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)
  

RSS / Podcasting

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

Good Info for Both Groups

• List of helpful tools
  

I'm sure this isn't a complete list so hit me up for more information if you need it.

"Tis' the day after Innovate and all through the house, not a creature is stirring, especially my mouse.

All work and all websites are put out of mind. Now rest and relax and try to unwind.

Yes take a deep breath and make sure you're fine. For on Monday we start planning for Innovate09."

Okay, it's not that bad - just thought it was funny.

What I really wanted to do is just post to say Innovate08 was awesome. It felt like one of the best yet in terms of the amazing arts, the quality drama and media presentations and the way all speakers presented individual messages that seemed to have a common thread of truth and consistency woven through them.

There was no big draw this year like Guy Kawasaki of Innovate07. But I don't think we skipped a beat. Shawn Wood, the Lifechurch.tv team and Steven Furtick each hit home runs. Not to mention the incredible messages put forth by the Granger team. Mark Beeson began and ended the conference with "Stop Talking..." and "...Start Doing." Tim Stevens popped the church and Rob Wegner went mission critical.

I love just sitting back and taking it all in - even though as an attendee of Granger Community Church I've seen much of what's presented during the conference. There is just something about the energy during the conference. The music is louder, the medias more meaningful. Not sure how else to describe it.

I can't wait until we do it all over again.

Innovate09!

Another year. Another Summit.

But the minute you start thinking that way it sneaks up and slaps you in the face.

This year it started early. Bill Hybels began with a compelling message on how leaders make difficult decisions and then transitioned into 'axioms' that leaders create and eventually begin using to help shape culture in their environment.

Here are some of those he put to paper (many more in his new book called ax.i.om):

• "Vision leaks."
• "Get the right people around the table."
• "Facts are your friends."
• "When something feels funky...engage."
• "Leaders call fouls." (both on others are on yourself)
• "Take a flyer." (risk)
• "This is church."
• "Get your butt off the fence." (Okay...I added that one just because he said it about people who can't make up their minds for Christ and I loved it.)

But the speaker that really hit me with content straight from the heart of God was Gary Haugen, CEO and founder of IJM. There is just something about people that are fighting injustice in the world head on. His stories were both painful and inspiring. A few quotes:

Are Jesus and I really interested in the same things?

If you want your leadership to matter, lead in the things that matter to God.

Something is wrong when Jesus' yoke is light and mine is heavy.

Not too shabby is the work being done by Wendy Kopp, CEO of Teach for America.

And what a rockin' end to the day as Efrem Smith of Sanctuary Covenant Church finished things off. My favorite line:

In case you haven't been paying attention I'm black. For those of you watching on black and white televisions, I'm the darker one. (my wording since I couldn't type fast enough...)

Last night our team breathed a sigh of relief as the final pages were saved, all apps connected and the last button pushed to publish the Innovate08 site and make it live.

For the first time we developed a mini-site from the ground up. Not just pages in a folder on WiredChurches.com, but a fully functional site with it's own domain name, hosting, navigational structure and registration component.

The entire process began in brainstorming sessions with the arts department. At that time we picked stop motion photography as the theme that would be used throughout the conference - from print to web to media/transitions during the conference.

Specifics
From there it was creating a dark web backdrop and UI that incorporated some of these images. Dump in all the necessary content and you have a website. I was lucky enough to work with a great team that put together the following elements:

• Stop motion photography
• Graphics for website
• Print elements (example: 2008 Brochure)
  
• Facebook Page
• Twitter Page/Feed
• Funny FAQ Videos
  
• Forms for Innovate08 Registration and sign-ups for Casual Q&As
  
• PayPal integration
• And much more that I'm forgetting...

This project was hammered out in less than a month and only happened because each person took their specific area of expertise and made it happen.

Great job guys! I love this stuff.

Task List
Go register for Innovate08 right now - I'll see you in September.

Day two had the bulk of the content and day three was the wrap up final session. Here are some specifics:

Opening Session (Curtis Simmons): Curtis did a great job walking us through both newly released functionality and what is right around the corner. It was good to hear about the architecture restructure that will allow for increased access to data through the coming API and CMS features. Ftech is wanting to be 'all things technical' for churches and yes, that includes managing and hosting their websites. With CMS a church will be able to develop templates and pull content right out of FellowshipOne and present it on the page. We're definitely heading in the right direction.

