Lifechanging iPhone Apps

Thought I'd post a few apps that are way above normal (sorry for the lack of links but just type any of these into the app store and they'll pop right up):

MobileFiles: This app allows you to view your iDisk from your phone. Built in support of several file types makes it easy to view the files once you're there.
scenario where this rocks: I set up all my computers (my macbook for travel, my iMac at home and my iMac at work) to sync with my iDisk. I then designated one folder active projects and created an alias on my desktop. This is where all my files for everything I'm presently working are at. Creative briefs, proofs, support docs and images are all there. Now I'm in a meeting and someone asks what the deadline for the project's first proof. I just open up MobileFiles and view the creative brief. Maybe I'm meeting with the client and nobody has the latest proofs, same deal just open up MobileFiles. It means always having my files with me and viewable.

Remote: This robust app allows you to control your iTunes libray from your iPhone. The interface looks a lot like your iPod interface on the phone and you have access to everything.
scenario where this rocks: I have my home stereo and a few other rooms of speakers set up to play off my iTunes via a airport express (another little device that has changed my life). I can not only assign and unassign those rooms from the Remote app but now anywhere I'm at I can change the song. The possibilites are endless but bottom line it makes your home entertainment that much more seemless. It's like having an iPod with a remote in every room.

Weather Channel weather app: I love the simplicity of the iPhone weather app but I'm always left wondering a little bit more. Here steps the Weather Channel's weather app. These guys did a great job. It's still very simple and you can get that at a glimpse view when you start the app but if you want the 36-hour forecast or the 10-day or if you want to see the radar it's all one click away. These guys should be proud. In my opinon they outdid the iPhone team on this one.

Flashlight: This definitely hasn't changed my life but it's one I wouldn't want to live without. It basically turns your whole screen white and can provide a bit a light when you need it. Worth having around.

I'm sure I'll have more but these blew me away this weekend.

Must have applications for a new mac

For all my new Mac friends a few (free) programs I can't live without:

istat pro- everything that's going on with you Mac from disk storage to fan speeds to temperature.

Screenshots- This has to be my most used app. It allows you to set what format a screenshot is taken in (screenshots are Shift + command + 4 for you new guys, you can then hit space bar to take that whole window). From jpeg to PDF to GIF to TIFF. This is especially helpful since many programs don't especially love Mac's default of PNG.

Flip4Mac- This is one of those programs people get early on and then forget they have. It's crucial allowing you to view windows media player files natively in quicktime. This allows quicktime to truly be your all in one media player.

OpenOffice- For any kind of power user I'd recommend getting iWork to meet all of your presentation, word processing and spreadsheet needs however for the casual home computer open office is awesome. It allows you to open and create word, excel, PowerPoint and access files. It even looks just like the older versions of MS office so PC users will feel really comfortable.

Version Tracker- Okay so not a program but it's the one site that I get almost everything for my Mac for free. Anytime you want anything stop here first. Most likely someone has made it and made it freeware.

Sites I really like

Wow I didn't even know this blog still worked. Sorry it's been so long since I posted but honestly I'm not near important enough to have anything to say.

BUT I do surf the web a heck of a lot looking for "stuff." A lot of my creative and web friends ask where I get this or that resource or where I find out about that. So I put together of list of my favorite sites for FREE vectors and images as well as the blogs I follow that give me even more goodies. Sorry there's not screen grabs, just didn't have time. Click a link and see it for yourself.

Sites I go get stuff from:

Kuler- Amazing color site by adobe. Type in anything and get a great color palette.

Brusheezy- Cool photoshop brushes and patters. This site has literally saved me hundreds if not thousands.

myPhotoshopBrushes.com- Same deal as brusheezy but they also have custom shapes, styles and gradients. This stuff is that little extra that makes your work extra sweet and someone else did a lot of leg work for you. 

Vecteezy- You guessed it, it's brusheezy but with free vectors. This site is especially good for floral, ornaments and icons. 

