Posted on October 30th, 2007 by clifg
My 25th wedding anniversary is next summer, so Laura and I have been giving some thought to how we should celebrate. She loves tropical places and I love the mountains. The big island of Hawaii comes to mind as a place that would fit both of those.
Image my dismay when [...]
Filed under: Uncategorized | 3 Comments »
Posted on October 29th, 2007 by clifg
TechRepublic points us to a British study which concluded that workplace profanity can boost morale. Huh? For me, a completely profanity-free workplace is a huge benefit of working on a church staff, although we do allow the occasional minced oath for comic effect. We even sang a song in staff [...]
Filed under: Uncategorized | No Comments »
Posted on October 29th, 2007 by clifg
Has anyone out there checked out Foldera? Does this technology address in any way Tony’s series of posts about document management? For this to be useful, would it have to be integrated with Google Docs and Gmail?
Filed under: Uncategorized | No Comments »
Posted on October 27th, 2007 by clifg
Earlier this week Matt Carlisle of Big Heart Design did a phone interview with Chuck Russell, Resurrection’s Director of Internet Communications, and edited it into a podcast. If you want to know more of the thinking behind our recent website redesign, you’ll find this 41-minute podcast fascinating.
Filed under: Uncategorized | 1 Comment »
Posted on October 27th, 2007 by clifg
Resurrection is in the middle of the annual campaign to get pledges for the next year’s operating fund. I’ve personally been involved in a lot of data analysis and list generation for the different segments in our target. Since I have fund raising on the brain right now, Katya Andresen’s post yesterday about [...]
Filed under: Uncategorized | No Comments »
Posted on October 26th, 2007 by clifg
Monday through Wednesday this week the senior staff of Resurrection took a bus trip to visit Willow Creek and Granger. Andrew Conard, one of our pastors, blogged the trip well. He began with a post about the Willow Creek visit, then a post about the Granger visit, and finally a post explaining [...]
Filed under: Uncategorized | 1 Comment »
Posted on October 26th, 2007 by clifg
Some time ago I stumbled across TechRepublic’s 13 questions to help you evaluate how you’re doing as an IT manager. It’s challenging and helpful for me to review every month or two. Here they are:
Technology changes everyday. Can you list three examples of things you’re doing to keep your technical knowledge current?
Your boss [...]
Filed under: Uncategorized | No Comments »
Posted on October 26th, 2007 by clifg
I waited a few weeks to see if anyone else would post more about the RoundTable. Just two more have appeared. I’m linking them here so I have all of them in one place. (I still have a huge smile on my face from the event. Thanks everyone, it was really, [...]
Filed under: Uncategorized | No Comments »
Posted on October 23rd, 2007 by clifg
I’m with the senior staff of Resurrection on a bus trip to visit Willow Creek and Granger. My phone has EVDO and will work as a modem. But being the geek that I am, I just had to give my fellow staff way for them to also have Internet access during the 9-hour [...]
Filed under: Uncategorized | 2 Comments »
Posted on October 20th, 2007 by clifg
Tonight I’m thinking a lot about Kansas State University’s “Digital Ethnography” program and the light it sheds on our Internet Campus strategy. If you haven’t see them, check out these videos:
Information R/evolution
The Machine is Us/ing Us
A Vision of Students Today
Filed under: Uncategorized | No Comments »
Posted on October 18th, 2007 by clifg
Chris Fowler, president of Church Community Builder, responded to my concerns this evening as follows:
I wanted to let you know that after speaking with multiple people yesterday and today about this issue, I heard lots of differing opinions - some saying we were doing smart optimizations, other saying some of what we intended to be [...]
Filed under: Uncategorized | No Comments »
Posted on October 18th, 2007 by clifg
My wife’s church is in the market for a web-based ChMS, so I thought I’d check out Church Community Builder. Imagine my surprise to discover questionable search engine optimization (SEO) on their home page.
First, notice the obvious keyword stuffing on the right side of the page. Then, look in the barely-readable footer and [...]
Filed under: Uncategorized | 3 Comments »
Posted on October 16th, 2007 by clifg
We have completed the first stage of our evaluation of the companies and products on our ChMS short list using the high-level criteria I posted a couple of days ago. Based on that evaluation, we have narrowed our choices to Fellowship One and Shelby Arena. Fellowship Technologies will be here Wednesday and Shelby [...]
Filed under: Uncategorized | No Comments »
Posted on October 13th, 2007 by clifg
We are evaluating candidate ChMS systems on the following criteria:
1. The company. We expect to run the selected system for the next 5-10 years. Accordingly, we are looking for a great ChMS supplier that will meet Resurrection’s needs now and in the future. Has the company attracted and can it retain a [...]
Filed under: ChMS | No Comments »
Posted on October 13th, 2007 by clifg
Two more things caught my eye in the last few days regarding social networking and the church.
First, Joe Suh of Digital Leadnet offered some thoughtful comments about how APIs for social networking sites will allow people to use many of them simultaneously. I’ve spoken about his previously, citing the thinking of Dave Winer that [...]
Filed under: Uncategorized | No Comments »
Posted on October 11th, 2007 by clifg
In the marketing section of my feed reader, along with Church Marketing Sucks, Kem Meyer, Seth Godin, and others, I have recently added Katya Andresen’s blog, “Getting to the Point“. Great stuff. For example, check out her recent post on Millennials and their social conscience. More food for thought about the Internet [...]
Filed under: Uncategorized | No Comments »
Posted on October 11th, 2007 by clifg
As promised, here is Eric Busby’s presentation from last Thursday morning at the RoundTable. It includes links to all of the sites he mentioned.
We didn’t have much time to process or discuss Eric’s ideas last week. Perhaps we could do that here in the comments. What is your reaction to Eric’s [...]
Filed under: Uncategorized | 2 Comments »
Posted on October 11th, 2007 by clifg
digital.leadnet.org is a valuable new resource. I find myself bookmarking several things a week. Check out:Saving a Generation through MySpaceTechnology Shaping Culture - the “Thumb Generation”Reaching the Post-Congregational ChristianTeens Search Faith Online
I have been drawn to each of these posts as food for our thinking about a new Internet Campus at Resurrection.
Filed under: Uncategorized | No Comments »
Posted on October 6th, 2007 by clifg
Rather than having a paper evaluation form at the end of the RoundTable, we decided to take a cue from Tony and solicit your feedback right here on the blog for everyone to see.
Some of you have already given feedback on your own blogs. That’s cool. It would be good to comment here [...]
Filed under: Uncategorized | 3 Comments »
Posted on October 6th, 2007 by clifg
Tony did a very nice job moderating our closing discussion on “CITRT: Where do we go from here?” Some conclusions:
1. When we get together in future, vendors will be invited and allowed to speak during the roundtable sessions. However, we strongly encourage vendors to send IT, engineering, product development, or consulting people - [...]
Filed under: Uncategorized | 1 Comment »