What do you get when 850 technical artists all gather in one place? Gurus of Tech 2012! Technical artists, mostly from the U.S. with a few Canadians, 4 Germans and 2 Austrians, gathered for two days in May at the Willow Creek Crystal Lake Campus, outside Chicago to learn new skills, enjoy community with fellow technical artists, and to be reminded of why we have chosen to give our lives to serving our local church through the use of the technical arts.
The idea of Gurus started 10 plus years ago, as a way for church production people who were attending NAB to get together and share ideas. Today, it has expanded with the same intent, but on a much larger scale.
LEARNING
A big draw for Gurus is the chance to learn something new, so that we can serve our churches better.
This year we had about 20 industry leading companies in audio, video, and lighting equipment manufacturing. The technologies presented this year included the newest in wireless microphones, digital audio consoles, intelligent lighting, video broadcast routing, powered line array speakers, and audio signal processing to name a few.
The skills-based breakouts featured technical artists from Church on the Move, Northpoint, Topeka Bible Church, North Coast Church, Mars Hill Church, Coast Hills, Willow Creek and LifeChurch.tv to name just a few. The topics covered audio, video, and lighting disciplines, as well as a few talking about working with volunteers or how to handle copyright.
COMMUNITY
While learning new skills is important, the idea of Gurus of Tech is to bring the community of technical artists together. Being involved in a local church doing production work can be a very lonely place. There is nothing quite like being in a room with 850 other technical artists that feel a similar way, think about life from a similar vantage point and laugh at the same jokes. To know you aren't alone can't be experienced too many places. To feel like you are a part of something much larger is a gift. To know you aren't crazy, or that other people struggle with the same issues as you, helps you to sign up for another season of ministry.
As the main sessions unfolded, watching a room full of people, who are normally responsible to make sure everything works, just let go and fully experience worship to our God is not something that happens every day and something I won't forget for a long time.
I loved seeing all the tweets the night before the conference started, of people trying to connect for dinner or just to hang out with anyone else that was staying at their same hotel. Also, during the lunch time both days, Bill Swaringim and other leaders from #CTLN (Churchtechleaders.org) helped to facilitate connection between people based on region, further helping people feel like they are known. People went home having made a friend of the TD who lives just down the road from them.
BECOMING LIKE CHRIST
Learning how to do the task better matters. Learning that I am not alone matters. But the bottom line is to be more like Christ than I was yesterday. The majority of the main sessions were focused around this idea.
Nancy Beach, of the Slingshot Group, talked about the importance of observing the Sabbath, even though many of us are working it.
I interviewed Blaine Hogan, an artistic director at Willow Creek to talk about how technical artists and creatives can work better together.
Dale Carmen of Reel FX talked about the lessons he's learned through his career as 3D animator.
Knowing that most tech people have trouble setting and keeping boundaries, I had the privilege of videotaping an interview with Dr. Henry Cloud, applying his book “One Life Solution” to the context of being a technical artist in the local church.
The final main session was titled “What Your Senior Pastor Needs From You”, which was a live interview between myself and my pastor, Bill Hybels. So often we can be hyper-focused on production, and this session helped to expand our view of how the technical arts fits into what our churches are doing holistically.
TEAM
At the end of the day, doing this event with the Willow Production team is my favorite part. I have the privilege of working with some of the most amazing technical artists around. Gurus would not have happened without their spirit and dedication to serving other local church tech teams.
As one of the founders of Gurus of Tech, Ben Mankin of Mankin Media has a heart for connecting local church techs. He and his team were the other half of making Gurus a success.
Check out www.willowproduction.org for Gurus content, including the main sessions.
