Just a quick post for those who attended my Casual Q&A sessions during Innovate08. I promised you some information so here it is:

Web Streaming

• Video encoding software (see list of tools below)
• Vendors for streaming video (see list of tools below)
• Our current Streaming Video Settings: 640x360 | Deinterlace on | 750kbps max stream | 15 frames per second | 80kbps stereo (audio)
  

• Blog software (see list of tools below)
• Blog readers (RSS aggregators): Bloglines, Google Reader, Modern browsers like IE7 and Firefox3, Outlook 2007

• List of helpful tools
  

A while back I posted on what a rating scale might look like for "blogworthiness." The BlogWorthiness Rating Scale (BWRS) as I called it was a way to categorize blog posts on things like the following:

• Significance: If the post appears significant or insignificant in the grand scheme of things.
• Relevance: If the post is relevant or irrelevant to the reader.
• Impact: If the post has the power to inspire/uplift the reader or if it is damaging/harmful to the reader.
• Validity: If the post is fact, opinion or completely inaccurate.

But there's another thing we can look at when it comes to blogging. For lack of a more imaginative term let's just call it "Shelf Life." In other words, how many people read it? How often do they read it? How long will they read it? Would they recommend someone else read it? Is the content rich enough to keep people coming back?

Maybe it looks something like this:

5 Read Religiously: Your blog has just the right combination of functionality, fact and fun. It hits the mark with your intended audience, is well written and has just enough of the real you in it to keep them wanting more.

4 A Literary Masterpiece: Your blog serves as your literary playground. You put pen to paper (or pixel to html page in this case) and people can't help but read, because it flows, inspires and should really be in a dusty old book too.

3 A Fun Distraction: Your blog definitely doesn't solve world hunger, but it's so funny that people keep coming back just to escape reality.

2 Too Little Too Late: Your blog may have started strong, but its either missing important elements or after a period of consistent blogging you backed off to the point where people stopped checking in.

1 A Flash in the Pan: Your blog may have started strong and then fizzled, it may have been missing so many important elements that people unsubscribed, there may have been too many posts for people to keep up with or maybe it just wasn't relevant to the average person.

Nothing scientific, I know, but it's just the way my brain works. Think big picture and the rest falls into place...

I was looking through the stats for WDC the other day on Google Analytics to make sure I installed it correctly.

I checked out things like total hits, unique hits, time on site, computer type, monitor resolution, etc. But the thing that really caught my eye was in the keyword section.

I just assumed that people would find WDC with words like "church web" or "church blog" or things like that. But this one jumped out at me:

How will my future benefit the greater good...

I have to admit, I couldn't remember WebDrivenChurch.com 1.0 looked like until I went to archive.org, typed in the URL and popped up the archived page. Call it the "light blue" template or the "flash" template. Either way it was pretty plain and yet it was a good start...

This version lasted from February 5, 2006 until August 23, 2006 - one week before I began my full time position at the church.

I found creative inspiration in my love for Macromedia Flash. I took screen shots of the timeline and a single layer in the timeline of from Flash 8 Pro and added header information to them. . Not sure where the light blue came from though. Ugh...

WebDrivenChurch.com 2.0 could be labeled the "green" template or the "wilderness" template. It took me from August 23, 2006 until November 18, 2007.

Not sure where my creative inspiration came from other than me looking through numerous designs on cssZenGarden.com and trying my hand at laying out columns using css for positioning. In this case I used the WDC logo as a static background image (doesn't move when the page scrolls). The main image is actually two separate images used as background images inside each column with large margins pushing the content down past the images.

I learned a lot on this round. Instead of modifying an existing template (like I did with version 1.0) I built this one from scratch using css and adding the classic blogger tags (example: <$blogger>) where they needed to go.

My only inspiration using the green and the wilderness scenes is that I grew up in Wyoming and this felt like "home."

WebDrivenChurch.com 3.0 is a step in the right direction for at least two reasons:

1. It simplified things: The layout is clean. It's Web 2.0 in look/feel. It's brighter than the previous version. It's wider layout allows for less overall scrolling.
2. It taught me new stuff: Blogger has since ditched the classic tags in favor of a new system (a much more complicated one) that I had to learn in order to create the layout. However, newer is better. I can now take advantage of new features like the archving tree and the ability to add "widgets" at will.

1. New WDC logo.
2. New archive functionality based on the new blogger options.
3. Added a Label Cloud: The bigger the label the more posts are in that category.
4. Added a favicon.
5. Added Google Analytics versus StatCounter.
6. Added my picture (so you could put a face with the name...)

I recently came to the realization that the tension I feel over blogging is due to the fact that I'm often unable to blog about the stuff I'm the most passionate about.

Allow me to explain: Being a web director, I'm often working on projects that are under wraps, not yet live and therefore not "bloggable." The stuff I'm researching and working on are often "confidential" until they are made public, so my blogging about them would simply ruin the surprise.

