, you know where you would normally put your CCLI or your one-liceness Information at the end of your worship board, you know during you know during your worship Make sure that you attribute to the artist So thank you again. Thank you for that Elizabeth Send me related to that since it's software and maybe you all know this There's a group called tech soup.org. Yes, and that's not church necessarily stuff, but it's for any nonprofit things like All kinds of generic software office stuff and Windows stuff They do have hardware to the hardware. I think is always refurbished stuff, but the software is You can sometimes get a license for like I just bought a license for Adobe elements and a premier elements $27 admin fee And right just one install each but yeah, right for for for $27 for Photoshop elements It's great. No, so Photoshop element is actually a it's a good starting point and for what we may be using, you know, and You know editing in in our in our workflows Photoshop elements, which you can get at staples usually cost about I think it's correct me if I'm wrong Richard. It's either Like 99 to 129 dollars, you know, and it's one install But yeah, well, thank you for that as well Does anybody else have anything to share that like that that you can like? Yeah I put in one there a link to the dig live event at Vanderbilt University they have a Huge collection of artworks from all periods medieval renaissance current contemporary art that I've used for After scripture readings or something like that or even during hymns It's searchable by biblical text by people by persons personality that you want Just even vague things. So it's it's it's a tremendous resource Thank you. Thank you so much James. I appreciate that. We all do. Yeah, I there's another Go on Richard. Yeah, I'm the one who put up the question about TechSoup The one of the links I found said that When you vet through this is just information when you vet through TechSoup It's actually very tied to Google and you can't get Google's business features for a non-profit without going through TechSoup to be vetted and So I had a comments. It's very well regarded by a comments that are now five years old. So I don't know how Current they are but they did Well, somebody said you really do have to plan ahead because you some things you can only buy once a year So for Microsoft if you want a lot of things you've got a plan ahead I don't know whether that's current. That's five years ago and and that some of the vendors within their system also have their own vetting and so so Time in planning and I also had a good I also had a question about This is very mechanical Unsume with a streaming license. We're supposed to show the streaming license What do you do spotlight at the end? I would yeah, I would spotlight. That's what I thought you can fit the Go ahead No, and we'll I'll be spotlighting some other resources. So you'll see how spotlighting works. Yeah Yeah, fine. I'm okay there. Thank you and thank you for your time. The rest of my question is No, no, we're we can we can circle back to it. I think no, no, I've got an answer Okay from other comments one that wanted to make sure So Richard brings up a good point with TechSoup there is at least again my my experience with TechSoup goes back to I think seven years ago when I worked for the brain injury Alliance of Connecticut in Windsor, Connecticut and It was you know, at least at seven years ago I think you know in terms of providing feedback Richard has a you know, a little more you know Little more fresh take on it, but even then yes We had to plan and you know, we planned at least in at Bayak. We planned around the you know tech Grant cycle. So for us, it was once a year anyway, you know, we had a we had a Grant that we would apply for through the Hartford Hartford Center for public giving and that was you know, a yearly thing but also yes, you know to to to repeat, you know Richard's point you you do have to plan because you are You are required to you know, have all your ducks in line and do some pre-planning and shopping and then place your order so Yes, but so thank you for all that information. The last bit I have here is There is I was talking to a friend of mine and She reports that concordia publishing is offering Licensing for a forty five dollar flat fee for live streaming I believe it includes and I think this you have to check it, but I believe Sue was saying that it was for their whole catalog and You do not have to report So concordia is linked with one license and My conversation with my friend, you know centered around the fact that you know There were some frustrations with one license of submitting, you know to one license You know what again reporting, you know what you're using and having some of those reports Come back rejected and then having to resubmit. I don't know if anybody's had that experience here on the call but What she said in terms of concordia now, of course, this is coming from you know a friend of mine who works in an Episcopal church So we we use some concordia's Lutheran, but I'm sure that you know, we may find a couple, you know Nuggets and depending on what you're, you know, what your Worship genre is like in at your own church with within your own context. So I Share that out as well So they see that there's two new messages here Elizabeth says another music site is queer sacred music comm comes with Audio lyrics and sometimes free sheet music. Well, thank you. Yeah, do you want to speak to that Elizabeth? This is great. We're all sharing stuff