Today, a new batch of Salvation Army cadets (trainees) were commissioned as fully-fledged officers (ministers). Although the commissioning meetings are a UK event, international headquarters has historically been drafted in to provide the technical support necessary for webcasting the ceremony and ensuing celebration.

So, despite being a Saturday, it was an early start and a shlep into London. My colleagues Mark and Gary had had an even more red-eyed beginning to the day, and had already set up the majority of the kit by the time I arrived.

My role in the webcast production is ensuring that name captions, song lyrics, social media hashtags and other on-screen graphics appear at the right time. In this instance, it’s meant creating 864 Powerpoint slides. If that sounds a lot: it is!

In order to overlay the captions on the output from the cameras, the slides are created on a green background. That is then chromakeyed by the vision mixer so that the green matte is replaced by the shots from the camera.

This…

…becomes this:

The eagle-eyed amongst you will spot that the lower image also has a Salvation Army red shield emblazoned upon it. This is added digitally too, as a DSK (downstream key).

We usually use one DOG (digital onscreen graphic) in the top right-hand corner for branding purposes, and have a separate graphics for the top left-hand corner for Twitter handles, ‘LIVE’ indicators, etc. They can be cued independently of the Powerpoint or MediaShout presentation.

Our web streams are now handled via YouTube, which gives us a number of advantages over alternative providers – not least that it’s a free service and that it is scalable. Once the technical team has connected everything together, all I need to do is embed a snippet of code on the right web page and then make sure that my content appears at the right time in the programme.

In the event of unexpected repeats of sections of congregational songs, I can take myself off-air, find the right slide and re-cue in a second or two – though it does help if everything is rehearsed first.

As this was a UK Salvation Army event, I could sit back and let someone else take care of the social media side of things – but it was a pretty healthy response for a Saturday afternoon gathering clashing with some major sporting event or other.

After the evening gathering, the de-rigging was especially important as the kit is travelling to Singapore for its next gig (20 July). I’m not accompanying it on this occasion, but will be providing support from afar.

You can watch Saturday’s endeavours at http://sar.my/tv.

Dodgy grammar, admittedly. But in the manner of Thunderbird 1 rising dramatically from its secret under-pond location on Tracy Island, the social media buzz I’ve been cultivating for The Salvation Army’s 149th anniversary today has been successfully launched.

For the last couple of weeks, I’ve been inviting/encouraging/nagging Salvation Army friends and supporters to sign up to a birthday greeting Thunderclap. The aim: to reach as many people on Twitter, Facebook and Tumblr as possible.

In the event, we exceeded the 500-name goal quite considerably and, by virtue of the friends-of-friends multiplication factor, more than 673,000 people will have seen the birthday greeting. With a special Founders’ Day meeting and morning coffee/cake at The Salvation Army’s international headquarters, there’s been lots going on. Sufficient to merit a live text commentary, that I’ve been beavering away on all day.

Of course, the 149th anniversary is just a foretaste of the massive 150th birthday bonanza in July 2015. It’s going to be a frantically busy 12 months…