A few weekends ago the Planet Wisdom Student Conference was in Lakeland, Florida, but our speaker Mark Matlock was in Dallas getting some medical tests done. This caused for a slight problem given the fact that he’s the main teacher/speaker for the whole conference. 

We thankfully had all the DVDs of the previous conference, so we simply played the video of Mark on the screens much like a video/satellite church campus would. 

What was interesting was how the kids, and even us (the crew) responded.  We forgot Mark wasn’t on stage.  I set the lights live to match the lights on stage in the video, just no ’speaker light’. 

One time in the video, Mark was speaking about a book he had written, which he had in his hands.  After he had finished telling about it, he offered to give it away to one of the students in the room.  He said “You know, who wants this book right now?” on video.  I saw a ton of kids in the live room I was in raise their hands, then after a few seconds, put them down after remembering Mark wasn’t actually there with a book to give away. 

Just so interesting…I mean, video: What a great tool, but how it shapes our culture and how we perceive things.  I got to see that first hand, and I have to be honest, it was a little weird.