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| April 23-25, 2007 Thrive Conference |
 Thrive 2008 is over! The spiritual life/leadership development conference at Bayside Church was a tremendous time of celebration, inspiration, challenge, conviction, and equipping of people from all walks of life. Although a year-long effort, the bulk of the work came starting in January when the planning team began meeting (after our crazy fall of 10 events in 10 weeks and 11 Christmas Eve services!). Here's a behind-the-scenes look of some of the stories that you never hear about up front, with lots of pictures so you can experience the event. Unfortunately there is not room to document the hundreds of details, stories, and people involved, but here are some highlights! The official kick-off for the event actually began the week before, on Monday April 14, when 241 volunteers attended the Thrive Volunteer Dessert Training. The decor theme was a "safari adventure" theme. We had an amazing lady, Sharri Black, of CNC Designs, come in and do the decor for us. It truly amazes me when people use their gifts for God, because never in a million years would I have thought of all the creative ideas this lady and her helpers did! She dressed up our lobby with pipe and drape to create a grand entrance for volunteers as they signed in.  In this picture below you can see how she draped some decorations over the door to make a secondary entrance. Also, hanging fabric on the pipe and drape make a wonderful contrast that brought out the theme. She also placed a lavish centerpiece on the sign-in table (which we workers had to dodge as we tried to talk to people checking in!).  We served a dessert buffet, also nicely decorated. Notice how Sharri used different baskets and heights to create visual interest. Desserts were purchased from Costco and Sam's Club but presented so nicely they looked like they were from a gourmet baker!  Sherwood Carthen, Pastor of Bayside of South Sacramento, gave an inspiring message about servanthood. Then Rob Shelton (assistant director) and I did training about procedures, information, and schedules.  After that, all the team leads were brought up to the stage and introduced. (Unfortunately we didn't get a picture of all our wonderful leaders!) People did "speed training" - they spent seven minutes with their team leader, had three minutes to go to another team (many peoplel signed up for multiple teams since it was a multi-day conference), spent seven minutes with the second leader, and did this for a total of three rotations. We passed out little job cards for people that described their tasks. People also picked up their volunteer shirts. The week of the conference began Sunday after church when a setup team came in to turn our campus over from the weekend services. A tent company came in and put a large tent in the middle of the courtyard. The courtyard was used for our exhibitors and also had seating areas that people could relax.  Sharri and crew came in and built a grand entrance, complete with the words "Thrive 2008" on top. Those rocks on the side look pretty amazing... but they are styrofoam! We had a little mishap during the conference when it tipped over and a couple volunteers stood there holding it up until Sharri could come out and fix it.  The inside of the tent was amazing. They hung decorations from the ceiling — fabric and greenery and lights.  Here's a closeup of the centerpiece - large packages hung from the ceiling, complete with custom "Thrive 2008" stickers.  The lights looked great at night and added a lovely ambience to the event. The night before the conference started, we had electrical problems with lights blowing out and Rob had to go out in the cold and rain to figure out what wasn't working. I'm just glad he didn't get electrocuted!  We also had a tent outside for our recording sales. Alive Media recorded and sold the sessions for us, so for the first time we had downloads within 72 hours available for sale! Click here if you are interested in checking out the list.  Because our campus didn't have enough room for the 2400 people coming, we made extensive use of tents. For the first time, Volunteer Central and Speaker Central were outdoors.  Here's how the inside looked as it was being set up - floor and carpet were put in so it felt like an indoor room.  Our lobby furniture was brought in and the decor company spiced it up so it was an oasis where speakers could hang out. Volunteer Central also had round tables and a live video feed. One of the highlights of the event was when I walked in there and saw the volunteers standing in front of the monitor, worshiping God and clapping in enthusiasm!  Speaking of tents, we also had a large tent for food. I had asked if we needed to get a permit and was mistakenly told that we didn't. The day before the event was going to start, we discovered the fire marshall threatened to shut us down because we needed a permit. There was a lot of scrambling, but in the end the permit was granted and the conference proceeded without a hitch! We also had outdoor gazebos where people could relax. In the past we have purchased the gazebos and then church members have bought them from us at a discount. But the church finally invested in some gazebos and anchored them permanently to the ground (after a storm blew the previous gazebos away and destroyed them).  Once again, Sharri did her amazing magic in dangling things from the ceiling — something I would have never thought of!  Our blank balcony wall was hung with fabric and decor elements, transforming the feeling of the location.  They also placed tropic silk plants into our usual planters that have live plants. One of the effective keys of decor, I realized, is integrating it into existing features so people can't tell what is added and what is real!  A large rhinoceros cutout was placed behind the waterfall and tropical plants were added.  Here's a picture of our other waterfall, where you can see a little bit more clearly the rhinoceros cutout trying to hide behind the greenery.  Large real-looking lizards were placed in the rocks, including an alligator in the waterfall!  Working people are hungry people. Dave and Sue Batz were amazing leaders of the food crew that fed thousands of people over the week!  We ran out of signage stands, but a creative guy on staff thought of hanging the guest check-in signs from pipe and drape, poles and it actually worked better! (Thank you, Trent Jenkins!)  The guest-check-in stations were split on either side. Volunteers in the blue Bayside shirts stood at attention, ready to greet people as they arrived,  After picking up name badges, people went to the Breakout Ticket stations where they picked up tickets for the breakout classes they wanted to attend. There were 101 classes to choose from! Here are Joey and Chris, two of our great volunteers!  