today Yeah, I'm really the tech music person in my church. Can you tell that's where my This is this was a wonderful site I actually put together a couple of videos just just in the last couple of days using The material from unsplash using images from unsplashed But it's got a whole host of of music and again They they put it out there right on the website free to use free to stream no licensing required nice Well, thank you so much And then Jane commented that the the Vanderbilt site used to be linked through the the UCC Website, but we will Jane was that through the the through national or was that through SNE? It was the national site and since the national side has been revamped I don't see the link anymore So it used to be really convenient to get to through that. So I just need to reestablish it It does have great resources and it's really easy to search by verse Oh, cool. Thank you so much So what we'll do is I'll I'll take a copy of the chat and I invite you all to do that after at the end of our time together um, you know just right click on the chat and You know click download and you can you know in case you're not a quick typer like I am You can um, you know have those resources for later And we I will be taking the the resources in the chat again from from all these From all of our meetings and meet-ups together and placing them in our resource section One of the things that I've been working on Um, let me just close and minimize the chat here And sorry for looking down my my teleprompter has not come in yet So I'm you know looking looking at my camcorder and now looking down at the at the screen. So I apologize um Let me spotlight myself And what I'm going to share is some Resource that I've been working on I've been working on a um Making system diagrams and you don't have to you know screen shot this or anything. I'll make it available Uh with a what a bunch of them. This is uh, this is the system that my um that is running at my husband's church And uh a few other churches. So it uses three ptc cameras Uh, it uses a streaming computer as you can see I'm working on the the image. So it's you know, it's not It's not totally uh, like I don't have the I just have a box inside That's a streaming computer. I suppose I'm having an icon but again work in progress So it has three street has three ptc or pan tilt zoom cameras now again I share this as one example your church will be different and again, I will I will have multiple, you know, uh resources and diagrams out there um The three ptc cameras are controlled by a ptc controller, uh, which you can see down here On the lower left hand side and all three of those cameras are powered by um a av Network switch. This is a separate switch than what you're Uh using in your church to get to the internet. This is a switch just dedicated to those cameras and to your live streaming system It's not connected to the net it can be and I'll I can Provide more information about that later. But again, all of those three don't um go into All three of those cameras are then fed into the streaming computer to streaming computer then Or any either, you know zoom vmix or actually it would have to run vmix obs or live stream studio will Well, then, um, you know go to facebook and in this particular system Again, these diagrams will have notes with them in this particular system the um The at least in vmix and in studio not the case in obs, but in vmix and studio you can live stream to Um, I believe in vmix. I'm fucking I know in vmix. You can stream up to three sources Okay, uh to three destinations. Excuse me three destinations, but that will be youtube Facebook and another private You know source like, uh, you know live stream the live stream.com or a real meal um So, you know, that's the architecture on the video side on the audio side. You'll see the the components right here on this side Which are The connection to your house sound you'll see the connection for for crowd mics and if you have a keyboard My uh in my husband's church, they use a yamaha clavin ova And that clavin ova not all clavin ovas have line outputs, but this particular clavin ova Has two line outputs and if you've been to his site and you and you watch the You could watch the watch the live stream carefully You'll see that the two you know when there's a wider shot You'll see two plugs just plugged into the into the line out section of the Of the keyboard right there So I share that with you as You know what's to come in terms of You know in terms of system diagramming My my goal is to have this sort of stuff all You know bound together into one resource by super saturday. So again my i've been You know, i've been you know busy at work trying to create resources for us. So in that case I've also been working on how to integrate zoom into live streaming At the same time, so and i'll have more about that You know in in the future Which would make for a hybrid and hybrid at hybrid as we'll find out, you know as we as we you know Transition into in-person worship Hybrid worship will has many meetings. So and we'll that's one of the ones one system design that we'll explore So I've been doing a lot of talking I'd like to hear from y'all questions When you when you pose your question, just let us know. There's some new new folks here Hello, and welcome to the tech deacons round table again When you pose your question, just say who you are what church you're from and You know if you care to share what What your architecture what your what your workflow looks like you're using zoom? Are