Too much travel.   Too much time on the road.   This is what I get for putting myself on a commercial project…..   That said the client is great, the wife is hugely supportive and we are seeing some very cool facilities.    We’re making television history.    Sorry - can’t talk about it publicly yet.   

Now, March 25th its Aruba for the wife and me - without the kids - for five days.

Well I have to admit to thinking a couple of things I saw today were pretty cool.   My prior post spoke of the pressure I sometimes feel between our Blue Hat Design business that’s focused specifically in churches and ministries and our legacy in the commercial broadcast world.   Jumping between the two for me sometimes feels like business whiplash.   Today I was smack in the middle of the commercial side of the world and saw some things that few people get to….

We’ll be working for KNBC in the same building with the Jay Leno studios and just down the hall from Days Of Our Lives.    This is the same complex that Carson did his show from.   Here’s the fiber tray that sends signals to Jay’s dressing room.   It’s strange when someone is telling you to land your cables here or there and then you look down and see something like this in the rack you’re going to be working in.

Well I just taped on my office door a month of travel itineraries.  It says I will be in the office for exactly three working days during the month of March.   This is a good thing really.  It means we’re so busy that I will be in the field where the action is for the better part of the next month.   

The majority of this time will be for NBC and there’s the rub for me.  I love being busy.  I derive great satisfaction form rising to a challenge.   Arguably this NBC project  our team is taking on is one of the most challenging projects I have ever seen.   But it’s a commercial project.   Now the balance of our faith-based work goes on as usual.   Mat and Steve keep the wheels turning but I have to miss a lot of it.   I am needed elsewhere.  

I am conflicted about this because like I say, I love a challenge.   But I want to work with the church all the time.   But in this economy one should be ever grateful to literally have more work than you can handle.   This is our position.  We’re turning some work away.   

Sunday at 8:30 I am on a plane from Atlanta to San Diego.  Internal conflict or no, I will be on the plane.   I will hope for an upgrade.  I will collect my frequent flyer miles and Marriott points.   I will go through my usual first night of on the road insomnia.    I will miss two track meets and five nights of tucking in the little boys.   I will wake up alone and so will my wife.  

Still for twenty years this is what I do.  

So I guess I will see you out there somewhere and until then, keep on truckin.

Is it important to serve up the truth in a way that attracts rather than repels?

Well here’s a lightning rod topic: when does good media production and creative programming cross the line and become entertainment?   I was out sick from my own church this weekend and saw this video online from the service.   It’s getting a lot of views on Youtube.    I probably err on the side of freedom in worship so I think that a moment like this can be a great teaching tool.   I know this view is not universally held in the body though.  

I saw a pastor demonstrate real leadership today in a design meeting.   Reverend Dan Brown is the pastor of Trinity On The Hill United Methodist Church in Augusta.   

Today was the architectural kick off meeting for a campus renovation that’s expected to takes years to complete and will encompass many aspects of church life.  

The building team has prioritized several parts of the project but has placed sanctuary renovations and improvement of their broadcast program at the top of their list.    As a part of the sanctuary renovations their old pipe organ will be retired in favor of a hybrid pipe/digital organ.   Many churches who opt for this route plan on including a number of “dummy pipes” on the chancel to satiate the older members of the church who have an affinity to the traditional.    I watched this pastor come down firmly on the side of good stewardship today and say that he did not believe they should be spending money on things that have no function and are only for show.    It was impressive and inspiring.  

This is an exciting project that we are just getting started on and I look forward to helping this church extend its reach into the local community.  They broadcast live every week with several replays of the service along with a studio-produced program too.

I had an interesting Facebook message last night from a client who said he was missing us and that he had gotten used to having us around.   Sites related to projects that last a long time and are complex can become interesting places to try and leave.   You want to do a good job and you want the client to be happy but eventually he has to sink or swim on his own.   Through the years I have seen both extremes of this phenomenon.    I have seen clients trying to kick us out too fast and clients that wouldn’t let us go.   I once was involved in a state government project where the client literally chose to operate out of a closet we had set up with a temporary installation of their old gear rather than move into the new, spacious and scary facility we had spent a year building them.    I ultimately had to go on site to push them into the space and to extract our people away from their fear and lack of accountability.   

Now the client who wrote that note last night was not at remotely the extreme end of the spectrum as the state government folks I refer to.   I am thinking that we have to find a way to help our clients with their new technology adoption cycle and its inevitable pitfalls and traps.   Its not that we aren’t helping at all.  In fact I would argue we do better than most, and often to our own financial detriment.   Eventually though we have to go home.   

I wonder if there is a sufficient need out there to justify some level of post installation support, troubleshooting and documentation maintenance.   I wonder if we could provide it without making it a financial hole we have to dig out of.

Standing in the ruin that was the East New Orleans sanctuary of the Greater St. Stephen Full Gospel Baptist Church was a totally surreal experience for me yesterday.   Here in this room where Bishop Paul Morton once sang “Let It Rain” I was moved nearly to tears at the thought of God’s house under all that water with only the steeple showing above the flood plain.   Yet I was reminded of Gideon and his faithfulness and God’s capacity to rebuild anything if his followers are willing to be used for his purposes and glory.

So we set out now to help them rebuild.   I was joined by Elder Raymond Steib, Jr. who was last in this room on the morning Ray Nagin called for a city-wide evacuation.   

I am humbled and blessed to do the work I do.   

Here’s the room BEFORE Katrina.   invest seven minutes of your life on this.

Here’s the room today after a lot of clean up from the flood.

I look forward with great anticipation to the day when our photo gallery includes pictures of worship breakin’ out all over this room again.   I sat with Bishop Morton’s wife yesterday and heard her vision for this place - a place where once again people will come to know Jesus and walk more fully with him, a place where God’s Holy Spirit will be free to move about and touch souls, a place of healing and deliverance and a place of restoration.   May it be so.

After spending the day in N’Orlans on a site survey with a client, that is all I have to say.   

Not really.  When Steve the no-selling-waste-of-space sends me the pictures we took, I’ll have plenty to say about how it felt to stand in midst of the destruction that Katrina wrought on Greater Saint Stephen Full Gospel Batist Church.  

For now I will remember sitting in the quarter at Cafe Du Monde having chickory and begniets by 9 AM while listening to the trumpet man on the street outside.  

God is in that stuff man.

Just wondering today about the rub between a culture of fun in the office and the need to actually get work out the door.   We’re shooting webisodes and generally having a good time.   And the webisodes are for our website so that’s work right?   But then I wonder about the importance in a professional services firm, of throughput.   We don’t get paid to shoot webisodes.   

Then again tomorrow morning I’l leave the house no later than 5:30 to make a 7:30 flight to New Orleans and land back in Atlanta at 11:00 PM.   So that’s a pretty long day of nothing but work.  

Who knows?