Going to WC tomorrow to set up.  Here is my list of things I need to watch out for, so that I don’t die again.

1) Not getting enough sleep.  Go to bed early, do not hang out with people past 11:30pm if I can help it.

2) Not eating.  Ask people to buy breakfast for me and don’t feel bad about it.  Eat snacks regularly.  Eat healthy foods, restrict myself to only one meal of street meat.

3) Exerting myself too much.  Take breaks and naps when I need to, when I can, and when there’s down time.  Go to the hot tub.  Take the elevator.  Rely on others to do what they can do and I don’t need to do.

4) Not spending quality time with students I work with.  Dedicate time to talk to students and staff, don’t keep a “always busy” appearance and mentality.  Schedule breakfast, lunch, and dinner with them so that I eat and I talk.  Focus on a few, and not on the many (and there are many I could definitely diffuse my time with).

5) Not learning anything about God due to paying attention to details.  Pay attention at some points to the speakers we have.  Delegate tasks that demand attention.  Allow God to challenge me.  Bring my Bible to each main session.  Pray for the students and staff and myself to be challenged deeply.

6) Feeling isolated.  Welcome social parts.

7) Skin gets dry.  Bring humidifier to hotel room.

8 ) Way too serious.  Ease up, allow mistakes to happen, problems to be corrected next time, to encourage people and joke, and praise God even when I’m stressed out or sick.  I am not indispensable.  God still works in people.

I woke up from coughing.  Now I can’t sleep because I’m thinking and pre-visualizing all the av setup and the main sessions. in my mind.stuff like music before sessions, video songs, worship lyrics, computer setups, and a whole lot more.  i had a mocha in the afternoon and chinese tea  at dinner but nothing keeps you up at night more than a looming conference with many open loose ends.

This year’s Eastern Winter Conference New Year’s Eve party theme is “The Rootin’ Tootin’ West” aka. Western/Cowboy.  I am on a costume brainstorming binge right now.  I just worked all day (slowly and inefficiently but worked nonetheless) and now I’m tired, my brain’s fried, and I just got a caffe mocha from Starbucks because I needed fresh air and to be around some people.  Unfortunately Starbucks on Bank and Third closes at 11pm.  I just got the mocha and now it may influence what I think.  This is perfect for brainstorming.

Here we go, suggested costumes for The Rootin’ Tootin’ West:

- a horseshoe , or set of horseshoes
- horse, or herd of horses
- John Wayne
- Paul Newman (Cool Hand Luke or whatever spaghetti western you choose)
- cactus
- Mexican gaucho or Mexican refugee (like in Zorro)
- tumbleweed
- cow, or herd of cattle
- cowboy, cowgirl (easy to do)
- Dixie Chick (wow, this one could be pretty sweet)
- Carrie Underwood (diggin her nails into someone’s leather seats)
- a pickup truck (preferably an F-150 or a Silverado)
- Lone Star State flag
- country fiddler (maybe like that violin player with Rascal Flatts)
- Will Smith as Wild Wild West
- a grain silo (that would be sick!!!!)
- a head of wheat
- vegetables (oh like a Veggietales costume!!! straight from the farm yo)
- John Deere tractor
- a Guelph Aggie
- Trucker (oh sweet… that would be so easy and yet so mid-West)
- Farmer with farmer tan hahaa
- a chuckwagon
- a BARREL!!!!  with beer spilling out from gunshots!!
- someone will definitely show up with a lasso trying to rope some people dressed as animals
- Dukes of Hazzard car (is this Western even….. it feels so in my head)
- oil drill rig
- Saddledome of sorts….. not sure if this could be possible, it would just look like a saddle eh
- a giant spur
- a BUFFALO hahahah
- a fence!!  a whole bunch of people could be fences and corral people in

There that’s my list.  I’m starting to stop thinking.  Objects are always funner to think about.  Because you know that so many people will show up as a person or character, but the objects are harder to do and they bring a lotta laughs.  That’s why I think up objects.  But there are so many Western people characters that could be done.

What should I dress up as?  I have no idea.  Give me your thoughts.  I want to do something EPIC but I don’t want to spend EPIC time making it.

Well that Conference was totally different than I had expected. Little did I know I would fall sick. Well… little did I know I would fall sick so soon into the conference. And that changed everything.

Someone wondered to me how I could be so busy during Winter Conferences. For the past few years I’ve already been helping out with audio/video stuff, and if you know how crazy that can be, you’ve got the idea. Someone also voiced aloud that I should train others to do what I do. I whole-heartedly agree; however, it seems like there are people willing to learn only when we’re packing up all the audio/video gear at 2am on January 1. But how willing are people to arrive 30 minutes early to every main session, wake up for 7:30am meetings, and learn the difference between a BNC cable and a VGA cable?  Transferability and training has always been on my mind.

My week looked kind of like this: Dec 26, I woke up and packed the car to arrive at the Sheraton at 10am. Kevin Schuster and I spent the next 14 hours unloading a truck, moving equipment, and setting it up with the rental company. Part of that travesty was lack of planning on our part… we really needed another 3 people to do the job properly. But I think the planning of manpower for conference for many years has under-budgeted for audio/video tasks. We are only starting to understand how many people we need to do this job properly.

On Dec 27, I woke up for the meeting, promptly continued to set up more video equipment, and drove out to pick up more stuff. When I was at home picking up a few things, I realized I hadn’t eaten breakfast or lunch, and my body rejected some vitamin C pills by vomiting the nothing that was in my stomach.

As a result, for the rest of the conference I woke up for the morning meeting, ran the video mixer for main session, and then went immediately to bed. Repeat. My superior forced me to commit to just eating properly, sleeping generously, and being alive enough to still do my job during main session. It was my job and there really wasn’t anyone else there who was capable of doing it well. I’m glad I was given this priority and not stretched even more.

All in all, I do believe and hope that students’ lives were impacted through what I did, through the power of the Holy Spirit’s sustenance. I wish I was able to spend more time to enjoy with students, skating at the Square, getting to know more people. But I guess this year it was just my job to focus, get the video stuff done well, and realize that I am not indispensable.

I have tons of ideas and tweaks that we should implement for years to come to increase our effectiveness at Winter Conference. One of those would be to multiply myself into others, so that I’m not the only person capable of video mixing. Mainly, I’m just glad that I can walk away from the Conference knowing the faith of many students has been challenged and we’ll see the effects of such a momentum piece in the next few months.

I’m heading to the Sheraton real soon. I’ve been looking forward to this for a long time. But then again, I feel very intimidated about all that we have to set up. We don’t have Middletone this time, which, admittedly, seems a bit odd. But I know it’ll be great and we may have to go around picking up little connectors and parts throughout the day.

I pray that this A/V stuff goes off without too many problems.