you using? Are you streaming to facebook? Are you streaming to zoom and connecting to facebook? That's that's what So let me see what we have in the chat here and anybody can chime in that this, you know The the floor is open and my and my My mouth is closed I'll start then. Uh, this is jim baracko. I'm at the first church in west heartford, canada cat Uh, I've been putting together. I'm the organist and music director and the duty has fallen to me to put it together online services So typically when I do that, uh We don't have ptz cameras yet. We are looking to install them it's uh pending a Vote of the congregation because of the cost it's coming in at All total with between we're making a room for the equipment and everything else within the chancellor So it's coming in close to 30 000 to put all of that together, which will also include overhead mics for the sound Which is going to be really important because I see from Jane that she's noticing that the sound for the piano doesn't the organ doesn't sound as good as the piano Uh, and so it really makes a difference of where you record and where the mics are placed And that'll make a big difference in what the actual sound comes out So right now i'm using uh two canon hand-held cameras using tripods. It's limited quality. It's not great, but it does and i'm using a software package called video pad by nch software it's uh Not it's got most of the bells and whistles that adobe premiere has But it's a single cost 59 for the software Uh, it does not it's not a subscription And allows me to do things like virtual choirs split screens In overlays all the stuff that I wanted to be able to do One of the things that we're doing for the epiphany season is we're including a segment called snowflake prayers And the ministers did a sermon back in january about snowflake bentley Who is the person who first photographed? individual snowflakes And you can see them if you googled snowflake bentley you can there these Pictures of snowflakes that he took that you can use and we just make a little we put in the text of a prayer on top of a snowflake And then in the background I have Snowflake falling down on the screen and another snowflake appears so it's an interactive way of keeping the Congregation engaged as part of the service each week they submit prayers That will turn into snowflakes and then next sunday we air that as part of our service That's what and we're only using youtube And we connect the link to that Through email which we send to the members of the congregation as well as we put it on our website Thank you. Thank you so much james of thank you. Thank you again for sharing That's a neat idea having uh, you know requesting Prayer concerns and prayer request joys and concerns during the during the week and then you know making them available In in the format that you described. So that's really nice. Thank you. Thank you for sharing that I have a follow-up action Sure, richard. Yeah, go on. Um, thank you. I'm um interim at elliott church in newton mass for jim You mentioned uh using Um Images from the Vanderbilt resource in the course of scripture. Did you was it you that? Reported that and do you do that by sharing the screen or is there a similar device and then also What was the adobe program? Yeah, that enables. Yeah, would you mention that again, please? Yes, please sure So the the way I do it is I download a the picture from Vanderbilt. You can download it in various formats uh, and it just comes down as a large jpeg and then I use that as an image with in uh video pad And I changed the duration uh, this The default for an image in this program is three seconds Which is not a lot of time to see an image. So especially with a piece of work like that Art like that. I changed the duration to air that picture for 30 seconds So I'm not using zoom or something. I'm using it and overlaying it as part of my video segment that I'm doing so The deacon will share the video of themselves reading the scripture immediately following that I input this picture And I sustain it for 30 seconds And then I add subtitles underneath that says what the title is Who the creator is and any other attributes that I need for that And the adobe product is adobe premiere Right so So to to go back a little bit james So this is the software video pad you're using for live broadcast or are you using that? To build a to build a video That's that's that's for a online it's pre-recorded video. It's not So this is this would be like again adobe premiere. That's why I asked when you mentioned adobe premiere. So this would be either to take the place of adobe premiere sony vegas or But it's um, it is um manufactured by Black black magic designs so Going back to the comment the question We notice our piano sounds better live stream than our organ and that is Yes, the the what james has Suggested is is right on For I would recommend jane to look at the of the video that we have on our s and e website crowd mics So crowd mics Do one of do one of two things They can either and they will they do both they both pick up the organ And they also pick up the congregational responses from Folks in the sanctuary. So when you have a call to worship When you have when you're having when you're reading the psalm You know and the worship leaders, you know say, you know, you know, um, you know We we come to we come to celebrate christ, you know and and and then there's a response to that At least it doesn't sound very it doesn't sound one way So you're actually getting the complete You're