1024*768 is the size

There are quite a lot topics to discuss about God and technology in general, however, as a person who run chapel and vesper every week, I am only going to focus on ProPresenter and worship now because I have a lot to say. There are some interesting things about this simple software almost every church uses now, it is really easy to use but it is hard to master it and make the worship flow better with the help of sound and lights. ProPresenter is one of the easiest softwares I have ever used, it does need more improvements but it is definitely a good tool for worship especially. With that in mind, here are my thoughts about people, church, worship, ProPresenter and connections between them.

First, most people seem they are threatened to technology no matter what form it is. I am not talking about older generation or some kind of anti-technology weirdos, normal people like you and me still seem scary towards technology though we use them every day. Half of the speakers who give me powerpoint or files they want to show in chapel have no knowledge about ProPresenter, they all think it works the same as powerpoint or a simple slide show which they can have a clicker, and they can click and go. Besides that, though I have been telling our dear faculty members and staff in college that we can only accept flies like powerpoint, pictures, videos which are either online or stored in flashdrive, most of them still do not care and keep bringing files which we cannot use in ProPresenter. For example, it does not accept PDF file; yes I usually take a screenshot of the PDF and drag it in there, but it looks weird on screen because it is a screenshot and it is not the correct size. Communication is becoming more and more important between students and professors in modern day education, and I definitely agree with whenever I have some weird files I need to put in ProPresenter. Technology is not your nightmare or one thing that you hate the most(if that is true, then I have to say there is some problem with you), it is designed to help us solve problems. ProPresenter is not an AI, it is a software; it does need to know you while you as the user need to know how to use it in order to solve problems.

Second, do not assume things will go as planned all the time, do not panic when ProPresenter crashes or fails on you, and do not blame the tech or sound or light guy all the time when there is a problem. My job is a 100% behind the scene job, I do not need to be known or recognized during every chapel and vesper; courteous and diligent are the things I value, but please remember in today’s world which is filled with technology, if there is one problem, it is never one person’s fault or responsibility. Teamwork makes sure everything run as plan, also creates problems, find them and solve them too. I do not know how many times people probably think I have done something stupid every time there is a problem appeared in chapel; let’s say yes I did make an mistake and mess it up, but I do not panic because I know that this software will crash anyway, and I am more happy to fail, solve a problem and learn from it instead of running this software smoothly all the time in every chapel. One time, one speaker was using Prezi for his presentation, and I cannot run Prezi in ProPresenter because it is opened in web browser so I need to close the output of ProPresenter and open the web browser, put it in fullscreen and then play it. And the text will look really small and blurry on the big screen since it is not the correct size. While I was trying to explain why Prezi doesn’t work and how I am going to make it work, he was panic and keep asking me for a clicker which we do not have in chapel, and I have told every single speaker that we do not have a clicker in chapel. I have a bad temper when I was a kid, and I still do when I am mad at things; but when I am solving a problem, I tend to tell myself that panicing is not going to solve problems, it will make them worse; keep calm and use what you have to solve your current headache. The best thing people can appreciate behind-scene people’s works is that do not just think everything is simple, and do not think one person should take all responsibilities for one problem.

The last but the least, please give us the right size of picture which is the title of my blog. The reason is easy, the screen in chapel is designed like that, if it is not right size, the picture will pixelated or shrink if that makes more sense. And we all know that people want to see your announcement, and we all hate pixelated pictures, don’t we? My professor Deloy Cole once said that” Pixelated picture or photo is the worst and most evil thing every in human technology history.” A correct size picture will save both my time and your time, and it will help your audience read your information on the slides, isn’t that what an announcement is for? It is same for speaker slides, if you are making your slides in Powerpoint, make sure you do not use two different fonts, and different color plates for background and texts; if you can make your slides in Photoshop, that is the best if you can make sure the size is correct.  Software is easy to use when you know the basic functions it has, and the problem it has too; again, like for DM major students, we learned skills to help people solve their problems, improve their marketing and branding, and then let our creativity embedded in our works flow through all these problem-solving processes.

God created us for a reason, so does he for technology because we created technology. Modern technology consists of we human being’s highest intelligence, so that it is God’s knowledge and wisdom which originally created these tools which are working for us. Church is to bind people together for worship God, technology is to help people solve problems faster; there is a problem about how to bind people together stronger and longer during worship, so here comes technology. God said “Let there be light.”, so does ProPresenter, house light, sound board, microphones and everything we have in chapel.

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