The Bible tells us to “be imitators of God…” (Ephesians 5:1). That's a good and lofty goal, but that “omnipresence thing” might be the hardest to accomplish.
Good tech leaders take steps towards omnipresence by developing teams: one person directs, one runs the computer, some moderate the chat, some run cameras, etc.
But what happens when someone on your team does things differently than you would like? Camera one tends to frame things in different way, or the sound engineer mixes things a little “harsh?” Those are generally things you can deal with. But
what happens when someone on the team consistently puts part of the mission of the tech team in jeopardy? What do you do when someone tweaks the settings and instead of making them better, makes them worse? That can be quite a problem.
This topic came to me as I was discussing streaming between church campuses with a friend of mine who lives in Texas. He's the tech director for the church, but one of the techies at another campus continually changes the streaming encoder settings when the pastor preaches from that location. As a result, the live-stream is usually either really bad or not present.
So how do you deal with a “tweaker” who wants to “makes things better,” but in fact makes things worse?
Evaluate the problem.
As techies, we sometimes get really close to what we do and see details that no one else sees. Is it actually a problem that the bit rate or sample rate of the video are a little low or a little high? Ask yourself if the pastor and the online congregation can tell. If not, maybe it's not worth worrying about. Different is not necessarily bad. But if the stream looks worse, or like my friend's situation in Texas, it's not working at all, it's time to address the situation. Democratically.
Consider the heart behind the changes.
In my experience, there are two types of people who make changes to systems like this. The first wants to help and thinks that they are helping. Perhaps, they have a different definition of what a good stream looks like. Maybe they know that they've made the video look worse, but they're concerned about the amount of bandwidth you have at the location you're streaming from. On the other hand, maybe it's ignorance. It's possible that they've been doing research and heard that some other church uses the settings they've been changing your encoder to.
Sometimes pride can enter the mix and they can be convinced that they know more than you do. Maybe they think, “I don't know why they put him in charge; I know more about this than anyone. I'm just going to make it right.” This is the hardest kind of person to deal with in this situation. They don't respect your judgment and think your way is wrong.
Educate or eliminate
In the case of someone who wants to do their best and is tweaking things because they think they're helping; They may either value something different than you do (like bandwidth vs. quality) or don't understand that their tweaks are causing problems. Helping them to see the problems that you see might fix the situation.
If you have another type of tweaker --- the kind that thinks they have to fix what you're breaking, start with an educational conversation. Perhaps they don't know all the facts. Maybe they don't see why you've done things the way that you have. Perhaps you'll both learn something and the live-stream will end up better as a result.
It is possible, though, that someone who is continually “fixing” things that aren't broken needs to be reassigned or removed.
Sometimes this is easier said than done. A lot of churches deal with having more serving roles than people to fill them. So, you may have to make the decision about whether having no one doing it is better than having the tweaker who is constantly messing with things.
Make notes and presets
If you have someone who is trying to make things better, it could be that they change settings to try and improve things and then don't remember the original settings. One way to help this is to create documentation (and/or presets) for the preferred way of doing things.
Put yourself in their shoes. They notice that for some reason the upload speed is slower this week than normal. In doing some testing, they notice that you have one mbps upload speed instead of your normal 10. It's the weekend, so the cable company isn't around to fix the problem, so something must be done to get the live-stream to work. They try lowering the bit rate and test it out. It looks bad. They just don't know how to get it back and tweak something else.
If you have documentation for the starting point, they can return things to where they were without making things worse.
You could also go the extra distance and set up a plan for alternative settings in certain siatuations. Anticipate a day with slower upload speeds and document the settings you'd recommend in that situation. In that case, the tweaker doesn't need to experiment; they can just follow the plan.
Learning by experimentation
There is another type of tweaker I've left out thus far. Sometimes, you have someone who really wants to learn. This person knows that to understand a system, you have to experiment with each part. If that's why they're tweaking things (to learn what does what so that they can understand it), this is something you want to encourage. Perhaps, though, the timing needs to be fixed. Right before you start live-streaming isn't the best time to try and figure out “what happens when I do this”.
Maybe a better time is after service or earlier in the week. You can explain “what does what” and what should affect the video in what way. Experimentation is fine, as long as it's well-timed and everything can be put back the way it was.
What if you're the tweaker?
Sometimes, we're put in situations where we really do know more than the people who lead us. If that's your situation (that the person who's asking you to do something technical at church is asking you to do what can't be done or what will make something worse), don't fake the changes (like the sound engineer how turns down the unused channel when the musician asks for less of their instrument in the room). Don't fly off the handle, calling them names. Don't grumble under your breath or complain to others.
Start by trying to understand what they want as a result. Sometimes, when someone asks to lower the bit rate, what they mean is “the internet is slow during church.” Clarifying might mean that you understand that the proposed solution won't affect the problem. Proposing another solution might solve it better.
Provide alternatives if there's something wrong with the solution. If the solution is cost-prohibitive or violates laws of physics, maybe saying “No, we can't do that,” won't help as much as saying, “What if we do either this thing or that instead?”
Remember, timing is everything. Be humble enough to try a solution that you think may not work. Feel free to express concerns. This isn't about making them regret that they asked, but demonstrating the problems or seeing where you might be mistaken.
We techies get a reputation for saying “no” or getting mad when people don't understand our position. Do your best to make sure that that reputation is undeserved. Be a problem solver, not a prima donna. Work together with your leaders and with your team. Assume that they want what's best for the church, not that they're trying to mess things up or make you mad.
Sometimes, live-streaming can have a lot of moving parts. Since none of us can be everywhere, teams can help us accomplish our goals. Sometimes, we'll need to help others learn and sometimes we'll need to be humble enough to learn ourselves. At the end of the day, do the best you can to encourage team work, learning, and doing what's best with your systems so that your live-stream becomes better.