getting a complete Dialogue both from the from the chancel, you know from the worship leaders and from the congregation If you do go to my husband's website live dot summersville ucc.org put that in the chat You'll notice that yes, it you know in his case He's you know He's got a he's got a joyous congregation And so during the prelude You can hear folks, you know talking at the same time and you know So what what I what myself and Graham say, okay, just you know turn turn down the uh the mics a wee bit You know, so what we're working on in his case because he does have a a congregation that is very joyful um when they come together You know before the worship service begins um Something that I don't experience in in my own denomination as a physical church You know when we get in when us Episcopalians sit down, it's like you could you hear you could hear the dust fall, you know but um just saying but um And no matter what we're looking to do then is to take that step further still have the crowd mics But have if we go back to the um And I'll I'll spotlight this again if we go back to the system diagram the um We you'll see that they're on the right hand side of the diagram. There's a input. There's a stereo input So there's two cables for keyboard. So while he does have the keyboard he has that yamaha clavinova We don't know if it's possible And I haven't had time to do this and work with uh, manny and the new Folks the new uh guy that he's got work that he's got a Serving brian to see if there's a line output right on the um organ itself Now he does not have an an electron pneumatic He has a electronic organ made by alan And so that's one of the reasons why you could do this if you you know if you have an alan organ Um, or if you're using a keyboard you can bring that directly into your you know into your stream by using a broadcast mixer So that'll be so if you can imagine picture an additional input You know to the to the right of the keyboard that's duplicated. I don't know if we can do it The what seems to me at least in the in the older um alan organs that um The they have speaker outputs You know for um all the different um uh registers that you know and various speakers laid out throughout the um um the chancell um and the and the and the congregation the sanctuary in general Like don't know if they have a combined output You know because so if you know if you're an organist acquired director of music and music, you know that different parts of You know depending on what your stops are set at and your presets are set on the organ The music's coming out of the sounds coming out of different speakers at different times So hopefully there's a there's just a simple stereo output on that thing Can I just go follow up question on that because I'm I heard from up here at another church that they're pursuing Connecting their organ directly to the stream and we have a newer organ in our church. We purchased it I don't know three years ago. Maybe um So I mean and I'm not a music person So whatever I'm gonna say is probably not right But my understanding of organs you have an electronic part to it But you also you have the pipes in the room And connecting an organ directly into the stream It's that is that only the electronic parts? How can you capture how the only way to capture? The sound in the room is through a crowd mic. Is that a correct? That is correct. Yes So and that's why it parsed it out between electroneumatic and electronic So in an in an electroneumatic You have and if there's organists choir directors here jump on They're What you're sending out to the different locations in your you know to the different chests and Divisions in the in the worship space is midi a lot of them run on midi So there'll be a midi cable going from the console or the organ console itself That the thing we see that you know the organist plays You know plays that That signal is You know converted to midi and that mini signal is sent up You know to the to the pipes where um, you know, there is another midi board that you know takes that Takes that signal and converts it into right down into the signal that the relays use There are the cell noise used to open and close the valves on the pipes That's how an electroneumatic works in the in the term in the Case of allen organ or an electronic organ or a keyboard There is midi like all the boards within side the organ are controlled by midi But there is what's what's your what the organ has, you know, like an allen has inside of it is The power amplification to drive loud speakers It also may depending on how old your allen organ is have a stereo out or a digital out So and I know somebody I don't know if it was the at the um at the 11 a.m. Session or the 7 p.m. Session I think it was a couple weeks back said that they were that they were looking to um, you know connect their organ Was that kevin williams by any chance? It might have been. Yeah, I think it might have been that's who I was speaking to as well Yeah Okay, so for it's similar to If it's a pipe organ and not all pipe organs are electroneumatic Some can be trackers Or some other other mechanisms Think of it as an acoustic piano You're not going to get any sound from a pipe organ or you're not going to get any sound from an acoustic piano unless you might get So if you have a hybrid which it sounds like you have it's a combination of electronic stops and real pipes Then in order to get the entire sound of the organ you're going to have to use mics Okay Okay, thank you Thank you for that clarification