F1 Roadmap (Curtis Harris): Much of the same stuff presented in the opening session just with more detail and timelines.

LifeChurch.tv - Here, Now and the Future (Terry Storch): I love sitting in on session with this guy. Terry's heart beats for 'kingdom technology' and he shared a few of the projects currently underway at LifeChurch.tv. Internet Campus, OnePrayer and SecondLife are three of the biggies. Looking forward to hearing more from the LifeChurch.tv Team when the OnePrayer series hits.

CMS in FellowshipOne (Tim Hardy): Tim was great at walking us through the future CMS feature in F1. He not only described the idea and the way it would work, but also demonstrated by walking us through the process of editing pages and navigation. Sounds interesting for smaller churches. We currently use a CMS designed for us from the ground up. However, I look forward to the possibility of pulling in content with the RESTful API and presenting it on our pages. All sorts of applications come to mind...

Customizing Weblink with CSS (Tara Coulson): Simple and to the point, so why haven't I got in there and messed with it? It's called laziness. I just need to put it on the list and make it happen. FellowshipOne still uses an archaic css stylesheet to style their popup windows. So it will take a little work to find the right selectors, make the changes and then make sure that it hasn't completely destroyed the look of another popup using the same selector. Shouldn't be too bad though.

Evenings Activities (Friday): P.F. Chang's and a quick stop at IKEA.

Closing Address on Saturday (Randy Draper): Excellent choice. Randy has heart, humor and passion for church work. He encouraged us to NOT be the negative, angry tech person sitting behind the scenes. But to find the passion we need to laugh, love people, serve and find purpose in everything we do. Sobering and encouraging.

Saturday's Activities: Spend the next couple days with my beautiful wife (who decided to come on the trip with me). No solid plans, but I'm sure we'll find something to do in the big State of Texas.

Day one has come and gone in Dallas. Yesterday we did the following:

Presenters Meeting: Quick and to the point. Thanks for coming. This is where the computer will be. This is the clicker for your powerpoint. Now go and do a great job.

Opening Address (Jeff Hook, CEO): Jeff opened the conference with another summary on Fellowship Technologies history, place in the market and commitment to the vision of the church. He gave a short overview of what's coming in the life of FellowshipOne and offered a new (modified) version of the graph depicting the operating needs/processes of the church.

Data Integrity (Marie Armitage): Marie offered many best practices on how to maintain data integrity and elicited similar tips from attendees. Good to hear that we're on the right track.

Super Team (Granger Team): We presented on the development of our Super Team and how it has helped us with the use of F1 in our environment. The team outperforms the individual every time...

Weblink Integration (Curtis Simmons): I returned to this presentation in part because we have semi-integrated weblink on gccwired.com. Last year it was considered a waste of time to attempt such a thing. This year it was discussed as being the preferred method because of the control it allows over the user experience. Exactly why we put the time and energy into doing it in the first place :)

Evenings Activities: Cheesecake Factory and IronMan.

This week a group of us will be making the trip to Texas for the annual Dynamic Church Conference.

Six of us went last year and quickly found that your FellowshipOne (church management solution) knowledge can go from 0 to 100 in two days.

This year we've been asked to present on what we call the 'Super Team' - a select group of people that help to keep FellowshipOne running smoothly at our church. If you want to hear more about the team concept, meet us on Thursday and we'll try to fill in all the blanks.

It should be a good time. I'm looking forward to hearing more about the recently added features and what is on the roadmap for future enhancements.

See everyone there.

For those of you dedicated to all things tech at your churches or places of employment, I have the perfect event for you. WiredChurches.com is offering the Technical Arts Forum again this May 30th.

Led by my good friend Adam Callender, the forum is a round-table event with discussion topics guided by attendees. Discuss how to effectively use audio, video, lighting and auditorium technology in services or presentations. Conversations also touch on needs, components, systems and how to find and train volunteers.

If you get geeked by tech you really need to check this out.

It just occurred to me today that even though I didn't know many if the panelists, these are top players in the field and are from leading technology companies and design firms around the world.

