traveling the world, telling stories that deserve to be told

Nothing is easy.

We’re now halfway through the Congress, and still difficulties rear their ugly heads to keep me in the edit room until 11 or 12 at night.  Today it was some software glitch keeping us from ingesting XD footage from a Sony EX3… and 90% of my stuff for that piece was coming from EX3.  It was four hours before we did our first edit.

But that report (number three) is done, and is being loaded to the ftp site.  I’ll share it with you tomorrow.  We’re getting good reports from stations and networks around the world who are using our stories.  Here’s the report on the opening of the Congress. For those of you who don’t have access to the broadcast media ftp site, simply click here to watch it.

Tomorrow is a day off.  Praise God!  I’m planning on hiring a cab and touring the scenery with my 7d.  This place is beautiful.  I wouldn’t mind spending a year or so here.

Please pray.  I sense there is strong spiritual warfare going on.  Everyday, the tech guys need to create new solutions and workarounds to keep things going smoothly.  Many stories to tell — after this is over.

My first story has just been uploaded and is ready to be downloaded from our ftp site to stations and networks across the country and around the world.  (woo hoo!)  For those of you who want to see it, but don’t have the ftp access, you can simply click here. 

DISCLAIMER:  This is not my best work, it’s not even my good work… but it’s done!

I truly thank you for praying. Several have emailed me and told me that they have been interceding – and I so greatly appreciate it.  In a moment of inspiration fueled by frustration, we have changed our working paradigm drastically.  Now we’re operating fairly independently, we’ve cut ourselves off from the network (kind of like in Matrix) and it’s working much better. The second story is being finished right now, and I’m writing the third. (but I took a break to update this blog)

More tomorrow!  Goodnight from Cape Town.

Praise God!  The opening session took place Sunday night with much celebration and fanfare. It was glorious to stand in the room watching the thousands of participants from 197 nations at that amazing moment in church history.

And yes, I got my first piece done… arrgh… such frustration.  Two days to do a 3 minute piece.  Amazing logistical and technological problems needed to be overcome.  But, that’s why I wanted to do a story early – to find the places that needed to be fixed.  It still hasn’t made it to the stations and television outlets – something about approvals – but I have done the first story in English, Spanish and French, and soon you can see it.

Today (Monday) started rough.  You can cut the frustration with a knife, the air is thick with it. Nothing is working.  The network keeps going down because it’s overloaded with every kind of media file you can imagine.  My language translators were sent away because they thought there was no work.  The managers who can fix these issues are pulled in a million directions. 

These seem to be technological and personnel issues, but really they are spiritual issues. Something great is going to happen here, and the enemy is trying to block it.  Please pray.

While you pray, go to www.CapeTown2010.com to view some pieces of what’s going on here.  My buddy George Thomas from CBN is doing stories as well, here’s one:  http://www.cbn.com/cbnnews/world/2010/October/World-Evangelization-Event-Draws-Thousands-to-Africa/  and I’ll give you the link for my story, as soon as it goes up.

Thanks for your prayers.  I greatly appreciate the support.  You have no idea how much I appreciate it.  Thank you.

Well, there’s good news and bad news from Cape Town…

Bad news first: my first piece isn’t online yet. As a matter of fact, its not even edited yet. But the good news is that I have all day tomorrow (Sunday) to get it done, and an editor is ready for me at 9am.

This first piece was going to be the test to see if the system worked. Some things did work: the shooters did a great job – we got excellent footage; the voice over people are wonderful – nice non-American English, plus French, Spanish, German and Portugese (we’ll add more languages tomorrow); the audio editor is masterful and nice to work with; and everything else will work tomorrow!

My piece is scripted, I’ve found and shot b-roll, recorded the voice tracks, and ready for editing.  (I haven’t been dragging my feet!)

There’s a mounting sense of excitement here as participants from around the world – about 4500 from some 197 countries – begin arriving and see the preparations we’ve been working on to make this a truly world-class event. It all starts Sunday night with an incredible opening celebration that’s been rehearsing all day on stage.

The 1100 of us staff/volunteers know the countdown is on, and as I left tonight at 9pm, there were still many people still hard at work.

I have so much more to talk about in the coming days… the miracle of the HD television truck, the mind-numbing signal flow, the Chinese participant issue… so keep checking in every day. If you have questions, just ask! Pray for us, preparation is almost at an end; we’re now at the starting line.

Our workspace isn’t ready yet, and the crews are still getting their gear together… but we’ve already begun creating stories for broadcast!  I’m finishing up the script for a piece that explains the historical connection of this Congress with the previous two and with events 100 and 200 years ago – and still making it seem interesting and compelling for a general television audience!  Yikes!