james. Thank you so much Yeah, our neighboring congregation to my husband's congregation is the summers congregational church and they have a They you know their church burned a few a few years ago They had a misfortune of losing their building losing the sanctuary and they rebuilt They put in a magnificent organ and it's a tracker But in other words, it's all the all the all the things that drive the The uh and make them make the sound or it's all mechanical. So so it's real real nice piece Let's check the message. I see we have one new message in chat Oh, yes, thank you elizabeth black magic to vinci resolve. Yes, it's free. It is a really good program It's it's really it's something that you need to wrap your head around it with and I and I confess That i'm in the in the process of doing that myself Um, it's just you know different different pieces off like any software different software different workflow Uh, but some things are similar Um, some things are easier and resolve some things are you know or a little more complicated But like any piece of software, you know, there's there's a learning curve I'm currently using uh, sony vegas used to be sony vegas sony sold vegas to um to magic m a g i x And i'm currently using these so so we're using magic um Magic Movie studio pro that's what i'm using at the moment. So but also, you know going back and forth between between uh resolve so yeah, uh resolve and and know that this the the resolve A program comes in two flavors. It comes in hd Which is a full the the nice thing about resolve is that it is a full on video editor And works really well The and it's free the only difference between the free version and the paid version Is that the paid version? Is enabled you to shoot and we're not sure but it doesn't allow you to edit video in 4k so So thank you for that elizabeth If you jogged my memory Any other questions This is great. We have a lot of lot of sharing today I think we're all staring out the window looking at the snow If if it happens to be snowing in your in your neck of the woods I'm staring at the impeachment set up with the sound off Have we we all have we all have our uh or go-tos Well, I was born in the district And so we're okay. Well, thank you. Thanks for sharing that lived across the river in virginia till age eight 1950 Oh, wow I'm a native of native of new jersey, uh, southern new jersey philadelphia. That's where I'm able to so I'm always doing I've both my husband and I have been in uh new england since 2005 and I'm still I'm still learning so, you know, the old uh, the old, um, um Saying that, you know, you're not really from a place until you've been there for 25 years. It's true so More in new england Yeah, that's what I I've been here a little over 90 years and maybe we're accepted I know we talk a lot about, um worship, you know, streaming and software and hardware for worship Does this group ever discuss like church management database software? Or is that's a topic that we could cover or we can cover it? Sure. Um, and actually you bring up something I'm gonna I'm gonna write down here. Um Um What what is your question regarding software because I do have I do know of one Software, well, we have the software selected and we just upgraded from kind of the administrative back end version to the connector in realm We use realm connect from a And so we're rolling it out, um, but We're trying to get everyone on board with its staff lay leaders congregation And it's a big job. So this comes some of the challenges I'm facing right now around that Yeah, jenna. That's it's a really good point. So I We've rolled out and I say we the the folks when I served in in long meadow Uh, massachusetts at st. Andrews. They adopted realm And realm is great. I mean realm You can have facebook style conversations Within ministry groups Um, and you don't even in the the nice thing is is that realm will send whenever you if you're let's say you're you're in the media group and someone set up like like jen set up a a um A group for media for all the media folk for all the tech the tech folk Um, and you had a conversation What will happen? And one of the settings you can enable in realm is to have realm Whenever there is activity in the conversation is to email you a notification The nice thing is is that you don't have to go. Okay. You know somebody somebody commented on your you know on your post Um, you don't have to go back into realm to reply to the thread You can just simply reply in the email and realm will pick the You know the response off and put it in the chat So the next time you go into realm and log into that, you know that uh that uh thread From whatever topic you happen to be talking about, you know within your digital ministry group Um, you'll see your comment that you emailed. So that's kind of cool You know so but it did get to your point. Um, um Jennifer it took us To get like fully up and running and have and fully up and running means, you know, you know We launched it, but it took about two years To get every to get everybody on board You know, and it was it was a You know, at least from the worship from the worship leadership staff It was like look and we have realm, you know, we're always pointing to it So that's my job. I feel like I'm the cheerleader and I'm so excited about what it can do But I feel like sometimes if I didn't push it push it push it and keep it in the forefront Not that people wouldn't use it, but life happens and other stuff is going on in church and Oh, sure. And and when you rolled it out, was