So I thought (for laughs) that I'd go back through the entire list of panels I attended and show you the companies/firms represented by the panelists. So here we go in the order I attended the panels:

• jasongraphix.com
• Art Institute of Atlanta
• Adobe
• Global Strategies
• AKQA
• Google
• hauntedcastle.org
• geocaching.com
• Skyhook Wireless
• areacodeinc.com
• Digital Roam
• MIT Comparitive Media Studies Program
• 37signals
• Further Ahead
• Facebook
• Preloaded
• Ekton
• Climb to the Stars
• flickr
• Worldwide Lexicon Project
• iStockphoto.com
• Postsecret.com
• W3Conversations
• NetCast HD
• armidatechnologies.com
• Polycot Consulting
• RipCode
• iTaggit
• invodo.com
• NC-soft
• Avant Games
• hackdiary.com
• DOPPLR
• CSSzengarden
• mezzoblue.com
• Quarterlife

Day 5 was a tremendous wrapup to a long week. Great panels with very helpful content and cutting edge stuff to look into for future versions of the stuff we're doing back home.

Panels today:

• Crunching & Streaming: Online video distribution challenge and opportunity (Various)
• Following the lifecycle of an idea (Various)
• Keynote Address (Jane McGonigal of Avant Games)
• Creative Collaboration: Building web apps together (Various)
• Quarterlife: A wild journey from internet to TV (Marshall Herskovitz)

Great Takeaways from Today:

• Principles of Happiness: 1) Satisfying work to do 2) Doing something you're good at 3) Time spent with people you like 4) Chance to be part of something bigger. Jane McGonigal
• Why gaming can be more desirable than real life: 1) Better instructions than in life 2) Better feedback than in life 3) Better community than in life. Jane McGonigal

Excitement for the day:

• Ran into Guy Kawasaki in a hallway. He was sitting for a short interview so I waited and then said hi. I think he remembered me...
• Jane McGonigal somehow managed to work the Soulja Boy dance into her talk (actually demonstrating after Q&A). I thought it was the most real and brilliant Keynote Address of SXSW 08.

Tonight's meal:

• Carrabba's Italian Grill: An old standby.

Day 4 was less than tremendous - there just wasn't anything that jumped out and grabbed me. I mean I learned stuff and thought there were good panels - just not like the past few days.

Panels today:

• Lost in Translation (Various)
• Social Networking and Your Brand (Various)
• Keynote Address (Frank Warren of PostSecret.com)
• Taking it to the Desktop (Lee Brimelow for Adobe AIR)
• WaSP Annual Meeting: Don't break the web (Various)

Great Takeaways from Today:

• Sometimes when we think we're keeping a secret - it's really keeping us. Frank Warren
• Social Networking and other Web 2.0 applications appear to be fueling an 'intimacy revolution' or an 'authenticity revolution.' Audience member
• Sorry...that's as good as I found from my notes today.

Excitement for the day:

• Rain. Rain. More rain.
• Found a new type of coffee: Kick Butt Coffee (a one store shop that intends on becoming as big as Starbucks)

Tonight's meal:

• T.G.I. Friday's: Pretty mundane I know. But we weren't there for the food. Got to hang out with a great bunch of fellow web/tech guys. They make up a group called the Godbit Project. Had a good time networking and chatting about technology stuff with like minded people. Had a great time and will join soon.

Day 3 was more of the same. Great panels, funny moments and hard hitting presentations bleeding from the cutting edge of the technology people are using today.

Panels today:

• Everyone's a Design Critic (Various)
• Everything I know About Accessibility I Learned From Star Wars (Featherstone)
• Keynote Address: Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook)
• The 10 Commandments of Nice (Preloaded Team)
• Harness the Power of Social Networking in Your Intranet (Cava)

Great Takeaways from Today:

• Top 5 Client Requests: 1) My unqualified friend has different ideas 2) Purple is my favorite color. Why don't you use that? 3) We need more stuff above the 'fold' 4) There's so much empty space. Can't you fill it? 5) Can't you make the logo bigger? (Everyone's a Design Critic)
• Technical marvels (like the Deathstar) can often fall apart due to one minor glitch in the system (Featherstone)
• 7 principles of user interface design: clarity, feedback, affordance, simplicity, structure, consistency and tolerance (Preloaded)

Excitement for the day:

• Derek Featherstone dressed up in a Jedi cloak for his entire presentation and made lightsaber sounds just by moving his MacBookPro around.
• The woman interviewing Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg (Sarah Lacy of Business Week and apparently Mark's personal reporter...) was so chastised by the audience for her poor interviewing skills that it was shocking she didn't break down and leave. At one point Mark explained that he would answer her if she'd only ask him a question. To which the entire audience broke out in applause akin to a standing ovation...

