Volunteers at the Helm

Video Transcript

00:15
Most churches will utilize volunteers within their congregation to some capacity for their audio and visual needs.  
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Volunteering in your church is not only about helping with the operational needs of the ministry 
00:29
but also about enriching the whole community and building life-long friendships.
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Serving as a volunteer can be one of the most fulfilling experiences.  
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But often those who volunteer for AV have no idea what they’re getting into.
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Lack of support and training will lead to frustration and burnout.
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First off, It’s super helpful to nominate an AV  leader or overseeing person who has ample technical knowledge.  
00:59
This person might be employed by the church. They might be a volunteer who is knowledgeable about AV  
01:05
or it might even be a contracted person from outside the church.
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With that said, the AV leader should have the following main roles:
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Maintain the systems.
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This doesn’t mean that they have to repair everything themselves. But they need to be able to identify a problem  
01:24
or broken piece of gear, so they can either purchase the right replacement part
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or hire the right person and/or integrator for the solution.
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The AV leader will be the person to establish a  unified technical protocol for volunteers to follow
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so that volunteers know exactly what’s expected from them.
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More on that in a bit.
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The AV leader should be the one to schedule the volunteers
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since they will know best the technical capabilities of the volunteers.
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With that said, here are some helpful protocols that can be implemented
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to help ensure a productive and smooth experience for the volunteer tech and ultimately the church as well. 
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1. Your volunteers must be trained on how to use the equipment they’re operating.  
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Training can take place as a specific event but it is more realistically done while on the job during sound check and while service is happening.
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Making detailed how-to videos specifically related to your churches setup and operations
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is super helpful and will prepare a new volunteer before they ever touch the equipment.  
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Which brings me to number 2.
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Never leave new and/or unexperienced volunteers alone to run sound.
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Though a volunteer may know what buttons to push at a certain time,
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if they haven’t yet learned troubleshooting skills  
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and a problem occurs, the volunteer will not know how to fix it.  
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This can be a very disheartening experience for them.
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It leads to frustration for everyone. 
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And number 3.  
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As your more experienced volunteers gain skills, 
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pair them up to work with less experienced volunteers.
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This not only allows the new volunteers to learn new skills, but reinforces those skills in the ones teaching them. 
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And number 4.
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Because most volunteers will generally not understand all the routing and signal flow in a system,
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following a unified and systematic technical protocol is essential.
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Here is what a unified technical protocol looks like:
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On the stage, each instrument should have a pre-assigned channel on the stage box or floor pockets to plug into.
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Label those inputs clearly so that the volunteers know exactly where an instrument should be plugged in to.  
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Leave a few blank channels for instruments that might not be part of a normal worship setup.
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All monitor wedges should have a unified position on stage and output assignment on the stage box or floor pockets.   
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In-ear monitor outputs should have a pre-determined output designated for each position as well.
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Here's a word of caution.
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It’s not wise to re-patch these output assignments  
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or an unsuspecting volunteer will come in on the next service,  
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and find that a monitor doesn’t work and will have no idea what happened to it or what to do to fix it. 
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On the mixer, everyone should be working from a unified scene or session.   
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The input channels on the scene should line up with the input channels on the stage; 1 to 1.
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Here’s a word to the wise, just because you CAN re-patch or soft patch, doesn’t mean it’s a good idea.
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Soft patching is a flexible function in our digital mixing world  
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where you can assign a channel to a different channel.
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This is very confusing to a volunteer.  
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Keep everything 1 to 1 when working with volunteer operators.
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Create and make use of instrument channel presets on your mixer.  
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It’s helpful to have an experienced engineer dial in the pre amp gains,  
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EQs, dynamics and FX for the specific instruments that are used on a regular basis for worship.
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Save those presets to the user library.  
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Teach the volunteer how to pull in instrument presets for that specific instrument or vocal.  
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In addition to storing user presets,
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the TouchMix-30 Pro offers world class factory instrument presets that will get you 80% of the way there
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and which are sounding great if you don’t have an experienced engineer who can help you get dialed in. 
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Here are a few tips for maintaining the stability of your sound system: 
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After an experienced engineer has dialed in your PA system,  
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restricting access to certain things like amplifiers and DSP processing gear might be helpful.
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On hardware pieces you can use grill plates to do this.  
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Once your routing is set up on your mixer, it’s a good idea to add restrictions on this as well. 
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To do this on the TouchMix, you’ll need to access the security settings by pressing the “Menu’ button and then selecting “Security” on the screen.   
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The security screen will present a text field to enter a password and two options labelled “Security settings” and “Log out/Lock”.
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To setup your initial passwords you’ll need to select the “Security settings option.  
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The security setup screen will display four different password fields  
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allowing you to create varying degrees of access and restriction with multiple passwords.  
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Someone who is proficient at mixing and has a strong understanding of the tools and features of the mixer
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could receive the “All Access” password because you trust in their ability.  
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Someone who is new and doesn’t have the experience or knowledge yet,  
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might receive the “Levels Only’ password, which will lock them out of the more complex processing  
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and router features, resting access to fader control and panning.  
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There is also a step between which will unlock the mixer in simple mode.
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Whether or not you intend to use all passwords when setting up security,  
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all password fields must be entered for the security feature to work properly.  
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If a password field is left blank, the mixer will automatically default to the next level of access after any blank field.
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So take the extra few seconds and fill in all passwords  
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with unique and independent passwords and then write them down somewhere.
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You don’t want to get stuck locked out of the mixer because of a forgotten password.
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It is also important to note, that the admin password must be entered in order to change or delete passwords at any time. 
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When all is said and done a perfect operating protocol for your tech volunteers doesn’t guarantee perfection
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and it certainly doesn’t guarantee that everything will run smoothly at all times.
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The servant’s heart attitude on the part of both the AV leader and volunteer is key to making this ministry a fulfilling experience. 
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But, having a framework to work within and guidelines to follow will help everyone to know better what’s expected of them. 
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That’s it for this video. Move on to the next video whenever you’re ready. See you there!