Kyle's Random

Today we launched our first Internet Campus with iPhone streaming, and it went great.  Josh was kind enough to get me some screen captures on his iPod Touch, and you can see them below.

The Faith Promise Internet Campus continues to make progress, and thanks to the help of Brad Roberts and the folks at Light Cast Media, we’ll be testing out streaming on the iPhone this Sunday at 10 & 11:45 am.  This is a brand new technology, and I’m glad we get to jump on board so early in the process.

If you have an iPhone or iPod Touch, you can test things out by going to http://faithpromise.org/icampus.  If you go there on an iPhone or iPod Touch, you should just see a iPhone specific countdown page.  From there, you’ll be able to select whether you want the stream with or without sign language.  (Yes, you’ll be able to stream the sign language video on your iPhone.)  Even without an iPhone, you can see what it looks like here.

If everything goes well, in addition to the iPhone stream, we will also see substantial improvements with both our audio and video quality.  Matt James has helped me to set up a better encoding process, and Phil Bledsoe helped me to work out some kinks in the audio – providing the iCampus with a better range of sound.

What a blessing to work with such a great team!  Pray with me that our iCampus will continue to make an impact in the lives of people online.

I love my job, and one of the things I get to do each day is make decisions.  Decisions like:

• What new projects will my team take on?
• What will be priority?
• Where will we focus our time and money?
• Should we do option A, B, or C?

I hope that I make good decisions most of the time, but even when I don’t, I often get the opportunity to revisit those decisions again.  The Deaf interpretation on the Internet Campus is a good example of this very thing.

You see, when we first launched the Internet Campus, I got a kind email that I quickly dismissed as outside our scope for the Internet Campus.  That was three months ago.

Fortunately, our Graphic Artist Heather Burson, mentioned the idea to me a few weeks later and cast a vision for the impact the iCampus could have in the Deaf community.  This second time, I listened.

Has that every happened to you?  Have you ever dismissed an idea but later come back with a new perspective?

Thanks to the Hurculean efforts of Matt James, and the support of our great tech ministry at Faith Promise, we’re still on course to add an additional feed to the Internet Campus this weekend for the Deaf community.

This is a shot of our recording room.  The monitors in the foreground are for recording both of the video streams.  The board is for the sound recording, and the monitors in the top right are what the camera director uses to select camera shots. (In case you can’t tell, things are a bit of a mess right now.)

PS – In addition to the new video feed, I think we’ll also see improvements to the audio and video quality online this week, and video on the iPhone should be happening soon as well.

In my last post I mentioned a big project that I’m excited to launch.  Tonight, Pastor Chris made the announcement, and you can watch the short video below.