this approved by council? uh cabinet All approved and we had our annual meeting The end of january and so we had about 80 people attend our annual meeting on zoom, which I thought was an excellent turnout Yeah, it is yeah We needed 50 for a quorum and I was worried we wouldn't have 50 for the quorum and the meeting went um two and a half hours Which was way too long But people stayed through it and I talked about communications and realm um And now i'm rolling it out through officers and lay leaders and trying to get it out to everyone But some of our data is old in it as well because we imported the data From an old source. So there's hundreds of inactive records and It's part of a membership on it all goes together right and I can speak for you know my limited experience uh with our database that we use here at the conference Um, and no, I say here at the conference. I mean we're we're a conference staff distributed because of of covet um, but uh, we use brick river and uh, which is a competing You know software and uh, it's based. I think I believe the um brick river is um is Was started by a by a member of the united methodist church Um, and um, I know that there's a I forget who actually started realm of what companies started realm Uh, but they are they are also tied to a denomination. So it's nice to work with you know with uh folks who are You know who are tied to the church, you know So when you have the you know when you're I'm sure you've you've uh been through this. I know I know what I'm saying Jen, but It's one it's one thing to have like a database field for you know, whatever, but it's also Nice to have Fields that are in there, you know in your database That incorporate the incorporate the church and church language. Absolutely And we we already encountered that the rep we talked to was from north carolina And you know, we had a demo for the upgrade and you know The fields the default field was Head of household and spouse And that immediately was I was not going to fit with our church and gender was male or female And so we were able to customize it to fit what we wanted it to but I guess I got 23 more months to go because we're We're still rolling it out Yeah, and you know, it's um again It's it's something that you um, so It's something that you always have to be a cheerleader for And also you're always like to your point of of scrubbing, you know, old records That's one thing that we have one person, you know on staff what a portion of her job is to Find duplicates in the database Scrub old records make sure folks are updated, you know, and that's why we send out at least from the from the s and e staff We send out to um, you know the leader the leadership of the conference. I believe it's to clergy. I believe Again, don't quote me on that. I'm Exactly that new But we send out updates and there is a dashboard that your local That's your local leadership can log into and report at least in in the Episcopal church. We say officers, but you know what you could You put all your uh, you would load all your ministries and you know Pied folks to like for instance tech deacons. That's one thing that they can That they can report who who is a tech deacon in your you know in your uh congregation In fact, we got a call from one person which is really cool They were in their dashboard, you know further church and they're updating the records and they they called one of us and they said What is a tech deacon? So we told them what a tech deacon is So Anyway Any other comments Any questions again and as I say in many many meetings if you're if you're joining us for the first time I you know I know our Our core our core Participants on the call will say okay. Here he goes again, but I always say that uh digital ministry is not a sprint Digital ministry is a marathon so if you you know if you Don't feel that you know any question that you may have is is is uh Not worth asking because we're talking about PTZ cameras or you know crowd mics and you know You're not quite there yet. So remember it's a it's a journey and one thing they always say is when I um, you know Had worked for uh companies, you know as an audio video and it specialist um Worked for a long middle public schools doing the same things with this background and if you go back far enough I work for sony But it doesn't mean that you know, I'm not constantly learning as well. So we welcome your questions You know and no matter what stage you're at in your digital ministry if you're just starting out or you have a more advanced question During this quiet moment. I'll just throw out a uh, hello to uh, james Uh, church. I was a member of many many years ago And before I moved down to the nyanic area Yeah Good good to make that connection Our church administrator also used to go there many years ago Sure, and I probably should have asked those and I know that there were folks who were actually coming in you know Throughout this throughout our conversation. If there's anybody who knew here who wants to share where they're from and you know, uh, you can name your church and Name and also include a state for people like me I'm realizing now that there are you know, not that we are a you know a combined conference um You know that covers southern new england Um, you know, they're they're duplicate town names. So if you could say, you know, your church name Um, you know, we're from your church name and the state that'd be great Hey, Eric, would it be possible for us to get contact information from all you know from each other for each