Willow Creek Community Church Connects Through Sony HD VideoConferencing
IPELA® PCSHG90, PCSG50s Extend the Worldwide Community
Sony IPELA® videoconferencing technology is helping Willow Creek Community Church focus its vision on a worldwide community.
The 20,000 plus attendee church is deploying Sony's PCS-HG90 high-definition visual communication systems and PCS-G50 videoconferencing systems to link with church outreach offices overseas. By the end of 2008, Willow Creek's goal is to connect its PCS-HG90 home system to remote PCS-G50 systems located in 12 countries including the Dominican Republic, Malawi, and others in South America, Africa and Europe, according to Mike Gold, Willow Creek Community Church's CIO.
"For us, relationships are everything — our relationship with God and with people," said Gold. "These Sony videoconferencing tools help us build a larger community."
Willow Creek Community Church began in a rented movie theater in the mid-1970's and has since blossomed into more than 100 ministries based on its 155 acre site in South Barrington, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago. Now, the challenge is to extend its calling worldwide without losing the intimacy needed for genuine connections. For this, technology helps, but Gold acknowledges there is no replacement for face-to-face communication.
"We have outreach around the world and we needed a better way to get people closer together," said Gold. "We needed to go beyond traditional phone conferencing."
Gold's team selected the Sony IPELA videoconferencing systems for their power, ease of use and interoperability with other systems. Two PCS-HG90 high-definition systems serve as the base units connecting over regular Internet links to the PCS-G50 systems located overseas. Sony 40-inch LCD displays serve as the "windows" looking across the world. While the link-ups now are primarily in standard definition, the PCS-HG90 system's HD capabilities provide the very best imaging now and open the door to an HD future.
"We decided that the HD system delivered the best possible image quality and a bridge for today's SD use," Gold said. "It also made sense to be ready for the HD future as bandwidth capabilities and costs come down."
The initial tests with the PCS-HG90 system took place closer to home last summer to connect with Life Church in Oklahoma during a conference on community building.
"The PCS-HG90 system worked simply and flawlessly," Gold said. "We connected immediately and the images and audio were just terrific over the Internet."