Dafont- This is my favorite font site. Almost everything is PC and Mac so no finding the perfect font and then oh wait font designers love PC better. They have a great range of fonts but by far I love the destroyed and eroded sections the best.

Urban Fonts- Not near as cool as dafont but they have those gems. Dafont has hundreds of good fonts. Urban font has 5 amazing ones.

CreativeMYK- This is a site specifically for churches and Christian designers. The art is really good and people upload their work in layers. Check the terms carefully, not everything is free to use, however being able to look at how someone achieved a look in layers is a cool way to sharpen your skills.

BgPatterns- This sites mostly for fun. I've never used anything here but it's a cool way to create a truly custom background.

Bittbox- Another cool site I've never been able to use things from but it definitely feeds me.

morgueFile- A free stock image library. I don't know that I'd say the art is amazing but it's free and it can be that spice in there that is not the critical piece.

Lost and Taken- amazing super hi-res image backgrounds and textures. Fun stuff.

Blogs I follow:

Creattica Daily- Great commentary and links to anything in the creative world. The highlight cool designers, designs, sites, conferences, etc. It's a one stop shop for creative fun.

Smashing Magazine- Another one just like Creattica. Actually I found this site on Creattica one day. Another one stop shop for everything awesome.

Usability Post- They basically crawl the web finding problems or solutions and put them out there for everyone to see. Lots of little things that make your world, err, I mean site better.

For sale

I want to put my projects up for sale. Not to designers or printers but to my clients.

I want to create a new level of ownership with my clients, on their counterparts jobs.

How can I bring them into the process and ask them to help us have ownership?

A few quick ideas.

Invite them to:

• weekly department meetings
  
• daily standup meetings
  
• weekly big idea brainstorm sessions
  
• other clients discovery meetings
  

Anybody have any other ideas of ways to bring them in?

Writing, right to left

I'm a lefty. I've used a right handed mouse most of my life, switched to left hand in college for a while just because it fit better on my desk. Mostly, though I've been a right handed mouse hugger.

About a year ago I had the opportunity to check out a WACOM tablet. Fell in love. So I picked up one of the lesser models to try it out. The question was which way to set it up. While I can mouse ambidextreously I can only write, well, left handed.

So right it is, but that has made it hard to get anything out of the WACOM really. So today I made the switch. I'm a left handed mouse person again. But while I'm at it I thought why not drop the mouse all together and go with the pen 100% of the time.

The part is pretty easy, I just didn't realize all the other stuff that would have to change, like hitting alt+tab to change programs. I'm used to keeping my left hand on the keyboard so I'm having to relearn all that too.

We'll try it for a week or two and see if I can get used to it.

Left handed mice unite!

A new blog

Yesterday was the one-year mark for this blog. WOW! I didn't know I had that much crap to say.

Sixty something posts in all.

But, it seems fitting that today I started a new blog.

This ones a little different. It's actually sort of a personal journal. I have so many fears it's not funny about posting these things. But, I feel like this is the part where I sacrifice my life for His glory.

I've been struggling a little bit with my faith lately and I want to put that out there for others going through the same thing.

So, not your thing, don't click. If you do click, please don't judge.

Just got the first post up, design and all to come.

As I Step

I love a fast bus

I'm not exactly on the bleeding edge with this but in case you haven't noticed yet the new iMacs are out and they finally crossed a signifigant threshold for me.

The new iMacs on top of crossing the 3 ghz range for the processor and having a beautiful HD (optional) display has finally added a front side bus capable of greater than 1ghz. The best I can explain it the bus is basically the bottleneck between your processor and everything else. It's kind of like a throttle and despite how much RAM you have and how fast your processor is more and more this is becoming the choke point.

Before, to get anything this fast you were looking at a Mac Pro that starts at $2,700 minimally equipped without monitor. The new iMac 24" display (the largest) on the 3.06ghz processor (the fastest) with 2 gig of RAM is running $2,200 MSRP.