The workaround: I do get to describe the project the minute it goes live. I get to talk about the work/rationale behind the project and answer questions that people are asking. So even though there is tension - I'm trying to make the most of it.

The Office Series Project

For the past week or so I have "gone dark" (to use a Jack Bauer term) in order to finish up the website for this upcoming series before I go on vacation early next month.

The plan: Think outside the box (again) in order to create buzz surrounding a felt need series targeting peoples unfulfilling work lives.

The Execution: In order to create this buzz we initiated the following:

• Billboards: obtain eight billboards in the community and advertise the series with witty sayings and display web address of site below.
• Website: created a separate site for this series (purchased domain name and forwarded it to www.gccwired.com/office and masked as www.myofficesecrets.com/ for those interested).
• Office Secrets: created a place where people could (anonymously) tell their secret office stories.
• Wallpapers: created desktop wallpapers from billboards.
• More Fun: Offer ways for people to interact. Page created so people can email pictures of their messy desks and have them displayed on the page. Page created so people can upload videos of their "crazy office games" to YouTube and have their link added to the page on our site.
• MyOfficeSecrets.com linked back to the series page on GCCwired.com.

Sidenote: Twice in the past month we have made an intentional decision to use YouTube rather than having people send in videos on DVD and encoding them for use in house. The quality is poor but this is the tradeoff: social acceptance is high, there is high potential for buzz and there are helpful features like YouTube providing the link to the video and the code for embedding the video into your site/blog.

Another fun project completed.

Go document your office secret now >>

I have been doing volunteer ministry in the communications department at Granger for over two years now. It began with basic web maintenance and some simple graphic design work and has blossomed into two full-blown websites complete with dynamic back-end administration panels, integration with the current CMS used by the church, flash navigation, flash feature sections on main and series pages, and media features that are taking us to entirely new heights.

It has been awesome to work with the team on these projects and peer into the future together. But from now on it will be from a slightly different perspective.

I recently began talks with the Administrative Pastor (Tony Morgan) about what it would look like to actually move into full time ministry at the church. This would mean leaving a career in the mental health field to do something totally different.

After much prayer, personal reflection (and of course conversations with my wife) I (we) accepted the position as Web Director at the church.

My first day at the church will be September 5th.

On one hand this is just a continuation of my two years of ministry. But on the other hand it is a brand new adventure - an incredible opportunity that I believe God was preparing me for with years of leading, teaching and testing.

I'm looking forward to this next leg of the journey!

New Look

You might be asking yourself why the site looks so different. Well, lets just say I thought a small face lift was in order to celebrate the transition. Hope you like it!

I've been using Blogger for quite a while now with no problems and excellent flexibility. Sure there are more robust applications out there (TypePad, WordPress, etc.) but for now I'm happy with the simplicity of Blogger for personal blogging and even for some side projects I have been working on.

For example, I am currently doing a website that will have four sections completely driven by Blogger. The Blogger Admin Panel serves as the Content Management System (CMS) for the pages which allows "less techie" people control over the site in a more dynamic way. The awesome thing is this: the people who will be updating these pages are already bloggers! So there is NO learning curve (how cool is that?)

All the work is in the front end - incorporating the Blogger specific tags into your existing page (similar to html tags but are dynamic to call data from the appropriate places after a post has been published). After that it's a detailed incorporation of your sites stylesheet.css and the styles from the blog template (if you're stripping down an existing one) and that's a wrap.

Blogger allows two publishing formats. The first (and easiest) is to publish all posts/images to the Blogger servers (called "blogspot"). But the second option is the one that rocks! Blogger will publish posts/images directly to your website via ftp or sftp. Simply enter the correct path(s) to the correct directory(ies) and Blogger does the rest...

What was designed for blogging can just as easily be used as a CMS!

Thanks for everything Google!

I worked for years in the mental health field as a licensed clinical social worker (LCSW). Then, in 2004 I was asked to volunteer in the Communications Department at Granger Community Church. For two years I helped keep the websites running as the church readied itself to launch completely redesigned versions of their two websites.

Then in 2006 I was asked to join the team on a more permanent basis.

I currently serve in full time ministry as the Web Director at Granger Community Church. I get to work with an incredible team of dedicated professionals. We cast vision for, maintain and oversee all aspects of both gccwired.com and wiredchurches.com.

WebDrivenChurch.com is not only one of my creative outlets, it's also where I get to process day to day goings on and advances in technology that impact progressive churches. If you have any questions about this site or the information presented here feel free to contact me (use contact button in the header menu).

I hope that this will be a safe place to discuss the following:

• Web design/layout
• Web technology
• CSS
• Programming languages (php/xml/javascript/etc.)
• Software/hardware/plug-ins/etc.
• Flash
• Online audio/video
• Podcasting/vodcasting
• Streaming video
• eCommerce
• etc.

Once again, thanks for joining me on this journey.