Whether your a sound guy who forgot to mute the pastor’s mic before he went backstage or your a web admin who’s site was infected with malware and you’re at the center of a major security scandal, we’ve all had out brushes with tech-based tragedies, “tech wrecks,” if you will. What makes it worse is that when you want to vent about it, no one around you has any idea what you’re talking about, thus limiting the effectiveness of your ranting. Last Wednesday at church was a perfect example:
My Tech Wreck
Our youth group’s G5 Mac had been trucking along with mediocre quality for a few years, but we’d asked for an upgrade. Of course, as most church techs will tell you, there’s never room in the budget. Before I go on, I don’t want to sound ungrateful. We did just receive an HD project through a very generous donation of funds, so we’re not running out youth room entirely on duct tape and chicken wire.
Of course, the sweet awesomeness of that HD output was a bit much for our secondary video card, which was a ten-year-old Windows PCI card that one of our techs flashed to make Mac compatible. That card fried like a pound of bacon in Paula Deen’s skillet. In a matter of seconds, we lost the ability to play music before service and project the words for worship. This was no small problem. We had already invited all of our students’ parents to join us, doubling our audience and exponentially increasing our need to pull this night off successfully.
Failure was not an option; no matter how strongly our equipment suggested it!
In the end, we made it work, like all good techs do. I used my MacBook to display the words in Pages since we had no time to build a Keynote presentation.
Ugh.
Pardon me while I shudder.
It wasn’t pretty.
It was barely legible! I had to invert my display’s colors so that it could be read.
Catharsis in Community
That’s just one of the many stores in my repertoire of “tech failure.” I have tons, and I know I’m not alone here. We’ve all got these stories, so let’s put them to good use. It’s time for some community catharsis by getting out all of our rage and bitterness. (Better to do it here than to unleash it all on our tech and people standing around us when we go-off!)
Every Tuesday, we’re going to post one of our tech wreck stories. Eventually I’ll run out of my own, so over the next few weeks, I would love for you to submit your stories in the comments of these posts. We’ll read the comments—like we always do—and pick out some truly epic fails to share in the coming weeks.
What are some of your “tech wreck” stories?
Michael B says
I have two quick stories
1. This one may not be so common but our lighting is controlled by a small console connected to a Mac Mini. One service right during the welcome all the lighting shut down and the stage was in complete darkness for two minutes (long enough for a reboot). Great first impression.
2. This may be more common. Spending the time to put a song in Propresenter only to find out the Worship team is singing another song with the same title. Of course you don’t realize that until after they start singing it. Putting songs in on the fly is a pain.
Phil Schneider says
Ouch, Michael. That first one had to be awkward! The second one is, sadly, all too common. Know that feel, bro.
Andy says
When getting ready to project lyrics, a slideshow, and an audio clip in ProPresenter for a funeral, the program froze. 20 minutes before the funeral started. Have an iMac at home but my house was 15 minutes away. Nothing I did could make it come back to life: restarted, reinstalled, etc. Luckily, 10 minutes before starting time, someone in the audience had brought their MacBook Pro with them. Got songs, slideshow, movie, audio clip and settings all transferred in 10 minutes so we started 1 minute late. THE MOST stressed I have ever been.
Phil Schneider says
Only one minute late? Andy, you are a rock star!
David says
I put a couple songs on a welcome/countdown video. They were songs that the band had played a couple months back. Unfortunately, the lyrics were not 100% Sunday morning material. I suppose it is a good thing that people like to get their coffee and chat until the last minute.
Phil Schneider says
Ooooh! By the phrase “not 100% Sunday morning material,” should we assume the worst?
Matt James says
I was directing video one weekend and decided to check the score of the UT vs FLA game on the video playback mac.
I neglected to turn the audio feed off and this particular weekend ESPN was running a Gene Simmons Dr. Pepper commercial. Mid-sermon his unmistakable voice pumped through the worship center – “I’m Doctor Love!”.
Fortunately the pastor just said “Sounds like they’re having fun up there!” and proceeded with his sermon. Meanwhile, I muted the audio out of the mac and never checked football scores during a sermon again.
Phil Schneider says
Lol! You’ve learned your lesson; that’s what’s important! Thanks for sharing!