Why does all this matter? This now makes the iMac a very viable option for hardcore graphic designers and a good portion of video editors (save Motion and AfterEffects work) at a grand lower than the previous cheapest option.

Branding: a family story

The conversation about branding to students has been coming up a lot around Perimeter. There are at least as many opinions on the topic as there are people in the room.

I really wanted to look around and see what leading youth pastors and church communicators were saying on the topic. Surprisingly no one is writing on it at all.

So I thought maybe I would. [in the words of Mitch Hedberd] I mean who am I, I'm not that cocky:

1. Don't make over-generalities. Adults aren't students and generalizing them to the point of hyperbole only shows how little we know. Their culture just like ours consists of every facet of person and while culture shifts may go one direction or another over generalities act more of an insult as we try to insinuate that we "understand" them.
2. Student aren't opposed to branding, so long as they like the brand: Nike, Apple, Taylor Made, BMW. All of these companies are sought after by both students and adults alike. The fact that a student's parent has an ipod doesn't stop them from wanting on.
   
3. However, students do want to uniquely personalize within that identity. They probably don't want the same color BMW or Nike shoe as their parent but that doesn't mean they are against the brand. In both cases the core value of the company exists. Whether it be fine German engineering and luxury nameplate or a high-quality and durable pair of shoes the brand is intact.
   
4. Students get their brand awareness from their parents. This is something I learned when I got married. Sarah's idea of what a quality product was and mine were different, from each other, but not from our parents. We learn the values of quality, durability, and reliability from our parents. According to Piaget, full formal thought doesn't *start* until age 12 and continues into adulthood, that is the ability to draw conclusions from available information.
   
5. They will like some things their parents don't but it is far more likely that students are more broadly accepting of culture than adults are. Pure experiential info here but my experience has been that adults are far less tolerant of concepts and experiences they don't fully understand than students are. Even given their still developmental state they are *seeking* new experiences while adults already have preconceived notions about most of the world around them.

Application: You don't need to divorce or change the brand of the parent organization, so long as the brand of the parent organization isn't contrary to their values (an anti-skateboarding organization would not do well to market to skateboarders). It does however need to be customized, different from changed. Customized is to take the brand and make it their own, to take ownership. Changing it would be to try and make it something it never was.

Earth hour

In case you didn't hear Saturday night from 8-9 was Earth hour. Surpised me too!!

I actually found out when I logged onto Google that night. Check out what they did. Apparently turning the page black causes so fewer pixels to be illuminated that it saves massive energy.

Funny though, there's been a page doing this for a while now...blackle. Google search with an earth friendly face.

Conflict dissolution

Don't you wish they'd just fall in line. Don't you just love to bring the hammer down. That is if you're perfect...

We all have to deal with conflict. In communications you're always finding people breaking the rules. You know the guys stretching you're square logo to fill an 8.5x11, misspelling your web address on they're promo materials, rearranging the vision statement to fit their needs.

I've been thinking for a long time on how to deal with those conflicts and misunderstandings. For one, I'm a really straightforward guy. Some people like that, they know where I stand immediately, other times it hinders me from being able to be heard. If you rub someone the wrong way they stop listening.

So here's what I've discovered for myself, and it seems to work. I've based it on watching my mentors and hearing what scripture has to say on peacemaking.