The Congress officially starts on Sunday night, but it’s my ambition to create at least this one piece beforehand, in order to test out the entire production work flow.  This one piece will see if all the pieces work as expected:  the camera output is easily ingested to the media server; the edit suites all able to access it; the audio easily stripped off for use in radio reports; translators able to record the narration in the 8 languages that we’re working in; graphics created and edited in; finally the “automatic” step of creating the multiple resolution and codec versions for various uses; and then the upload to our dedicated ftp site and download to stations around the world.  Let’s pray it works.

First problem already found – and fixed.  There’s no coffee.  Really.  I’ve done several of these types of events and you always work late – especially when you’d rather not!  And dang it, we’re all jet-lagged!  Finally, after much sweet talking and cajoling… I still couldn’t get any coffee for our team.  So, when the going gets tough, the tough go shopping.  I found a grocery store and bought a kettle for boiling water and a bunch of instant coffee.  Ok coffee snobs, I’d rather grind my own and use a french press, but this an emergency.  We’re a blue collar group and we’ll drink instant coffee, thank you very much.  This is nothing fancy, just your basic cup o’ Joe.  So, tomorrow, when we get our own work area out beside the edit suites and HD TV truck, we’ll have coffee anytime we want/need it.

I’ll try to post a link to the first story that I described at the beginning of this post, hopefully later tomorrow. But if you are part of a television or radio outlet, and you’d like access to full broadcast quality stories for free use on your outlet, please contact me, and I’ll get you set up with a link to our ftp site.

After 24 hours of air travel (thanks Delta for the upgrade!) I’ve finally arrived in one of the most beautiful cities in the world – Cape Town, South Africa.  I’m here working (as a volunteer) on the broadcast media team, creating stories that capture the spirit and experience of this landmark Congress, and releasing them to the world’s media for broadcast.

I called this a landmark Congress, and I didn’t do that lightly.  Consider the following:

• This is the Third Lausanne Congress on World Evangelization (the first was in 1974 in Lausanne, Switzerland and was the brainchild of Billy Graham; the second was in 1989 in Manila, Philippines) and it’s predecessors were all milestones of the missionary movement.
• The Lausanne Covenant, which came out of the first Lausanne Congress, has proven to be one of the most influential documents in modern Evangelical Christianity.
• The Second Lausanne Congress elaborated on the Lausanne Covenant with the Manila Manifesto, a document affirmed by the 4,000 participants.  Some 300 partnerships were formed at Lausanne II to strengthen the efforts of the Church for world evangelization.
• CapeTown 2010 will likely be the most diverse Christian gathering in history.  A full 70% of the 4,000+ participants come from the Majority World; and 25% are Africans.  197 nations will be represented.  (Pray for the Chinese delegation – their government is blocking their departure.)
• This historic event falls on the 100th anniversary of the World Missionary Conference held in Edinburgh, Scotland.  The spirit of the Conference was driven by this call: “The Evangelization of the World in This Generation.”
• 200 years ago William Carey, considered the father of modern missions, sailed past Cape Town, and he proposed an international missionary conference to be held there in 1810.  That dream never was realized, but now in God’s timing, CapeTown 2010 is about to begin.

I was privileged to have been selected to be the Director of Communications for the Lausanne Committee for World Evangelization (now known as The Lausanne Movement) for the two years leading up to Lausanne II in Manila, and served as Media Director during the Congress.  Then, I was one of the “younger leaders” being mentored by great men such as Thomas Zimmerman, Leighton Ford, Thomas Wang, Ed Dayton and many others.  Today, I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t blend into the crowd in the Younger Leaders’ Lounge, but instead, I find myself looking for the twenty- and thirty-somethings that I can encourage.

You can take part in this historic gathering. Check out the CapeTown 2010 website and participate in The Global Conversation.  If you have a television or radio outlet, contact me by email (jsindorf AT gmail DOT com) and I’ll get you set up for downloading program content direct from the Congress – we can even customize the reports for your station or program.

I can’t tell you how excited I am to be here.  God’s going to do something… I can feel it.

According to my Delta SkyMiles account, that’s how many miles I’ve flown in the past 30 days.  (That’s almost twice the distance around the earth.)  Oh, and I flew yesterday on Frontier, and I drove from Michigan to Seattle, so you can add a few thousand more miles onto that total.  That’s a lot of traveling in one month.  And it’s about to start again!  I’m home for a few days and on Tuesday I fly to Cape Town for the Lausanne Congress on World Evangelization (where I’m volunteering with the broadcast team).

