Posts by Nick Jackson

After all of our big services and events, we like to review how things went and identify areas for improvement, even if we felt that nothing went wrong. For our reviews we follow a format called The Good, The Bad and The Ugly, where we identify things which went well, things which shouldn’t have happened, and things which we could have done better.

The Good

• Having two operators meant that streaming was less stressful, and gave a more dynamic mix of both sound and video.

The Bad

• The soloist for the beginning of Once in Royal David’s City wasn’t mic’d correctly, meaning the sound wasn’t as clear as it should be.
  • In future, a member of the Tech Team should perform a mic check beforehand.
  • Microphone users who are unfamiliar with them should be told to always leave microphones switched on; the audio operator will manage levels.
• Changes had been made to the configuration of the sound desk at an unknown point in the past which affected our baseline mix, leading to a small amount of feedback.
  • Although this was quickly addressed by the sound operator, it shouldn’t have been an issue in the first place.
  • Replacement of the current mixing desk with a digital desk which can be locked or which has automatic feedback suppression should be made a higher priority.

The Ugly

• The microphone arrangement for the choir and organ is starting to show its weaknesses compared to the quality of the performance, and should be reviewed to provide a better mix.
  • This will likely require consultation with an acoustic engineer to ensure the best placement.
  • It is likely that this will also require engagement with the faculty process if anything more than the bare minimum is done, as microphones and cabling will need placing at high levels.
  • This will likely need either the inclusion of a submixer, or the replacement of the mixing desk, to allow for sufficient number of microphones.
• An incorrect expander configuration in our streaming pipeline meant that particularly quiet parts of singing or organ were being lost on the stream.
  • This configuration has now been changed to be less aggressive.
• A shortage of members of the Tech Team meant that we weren’t able to install the usual number of supplementary cameras, leading to a less engaging visual mix.
  • We should consider permanent installation of additional cameras in key positions, and potentially replacement of our video mixer with one supporting more inputs. This will provide a wider and more engaging range of shots for all services, not just ones where the Tech Team are able to install temporary supplementary ones.

What happened?

Our Festal Evensong service on Sunday 3 November didn’t stream as expected.

It’s been a while since we did weeknotes! Here’s what’s happening:

We mixed up our prayers

If you subscribe to our weekly notices you’ll know they (usually) include a list of names to pray for. In the past these have always been sorted alphabetically, but we’ve made a change so they’re randomised on a week-by-week basis. This way helps prevent intercessions from being something you do ‘by rote’, encouraging more engagement with the act of praying for the individual.

We’re planning some audio improvements in the church

The audio equipment in the church is getting a bit long in the tooth, and we’re growing increasingly worried about its reliability. To address this we’re putting together a five-year plan for rolling repairs, replacements and upgrades.

We fixed timezones on whitkirk.com

The website for our Community Centre wasn’t properly understanding timezones and daylight savings, so we reminded it that we live in the Europe/London timezone and not UTC.

We started writing a handbook

We love openness, and we love documentation, so we started combining the two into our (work in progress) St Mary’s Church Handbook. The grand plan is that this will become the go-to source of “how do I do this thing” information for anyone on the entire St Mary’s team, not just the Technical Team.

We sped up some website behaviour

We were able to make some optimisations to how we serve images on our website which makes it snappier and more responsive for users.

After all of our big tech events, we like to review how things went and identify areas for improvement, even if we felt that nothing went wrong. We always do these in a no-blame way, following the Retrospective Prime Directive:

“Regardless of what we discover, we understand and truly believe that everyone did the best job they could, given what they knew at the time, their skills and abilities, the resources available, and the situation at hand.”

Norm Kerth, Project Retrospectives: A Handbook for Team Review

For our reviews we follow a format called The Good, The Bad and The Ugly, where we identify things which went well, things which shouldn’t have happened, and things which we could have done better.

The Good

• The stream from the War Memorial was good, with solid connectivity and clear audio.
• Using an additional speaker at the War Memorial gave clearer, crisper audio for those there.
• Relaying the Act of Remembrance into the Community Centre is appreciated by those unable to join the procession for whatever reason.

The Bad

• We lost our in-church connectivity just as the procession was forming, which meant we had to hurriedly switch to a backup. We were only able to do this because of performance issues earlier in the morning meaning we were in a state where this option was available. We should investigate ways of improving the resiliency of this connection.

The Ugly

• The internet connection in the church was performing poorly at the start of the service, prompting us to use a more adaptive but lower quality streaming process.
• There was a slight mis-timing at the start of the service due to some confusion over flag parties.
• We forgot to disable the wifi on our mobile camera, which led to a drop in connectivity as we left the church.
• We used a radio microphone at the War Memorial, but this wasn’t as reliable as we expected. We should spend the time to install a wired microphone in future.