1. Affirm that you have a relationship. Let the person know how you feel about them, not the situation. I often love the person that I'm talking to and that makes it all the more difficult. Also doing this helps bring the group together towards a solution and not the blame game.
2. Before you ever start, identify if this a personal, work or spiritual problem. Each has their own unique way of being handled. That's not to say that all of them shouldn't be addressed but some are more clear cut than others.
3. Bring a positive/Be a part of the solution. I learned this from my mentor and friend Randy Renbarger. Instead of ever coming down on someone he always offers a solution. Instead of looking at someone and asking why they did this or that without consulting communications he instead asked how he could help. He knew they weren't out to get him so instead he went strait to the heart of the problem, they didn't know they could get help.
4. If you do need to address the hurts bring specifics. Don't say things like "you always" or "I can't remember when but you did." If you're bringing a hurt it's on you to address the specifics. Most people want to help and don't want to have wronged you. Not bringing examples puts them in the conundrum of wanting to help but not being able to.
5. Go to the person responsible, quickly. Don't talk about it with anyone who does not need to be involved. Do it quickly so that hurts don't fester. We all know times when we've put off discussing something only to find out that once we did the person was incredibly sorry and never knew they had offended. I will always miss time I could have spent with friends over perceived wrongs.

So that's my model. I'd love to hear if you do something different, would add something to the list, or have a hard time with one piece. Obviously different situations and relationships call for different angles, but for me these have proved to be a foundation to build on.

_sl

Identity Crisis

Well it finally happened- I've been victimized. I can now join the ranks of those who have in some way suffered identity crisis.

Doing bills last week I noticed things were way off of where I expected. I started wondering if I had suddenly purchased a new apple product, but realized with the apple backlash day looming that couldn't be.

So I started looking closely and there it was, 440 bones to paypal.



So I called my bank, they assured me that it would be taken care of, not to worry. An investigation would start as soon as it posted to my account and they would temporarily refund me the money until the investigation was over. Cool! They also canceled my card an initiated a new one. Go wachovia! Good user experience abounds.

Then I emailed paypal. Not so happy about having to go the email route. I just lost a signifigant sum of money. I need to hear a carbon based creature assure me. Never the less I was able to follow the progress through a resolution center view. An email was sent to the "seller." The same night the case was closed as the seller had refunded my money.


So I'm mostly feeling ok about it, until today when the fee hits my account. No new stuff has posted to paypal so I'm sure it's the original charge, then I'll see the refund.

All in all a good experience considering a someone from a country we don't have diplomatic relations with stole my money. Ain't the web great.

Got experience?

I need help. In many ways. We're looking to hire three "experience consultants" to go through our site and tell us what they like and what needs help. We'd like two professionals and one mystery shopper.

If you know anyone, or would like to be someone, to help us out with this email me.

Only caveat is we would like it if they didn't know Perimeter well.

Seems like there should be a whole post in why we think this is important but it's getting late.

I'm lost

The other day I had to go to the DMV. After driving for two weeks with an expired license including a trip to Orlando and back, I decided it was time to put on my big boy shorts and go get it renewed.

If you don't know I live WAY out. Literally half way between Atlanta and the S. Carolina state line. That wouldn't be so bad if I worked in S. Carolina but I don't. So I went to my local DMV in a smaller county.

I drove up, no one was there, maybe 10 cars. Walked in, no one was there, like perhaps eight people (I guess someone left a car overnight). Looking around, they were obviously using a number system to call people up to the counters but I couldn't see a ticket dispenser so I assumed they were slow and weren't using it.

So after a moment I sat down. The guy next to me told me I needed to go get a ticket from one of the counters. Cool! Nice guy. Should have bought him a starbucks.

After that smooth sailing. In and out in 15 minutes.

BUT, what if I didn't sit down next to the nice guy? How long could I have waited? How frustrated could I have gotten?

Everything was perfect except they blew the experience at a key point.

How often do we do that to people that walk in our doors or visit our website? I'd love to say never, but I know better. Perimeter is a big place, I often see people looking for this class or that prayer group. I always try to help someone if I notice.

How many people walk in on Sunday and walk right back out? We are responsible for that. We need to help them find a seat, get a bulletin, find the sermon downloads.

When we don't what kind of frustration do we cause? How long are we letting people sit in the lobby waiting for a number they didn't get? How can we empower members to be the nice guy that helps out?

One day when I'm smarter I'm write a top five on how to fix this. For today I'm just asking the question.