Tonight's meal:

• Antonio's Tex Mex Perhaps some of the best Mexican food I've ever had (chipotle enchiladas).

Tonight's Entertainment:

• Jumper (3 stars) Good initial concept that was developed well throughout the movie. Scenario set for future movies. Seemed a bit short though.

Day 2 is obviously NOT meant to be an introduction to SXSW. It's more like trying to drink from a fire hose. The day started at 10:00 a.m. and (for me) went to 9:00 p.m.

Panels today:

• Creating Findable Rich Media (Various)
• Geolocation in Web 2.0 (Various)
• Book Reading: The Back of the Napkin (Roam)
• Opening Remarks: Henry Jenkins & Steven Johnson
• Ten Things We've Learned at 37Signals (Jason Fried)
• Interactive Media Trends: Are you on top of it? (Various)

Great Takeaways from Today:

• What's your consumption to creation ratio? Are you teaching your kids to create as much as they consume?
• "You can't build a democracy on the premise that people are stupid." Henry Jenkins
• In discussing the time some spent on analyzing the map (shown for 2 seconds) in the second season of LOST: "We shouldn’t ask what's wrong with them. We should ask what's wrong with a society where people have the time to do this stuff because they aren't challenged in their jobs?" Henry Jenkins
• "Err on the side of simple." "Interruption is the enemy of productivity." "It's ok to think about the future - just don't write it down." "When you make tiny decisions you can't make big mistakes." Jason Fried
• "Invest in what doesn't change. People aren't going to wake up a few years from now and say, #&@*!! I wish this software was hard to use." Jason Fried
• "The brain is infinitely more capable than any piece of software we have on our machines." Dan Roam

Excitement for the day:

• Attempted the Google Party: Realized I was going to be standing in a line around the block for a couple hours so determined that dinner was the better option. Got to hang out with the Digerati Team from LifeChurch.tv - good times...
• ScreenBurn 2008: Got to walk through a room full of amazing gaming technology and watch expert gamers do their thing.

Tonight's meal:

• Katz's Deli & Bar

Day 1 is obviously meant to accomplish the following:

1. Assimilation: Those who live here or are repeat attenders may not need this, but I definitely took an hour or two to just figure things out. I found the hotel, unpacked, drove to the convention center, looked around at the hundreds of thousands of people and then found the line to register.
2. Registration: I stood in line for close to an hour to get my badge and then another 15-20 minutes for materials.
3. Introduction: Panels only went from 2-6 with the bulk of them taking place between 3:30 and 6. Nothing crazy - just enough to introduce you to the way the schedule works and to prepare you for a packed day tomorrow.

Panels today:

• Book Reading: The Principles of Beautiful Web Design (Beaird)
• Book Reading: Building Findable Websites (Walter)

Excitement for the day:

• Interviewed by local Austin CBS affiliate: I was asked these questions while in the registration line: Where are you from? What interests you about SXSW? How much money do you plan on spending total while in Austin? I'll have to see if it shows up on the late news tonight.

Tonight's meal:

• P.F. Chang's China Bistro: I went big the first night assuming that I may be tied up the majority of the nights with after parties, film screenings and award shows.

Better get some sleep - tomorrow's schedule starts at 10 a.m. and ends at 2 a.m. Sunday morning...

This year I get the amazing opportunity to attend South by Southwest (SXSW) in Austin, TX. I hear it's one of a handful of annual conferences that designers and developers have to experience at least once.

I was all set to go, had a friend willing to make the trek with me and then the unexpected happened - something came up and he was unable to attend. So I'll be there on my own unless I can do some innovative online networking prior to going...

I'll be there on an Interactive Badge from the 7-11th of March.

Don't leave me hangin'

Anyone else going? Let me know!