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Wednesday, September 30, 2009

Church Sound Profile: Houston Clark On Building An A/V System Business

Reflections on the church technology marketplace from the co-owner of Clark Promedia

Though admittedly not involved in anything arts or performance related while in school, these days Houston Clark finds himself sharing the helm of Clark Promedia with his brother, George, where together they design and build sophisticated audio, video, and lighting performance systems, primarily for the house of worship market.

Clark helped found the company – based in Alpharetta, Georgia – in 1996 while he continued to work in the software industry. He eventually joined the company full-time in 2002. The brothers complemented each other well with Houston concentrating on the business side, (sales, marketing and operations), while George focused on the performance technology aspects.

Houston Clark recalls, “A lot of it really originated out of a passion to work with my brother. We were eight years apart age-wise and really didn’t know each other as adults. I had left for college when he was in sixth grade.

“So it wasn’t until he got in college in Atlanta, that we really spent any amount of time together as adults, and just realized that we really enjoyed one another. We’re very different from a personality perspective. The desire to work together was the starting point. Over time we both developed an incredible passion for the church and helping the church create engaging environments. And obviously media – multimedia is a huge part of creating an engaging environment in today’s church culture.”

While they knew what they wanted to do, it took them a little while to determine a specific area to concentrate on. Clark continues, “The first couple of years, we did literally anything from conference rooms to production events. In fact, we produced a user conference event for the software company I worked for, and worked at whatever else we could in this industry.”

Around 1997 George Clark started to work with sound at Northpoint Community Church, and his brother notes, “We convinced Northpoint to let us do their audio system for a 2,700-seat auditorium, which is just crazy. I mean there’s no way they should have done that.

“But that allowed us to start with a church that was influential, and that really is what solidified the market niche we’re in. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, the number of churches that were new and needed to build facilities that embraced and valued performance technologies was just exploding.

“And we just happened to be in that position. We had the incredible opportunity to literally start with one of the most influential churches in the country.”

Looking back, he concedes, “It was crazy. Today if I were competing for a job it would be unheard of for someone to say, ‘Well I’ve never done this before, but I really think I could do a good job.’ You know, I could tear that up from a competitive perspective, given the risks you are taking, it’s just crazy. You’ve got to look back at that and say it’s a total God thing because they were crazy to do it, but George had the confidence that he could do a good job.”

The facility at Northpoint, called the East Auditorium, is operating currently with fundamentally the same system Clark Promedia installed over a decade ago.

Community, Culture & The Church
Clark has strong feelings regarding the topic of the church understanding and responding to the culture of the community it serves, as well as being relevant in its presentation both in method and content.

“What I’ve learned is that you could have phenomenal content and average platform, and by platform I mean the audio, video, and theatrical lighting solution, and you’re just beating people back with a stick,” he says. “Conversely, you can have an incredible platform, but your content just isn’t that relevant. I think that’s the conundrum many churches are finding themselves in.

“Good content is readily available today. You and I could go on the web and listen to the top 10 church leaders in the country right now. Whenever we want to. We can listen to Andy Stanley, Ed Young and Mark Driscoll, just any number of highly influential teachers. And then you’ve got all these churches on a Sunday trying to create relevant content that essentially competes with what you and I can get almost any day of the week. Good quality content was just not as prevalent six or seven years ago as it is today.

“Whether we like it or not, multimedia is ingrained in our culture. One of the challenges we’ve found is it’s very difficult sometimes for churches to break free from the culture that they’ve developed internally because they’ve been around so long.”

“Yes, the technology is incredibly important, because that’s part of the message now, but understanding culture and how the technology can be used in communicating culture has been really where we’ve focused the last several years. That’s the value that a company like ours, that’s been around for years, can provide.

“So for me personally, that’s allowed me to be not so much focused on whether this is the right speaker or the right video projector. We have a team of people that do that very, very well. I get to focus on helping churches understand what would be meaningful for them to do in order to help them communicate to the culture that they’re trying to reach.

“I think sometimes we lose sight of the fact that it’s the content that being delivered that is critical, that’s making the difference.”

Doing Business In The Current Economy
The current economic challenges have manifested in many ways for different companies, but Clark Promedia is faring well through the turbulence, and Clark has a realistic attitude and expectations.

“For us, business has been consistent, we haven’t seen phenomenal growth like we’ve had in the last six or seven years,” he says. “But the caliber of opportunity seems to be still there, still solid. And we’ve just got such a long history with so many churches now I would say we’ve been able to have some balance because churches are still growing and they still need our support.”

On The Home Front
While not necessarily technically inclined at home, Clark admits to being what he calls ‘a born again gamer.’

“I have children that are 16 through 22 (the older ones are boys) and we’re Xbox junkies,” he explains. “It’s been fun because it’s allowed me to be engaged with my kids in something that they value, which is important to them. I have a nice media room – thank you George – I’ve got the Xbox, I have a 72-inch Mitsubishi single chip DLP rear screen projection system. I better not tell you what loudspeakers I have though, I might make somebody mad because I didn’t use their loudspeakers, but they’re professional.

“I’ve got a Kindle. That and the iPhone are the two best technical innovations for me personally that I’ve seen in the last six years. They’re incredible. Everybody laughs about my iPhone, but it’s a valuable tool.” Other than the iPhone, when queried as to whether he’s a Mac or a PC, the response is succinct: “I’m a Mac, no question.”

Involved more with athletic endeavors in school than the arts, Clark also used to participate in triathlons, however, back surgery about 10 years ago has limited his athletic pursuits these days primarily to swimming. Married for almost 23 years, he also enjoys traveling with his wife, reading (juggling three or four books at any given time), and is a huge history fan.

“Growing up I didn’t listen to the radio; I didn’t really have an appreciation for any of the performing arts,” he concludes. I’m technical by my education and background; I was a systems analyst and software engineer and then moved into more of the software marketing and business development side. So I appreciate and understand technical things but the artistic side was something I never thought about.

“George has been an incredible teacher in exposing me to this environment, and the things that are valuable in this environment. It’s funny to look back on. I would have never in a million years have thought about this as a career path, but when you look back, you see how your background is helpful in what you’re doing.”

Mark Johnson has been involved with audio and video in one way or another for over 35 years, including production, manufacturing and covering the industries for various publications.

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