Are you aware of the Entrepreneurship Initiative at Redeemer Presbyterian Church's Center for Faith & Work? www.faithandwork.org/ei

You might find encouragement in the work of the Ei organization.

I love it Pastor Dave! I use also use photo postcards for that personal touch for thank you notes and following-up after big events (birthday, celebrations, etc). I just sent a postcard on Sunday and it was received on Tuesday -- that's fast (and impressive to the person receiving it!).

Another service other than CellPhonePostCards.com that I've been trying out recently is TouchNote -- they have an iPhone app which makes things easy peasy.

Thanks for dropping by and sharing that note Al!

One of your thoughts in the book does point to an all or nothing issue though, that in the end, an organization does need buy in from all of the meeting owners/leaders for your radical approaches to collaboration in this setting.

What can someone do as Suzi's great rants above capture, when you are not the one calling the meetings, but rather the "required" participants?  One option is to NOT attend, but that isn't always a sustainable strategy...

Any other ideas or comments, anyone?  Love this thread so far!

Kenny

Love your RANTS!

Al drives hard against #1 and #2 in your rants above.
Your #3 and #4 are interesting for sure.  It will be interesting to hear what he says for those two issues.

Thanks for the comment!

Stand up meetings are better when they are just in earshot of a co-worker NOT in the meeting, so you stick to the point and get it done quickly so you don't disrupt that co-worker for too long! Having evil eyes peer out from a desk to see just how much longer you'll be is kind of incentive to move it along ASAP... :)

But one of Al's big points in the books is about preparations, by both the meeting organizer and the attendees.

No matter how long or short it is by way of standing, some of his principles say even those stand ups could be killing our work.  Interesting stuff.

Chat has always been on the big differentiators for church online vs brick and mortar church. Being able to ask questions, share in the joy of worship with peers, and encourage each other are just some of the benefits of a live chat interaction.

But I wonder if there are better ways to radically improve that visitor experience instead of a long unthreaded chat. There hasn't been much improvement in IM/group chat technologies in the last decade, and I think church online has an opportunity to lead in this area. What about ability to mute certain voices so that you can concentrate on deeper conversations with new worshipping peers you've met that day in church online? What about the ability to make direct social media connections (FB friending, Twitter following, LinkedIn connections, etc) right from the chat window with others you are interacting with by simply right-clicking their chat handle and being able to connect right there? What about the ability to select a group of people in chat (one, some, all) and turn on webcams so you can see each other as a group -- not necessarily for group video conferencing, but a visual wall so you actually see the others you are in church online with? There's so much we can do to iterate our worship experience online. . . Looking forward to pushing it forward!

Nice suggestions Rich. Your #2 above could be applicable to both the subject of most meetings as well as the meeting time itself. Don't you just love meetings that drag on beyond their originally scheduled timeframe?

Hi Kurt - nice follow-up post on press releases. If you're looking for a SEO angle, I would also look to syndicate the actual press release yourself -- to the main document sharing platforms like www.scribd.com as well as create a video version which is simply a narrated talking head and then distribute that to the Tier 1 & 2 video sharing platforms. Don't forget to post it to your own site, blog, social media updates, etc too!

Cheers!

Kenny Jahng

There's several ways to access the NIV bible on a Blackberry.

One of them is through www.YouVersion.com />
Another can be found in this video tutorial: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N2nNwE0gMJg />
Hope that helps.

Kenny

Paul, Thanks for the kind note. I am just trying to share some of the behind the scenes thinking around church communications and marketing I have put into practice.

I have 2 press releases being sent out over the wires next week. I hope to share in the next series of posts, what goes along with the press release. Because a press release alone isn't enough.

Simply shooing a flare in the sky isn't always enough to get reporters to take notice and engage -- especially when there are tons of other voices trying to do the same thing at the same time.

Along with each press release, one strategy that seems to work well is to build out an online press room to go along with each. A media resource page of sorts.

My plan is to share what I put into assembling an online pressroom for a given story, and perhaps invite others with some experience to contribute their thoughts too.

Hope all of this is informative and inspires other church marketers to try it out.

Stay tuned!

Kenny