Planning for inspriation

I know we've all heard the addage "failing to plan is planning to fail."

Poppycock!

Well at least to an extreme. Too many times I see people create process documents and ministry plans that are excellent but are unwilling to veer from them when inspiration comes.

Unwavering plans and rigid structures leave out room for the inspiration, creativity and the influence of the Holy Spirit. Some of the coolest things often happen by accident. For myself some of my best designs come from when something accidentally happens, when I clicked the wrong button and it was suddenly cool.

The question is how do we build room for inspiration into our plans? We have to create that space for the Holy Spirit and creativity and we DO need to plan.

For different disciplines that answer is going to be different. In the tech/production world it might be systems that allow greater flexibility at the 11th hour. For IT it might be processes and systems that allow greater freedom.

In communications I think it comes down to building policies that allow that flex. I know I'm guilty of not letting this work. I often have preconceived notions of what something should be. But we have to create structure that allows creativity to fill in the blanks.

At Perimeter we love spreadsheets, process docs, critical paths, you name it. As a creative my challenge is to work in those margins. To find something cool in the spreadsheet.

One more thing to know if you're a mac user at Perimeter

ok, ok, ok. I had to say this, especially after reading Jeremy Scheller's post on Keynote.

The last thing you have to know if you're a mac user at Perimeter is:

Even though you may have some more polished tools than some of the people around you, you STILL have to play nice.

Case in point I recently was asked to put together a presentation for a new strategic planning dealy here at Perimeter. My first question: Am I presenting this or do I have to hand it over to someone else to present (run the presentation)?

There were a lot of early requests that would have been very confusing without doing some simple animations (made incredibly easy in Keynote '08). So, I went ahead and start creating in Keynote. 

It was easy and fun.

Some bonuses for me were:

Easy animations along a path, ability to animate scaling, rotation and transparency.

Fun and really fast

Finished product always has more polish

Presentation viewer is really nice

Works well with all types of media, including photoshop files (in case I'm too lazy to convert)

In the end though the guys upstairs wanted edibility and the ability for everyone to view the presentation on their computer. PDF wasn't going to cut it anymore.

So reluctantly (at least for me, to them it was yes sir) I went ahead with the conversion. It had to redo some text, bullets were a mess, and my sweet animations had to be replaced with before and after slides transitions. Bottom line though, it doesn't matter. 

I go back to we're lucky because we have a choice. So it's our responsibility to play nice with others.

Taking our licks

If you've paid attention at all you know we just lanuched our new website. I think this is going to be such an amazing tool for ministry here.

First though we've got to work out some of the bugs. There were a few things that because we knew it so well we never realized how unfamiliar they would be to other people. So here's a couple of things we're hit on and how we're working to make them more clear.

Visitor/Perimeter Family/myperimeter:

We created three different sections to our site. Really three complete sites. One for visitors with all the top-level-before-you-get-here information. This is our main url. The family section has all the deep ministry information. It's what you think of when you think of the site. We tried very hard to keep the site shallow to help navigatbility. Never more than four layer: home>ministry category>ministry>ministry subpage. Myperimeter is a personalized content site like myyahoo! or igoogle.

People are having a very hard time figuring out where they are. They land on the homepage and can't find ministry links. We've received this coment a couple of times: You have a lot of great information for visitors but where is ____ ministry.

So we're adding a new homepage that lays out the three site and directs them to the one for them. As much as I hate splash pages this is one extra click to get people where they want to go and maintain the visitor/family experiences.

Downloads:

We're having a few problems with very random downloads on some operating systems. So random we're having a hard time tracking it. It is becoming an increasing problem though. See my post on PDF's and Vista for more on this.

Week at a glance:

On our old site we had this page of things coming up this week including who was preaching and leading worship. I way undervalued how important that was. Not so much sure why but it is. 

We adding back the link from our e-newsletter, the pulse, which is where most people found it.

