A Lambda Christmas Letter

As lead Lamb around here, (Duh the Lamb writing this year), I take it upon myself each year to regal you with the accomplishments and tales of the crew at Lambda throughout the year. Originally, there was a board meeting discussion of removing me as your narrator and doing something light and fluffy and Dr. Seusy for the children, but I can’t have anyone ruin Christmas traditions, so we’ll call this letter the Lamb who stole the Christmas letter: Coffee Edition.

Every year as we look back, we ask the same old questions: did Lambda accomplish anything? Did Ryan actually work? Did we drink enough coffee? What? What? What?

Really, as we looked back over this last year, we were reminded of a lot that the team here has accomplished! If you missed our year-end review in pictures, be sure to check it out for just a quick look at some of the projects and free resources that Lambda created this year! With the challenges of Covid and industry shortages, it really has been a team effort to produce as much as we have. We cannot espresso how much YOUR support of Lambda AV means! We couldn’t have done it without you.

Now, you may be pondering why this Christmas letter is called the Coffee Edition. Many reasons. First, we run on coffee here at Lambda, so you can imagine the time we’ve been having when I tell you our shop coffee brand was discontinued this year. *moment of silence* You can also imagine the amount of effort everyone has put in to finding a new coffee. You could call it a part of our daily grind. And in true Lambda fashion we’ve kept a Top Secret Coffee Spreadsheet to rate each one. With detailed descriptions comparing them to life events, equipment we own, or Ryan, it’s easy to say, we’ve all had coffee on our minds recently. That and I’m running out of Lamb puns…time to roast something else.

So, what’s bean happening this year? Along with creating lots of resources, we also added two new little Lambs to the herd! Both Ryan, our owner, and Trevor, our Audio Expert and Shop manager, welcomed baby girls this year! Now our HR and accountant, Elizabeth, has the most important job of all keeping Little Boss happy and ready to win a lot of bids for us in the new year with her big blue eyes! Maybe she can help keep track of Ryan’s recent PR Tour too. #ryandoeswork. 

If there has been one trend for AV this year, it has been video studios. The need for remote communication and production has not slowed down with these changing times! This has led to us installing half a dozen video production and streaming studios. The biggest studio we did this year was in Tampa Florida for a large corporation looking to keep up with the times and produce more video content for their staff and patrons. This studio had a little of everything with camera dollies, green screens, a few different set backgrounds and more! Ryan stayed behind in CO on baby watch, while we sent the whole crew on a road trip across americano to install and train staff for this beautiful studio!

With all the video installs this year, Matt has enjoyed working with some of Blackmagic’s new cameras as well as remote camera control heads. We designed a high-end, professional broadcast camera setup that can be controlled remotely and allow a pro video production without additional staffing! In addition to adding these cameras to one of their buildings, New Life Church also asked to upgrade some of their other broadcast cameras with handheld setups and cleared out all the old cable in their broadcast room! With a few mounted monitors and a cleaned-up rack, their broadcast room was ready to up their productions. Matt has been able to help with the video launch of another New Life Campus. Now all he needs to do is get his coffee cup back from Ryan. He’s not bitter about that.

When we weren’t putting together studios, we were mounting small camera setups for other churches to get more people up and streaming as well as replacing lots of projectors for both churches and schools! When people began to meet in-person once again, they started to notice the need for projection upgrade and brighter content for their whole audience to see. As schools started back, Lambda has been able to keep their theater and gym spaces up to date for school gatherings and performances as well as updating classrooms to better serve the teachers. We’ve had the pleasure to continue to serve our D20 school district and schools, D38 and Douglas County District throughout the year. We’ve also continued to provide support for multiple churches, offering support, trainings, color corrections and more! 

Lambda has bean so busy providing support for multiple churches, keeping our schools functioning, offering training, color corrections, and more, that we’ve consistently contracted a non-coffee drinker. He’s all about safe Tea first. Despite his one flaw, Dale has been on several large projects with us this year and has made our team mocha better. Lambda has a perfect blend of talented and dedicated contractors and vendors who are a huge piece to making your visions come to life! This recently included reworking and engineering a new audio system this December!

With the supply chain increasingly delayed as the year has progressed it means we’ve had a latte problem with supplies and materials taking much longer, even months, to receive. This last week, just in time for Christmas, Trevor took the lead to do a complete speaker install for a local church! We love our Danley speakers and couldn’t wait to hear the amazing difference they made. From having dead spots in the room where speech was sometimes unintelligible, to having clear audio and complete coverage has made all the difference for the church. The guys were finally able to use the new chain motor lifts for something other than stirring up trouble at the shop. Some people lift speakers. I prefer to French press. 

Even Jewell has had an exciting year! When we opened our offices back up this year, she decided to make her desk into a mini jungle with plants and twinkle lights. But you know, whatever keeps you sane while Ryan is on vacation and the crew has run out of snacks! She’s also been turned into a part time camera operator which allowed us to help staff a few events to keep our clients up and going when they were short on help. 

Along with permanent video production studios, we also designed and built several portable streaming systems for small churches that often need to move their setup or have different volunteers setting it up each week. It really is our goal at Lambda to bring you resources that will serve you where you are at!

Overall, 2021 has been a grande year with birthday sushi perks and a grounded team! We are looking forward to what 2022 brings us and hope it’s half-and-half audio and video this time. We’ve got some exciting projects brewing and we can’t wait for you to be a part of them too!
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Thank you so machiatto if you read this far! It took a lot of procaffinating to get it written, and we didn’t filter anything out. With that, we wish you strong, Columbian roast kind of Christmas!
​The Lambda Team