Tag: tech

  • ZCal for Deputation

    Our District Deputation Manager asked me to setup a way for churches to better directly schedule a missionary speaker. Being the nerd and cheapskate that I am, I decided to use ZCal.co for this project.

    Having already made enough mistakes myself getting this setup, I decided to make some quick and dirty videos covering setup. If you want to do something like this, you will need to have either a Google or Microsoft Account that has email and a calendar (though ZCal does allow you to additional calendars of either type).

    A strong recommendation is that this be setup with an account that can be handed off to another person who might handle deputations (as when one steps down from the NMI Board). In other words, don’t use a personal account of yours, instead setup an account that will handle the deputations. This does mean it needs to be checked, however. So make sure that you access it regularly.

    With that, here we go!

    This video shows how to setup a calendar for a particular missionary. This is a long video (~18min), but is pretty much a step-by-step, including pitfalls (I make them in the video).

    This video shows how modifying invites works. This is an important tool for the deputation manager, as rescheduling might be necessary due to transportation issues (our district is, by car, 8 hours tall x 4 hours wide, for example) or missionary changes.

    This video shows how the user/church/NMI person would get an appointment to have a missionary at their church.

  • Tech Glitch

    Tech Glitch

    Everything’s been working, and then suddenly there’s a problem. Sound familiar?

    For those of us who do not do online church as profession (i.e., full-time paid), we often have to fit online in. In addition, while churches are learning about online (COVID-19 being the biggest full-blown panic instigator), they may not have all the pieces in place needed for that professional presentation we all desire to have (and compare ourselves to).

    Take this past Sunday (15 March 2020). We didn’t have house sound. House sound has always been a problem for my online mix, as I’m in the house and miss a lot (no separate soundboard). The sound should have been perfect!

    It wasn’t. Instead of having the perfect sound, we had this weird warble. It was awful. Really, really awful. The primary guess is that it was an input that doesn’t cause us problems that did now because there was nothing to mask it, or something else changed. There were a couple proposed items, which I will be working on.

    Long way of saying, I’m not a professional. Just like a lot of other people, I’m learning along the way. I have to fit this into the rest of my life. So, it will be frustrating and heart-wrenching. That’s the reality.

    If you had a great first launch…AWESOME! I’m really glad! If you didn’t, I understand completely.

Verified by MonsterInsights