There are about 100 other smaller things that we've seen and taken care of since our launch last month. Here's a post we recently put on our intranet for our staff describing some of the bigger, small things.30 Day Update

 

Changes Made:

• Within the first week of the site we doubled the number of pages on the site – and maintained an average of less than 24 hours to make changes and corrections.
  
• In the first 48 hours:
  
• We had ~1,800 visitors
  
• Visiting ~20,000 pages
  
• Averaging 10.65 pages per visit
  
• While staying on the site an average of 6.5 minutes (600% the industry average).
  
• We have added password protection capabilities for sections of the site, specific pages, groups, and files.
  
• Enhanced our Content Management tool with a “duplicate page” option to make it easier to create new pages.
  
• Completely overhauled the MyPerimeter login and Create a Group process per feedback and suggestions.
  
• Added the “remember me” feature so you get “Welcome ________” when you login to MyPerimeter.
  
• More than 20 ministries have been featured on the Perimeter Family home page scrolling window.
  
• More of you are using the “Change Request” feature to manage content then doing it yourself.  
  

Coming Soon:

• We are increasing the visibility of our Search and Feedback options.
  
• We are creating a new Home Page in order to correct the confusion between the Visitor experience and the Perimeter Family experience.
  
• Improved navigation via new links on the Perimeter Family home page.
  

But I'm on a date...

I like to pretend I've got some things figured out here. The reality is I'm more a juior to a lot of seniors out there (that's for you Tony). I'm still kind of breaking into this thing.

So, today, my Sabbath, I'm walking through church and I couldn't make it to the service without being asked several questions about work. Why does this brochure look like this? How do I get this on the web? Any word on that project?

This isn't really unusual.

I retreated, to a room that me and only two other people have a key to. I'll pretty much hide here until just before the service, grab Sarah and run into the back of the auditorium.

Has anyone figured out how to work at your church and still enjoy a rich, full Sabbath? Is this just the by-product of working for a church? Should I accept this as my Holy duty?

My problem is I just wasn't thinking that way. I was thinking about worship, trying to prepare my heart (which is an all week thing, but corporate worship is special, it's like going on a date with God. You guys always talk but this is special devoted time to block out the rest of the world and focus on Him). I was thinking about how great it was to be doing that with Sarah.

BLAM! I get hit out of left field. 

I hear my name and then the questions. I love the person that asked the question, it was a good question. I just wasn't ready. So I stammered for some answer and finally came out with,"What can I do for you right now?" 

Any sage advice out there?

Vista and PDF's

I figure with the ultra-cool, highly sophisticated readership I have all the problems of the world can be fixed. Or the two people who actually read my blob (not a typo), Tony and Richard, know people who can fix this problem.

On our new site we're having some problems with downloads. Here's how it goes down:

Someone goes to this page on our site.

• Three out of the four pdf's download no problem. Lesson one corrupts on the way down.
  
• We've been able to track down that this might well be a vista problem.
  

What we've done to troubleshoot:

• Re-saved the pdf backward compatible to acrobat v.5
  
• Renamed the pdf
  
• Emailed the pdf to the person who couldn't download it, they were able to open the email.
  

This is becoming one of those increasingly negative problems. Just happens that other than homepages, this is our most visited page on the site.

P.S. Same seems to be happening with some audio downloads. Two work one doesn't. I think the problem is related, since it also appears to be a Vista problem.

My kitchen stadium

I don't get to do that much design anymore. I still love it but I couldn't do that and my duties as well. So, anytime I get to do a little design I relish it.

With the launch of our new site we added a flash scroller on our family page to show the upcoming events. With the volume of design that goes into that it simply wasn't an option to outsource. I was pretty reluctant to take it on as I thought it would suck away my time.

It's actually turned into one of the most fun things I do all week. I look forward to the one hour I set aside on Wednesday to do them.

That's right, one hour. That's the fun. I've turned this into a challenge. On average we have three new images a week. That means I get 20 minutes to concept, find imagery, design and test per image. 

