This week Pam and I are attending a church media conference in Indianapolis, sponsored by ChurchMedia.net. Pam runs the sound at Anchor, handles DVDs, and often pinch-hits with song slides. I do our websites and Powerpoint slides. The idea of spending time together in a learning environment, particularly when the learning will benefit our church, appealed to us.

The discussion forum at ChurchMedia.net, henceforth to be known as CMN, is known as being technical oriented. This sure came through in their seminars today. The presenters threw around techie lingo with reckless abandon. It’s kind of amusing when people do that. Do they feel a need to impress, or are they just oblivious to the fact that they’re speaking above people’s heads? (In this case, an innocent case of the latter.) They flaunted acronyms, referenced web technologies without explanation, used technical terms as if everybody knew what they meant…you get the idea. My coworkers contend that I do exactly the same thing, with equal oblivion, around them.

Despite our occasional cluelessness, Pam and I enjoyed ourselves and learned some things which may prove useful at Anchor. We attended the same seminar at the end of the afternoon, on “Blogging and Podcasting.” Pam’s been turning Tim’s sermons into MP3 files, and I’m administering five blogs at present. That was a good session. Pam attended sessions on Easyworship and using projectors. My other seminars were on digital photography (a very poor start) and doing websites (ah, now we’re talking my language!).

We’ll go back down tomorrow. The afternoon features two seminars on running sound, so that’s where Pam will be. I’ll take a seminar on using metaphors in worship (try to make that technical!), and I forget what the other two are about. But it’ll be fun. These techies are good guys (and let me repeat: guys). And may I add that they are cheap. They don’t like to spend money, but always recommend open-source software which they can get free. My experience is that open-source software is rarely easy to get up and running unless you’re a techie. Me–I go for user-friendly. I can figure things out, but I’d just as soon not have to.

Meanwhile, some of you are wondering, “What’s open-source software? Why doesn’t Steve explain what he’s talking about?” In my case, I’m just trying to impress.