WFX 2010: Day 2

Day 2 began for me with the keynote talk by Shaun King, pastor of Courageous Church here in Atlanta. His focus was how you can use social media to grow your church, not just numerically, but in discipleship and diversity, as well. He's a young guy, great speaker, and he's really plugged into the whole social media thing (e.g., Facebook, Twitter, etc.) and using it to great advantage in his church, which is less than a year old.

King made the observation that in his church, 75% of the attenders showed up because of a social media connection, and the other 25% showed up because of a social media connection with someone they knew. Pretty impressive. He shared some interesting anecdotes about his experience using Facebook ads to promote his church, and he demonstrated how he uses Facebook and Twitter to connect with his congregation personally. You can see Pastor Shaun's notes for his talk on his blog right here.

My next session was a hands-on session with live sound mixing, using Yamaha M7 digital consoles, with sound over Ethernet. But even though the technology was a bit beyond what we have in our worship center, (and "a bit" is a gross understatement), the principles of live mixing, EQ, compression, headroom, etc. are applicable nonetheless. I did learn some very helpful things about how to improve the sound of various instruments and vocals using just the controls on the console, and I'm looking forward to experimenting with that stuff.

Out on the expo floor, I stumbled onto an impromptu demo featuring Todd Fields, worship leader at Northpoint Community Church here in Atlanta. He had a drummer with a very small club kit (snare and small kick), and he played acoustic guitar and sang. All of this was amplified only using mics hanging from the overhead rigging in the booth, through an array of 4" speakers that were also hanging overhead. (With the particular product the vendor was demonstrating, this little open booth in the middle of the show floor sounded like a cathedral--pretty impressive.) Anyway, it was a nice little treat for a worship leader/media guy.

Next came a session on "immersive audio"--surround sound, elevated surround, and some of the stuff like what Todd Fields was helping to demonstrate. The first speaker, Buford Jones, worked as a live sound mixer for Three Dog Night, George Harrison, Pink Floyd, and many others, going back 30 years--very cool. The other speaker, Steve Ellison of Meyer Sound, explained a lot about the acoustics of rooms. I was hoping to hear him relate all of this stuff to how we might do better sound designs for worship, but from there it sort of went into a more esoteric place, with interesting audio demonstrations (flies buzzing around our heads, etc.), but with little practical application for the church. (They can't all be winners, eh?)

Tonight they're having church tours, but they cost extra, so I'm going to pass and try to go back to my hotel and do some of the work I'm not doing at home right now.

More tomorrow.