It's actually opened up a whole new style of design for me. Here are my design criteria:

1. It has to be simple. I have to do this in 20 minutes, so the concept has to be simple for me to do.
2. It has to be simple. Deja vu. The image is only up for 5 seconds, so it has to be easy for the viewer as well.
3. It can't get stale. Again I do three a week. The tendency to create a white background, simple image, and text is too easy. I force myself to try and keep it fresh. Every week I watch the whole thing to make sure they don't look alike.
4. They have to match what our graphic style is for the web. Simple, clean, interesting, and contemporary.
5. I really wanted five points.... They have to be fun for me. Again this is my relished time of the week. If I hate what I'm doing, I need to stop.

See, it's just an opportunity to choose your attitude. When this got added to my plate I thought, it's just too much. This could have become a begrudging, belabored part of my week. Instead it's become one of my favorite challenges.

What part of your job or life could you turn into a challenge and enjoy more? I've even found cleaning can be more fun when we put a time limit on it and then add a reward. What can I say, I'm a simple creature.

If you're a mac user at perimeter

Perimeter is a PC centric place. That said our IT team graciously let's some people use macs based on their need. I imagine that's not very different from most places.

But as an off-the-grid user how to "play nice" with the people around you.

As I've said I like lists so here are my steps to being a mac in a pc world:

1. Realize you are not entitled to the platform of your choice. You are the alien and they owe you nothing. You've been given something in that you get a choice. So try to play nice.
2. Purchase the MS office suite for mac. One of the first steps to playing nice is using what they use.
3. Get a PC. Install some sort of virtualization software on your computer. I prefer VMWare, however, given that our "PC's" are all virtual at Perimeter I prefer to use a client as it doesn't use my processor or memory.
4. Map the network drives. Mounting in mac vernacular. These are actually a great drop zone between your virtual PC and your mac, plus you'll need it to access network files.
5. If you have multiple drives to mount use automator to write a script to mount all of them at once. Save as an application and put in your dock.
6. Download screenshots for free from versiontracker.com. Your PC friends can't open you png screenshot files easily. Screenshots let's you determine what format they save in.
7. Obviously get a good security suite and password protect your machine. You are now an open tunnel into the network.
8. Get IP addresses for your printers and print via IP. Our IT department is so awesome they added a server side application that allows me to add printers as a bonjour printer. I bet Tony may tell you guys what that is in a comment.

So there it is.

That'll teach me to pray

Middle of last year we were doing a lot. All the ministries were kicking off their promotions, we had normal year kick-offs, were working on a new website, new graphics templates, oh and it was our 30th anniversary (I'll add pics tomorrow).

I was getting a normal amount of positive and negative feedback, but a lot more of both given the nature of how many things we were doing. I have to admit I'm a fragile flower and can easily get my feelings hurt. I know bad combo for a designer. Ya think?

My boss, Randy, as someone described him, is like a muscadine. Now I've eaten a muscadine but I was intimately aware of the nature of this grape like fruit. But as they explained a muscadine has a really tough outer skin but has a really juicy, sweet inside. Think grape with the skin of a lime.

So I set out to be a muscadine. I prayed for a thicker skin. If only I knew that was like praying for patience.

Fast forward a couple of months and we're launching the new site. Of course, no one checked to see if their stuff was up to date, if their ministry existed, anything. In the week prior to launch we DOUBLED the number of pages on the site. I'll post some stats tomorrow. Pretty cool.

Just the way it fell I became point for the launch. For two or three weeks people called me day and night in a panic, mostly thinking we had intentionally deleted their ministry. I think I answered the same three questions about 100 times.

This did two things:
1. Gave me an opportunity to think about what I would have done differently.
2. Gave me a really thick skin.

Fast forward to today, one of our clients called a meeting to discuss a particularly cursed project. One of those ones everything went bad, for a lot of reasons, some mine, some his. We were able to talk it out without any feelings getting hurt and actually our relationship is better for it, all because I became the muscadine.