other? sure I don't know if anybody else would find that interesting, but um, you know, I'm from connecticut I'm in hebron. I mean james is right in west harford You know, if I wanted to get in touch with him and say, hey, can I come over and see what you guys what your setup is Stuff like that. I think it would be helpful Yeah, so um, what we could do immediately is if if you're um, you know, if you're um, Okay, we're doing this james. You could share your email address in the chat Um, well, I don't have anything specific. I was just when he was talking I thought hey, there's somebody that's not too far from me It might be nice to you know have a Okay, and I don't have anything specific right now Sure. Thanks and thanks for asking that question lisa. Let me break this um, and um Go into gallery view Buy a show of hands either electronic or just by simply raising your hands if everyone's okay with sharing your contact information At least your email address If I could share your email address, would that be okay? Just give a raise Okay, and I got that recorded so Since we are recording I could see that um As far as uh, richard chrisman and richard edens I know that you're you don't have video turned on if you could raise your hand by going down into the You know either putting in chat or or um or um electronically raising your hand Who cool. Thank you so much everybody Again, thank you for for joining us. Um, I'm aware of time and I know that you know We are entering our our lunch hour So I want to be mindful of your time and the time the time that you uh that you give oh paul You you had your you have your hand up. Okay. Thank you. I'm sorry paul Yeah, i'm paul goodman. I'm from the plantsville congregational ucc in plantsville connecticut Uh, which is a section of sullington if you you know where that is right next to waterberry if you know where that is Um, and uh, I'm just curious. It's the tone of the group here largely Do most of you this is just for my own information. Do most of you pre-record? Look how many how many people are doing live? lives Oh, okay Because there's a lot of talk about video editing and stuff like that It's just it seemed to be tilted more toward the pre-recorded service as opposed to the live I mean, I do elements of recording and things like that, but nothing Compared to what it sounds like some of y'all are doing so Well, uh, no this paul. That's a lot of us. Um, or some of us. I should say a lot of us some of us Even though we're we may be live We will insert By any means we we have available to us a pre-recorded video into the worship service So if you're doing that if you could raise your hand and and you know, okay, that's that Pre-recording and playing back Because because there are people I know who pre-record the entire service and On sunday, they sit home drinking their coffee and watching themselves Leading worship And that's a and that's an option We pre-recorded the christmas eve service, but Yeah, each week, uh, we're only doing pre-recorded right now Because our congregation most of our congregation who would be coming is in a very, uh, risky age group So, uh, it's better for them to stay home. So we're make we have our building closed We're doing zoom worship now. We've done it since the second week of january So the nine o'clock on sunday morning and we have a monitor set up in the sanctuary It looks like a production studio these days And the pastor can see we put it in grid format for her and she can see exactly what's the reactions of people So she gets that interaction From the congregation that she misses by just preaching to an empty sanctuary Yep, yeah, we're doing we're doing kind of half and half. We live stream on sunday. There's about 10 of us total in the congregation. We don't have Uh, a bunch of people coming in for worship, but there's the the pastor. There's the organist. There's me There's another tech person. There's a liturgist and we social distance among ourselves We live stream and and we do some recording of stuff also mostly music Yeah, our pastor actually is in his, uh House he doesn't go in the sanctuary in the choir pre-records And we play that during the worship So there's actually the church is actually closed except when the choir goes in with masks to pre-record right That's us too Our in our church everybody is is virtual, but we do zoom live and we have a lot of pre-recorded segments Nobody in the sanctuary So that uh, so yeah in in in our congregation. We have Organist we have two folk one person controlling v mix The live stream so we live stream We live stream to facebook and then we take comments from facebook prayer also, so prayer concerns um joys and concerns and we use that kind of as an interactive You know Way to you know to communicate It's not the same as seeing, you know a a screen in front of us, you know, like a you know a 27 inch monitor or larger For us to see participants like we're seeing now, you know on zoom But it's that's that's where we are as a as a congregation We we took a slightly different track and I think I want to kind of Probably plug For for our next topic for next week Or in two weeks And that would be um what we did at saint mark's not in the same style because it can you know It every church is different But what we did when we went into pandemic when we went into lockdown Uh, the priest that I was working with us together decided. I don't know what we were drinking that morning really We decided that we were going to go into worship Five days a week three times a day morning prayer