Pocket Revolutionary

So, I’ve been at White Rhino Coffee once a day for the past two days while we’re doing a conference at Trinity Church. It’s like a comforting trip back in time to high school when my friends and I went to actual coffee houses and not chain stores. I mean, Starbuck’s is still closer and works for me in a jiffy… but I love the atmosphere and genuinely good coffee that only comes from a small coffee house. I can show up, see a couple of people I know, and then retire quietly to the couch with my laptop… nerd-vana.

Sorry for the long delay in-between posts. We just had a Generals International conference this past weekend and the build-up sucked away all free time, I think.

Some of the marketing types had a great idea to get testimonies up right afterward with the photo gallery from the conference, though, and I really think our audience will like it. Our new follow-up page for the conference will have video interviews with some of the attendees along with typed testimonies that were taken as transcripts from the interviews. Instead of trying to wait and compile a professional ad, we opted for speed! I think that YouTube and the other “Web 2.0″ ideas have shown that speed can beat perfect editing a lot of the time.

I love well-edited video, but some quick behind-the-scenes style video clips can communicate the same information and even allows your web audience to feel “connected” in a very intangible way. Instead of always needing a perfect spot with intros and outros, we have clips. They were taped by the head of our media department (very well), and then edited using crude, fast tools like iMovie and Quicktime Pro. Because we didn’t have time or manpower to edit with with Final Cut Pro on-site, I was able to edit all the videos myself. They’re not perfect edits by any means, but they were ready to post within an hour and the rough cuts give people a more personal feeling of being there.

I’m not saying that the idea itself was groundbreaking, and I won’t say that my execution of the technology was brilliant. I think it did follow a new mantra that I’ve been trying to spread, though: deliver now. If I were an MBA I could start spouting facts about time-to-market, but that’s just not me. What I will say I’ve learned, though, is that we increasingly want things now, and we’ll be happy to see the finished product later. This is the same reason that we sell CD and DVD sets of the conference the minute it’s over. It’s not the same well-edited set you can pre-order that will show up a month after the conference, but it’s available right now.

When my wife, Rebekah, shoots a wedding (imagesbyrebekah.com), we post some initial, unedited photos within days of the event with a quick slideshow. Why? Because you want them to see pictures immediately, and it only increases their anticipation for the finished product.

Once again, this isn’t groundbreaking, but I’m going to keep repeating it until I see more ministries doing this! Anyway, I can’t post a link to the page because we ended up still missing a crucial piece of information (I don’t know the names of the interviewees), but I’ll post it here when it goes live.

Edit: You can now see the conference follow-up page here.

It is time for a change at PocketRevolutionary.com. I’ve enjoyed the opportunity to wax about all things random and theological, but I’ve decided in the past few weeks to take a serious look at the focus for PocketRevolutionary. I’ve realized that my heart is in the subjects I end up talking about every day in my non-blog life: the web, Web 2.0, new technologies and strategies, and how these things affect ministries and the Christian marketplace.

My main goal in my non-blog life is to build systems and new strategies for ministries and a few Christian-owned businesses. As much as I may listen to Ravi Zacharias, Bill Johnson, Cindy Jacobs, etc., I realize that’s not my voice or my mission for right now. I like internetmonk.com, but I flag and read PhilCooke.com and tech blogs obsessively. Why? Because they talking about practical things that are necessary for using “new media” in ministries today. So, I’ve decided to find my own voice in blogging (the same thing I’ve told others to do before). I may like to read Bonhoeffer on the weekends, but my weekdays are spent creating wiki communities, helping my friends start successful blogs, or training the staff at Generals International on using project management software. The questions I’m asked have more to do with web technology than my theology of grace.

So, this is the day of a “re-imagining” at PocketRevolutionary. I want this site to be a friendly guide for those in the field of “2.0″ ministry today. This is my small handbook for the revolutionaries; your “pocket revolutionary.” My goal is to really make this an interactive place for discussions of the issues we run into and ways that we can push the boundaries. I’m always open for more input in the comments and at my email. I’ll keep the old posts because I know there was a few readers back then, but I’ll pull them down and archive them “off-site” for now. I’ll still post my personal thoughts and stories, but I’ll at least try to tie them to the central focus of using technology.

Future blog ideas (in no particular order): ministry blogs, Typo3, MySpace, YouTube, GTD, software picks, Apple, productivity, OmniPlan, OmniFocus, wikis, Google Maps, TextMate. I’m sure more things will come up as I pore through my own news feeds. Let me know if you have any other ideas.