Every year, we have our annual profit sharing worship service where some of our newest members share how Jesus Christ has changed thier lives. This year our creative media team pre-recorded them instead of sharing them live. Here is the return on ministry shared by all of our church family:
Recently, I gave a presentation to parents of Junior and High School students on Internet Safety. This past weekend, our Bible Study group was a week ahead in the curriculum, so I took a moment to revise my presentation to suit my audience. Hence, Preparing Your Preschooler for the Digital Age was born. Truthfully, I believe the battle for your kids is won or lost in the first 5 years of life. As parents, if we commit the time now and teach our children, we will have the relationship and trust with our kids to better parent them and guide them through the dangers of online and offline relationships. Below is the revised presenation (Slideshare and PDF) for parents of preschoolers.
The links in the PDF below are hyperlinked giving you direct access to the websites and resources mentioned in the presentation.
Thank you for attending tonight's seminar.
Here are my presentation notes in PDF form (see below). If you see something underlined...more than likely it is a hyperlink to a website or resource that I mentioned in the seminar. Once you open the PDF, you may click on these links just as you would a website.
If you have any questions, feel free to contact me at the church: 713-465-3408.
Downloads:
Presentation Slides
Jeremiah Owyang shared some interesting info from the US Airforce. Thier Public Affairs Emerging Technology Division released a diagram of how to respond to 3rd party blog posts. Jeremiah is right, we can all learn from this...especially as it relates to the church. As a pastor and IT Director, what people are saying about our church (and more importantly God's Church) is important. We should be aware of what people are saying and respond accordingly. The diagram is a GREAT starting point for how we strategically respond to both positive and negative comments.
The best thing about the tools listed below is that they are either free or inexpensive.
Web Design Projects
Conceptshare.com: A great website for online collaboration around visual designs. We used this resourceful site in designing the new 380+ page second.org.
WebSort.net: A easy and helpful site for working through taxonomies, information architecture, etc. We used it to ‘survey’ key staff on how they would group information together on our new website.
FreeMind: Looking for an easy tool to draft a sitemap or brainstorm some ideas. FreeMind makes it easy!
Issues/Bug Tracking
SourceGear.com: They offer two companion, Fortress and Vault. Fortress provides issues management/bug tracking with email notifications. Its companion Vault, provide version control and is a helpful tool for any software development collaboration.
Overall Project Management
BaseCamp: 37Signals provides this very popular tool. I give it an A+ on usability though I think its functionality is a bit lacking. If you are looking for tool that non-technical people can use and who will ‘own’ parts of the project…this is a good tool to consider.
LiveScribe.com: I got this about 5 months ago and this is a MUST HAVE for any project manager. This fancy pen holds up to 100 hours of audio and syncs it with your handwritten notes (special paper included). It allows you to touch any written word and begins playback of the meeting at the very moment you wrote that word or note. Confused? Watch the video. With this tool, I have preserved every conversation, decision, creative session, etc. After the meeting, I then share my notes with audio with those who attended and those who missed the meeting…all over the web.
ProjectManager.com: Though I have never used this and I have not read any reviews on it, but the demo video looks impressive. Check it out and let me know if you have used it or know anything about it.
PMToolBox.com: Not a tool per se, but a helpful and resourceful website that gives you plenty of info on project management.
Data Migrations
CleanUpData.com: From the folks at DabbleDB, this tool is simply awesome and a time saver. If you are responsible for a data migration or data cleanup, you will need to take a look at this.
If you know of any other tools or would want to share your experiences with any of the tools mentioned, please drop a comment for others.
A week after the Storm was released, we got our hands on one to see if it delivers 'the goods.' I chose one of our tech savvy pastors, Brian Mills, and let him take it for a spin. Here is his review:
Love IT!!! If no one wants it well I will take it off anyone’s hands.. ha ha
Easy to use
Pretty Slow at times – acts like it does not have enough memory space. Maybe Blackberry will put out an upgrade for this.
Froze up twice on me so far.
Like the Touch Screen. Easy to use. You do not click on what you don’t want to, like you might at times w/ the IPHONE
The Key board is different and you have to get use to it. Can’t text really fast but it is still quicker than your normal phone.
MMS is great.. you can send video/pict’s/voice notes in which is pretty easy. You cannot do this on the IPHONE
Great applications – be nice if they make it so you can have app’s like the IPHONE has.
Fast Internet
Very business savvy
As for Looks – well it does make you look “cool."
I just saw this referenced in a feed that I read a few days ago, but I can't recall who shared it with me. Nevertheless, if you are an advanced excel user, a consultant, or someone who works on data migrations, then this post is for you. The folks at DabbleDB.com have published a great data clean up tool at http://cleanupdata.com. Before you use it, be sure and watch their how-to video. It explains it all!
Nice work guys!
Both the church and technology are ever changing. Churches have to work strategically to maximize its staff, resources, and work processes; otherwise, they'll likely experience duplication of effort, inefficiency, excessive expenditures. This is more true with IT, Communications and Media than any other area of the church. These 3 areas are technologically driven and technologically dependent. Churches can't afford to operate inefficiently because of the high cost of technology. The three diagrams below show the overlap that often occurs between these 3 entities. The overlap may vary based on the size and complexity of the church, but as a church grows these areas of overlap are real issues. It is obvious these 3 areas must work together in unison for a church to be strategic and effective in its use of technology.
The Shared Ministry (Functions) of IT, Communications, and Media
The Shared Technical Resources of IT, Communications and Media
The Shared Staffing of IT, Communications, and Media
As you can see, when these three aren't working together, you will find the following issues:
A. Decentralized Purchasing and Reduced Purchasing Power with Vendors.
B. Employing redundant personnel.
C. Defining redundant working processes.
D. Wasted time getting department heads to agree on priorities, projects, and availability of resources to get things done.
Conclusions:
1. Establish 1 person (the Triad Team Leader) to oversee all 3 department who shares a seat 'at the table' with the senior leadership/pastors of the church. This person needs to have both a heart for ministry, a technical bent, and a very defined vision for how technologies may be used strategically for the church.
2. Appoint a team leader for each of these 3 teams and define a clear chain of command.
3. Each week the Triad leaders meet to share project updates, weekly tasks, and reevaluate project priorities.
3. Locate (i.e. office) all personnel from these 3 departments into one central location to streamline internal communications, project collaboration, creative teamwork, etc. It helps to have a really good conference room.
WOW!!! Since November 1, our email filter caught 484,879 emails because of spam, viruses, malware, etc. This is 81.89% of all inbound emails to our church staff. What would we do without it!!!
I came across these great videos from Common Craft...a great teaching site to use in explaining social media (and other technologies) to your church staff:
Social Networking in Plain English
Twitter in Plain English
Social Media in Plain English
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