noonday prayer and complin Uh, so if you go if you're on youtube and you go to saint mark's media Or look for saint mark's media you'll see this you know this this um all of all the worship services but um By a show of hands how many would be interested to to uh learn and kind of investigate the worship that could happen outside of sunday Because I know we focus a lot on you know on um on sunday But as we go digit more digitally and this is one of the points that you're so you're gonna get a little little sneak preview of hybrid worship The one of the um Things is that we as a as we go more digital And you know you all adopt a digital you're you're all here, you know, but as churches come on board. It's important Uh to realize that uh worship for many folks it will come in the form of um For for more engagement will come in the form of short form video so for example, uh one of our um Our our meditation service, which is not out of the episcopal prayer book It's not out of the episcopal hymn. It comes you know comes right out of the Comes from a tradition different than uh than than your typical episcopal worship that we run on friday nights Is between 15 to 20 minutes long. It's very short noonday prayer is very short Now i'm not saying you need to adopt those those um You know those strategies in terms of liturgy because we're all you know, we're all uh, you know come in from different contexts but how would who would Think that they would benefit from um learning about and investigating worship through the week on the other on the other You know the other rest of the uh Good because that actually will boost engagement for you on sunday So that's one thing that we found out uh at uh at say marx so And there'll be some uh social media uh tips that I can give you for you know for for boosting organic engagement So I know we can like my husband uh he on facebook He uh uses the uh facebook um boost add boost section of uh facebook to you know To boost viewership within a 25 mile radius of the church Uh, which is very keyed on specific you know folks who have specific interests That's one way of doing it, but there's also another way that you can do it as well so Eric are you referring to uh Just worship or would that also include like for example with any a seven week linton discussions? Yep. This yeah so discussions reflections. Um Devotions, you know like anything that you would um that you would um again in social media It's you know, what what do people what would people find valuable now? We all know what happened when pandemic you know when we went into lockdown our viewership If you can remember back went through the roof You know and uh, we were you know at least at same marks We would you know and and in my husband's church we could we would hit the you know They'll go live button and get 300 viewers So we're not there yet you know and You know we You know there there are some strategies that you can you know, you know the reason why that there was a There was a bump is because there was folks who there were churches who weren't pivoting as fast as some of us were And so we you know we we were um, you know getting some of those viewers And participants in worship, but then as churches adopt digital more and more that's when you saw the everything level off so Cool again, I want to be um, you know mindful of folks time as I look at my own time here. It is 1202 If there's any other comments Or uh concerns or feedback anything you want to mention to the group? Okay May have a future session it'd be great to hear if there's anybody that has any experience with uh phone apps That I use interactively for church I know, um, I guess it was liz that made that question in the In the chat and that's that's very intriguing. Love to learn more something about that Yes, um, in fact, um, sorry liz for uh for Not seeing that but yes, there is an app that we can there's plenty of a couple of providers for apps And we can we can focus that on in another uh in another meaning as well. Yeah, one of them's sub splash Sub splashes. So if you want to some you want some fodder, there's there's a company out there sub splash That can provide that In fact, I was in conversation with them. Um, get not to make the ball. I'll save I'll save it for for another time they they were They're more they're They're more in tune now. They're they come from a different work. Uh different, um, you know, uh, christian expression to different christian Tradition than we are and so they didn't have a lectionary Built into the app at all. But then what they had is reading what they call a reading plan Uh, which is what most evangelical churches, uh, do As opposed to reading from a three three-year lectionary like we do Um, so What uh, what I when I approached them, you know, I think this was like four years four or five years ago Uh, which the app I will say then was much more expensive. They've actually since everybody's been adopting digital Um, they've they've actually lowered the price down and they they're making it a little more affordable for smaller churches but we you know, there was a We had some discussion about, you know, including the lectionary. So and they went lectionary. What is that? You know, it's It's it's all good. It's all good so So with that folks, um Have a great week We'll see you in two weeks or another week if you want to drop drop on, uh, the the next tech tech decan Round table next tuesday at 7 p.m. So until then Be gentle with each other be gentle to yourselves. Take care. We'll see you Bye bye now