Share Your Best Advice

[Gracetech]

"Stay calm people are watching you"

"Two wrongs don't make a right"

"Don't force it...unless you can live without it"

"You can never have enough resolution"(works on many levels)

Always be direct and never forget to love.

crt

[Mustangnaz]

If the computer is acting in a way that does not make sense, try restarting it.

Emails are great, but don't forget the power of a handwritten note. (As a 22 yo music pastor this doesn't come natural but is worth the effort.)

[DTV-Engineer]

Several points about maintenance and troubleshooting:

• Documentation is your friend! Every wire must be labeled; ideally, every wire should have a number that you can look up in a binder to tell you where the signal comes from, where it goes, and what its purpose is. Your drawings (you do have drawings, don't you?) should reference every wire number.

• When trying to solve a problem, an excellent starting point is to ask, "What's the last thing that has changed?" You might answer, "Someone just returned our CD player, but that doesn't have anything to do with why the console's entire left channel has died." Then you discover that the CD got plugged into the left effects insert jack instead of its proper input jack. True example.

• Foster an atmosphere of honesty and readiness to accept responsibility. It's a strong leader who will step up and say openly, "I messed up" or "I broke this" -- especially if it's a debatable point that could be blamed on the equipment or circumstances or on someone else.

• Establish a way for people to report equipment problems without fear of getting their head handed to them. (This tends to tie into the last point.) Finding out on Thursday night that a stage monitor got blown is far better than discovering it Sunday morning.

• Be methodical in your troubleshooting. Either start at the beginning of the system and go forward step by step until the signal goes bad, or start at the end and work backward until the signal appears. It's hard when you've got half the congregation doing the neck-twist-to-glare maneuver, but an orderly approach is almost always quickest.

• Know your system! Read the manuals. Understand how your system is wired. Know where all the circuit breakers are.

• Think through some basic backup plans. What can you do if the main PA dies? What do you do if the projector or graphics computer dies? What should the sound operator do when the power fails? (Hint on the last: kill the amps until the power comes back and stabilizes.)

• Always show up early, allowing enough time to fix the problems you don't know about yet.

That's about enough... I'll end with the excellent advice my Dad gave me more than 40 years ago about engineering radio remotes: make a habit of going to the bathroom before air time, because once the show starts, you aren't going anywhere.

-- Jeff

[llbrown2]

I do a bit of everything, but I work mostly with the projection and I've learned that the best thing I can do to perfect any work is to ask the little old blind lady in the back to critique it. She can always tell me if it's readable or not. She doesn't always care for the grunge/youth designs but we compromise and it generally pleases a crowd.