Before You Create Your Webpage
Nov 11, 2009 Uncategorized
“Do you want people to spend time visiting your church website or visiting your church?” This is the question a wise person asked me when I was talking about upgrading our church website. The question caused me to rethink some of the things I was planning for our site. I am not arguing against having a quality website, however I think there are some questions to be asked, and things to seriously be considered when you are starting a website for your church or non profit organization. Here is a list of questions I came up with:
1. What is your goal? You need to decide what your website will provide. Maybe it will have basic information like dates, times and forms. What ever your reason make sure that you are using the appropriate tool, or site, for the job.
2. How much are you going to spend- You can easily spend $2500 or more to have a beautiful website designed for your group or church. You need to ask yourself whether that money should be spent on your web presence or if it could be put to use in your organization in a better way.
3. What do you need to get your message across? Wait.. first figure out what your message is. Then what do you need to get that message out. Will flash slideshow with pictures be the best format? Would video updates be effective? Do you need to be able to create podcasts?
4. Who is your audience and how do they like to be reached? Don’t just think about who you are communicating with but also consider what ways they communicate. I recently had a member of our church tell me she does not go to our website. When I asked why, she said that she gets our email updates and facebook messages and they all came to her phone. She has no idea what the website looks like, how many hours I spent choosing the right photo or how much money we spent designing it. She gets the information she wants in the best format for her. That’s what’s important.
5. Consider other forms of communication- In this artcile by Fred Zimny he proposes that with services like facebook and twitter, that websites are becoming less important and are being forced to change:
“Over the next few years, we’re going to see official institutional websites become less important. They will cease functioning as the only point of web interaction between businesses and customers and will become merely the official storefront. The main “conversion goal” of these retooled portal sites will be to drive interactions onto the third-party social networking sites.”
It used to be that your goal was to get people to come to your website for interaction with your company. It seems more and more that websites are directing their visitors to their presence on social networking sites like facebook and twitter. Consider the thought that a website cannot be the only online presence your organization has.
6. Will your web presence be mobile?- Look at the number of iphones, blackberry’s, droids and other smartphones that are out there. More and more we access the web on the go. Are you considering how your site will be accessed by these devices?
What questions do you think should be considered before starting a website for your organization?
Tags: Church, Communication, email, facebook, people, photo, Pictures, podcast, question, Service, sing, twitter, video, websites, work
Instrumental Reflection #11- Veteran’s Day
Nov 9, 2009 Free Stuff, Instrumental Reflections
This past week we created a video of member of our church, who was in the military, sharing his thoughts on what veterans day means. This weeks instrumental reflection is the background music I composed for that video. Click here to see the whole video.
To listen click play!
Just a reminder.. Instrumental Reflections is now available as a podcast. Click here for the feed for the podcast or here to subscribe in itunes
Tags: Background, Church, Click, compose, Instrumental, mp3, Music, podcast, reflections, song, Songs, subscribe, Thoughts, video
Instrumental Reflections #10- Bridal Entrance and Podcast Test
Oct 28, 2009 Free Stuff, Instrumental Reflections, podcast
This past weekend I had the privilege of providing music for the wedding of one of my former youth. The really cool part is that I was given the challenge of providing original music for the ceremony. This is the original recording of what was chosen for the Bride’s Entrance.
Also, I am using this post to test out the podcasting of Instrumental Reflections. The podcast will include not only these instrumental reflections but also other items, thoughts, videos, interviews etc that I can capture and put up here. What do you think?
Oh.. and I haven’t forgotten about the Christmas Instrumental Reflections.. I promise they are coming soon.
To listen click play!
Click here for the feed for the podcast or here to subscribe in itunes
Tags: bride, capture, Christmas, Click, Instrumental, mp3, Music, piano, podcast, Recording, reflections, sing, song, Songs, subscribe, Thoughts, video, wedding entrance, youth
Worship Planning with Google Wave
Oct 14, 2009 Communication, Media and Technology, Worship Planning
I was invited to a google wave “post” or “blip” or whatever it is called, where my friend was writing a blog post, and wanted some fresh eyes to read over it. He posted his thoughts and what happened next was amazing. About ten other people started sharing thoughts, finding spelling mistakes and making corrections, giving alternate ideas and collaborating on the post.
After watching this for a few minutes I wondered if it could be used for planning worship services? What would happen if someone could start a wave with the sermon and scripture, then let people from all over comment, make song suggestions, give links to videos or tell about a skit they wrote that would fit the topic?
Well let’s find out. First let me say that I know not everyone has Google Wave, and I know this process won’t fully work until it is available everywhere, so hurry up Google! But I think there are enough to give this experiment a try.
I have created a wave for a service we are doing on November 8th. If you have wave add me to your contact list and I will invite you to the wave.
My contact is rgmmusic@googlewave.com
Tags: blog, Google, LInks, Music, people, planning, scripture, Service, song, Thoughts, video, Wave, work, Worship, Worship Planning
Video Tips- One Way to Capture Audio
Oct 7, 2009 Communication, Media and Technology
Video is something I have just started doing at our church. Even though it is new to us as a way to communicate, we are already seeing some awesome results. We started out doing all of our youth updates as a video and have had some fun with that.
To start off with though, all the videos have been kind of funny and light. That changed this past week when our pastor wanted me to video the testimony of one of our members. When doing the funny, light videos it was good to hear what was being said, but with background music and other elements in the video sound quality could be compromised a bit. With the testimony, however, I knew that we had to get the best sound possible.