Here then is my list of “must have” gadgets based on my travel usage over the past month (in random order and not an exhaustive list):

• netbook computer – I have the Toshiba NB205. The battery lasts forever; the integrated webcam makes Skype calls home very enjoyable; it weighs next to nothing; and it’s perfect for email and writing. (I used to think I’d actually edit video on the plane ride home – ha!)
• iPod – Driving on the sorry excuse for roads in Southern Sudan in a Land Cruiser with no shocks, whilst the speakers self destructed due to the local techno-pop music/crap blaring at 11 on the volume knob had me thanking God (and Steve Jobs) for my iPod.  My collection of Eva Cassidy, Hillsong, James Taylor and Yo Yo Ma got me through this last trip with my sanity still intact.
• fountain pen by Lamy – Many of you know I enjoy writing with Montblanc fountain pens, but I just can’t bring myself to traveling with one of them in my pocket.  In Amsterdam’s Schiphol airport I purchased a Lamy fountain pen for 16 Euros – I love it.  It has a very pleasurable writing feel but I wouldn’t go into a depression if it turned up missing.  If you write a lot (as I do) find something to make it pleasurable.
• unlocked, dual-sim, quad-band cell phone – Now I have a US phone number that I can answer just about anywhere for only pennies per minute.  Plus, I can add a sim card for a local number. Sweet!  I talked to my wife from the hinterlands of Southern Sudan when my associate couldn’t get through to the office on our iridium sat phone (but I’m not sure how hard he was really trying!).
• neosporin and cipro – not really gadgets, but lifesavers. Get a cut in the Third Word, clean it and then grab the neosporin and fill up the cut with its healing goodness.  Trust me, out there, you don’t want an infection.  And cipro?  It fixes the digestive tract – if you know what I mean.
• canon 7d – full 1080p high def video… sorry I’ve talked enough about that in other posts!

Yesterday a pastor and his wife made total fools out of themselves on a flight that I was on from Amsterdam to Nairobi.  They were demanding different seats and when their rant didn’t seem to have much impact he topped it by declaring to the Purser: “I’m a Christian pastor about to lead a week-long seminary workshop on leadership principles for new pastors, so I need a comfortable seat so I can go over my notes.”

People all around were gawking at him.  It was like they were slowing down on the Interstate to stare at a car wreck.   An awkward moment of silence followed.

Then a tall, skinny, dark African man, wearing a well-worn suit, stood up a couple of rows away.  He walked back, and said “I too, am a pastor.  My seat is comfortable. Please take it.”

He American was stunned.  He finally realized what was happening.  He was traveling to Africa to teach leadership principles, but on the way, an African showed him how to lead.

Please. Stop the stupidity. If you’re going to name the name of Christ, at least act like him.

Como descubrimos en la clase, a veces la tecnología no funciona de la manera que usted quisiera que! Por alguna razón desconocida, WordPress no es lo que me permite subir archivos de los medios de comunicación a esta entrada.

Por lo tanto, si a usted le gusta ninguna de las limosnas o nuestras notas de enseñanza, por favor escríbame a jsindorf (at) gmail (punto) com y te los devolverá a usted.

Por cierto, vaya a mi página de Facebook y echa un vistazo a las fotos de nuestro grupo! Simplemente busque para mí (Joe Sindorf) e iré a mi álbum de fotos de COICOM. 

Manténgase en contacto – Estoy orando por ti!

and now for the translation…

As we discovered in class, sometimes technology doesn’t work the way you would like it to!   For some unknown reason, WordPress is not allowing me to upload media files to this post.

So, if you would like any of the handouts or our teaching notes, please email me at jsindorf (at) gmail (dot) com and I will send them right out to you.

By the way,  go to my Facebook page and check out the photos from our group!  Simply search for me (Joe Sindorf) and go to my COICOM photo album.

Keep in touch – I’m praying for you. 

Kathy y yo acababa de regresar de una semana maravillosa en la conferencia de COICOM en Punta Cana, República Dominicana. Nos ayuda a un grupo enorme de los ministros de los medios de comunicación con talento y líderes de la iglesia crecer en sus habilidades de medios de comunicación. Estábamos unidos por nuestro buen amigo Orlen Stauffer y añadió una nueva perspectiva grande.

Me prometió que después los documentos y presentaciones aquí para su uso. Las presentaciones Prezi que Kathy y yo estamos aquí utiliza ahora. Mañana, voy a tratar de agregar los documentos. Cuando vuelva Orlen en la oficina, nos pondremos lo suyo también!

Por favor, mantenga en contacto. O dejar una respuesta o bien, enviando un correo electrónico a jsindorf (at) gmail (punto) com. Te queremos mucho y no puedo esperar a verte otra vez. Hasta entonces, que Dios los siga bendiciendo!  

Los Links:  Dia 1   Dia 2   Dia 3   Dia 4  

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