Archive for November, 2008
Twitter Tricks: Question on Twitter Badges
Posted on 11. Nov, 2008 by Kenny.
Okay, my turn to ask a question out there.
I really want to use twitter for my camp updates like I wrote about yesterday. However, I don’t want to be the only twitterer. I’d love it if all my counselors were twittering. They could twitter specifically about their kids. This way parents could subscribe specifically to their kid’s counselor or any of my staff. I’d plan to put a twitter badge on our website, but I’ve only seen twitter badges where they feature just one twitter feed. Does anyone know where I can fet a badge that will handle multiple twitter feeds? I’m wondering if I have to use some kind of aggregator and use a rss address for the aggregator to display on the badge, but would it maintain the author of each post?
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First Six Months: Email
Posted on 11. Nov, 2008 by Kenny.
This week I’m writing about the one thing I’ve done in my first six months at Gateway that has paid of BIG TIME! It’s all about communication. No one should be left in the dark.
Once I realized that I needed to start communicating consistently, I moved pretty quickly. I ran a report that gave me the email addresses of all moms, dads and household of any kid who attended Gateway in the last four months. We sorted the list, eliminated the duplicates and simply cut and pasted them into my Outlook email. I crafted an email (it was a little longer than I wanted it to be, but it was divided into heading for differnt age groups or events). that I would send out every Wednesday afternoon.
TIP: If you ever have to email a lot of your parents from your personal email, I’d HIGHLY suggest you BCC (Blind Carbon Copy) everyone rather than put them all in the “To” box. You’ll quickly irritate your parents by not hiding their email from the dozens (or hundreds) who might add them to email chains.
I was pretty straightforward at the beginning of the email explaining that we had many changes on the horizon with many special events with information parents would want to know. I explained that we would be launching a new tool for communication within a few weeks that would help inform parents. I also told them that they would be getting emails from me every week through the end of the summer. So, everyone knew what to expect.
TIP: Oh, and being new I knew that I needed to make sure my email didn’t get ignored. I knew that many parents wouldn’t have any idea who I was and they were likely to delete the email before reading it. To be honest, even after being at a church for a very long time, we shouldn’t allow ourselves to things we’re a well known as we might think we are. So, my emails always have the subject line of “Gateway Church:” in the front. I know that “Gateway Church” carries more weight than Kids Quest or something else. So, be sure to be very clear in the subject so your paretns know exactly what the email is and will want to open it.
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Twitter Tricks: Camp Updates and Communication
Posted on 10. Nov, 2008 by Kenny.
A blogger I follow posted a really helpful blog about using twitter (along with twitpic and 12 seconds) to update parents and families from camp.
I’ve gone to many camps where I would send an email to parents every day, just to update them. I always wanted to include lots of pictures and stuff, but it just took time away from focusing on the kids. I’ve created a yahoo group, email groups, calling posts and even had my admin email parents after I’d call her. But using twitter and twitpic is perfect. You can tweet about individual kids, activities or whatever.
I can promise you this. Next summer I will be using twitter for camp updates, unless something else comes along… or Jesus comes back. 
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First Six Months: Communication
Posted on 10. Nov, 2008 by Kenny.
I’d like to say I came in with this plan that reaped huge payoffs, but I didn’t. Don’t get me wrong, I had plans and we’ve implemented many of them. However, this communication thing came more as a reaction than something intentional.
After just a week or two of getting to Gateway, I was picking up the vibe that many people didn’t know what was going one. Actually, people were telling me that they didn’t know what was going on. 
It wasn’t really with anything huge, just the little stuff. When do kids promote? When is the next child dedication? When is camp? How can I volunteer? I remember getting bombarded with all kinds of questions, questions, questions. Unfortunately, I also started responding to emails and phone messages of people who had been seeking answers to questions for weeks or even months. No one really to blame, just questions that had fallen through the cracks.
It didn’t take me long to realize that these people needed answers. They needed communication. They needed to be connected to an information outlet. Within a few weeks I implemented a three stage plan to nail this communication thing. I’d say that of all the positive feedback I’ve gotten since being at Gateway, the most is about how we’re communicating now. Many described it as a breath of fresh air. Tomorrow I’ll tell you about stage one.
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Your credit report
Posted on 09. Nov, 2008 by Kenny.
