Pete Bishop

Just Breathe

Here's a neat trick. we'll first a question... if you are a musician.....what is the quickest easiest way to settle into a groove and force yourself to connect and listen to the people your playing with? It's not by listening harder... you gotta breathe. That's right. breathing in time with the groove that your playing will force you and your body into that groove. Try it some time. Either breathe through the rhythm of the length of measure.. in...1,2,3,4...out.. 1,2,3,4, or if you can breathe in syncopated rhythm to the drummer or your instrument. It will instantly change the way you play. Westerners are notorious for our bad breathing habits so don't be surprised if this freaks your body out. But it works! Oh yea.. and on fast songs be careful not to hyperventilate.

Are You A Tool?

One fascinating thing to me about musicians... is that for the most part they define themselves by the tool they use.  For example most musicians who play guitar, say "I'm a guitarist". I have noticed you don't see other art forms doing this. You never hear a writer exclaim " I'm a pencil" or a programmer yell..." I'm PHP" or a painter .. " I'm a brush".  As a musician... or no matter what your art-form, I wonder how much more expression, imagination and creativity could be accomplished if we identified ourselves by who we are, what have to bring and the art form itself and didn't identify ourselves by the tools we use.

Mr Impossible Promo Guy

If you work in a church production environment,... or really any kind of production. This will be all to real. Your welcome. Thanks Mr Mike G for the link.

Leading A Horse To Water.

I am lucky. I get to serve alongside amazing people. My job is to help them get their "job" done.( which is another post) Someone last week asked me how I get that done. I told them " I don't", ..."seriously, they said how do you manage all those people?" I responded by saying " I can't".  I can't manage the people, I can't motivate them, (I can inspire them) I can only teach them to manage and motivate themselves.  How do you do that? With agreements and expectations. You can't manage behavior, in the end people are going to do what they want to do, you may influence them to do what you want them to but in the end the choice is really theirs. So instead of trying to manage people... help them by:

• setting up common agreements and expectations (what you expect of them, what they can expect from you)
• put the agreements down in a way they understand, (making sure you both understand :)) and have them make a commitment to them in some way.
• give them the resources they need to live that out.
• manage those agreements and expectations.

(the biggest mistakes I have made with people have been when I tried to manage them and not what we agreed on, never works)

The Commision or Omission of Information

My blog has been dead for a while. Mainly because I was tired of listening to myself wax poetic and I felt like I was just adding noise to peoples lives. The information I had people could draw from a myriad of places. In the last few weeks something has been dawning on me. I have realized that there are certain people that I specifically look to for influence, inspiration and information. And on the same hand I have realized that God has put people in my life that look to me for that same influence, inspiration and information. Regardless of where else it exists I search out certain people for validation or whatever reason, and there appears to be people who do the same with me.  So I'm going to start blogging again, but from an entirely different perspective.

So the question becomes.. who do you look to? And who looks at you?

The End of an Era.

This is Zach. You've seen him here before. Wednesday Zach moved to Ky. We're going to miss him. Zach is the end of an era because he is the brother of Mike. I have had the deep honor and privileged of hanging out with mentoring and creating with these brothers for the last 4 years or so. Mike has gone off to CCM and is cranking out killer media and Zach is now going to rock the world from Kentucky. Both of these guys are artists in there own ways. Mike with visuals and Zach with audio. Gonna miss you Zach. Thanks for sharing your life with us!

On people and movies and connecting and such...

Haven't blogged in a while because... there is a lot of noise out there and I haven't felt like adding to it. And twitter has been a much easier way to communicate and connect. This might be helpful to someone though.

I am not a "people" person. It is very difficult for me to get to know people and be around people in general. Once I do get to know them I'm fine but prior to that it makes me very uncomfortable to be around them.... like panic attack uncomfortable. So building community for me has never been easy. It's one of the reason I like the web. I can communicate when and how I want and stand at a distance and watch.

A couple weeks ago at a team leader meeting we were challenged to  continued to build community.. which again I think can be an "oxymoron" for tech folks...but.....

Here are the steps that I am currently taking to build community in the context of our technology teams at Crossroads.

More presence on web: I think I'm going to ramp back up my blogging. If nothing else it will be good for me to work out all the banging in my head. I'm going to begin to encourage the team to connect through Twitter and facebook. Training will begin in the fall. If your on the Amplify team and not on twitter or facebook go sign up now :)

Monthly team newsletter: I'm going to start back up a monthly team newsletter. One Page. Short. Info and training links. ( I did this a couple years ago, but didn't have good infrastructure in place to keep it going, now I do)( This Months is Attached to this post) Download august_monthly.pdf

Couple big get togethers a year: August 31 will be our first one. All Team Party blow outs. 1-2X a year.

Monthly Movie nights: We are lucky/blessed enough to have a guy on our team who has  a full blown movie theater in his basement. He has agreed to open it up to the team once a month to just hang out in a small group atmosphere and watch a movie. Starts in September

Song Writing Nights: Once a month the arts team (which is connected to our tech team) is going to be doing songwriting nights, to create community, to build our original songwriting repertoire and to be used as training for recording and producing.

Field Trips.  Field trips used to be a big thing on our team a couple years ago. There coming back. In the past we have gone to concerts, museums, stores, other churches, etc.

What ideas do you have to build community or what works for you?

Iphone Update and apps

So I updated my Iphone to 2.0. Currently My favorite apps in no particular order.

YouVersion - (free) LifeTV's online bible rocks.

Omnifocus.-  ($19.99) Iphone version of my desktop GTD. Syncs over mobile. In-Cred-a-bull!! This is actually the biggest reason I was excited about 2.0. I have tried almost all the GTD's and Omnifocus is by far my favorite.

Pandora - (free) internet radio with music I can actually listen to..( because I choose it) over the edge network.. wow...

Twitterific -  (free) Makes twitter better than it is.

Evernote - (free) Again Iphone version of the online. really well done.

Remote - (free) Controls my itunes and mac from my iphone.

Boo Yaa

So I'm walking down the hall today at church today and there is a super rock star looking couple in front of me. ( maybe about 20 years old or so)

Rock Star Guys Phone Rings.

Hello

Hey yea.... no we're at Church....

pause.... yea I said Church....

pause.... no I'm not kidding... I said Church...

Yea....  I know I've never been to church...... pause.....we'll we are going  because I found one we can sit though and we fit here..

Pause.... Its called Crossroads or something.....

That rocks!!!!

Gerry

This is Gerry. For the last year he has been interning for me, learning the art of audio production and how to work in a recording studio. 2nd semester he recorded a demo project for these guys. It came out well.  Gerry has natural skills in audio and could do well pursuing a career if he chooses to. He has been a blast to hang out with because everything is exciting to him, he's not afraid to try anything and he is brutally honest. If it sucks he tells you and if its great he says so to. Thanks G, for a great year.