At WFX this year, Craig Janssen of ACOUSTIC DIMENSIONS presented a session called "The Next Big Thing is not the Next BIGGER Thing."
In Dallas, we understand big. You simply have to look at the screen at Cowboy Stadium to get that we know how to do things at epic scale. In my day job, we work with churches (ones you've heard of and hundreds you haven't) but we also work with clients in the NFL, performing arts and cutting-edge performance. The thing is the conversations in all of those venues are the same. Everyone wants to know what is next. And everyone has a sense that it isn't in bigger screens, bigger audio systems or bigger lights.
There are reasons why "big" is in our past. The past 20 years of venue design have been defined by the values of a broadcast world. We can see it in the size of venues. Scale matters. Think ratings. You need a "big hit" to make things commercially viable. But in a digital world, you can connect at a smaller scale. Accessibility becomes important. As our culture moves from broadcast thinking to digital thinking, we are seeing the desire for an accessible user-defined experience over the large-scale "one-size-fits-all" that has shaped the past two decades. Here are three ways to make the shift from "big" to "small" in the form of your Sunday morning services.
Break the stage line.
A hard stage line creates separation—which is fine in a broadcast world where people sit to view a production, but in a digital world that thrives on connectivity, it communicates a sort of us vs. them. Strategies such as thrust stages, theatre in the round, environmental projection, and having more than one focus point in a room blurs the lines of separation and creates community within a space. That sense of connectedness can create a feeling of "small" even at a large scale.
Create in real time.
The broadcast world was based around linear productions with scripts, but the digital world creates with more immediacy and authenticity. Digital thinkers prefer things that are authentic and real (ie. selfies on YouTube) over heavily polished and produced material. They also prefer things to unfold as they happen (reality TV vs. scripted TV).
One of the things that sports facilities do well is create in real time. There is no script for a national level sporting event. Oh sure, there are parameters such as how many players are on the field and the shape of the field of play, but for the people who man the video boards and play the music, everything unfolds as it happens. They put up content based on whatever occurs in the game as the game happens. Technologies such as Show Control, Click Effects, Coollux and even iTunes allow operators to select content from a palette of preproduced content to create the event in real time.
Find Opportunities to Co-Create.
The future of worship facilities is much more bi-directional than in previous years. Generations raised in a broadcast era were used to linear presentations that didn't necessarily require engagement. Digital generations are used to non-linear formats where they can comment, hack, modify and customize. There are technologies that facilitate co-creation such as Pangolin's text-to-screen, Poll Anywhere and event Google Docs, but this co-creation doesn't have to be technical. It can also include collaborative art pieces, material created by the congregation and/or program elements that not only invite participation, but also allow the congregation to impact the flow of the service.
