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.