Tawny Bussey and Sara Page on our events team did the massive job of creating the board and tickets and then managing all of them. They trained volunteers on how to pull tickets for attendees. When a class got full, they put a "FULL" sticker on it.  Breakouts were offered in just about every topic imaginable! Here Bill Butterworth teaches a large breakout class on Communication.  During the first afternoon, I taught the "I'm Not Neat But I'm Organized" seminar. (Sorry, blatant plug for the book!) The events team did an excellent job of running the conference while I was not unavailable.  In the worship center, before every session, we had a massive crew of people putting handouts on all the seats. The most rushed one was when at 8am we discovered we had two CDs, a book, a brochure, and a newsletter to put out on all 2000 seats — and doors opened at 8:30! Needless to say, we opened doors a little late that day!  The opening session was an evening this time — which was great because we had a very large crowd of people! The program kicked off with a rousing performance by the Sacramento Taiko group. This year we intentionally tried to develop a more multi-cultural flavor in our programming.  At the end of the Taiko finale, the confetti cannons went off, and the conference started off with a bang!  Sherwood Carthen kicked off the conference as the keynote speaker. Other speakers in the conference included Miles McPherson, Brennan Manning, and Francis Chan. Ray Johnston, our senior pastor, served as host of the entire conference (and key creative force behind our high-impact keynote sessions). The tech crew also did an outstanding job creating a fresh-looking set, including turning four video screens on their sides. Thrive is all about fun. Because we had Bob Balian as our emcee, Bob Stromberg as our host/comedian, and Bob Smiley as a guest comedian, much of the conference played off of the "Bobs." We had an impromptu Bob choir where everyone named Bob got up and sang "Ba-ba-ba-ba-bara Ann." Notice how the back of the t-shirt has the letters spelled backwards.  Dave Enns, the Horn Guy, was a new guest at the conference and people loved his unique and amazing way of performing music.  Unfortunately I missed most of his performance (and most of the keynote sessions, come to think of it), but this picture below sure looks interesting!  Jon Pritikin, one of the world's strongest men, blew up a water bottle and made it explode! He also rolled up an iron pan. He's probably the type of person you want as your friend if you're walking down a dark alley.  Worship was more varied this year too. Below was the kickoff session with the Bayside Family of churches worship team and choir, led by our Associate Worship Pastor, Jeffrey B. Scott. We also had our south side brothers and sisters lead worship, a Lincoln Brewster concert and also Israel Houghton for an entire night of worship.  One of the fun activities was "Sanctuary Volleyball." A net was strung down the middle and the two sides competed in batting beach balls to each other.  Unfortunately, both sides cheated by not stopping when the whistle blew, so they ended up with negative points.  Beside humor, heart is another important element. Every session, we have a "luxury box" where special people are honored. A group of nine people came from England! They were honored by being seated in the luxury box and being served tea and scones.  On the other side of the stage, junior high ministry leaders were honored — with fresh In-n-out meals and hats! (Getting those hot meals with the minute-by-minute timing was another miracle itself, pulled off by Debbie Fletcher and her crew!)  At the end, since most of the events team missed all the programming, we treated ourselves to a few moments of rest in the luxury box. Everyone deserved it! Below: me, Marina Wang (amazing admin and finance), Tawny Bussey (exhibitors, little pieces of paper (including 10,000 breakout tickets), merch and decor), my husband Albert (who was so wonderfully supportive — he didn't see me almost all week!), Rob Shelton (assistant director, vendors and logistics), Chris Shearer (registration, customer service and Command Center), Lorie Smith (helped me a TON with speakers and oversaw Speaker Central) and Sara Page (volunteer scheduling and breakout tickets). We also had a great group of team leaders that oversaw so many different areas: guest services, speaker hosts and drivers, classroom aides, Volunteer Central, and many more! Thank you, Thrive 08 Leadership Team! What an amazing team! I love all of them and are so proud of them!  Some interesting statistics:
On this note, I will be leaving Bayside Church (currently Events Director and Thrive Conference Director) in early May. God has led our family to move to Davis, California, where I will be Associate Pastor of Adult Ministries at University Covenant Church. It's a long story, but it's really a God-thing and clear leading, and I am very excited about the new opportunity. So I will be stepping out of the role of doing large-scale events, but perhaps participating on a smaller scale at UCC. And, I will continue to blog as I attend other events, so that readers can get ideas for their own events! However, I still recommend Thrive as an outstanding conference to attend, and hope you will come in the future to experience it yourself. Hope you can come to Thrive 2009! It's going to be the most amazing Thrive conference ever! Register here.  (Special thanks to Chris Moon and the amazing Bayside photo team for many of these wonderful pictures!)
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Hits: 124 Comments (2)
  written by Albert, May 04, 2008
Yes, that's my wife, Angela Yee. Nutty enough to put in a 115 hour week, amazing enough to still have time to read to the kids.
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 written by Rob Shelton, May 14, 2008
Angela, between moving, creating 400-page binders, and giving the most detailed and efficient pass-offs to all of us staff, I'm even more amazed that you were able to compose this incredible blog in the same 4 day time period that you did everything else! Wow!
Thank you for capturing the essence and journey of Thrive better than anyone has before. This blog really exemplifies what Thrive is about and the people that helped to make it happen. Thank you for all that you did for us here at Bayside and more importantly, all that you did for bringing lives in to the kingdom by directing the most powerful events that Bayside has ever done. Your Friend & Brother In Christ Forever, Rob report abuse
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