Babies, Mother PB is HERE. She is just in the midst of buying a house, which requires many thousands of documents, large buckets of money and soon I’m sure they’ll be coming with syringes to collect my blood.
In the midst of all that, and saying farewell to a beautiful congregation of ten years, I skipped off to the corn fields of Iowa last weekend to spend a whirlwind day with the Iowa Conference of the United Church of Christ. I flew in, led two workshops, had some great conversations, flew home, and boy are my arms tired! *rimshot*
Something so wonderful happened out there. Yes, I saw a man in overalls, a bow tie and a sports jacket, but there was something even more wonderful than that (and please, don’t try that fashion combo unless you live in Iowa). The wonderful thing is how the BTFM community saved my hide when I got into Techno Trouble as a presenter.
Here’s how it happened. I got to my room at Iowa State University where the projector was set up so I could show my PowerPoint presentations, but none of my Mac adapters worked to hook me up to the projector. After a few minutes of futile fiddling, I began to feel a mild panic. A Tech Guy showed up with his adapter, which also did not work. People were filing into the room, and my panic mounted.
“Are you the real PeaceBang?” I hear. It turns out that a lovely couple attending the workshop are the parents of one of you long-time BTFM pigeons, and we get to chatting and stuff, and it’s so nice to meet them. It really is. They turn out to be not only lovely people but the Saviors of my presentation because they have a PC laptop out in their car that Daddy Pigeon goes out to get.
The plan is for me to e-mail him my PowerPoint presentations so we can show them from his PC. I start my presentation, grateful unto the LORD that the first section is a lecture off of outlines. Papa Pigeon fiddles at the desk behind me and tries to get the PowerPoint up and running. Problem: my e-mails to him haven’t gone through.
I don’t want the participants to see me sweat, so I keep tap dancing with my presentation, trying not to stop the whole thing cold to sit down and cry. What am I going to do if there’s no projector? And by the way, Iowa State University, maybe you could arrange it so that Mac users are able to present at your fine, world-class institution of higher learning? Just a thought?
At the point at which I am at wit’s end and looking like this,
Papa Pigeons says, “I have a thumb drive. Save your PowerPoints on there and I’ll upload it.”
I hear angels singing glorious hymns of praise and without missing a beat while I’m still tap dancing about social media and ministry (did you ever see that scene in “Chicago” where Richard Gere tap dances through his courtroom defense of Roxie Hart? It was like that), I save the presentations off my MacBook Pro, hand them off to Daddy Pigeon, and keep going while he lickety-split saves the data on his computer.
At the very second at which I need the images from my PowerPoint to show up, they do. The presentation comes in at pretty much exactly 1.5 hours and we upload the next one, which also goes beautifully and comes in at 1.5 hours.
And that, my friends, is how social media can connect us and saves our lives. Sometimes in spiritual ways. Sometimes in emotional ways. And sometimes in the form of your mom and dad who become the actual, technical saviors of an important professional commitment that I could not have met without them.
Let the people say AMEN.
The moral of the story is, dumplings, always make sure to either make sure you bring all the possible technological equipment you might possibly need to assure a smooth visual presentation or try to arrange it so that someone’s awesome mom and dad are there to save your ever-loving derriere.
