IRC for A/V Tech

Recently I've been doing a lot of work at the church related to the Dave Ramsey Town Hall for Hope which was having a live hour-and-a-half stream of Dave talking, to be broadcast to thousands of hosting locations - our church being one of them. Naturally, it's my job to do the hours of testing, and ultimately run the A/V during the live stream.

It was very clear that while the Town Hall guys have great production equipment, they've never done anything like this before. Very clear during the testing. :/ So when the live stream day came, I was grateful for some very kind soul who set up an IRC chatroom (channel) specifically for all of us tech people to sign into and keep in contact during the live stream.

You have absolutely no idea how helpful and reassuring this was. When you're doing everything you can to make sure that live stream is solid and glitch free, and then the audio goes out, the first thing you assume is that it's something on your end. But when everyone else is reporting that, yes, their sound went out as well, it's a wave of relief. It's like that commercial for Nextel, where roadies rule the world.. Except it's with many more people keeping in touch. Without that chat, that live stream event would have been much more stressful (considering that the battery in Dave Ramsey's wireless mic failed twice).

I also need to thank Buzz Out Loud and gknee for introducting me to, and showing me how to use, IRC and XChat. It couldn't have been timed better.