Macs are bulletproof

To be honest I've hesitated posting this, mostly due to embarrassment. But, I figure Richard Dolan or Tony Dye (names later) would end up posting it so I better get my side out first.

About a month ago I woke up, walked into my bathroom, looked and the window. It was still dark so it was easy to notice the streetlights shining off the wet pavement. I thought, why do I care the pavement is wet. Then panic hit me like jumping into a very cold pool.

I left my mac in the back of my pick-up truck.

The night before I did a little overtime, placed my bag in the back of my truck to come home, as I've done before. My intention was to come home and do some more work. I got home really tired, walked in and fell asleep on the couch.

So I did the best I could. I opened the lid. Amazingly it came right up, my goal was to shut it down quickly. As I went to the shutdown button the screen did very weird things. I was able to get it turned off and took it very humbly into our Viant guys.

They were pretty optimistic. We did a complete tear down. Danny Ybarra, amazingly did a complete tear down of the LCD as well. Sprayed it with denatured alcohol and waited.

When we first powered it up it worked. The screen was glitchy. So I took it downstairs to remove the hardrive while I sent it off for repair. I figured any repair cost would be better than replacing a new macbook pro.

When I took it apart I looked at the video ribbon cable, it was loose. A little jiggle and it clicked. I closed it up powered it and it worked. Perfectly.

I'm actually still using my macbook pro everyday with no problems. Well except both fans run at 6,000 rpm's constantly. But hey, I have the coolest running mac ever.

I love my mac.

Communication Outlets

Churches have a very unique communication challenge, that of the ratio of communications needs to communications outlets and opportunities.

I say this is unique to churches because I can't seem to find it in the business world. Sure, the more targeted a message becomes the more scarce that vehicle becomes but the number of vehicles is quickly approaching limitless.

Think of Coka-Cola or Nike or a blockbuster film title. They groups can determine who their most targeted audience is, look for the outlet that reaches that audience and purchase space. For example if Coca-Cola were releasing a new product that was determined to appeal mostly to middle-class, white, suburban men and they determined that the largest demographic portion of channel 21 fit that group then they buy ads there. Simple.

With a church they have a very large number of products, in this case called ministries or programs. In our case around 250 (if you want to know what I think about this check out this post.) Churches also have a very limited communications window.

We have a very active campus, with around 50,000 events on campus a year there's always people here, but even with that great bustle going on daily most of our congregation is here on Sunday only. A lot of what happens here happens off campus, such as discipleship, neighborhood congregations and then there's Perimeter West (also known as Starbucks).

So we have the walls of our building to display brochures, posters, postcards, invites, whatever. We have the service itself, which we limit announcements and such in. We have our website and we have our email newsletter, the Pulse. That means we have two active, push style media.

We've done some things to try and help this.

1. We created a tier or emphasis system to make sure that things that need to be heard by the whole congregation are and other things receive an emphasis equal to the portion of the congregation they touch. The problem with that is 90% of the ministries or programs don't get actively communicated.

2. Next week we'll bring live the new Perimeter website. With it the myperimeter section creating a personalized content page so that people can check the info they are interested in. This is sort of active passive. They select the info, allowing them to cut through the clutter of things they are never going to be interested in (like a senior high student may not want to see the children's ministry info) and for the ministry to be able to push content to those blocks.

To be honest I'm looking for a new system to propose. Something that evens the playing field AND reduces the overall clutter and noise.

I think I've got one, comm coins, tell you more next week.

My sandbox

A few years ago ingenious|atlanta started as a freelance outlet for the small amount of creativity I have. Since taking a creative position at Perimeter I get my creative fix daily and don't do much outside anymore.

I still do however keep my portfolio updated (I say thay loosely, about every 3 months).

I updated it yesterday. If you're interested you can view it at ingeniousatlanta.com.