First you should know we are using two Everio Hard Disk cameras, set up in two locations with different angles. Its a good consumer level camera with a decent microphone. We have not invested in higher quality equipment, extra microphones or any thing else up to this point because we are just getting started and want to build slowly. But I did need to find a way to capture good audio. When telling a testimony, we really need to hear the story.
This is when I got the idea to just use the church sound system. We used the wireless lapel mic as our input. I then captured the audio three different ways. First it was captured by one of the two cameras I had set up; Second it was captured by sending it from the board, to a wireless earphone pack, to the second camera’s microphone input; and third it was captured by a CD recorder running on the sound board. We recorded the interview and I used my computer later to sync up the video, and audio from the different sources.
The best thing would be to purchase a good microphone for the video camera, and I hope that is in our future. However, this way gave great results and did not cost us anything.
Do you use video in your church? If so how? Is it effective? What is your setup?
Tags: audio, Background, Camera, capture, CD, Church, computer, Everio, Funny, late, Music, sing, tips, video, youth
Instrumental Reflections Live #1 Haunting Melody
Aug 19, 2009 Free Stuff, Instrumental Reflections
Basically this is how it works. I found a web cam I had bought a few years ago. Then I set up my keyboard, ran it into a small mixer and then into my computer. I then signed up for a ustream account and set up a show called “At the Piano.” From there I just sit down, invite some friends and just play.
Today I asked my friends to give me several notes in a random order. I took the notes in the order given and gave myself the challenge of creating a melody and chords based on the give notes.
Want to know when I play next? Follow me on Twitter and Facebook
Tags: application, CD, Chords, facebook, Instrumental, Music, piano, reflections, twitter, video, work
How to Make a Slide Show Without a Computer?
Jul 28, 2009 How To, Media and Technology
This past year I was introduced to Animoto, a service that takes your photos and turns them into a slide show. I really hadn’t done more than a few attempts at videos. However earlier Animoto released an app for the iphone. I began wondering if it would be possible use this app to create a slideshow of an event without ever using a computer. This last weekend I led a group of adults and Jr. High youth at a BIG HOUSE camp and I used the opportunity to try it out.
Each day I began by taking about 90-95 photos from morning till night. After that I selected the ones I wanted to use and uploaded them to the animoto app. After choosing my music I set it to render. It took between 5-15 minutes depending on my connection. I never had Wi-Fi but generally had the 3G network. Once the photos were uploaded and it began rendering I could close it out. Animoto sent me an email when my video was ready.
I ended up making one video per day including one the last day of camp. Usually we show our overall camp slide show on Saturday night, and then pack up on Sunday morning. Doing this completely using the iphone I was able to even take photos on Sunday morning, and on the drive home, (my wife was driving) I was able to upload and render the video.
Click here to see Saturday’s video.
One setback. Right now the videos created on the iphone do not show up on the web version. They say they are working on this and will have it fixed soon.
Tags: Animoto, BIG HOUSE, iphone, Slide Show, video
The Fourth Screen- Can Social Media Bring us Back Together?
Apr 22, 2009 Uncategorized
When I found this clip about the 4th screen I had just heard about this guest post called “Is Twitter the New Town Square?” written by Gavin Richardson for the blog Life Without Pants. In his post he suggests that social media, like twitter, facebook, blogs etc can be the new town square.
In our world of intense individualism social networking may be a place where we can come together and share stories of faith, testimonies, exchange ideas, find comfort and support from other believers that we may never see or know about without social media.
I think this commercial reflects the same thing except the computer has done the same thing that the printing press did. That as technology has advanced we have in fact become more individualized. We need to find ways that technology can help us be more connected to each other, and engaged in the real world, rather than continuing to allow ourselves to live in increased isolation.
What do you think?
Oh.. for more you can always follow me on twitter @rgmmusic or on facebook
Tags: application, iphone, printing press, technology, video
Sunday Setlist 3/22/09
Mar 22, 2009 Worship Planning
This was my first attemt at a video worship confessional. Check it out and let me know what you think.
To see what other worship services did this week make sure and check out Sunday Setlists on Fred McKinnon’s blog.
Tags: application, CD, Fred McKinnon, Setlist, Sunday, Sunday Setlist, video, Worship
Online Songwriters Showcase
Mar 8, 2009 How To, Online Songwriters Showcase
I remember in high school I attended my first songwriters showcase at a local restaurant near where I lived. I went, typed lyrics in hand not knowing what to expect. I played my song, a crowd of strangers listened and then they offered their feedback. It was a good experience for me to take a song that I had written and to put it out in the world for others to listen to and give feedback.
I am still writing songs on a regular basis. I recently began to think about ways to host a songwriters showcase for worship leaders writing songs. I wondered if there was a way that we could get together and play our songs for each other, offer suggestions, and help. There really is not one real location that we could all meet on a regular basis, so what about online?
So here is how it works.
1. Write a song
2. Record yourself, video or audio, singing the song with whatever accompaniment you like.
3. Upload a video, or audio file your song to your blog. (Or video hosting site like Youtube or Vimeo)
4. In your blog or in the video notes add a link to this page, not this site.
5. Leave a link to your page in the comment of this post.
6. View and listen to others songs, and add comments
I hope that this will offer a great chance for some connection between songwriters, a chance for some genuine feed back, and a way to get your song out there. What do you think?
Tags: Songs, video, work, Worship, Worship Leader
