Event is weeks away. Site visit: already done. Tape measure and all. New venue = new unknowns. Cable runs measured, house tech verified, expectations set both ways. A site visit costs an afternoon. Skipping one can cost the show.

Home events: bring 2x what you need. The truck doesn't care. Fly-out events: every case earns its seat. No "just in case" — just a signal path you know cold before you pack. NYC, Radio Mercury Awards, 2 crew, clean show. The plan is the safety net.

Bought the X6 not to replace main cameras, but for seamless recording. Just place it, hit record, and get back to work. This 360 camera captures everything, letting you focus on the main task. #CameraGear #ContentCreation

Tearing down and packing up after breakout rooms felt like a chore, especially when I wasn't even thinking about the camera setup. Just finding a spot, hitting record, and doing the work. #EventTech #WorkflowHacks

PTZ camera shake is a common problem, especially on creaky gym floors like those at East Texas A&M. Crowds cause vibrations that turn your shots into a shaky mess. Thankfully, Rig Wheels offers a vibration isolator that can save the day. #CameraTips #LiveStreaming

We bring extra comms headsets to every event — for the OTHER crews. Venue AV, hotel team, planner: one shared channel. When something breaks mid-show you want one team fixing it, not three teams assigning blame. Attitude is a piece of gear.

Woke up to an automatically edited recap video from my Insta360 footage—no editing required! AI created music, cuts, and transitions overnight. While not client-ready, it's an incredible time-saver. #AI #VideoEditing #Tech

Agenda: keynotes, panels, band… and a choir. That one word = different mics, different placement, different mix. Caught it 2 weeks out. Specialty mics ordered, tested, ready at load-in. 1,500 people. 3 days. Zero audio complaints. Boring audio is earned.

Graduation stream wobbling. Camera: fine. Tripod: fine. The gym floor itself: bouncing every time the crowd stood. Fix: stabilization isolators + heavier stands with rubber feet on every PTZ. Our dime. Next ceremony: rock solid. Physics is negotiable if you spend on it.

I don't remember the keynotes I've streamed. I remember the graduation comments: Grandparents who couldn't travel. Family overseas at 3 a.m. "SO PROUD OF YOU" in all caps. 8 seconds on stage — and everyone who loves them was there for it.

Client (morning of): "Can we also get iMag in this breakout room?" The planned switcher: not enough ports. The extra vMix laptop we always pack: no problem. 20 min later they had the room screen + stream + our multiview. There's never one way to route a show.

Unexplainable law of live events: book a random Wednesday 3 months out, and someone else will request that exact Wednesday within a week. Every. Time. Planners: lock your date early. Confirmed = protected.

The groom got in a car accident right before his wedding. Everyone was fine — but it's why we run every event like something will go wrong. 3 audio zones. Playlists downloaded before trusting venue wifi. The wifi died. Nobody noticed. Prepared beats lucky.

Not every job we do comes with an invoice. We do a fair amount of volunteer production — churches, community events, causes that can't swing a full budget. And I think that matters. When you run a business, it's easy to weigh everything by what it pays. But some of the work I'm most glad we did never showed up on a single invoice. There's an old line about it being better to give than to receive — I've found that holds up more often than not. We're lucky to do work we love with gear most people will never touch. Getting to point that at something good now and then isn't a cost. It's kind of the point. #givingback

A client should never feel like they're competing for your attention. Last month I had a three-day conference at the Gaylord. And of course — because that's how this business works — three other clients needed me those exact same days. A site visit for a college conference. A noon webinar. A CEO shoot in downtown Dallas. Here's what I won't do: leave my conference short-handed, or tell a client "sorry, I'm booked." So every one got covered. I brought in a crew member to hold my spot at the Gaylord. Eli ran the CEO shoot. Nobody got the B-team, and nobody got bumped. Events cluster — everything lands on the same Tuesday, then it's quiet for two weeks. That's the rhythm. But "I'm busy that day" isn't an answer your client should ever hear. Let them down once and they find someone else — and they might just stay with that someone else. Being reliable isn't glamorous. It's just the whole job. #eventproduction

At that same conference, a couple things came up that weren't in the plan. They needed to bring someone in over Zoom. They needed a podium mic that wasn't on the original list. No problem — both were already in the case. This is the quiet value of an experienced crew: we don't just bring what's on the run sheet. We bring what the day might throw at you. Most of it never comes out of the bag. But the one time it does, it turns "uh oh" into "handled" before you've finished the sentence. That's what you're really paying for — not the gear that gets used, but the gear that's ready just in case. #eventproduction

Here's something most people don't realize about a big event: the setup takes way longer than the event itself. For our last 1,500-person conference, we were on-site from 8 a.m. until late that night — a full day before a single attendee showed up — getting everything tested, tuned, and ready. Then we showed up early again the next morning. Because here's the thing nobody warns you about: you can test everything, leave it running overnight, and some gremlin still sneaks in and nudges a setting while you sleep. Every time. So we build in time to run the whole thing again before doors open. That's the difference between "it worked yesterday" and "it works right now, in front of your people." The calm you see at showtime is just a lot of careful, boring prep you didn't see. #eventproduction

Just wrapped the Society of Classical Learning conference — 1,500+ people, and we ran the whole thing. IMAG, audio, cameras, switching, graphics, speaker notes, the stage timer, all of it. It ran clean. When a client hands you an event that size, they're not really hiring cameras. They're handing you their reputation in front of 1,500 people and trusting you not to drop it. That's the part I think about driving in at 6 a.m. Proud of how this one turned out. The kind of job that reminds me why we do this. #eventproduction

For the person who just got told "make the town hall hybrid" and has no clue where to start — breathe. You don't need to be a video expert by Friday. What actually matters: people at home need to hear clearly, see who's talking, and have someone watching the stream the whole time. The rest is our job, not yours. Happy to talk it through anytime — no pitch. #corporateevents

My favorite ten minutes of any event is before anyone arrives. Empty room, chairs straight, cameras set, stream tested and standing by. Everything ready, nothing happened yet. Calm at showtime isn't luck. It's everything you did in the hours nobody saw. Then the doors open and the day belongs to the people on stage. #livestreaming