I’m posting this on both my personal blog and ministry blog as I do write to two different audiences and thought that this information might be helpful. This weekend it was my mission to track down and close any credit account I had tagged to my name. I had a few that I knew of and I was sure there would be a few I didn’t know about.
I’ll be honest. I’m a sucker for a deal. Sara and I try to live in a pretty tight budget, so when I see that I can get 15% off a purchase at Amazon if I sign up for a credit card, I’m seriously going to think about doing it. Actually I’ve opened cards at Target, Amazon, some place at the mall and even a Planet Hollywood card because I wanted the free CD that they were giving away (Sara and I enjoyed that CD for many years). I came to realize that getting these cards (even if I planned to cut them up and never use them) reduced my credit score.
I knew I needed to clean up some of these accounts, so I went looking for one of those free credit report sites. Most of them are scams. Actually, they aren’t scams, they’re just giving you a free credit report if you sign up for a 10 day trial of credit monitoring (which will be billed to your credit card if you don’t cancel at the end of the trial). Then I found this site. No scam, just a site (I think it’s the only one sanctioned by the three credit bureaus) that lets you run a report from each of the three bureaus every year. I figured I’d run the report every 4 months, hitting a different bureau each time. This way I could see any suspicious activity more often than once a year.
So, I found two or three open accounts that needed closing. One I knew about, the other two I thought had been closed. The report provided the contact information of the companies I had accounts with, so closing them were easy. Again, I was able to do all of this for free. I used Equifax this time around and had no problems other than Equifax wanting to sell me credit monitoring or offering my “credit score” for a little money.
So, if you want to check out your credit report to clean up some of those account or just curious about what is on there, check out www.annualcreditreport.com.
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Twitter Tricks: Twitter Vision
Posted on 09. Nov, 2008 by Kenny.
This one is purely fun and of no real use.
Twitter Vision is basically a mashup fo Google Maps and Twitter. Random tweets from around the world pop up all over the map based on locations.
Just fun.
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First Six Months
Posted on 09. Nov, 2008 by Kenny.
I just hit my six month anniversary at Gateway Community Church. Amazing! I can’t believe how fast time has been going by. I also can’t believe how much has changed.
I love what I’m doing, although I’m not totally doing what I’ve been hired to do. However, we’re getting pretty close to having the open positions filled and I’ll be able to move into the role I came to Gateway to fulfill.
This is the 4th time I’ve been the “new guy” coming into an existing organization. I was a lot more intentional in one area and it has provided great results and I’d recommend this to anyone coming into a new job in a new organization. In many ways it was a “low hanging fruit” that was ripe for the picking. I’m going to expound on what I did tomorrow. I no expert by any means, I just tried something and it worked really well. Hopefully what I have to say might guide someone going into a new organization or serve as a good reminder for others that have let this one slip.
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Twitter Tricks: Twitter Timer
Posted on 08. Nov, 2008 by Kenny.
I’m not sure I’ll use this one a lot, but my wife could use it. It’s often my job to wake my wife up from a quick nap. “Wake me up in 20 minutes.” Then 45 minutes later I wake her up.
Well, with Twitter Timer, you can direct message timer when you want to be reminded of something and it will twitter you back when the time is up.
Simple. Fun.
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Twitter Tricks: Google Calendar
Posted on 07. Nov, 2008 by Kenny.
This one’s pretty awesome. Using this tool, you can create Google Calendar Events by twittering. Just follow gcal and direct message an appointment to gcal and the event will show up on your calendar.
Currently I use Google Sync to connect my Outlook Exchange calendar with my Google calendar. This way my wife can access my work calendar and create appointments without her having access to Exchange. Now I can twitter an appointment and it will sync to my Outlook Exchange calendar. This is especially nice for a guy who doesn’t have a data plan on his phone. I can text to twitter and set up meetings.
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Our election from a fresh and different perspective
Posted on 06. Nov, 2008 by Kenny.
My good friend Joel Hayslip, whois a missionary to Burkina Faso, West Africa wrote an amazing post on the election. He’s been in Africa now for five years, but happened to be in the US this summer and fall and was able to experience all of the politiacal campaign. Since he’s no longer a resident of the United States (but still a citizen), he had quite an interesting perspective. I thought I’d share it with you here.
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