Video Transcript
Volunteers at the Helm
8m 46s
00:15
Most churches will utilize volunteers within their congregation to some capacity for their audio and visual needs.
00:22
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.
00:35
Serving as a volunteer can be one of the most fulfilling experiences.
00:40
But often those who volunteer for AV have no idea what they’re getting into.
00:47
Lack of support and training will lead to frustration and burnout.
00:51
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.
01:10
With that said, the AV leader should have the following main roles:
01:15
Maintain the systems.
01:17
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
01:29
or hire the right person and/or integrator for the solution.
01:34
The AV leader will be the person to establish a unified technical protocol for volunteers to follow
01:40
so that volunteers know exactly what’s expected from them.
01:45
More on that in a bit.
01:47
The AV leader should be the one to schedule the volunteers
01:50
since they will know best the technical capabilities of the volunteers.
01:55
With that said, here are some helpful protocols that can be implemented
02:00
to help ensure a productive and smooth experience for the volunteer tech and ultimately the church as well.
02:08
1. Your volunteers must be trained on how to use the equipment they’re operating.
02:15
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.
02:25
Making detailed how-to videos specifically related to your churches setup and operations
02:31
is super helpful and will prepare a new volunteer before they ever touch the equipment.
02:38
Which brings me to number 2.
02:40
Never leave new and/or unexperienced volunteers alone to run sound.
02:47
Though a volunteer may know what buttons to push at a certain time,
02:51
if they haven’t yet learned troubleshooting skills
02:54
and a problem occurs, the volunteer will not know how to fix it.
02:59
This can be a very disheartening experience for them.
03:02
It leads to frustration for everyone.
03:07
And number 3.
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As your more experienced volunteers gain skills,
03:12
pair them up to work with less experienced volunteers.
03:16
This not only allows the new volunteers to learn new skills, but reinforces those skills in the ones teaching them.
03:25
And number 4.
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Because most volunteers will generally not understand all the routing and signal flow in a system,
03:33
following a unified and systematic technical protocol is essential.
03:38
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.
03:49
Label those inputs clearly so that the volunteers know exactly where an instrument should be plugged in to.
03:57
Leave a few blank channels for instruments that might not be part of a normal worship setup.
04:02
All monitor wedges should have a unified position on stage and output assignment on the stage box or floor pockets.
04:10
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.
04:19
It’s not wise to re-patch these output assignments
04:22
or an unsuspecting volunteer will come in on the next service,
04:27
and find that a monitor doesn’t work and will have no idea what happened to it or what to do to fix it.
04:34
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.
04:46
Here’s a word to the wise, just because you CAN re-patch or soft patch, doesn’t mean it’s a good idea.
04:55
Soft patching is a flexible function in our digital mixing world
04:58
where you can assign a channel to a different channel.
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This is very confusing to a volunteer.
05:04
Keep everything 1 to 1 when working with volunteer operators.
05:10
Create and make use of instrument channel presets on your mixer.
05:14
It’s helpful to have an experienced engineer dial in the pre amp gains,
05:19
EQs, dynamics and FX for the specific instruments that are used on a regular basis for worship.
05:26
Save those presets to the user library.
05:29
Teach the volunteer how to pull in instrument presets for that specific instrument or vocal.
05:36
In addition to storing user presets,
05:38
the TouchMix-30 Pro offers world class factory instrument presets that will get you 80% of the way there
05:45
and which are sounding great if you don’t have an experienced engineer who can help you get dialed in.
05:51
Here are a few tips for maintaining the stability of your sound system:
05:55
After an experienced engineer has dialed in your PA system,
05:59
restricting access to certain things like amplifiers and DSP processing gear might be helpful.
06:07
On hardware pieces you can use grill plates to do this.
06:11
Once your routing is set up on your mixer, it’s a good idea to add restrictions on this as well.
06:18
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.
06:28
The security screen will present a text field to enter a password and two options labelled “Security settings” and “Log out/Lock”.
06:38
To setup your initial passwords you’ll need to select the “Security settings option.
06:43
The security setup screen will display four different password fields
06:47
allowing you to create varying degrees of access and restriction with multiple passwords.
06:54
Someone who is proficient at mixing and has a strong understanding of the tools and features of the mixer
06:59
could receive the “All Access” password because you trust in their ability.
07:05
Someone who is new and doesn’t have the experience or knowledge yet,
07:10
might receive the “Levels Only’ password, which will lock them out of the more complex processing
07:15
and router features, resting access to fader control and panning.
07:20
There is also a step between which will unlock the mixer in simple mode.
07:27
Whether or not you intend to use all passwords when setting up security,
07:31
all password fields must be entered for the security feature to work properly.
07:36
If a password field is left blank, the mixer will automatically default to the next level of access after any blank field.
07:44
So take the extra few seconds and fill in all passwords
07:48
with unique and independent passwords and then write them down somewhere.
07:52
You don’t want to get stuck locked out of the mixer because of a forgotten password.
07:57
It is also important to note, that the admin password must be entered in order to change or delete passwords at any time.
08:06
When all is said and done a perfect operating protocol for your tech volunteers doesn’t guarantee perfection
08:13
and it certainly doesn’t guarantee that everything will run smoothly at all times.
08:18
The servant’s heart attitude on the part of both the AV leader and volunteer is key to making this ministry a fulfilling experience.
08:27
But, having a framework to work within and guidelines to follow will help everyone to know better what’s expected of them.
08:36
That’s it for this video. Move on to the next video whenever you’re ready. See you there!
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Volunteers at the Helm
8m 46s