Mister Nifty » Communication

Dear Church Leader, Please Stop -

Brian Fegter — Wed, 16 Feb 2011 11:43:31 +0000

- disclosing your entire email list in the TO: field on mass emails.

There are a few arguments that should sway you away from this awful practice:

It disenfranchises your audience. When I see I’m just one of 200 emails, I feel like a number and I automatically begin prejudging the email and the one who sent the email. The message is certainly lost or tainted before it can even be read. With the proper tools readily available at our fingertips (in all email programs), it is frankly unprofessional to send a mass email exposing your entire email list. It is tantamount to the practices of my grandmother’s forwarding group who sends me cute kitten photos and Maxine comics on a regular basis.
It exposes your audience to unwanted spam. All a reader needs to do is hit “Reply All” on your email, and he now has access to your audience. For church email lists, you have not only provided an email list, but more specifically, a targeted, demographic email list. This is extremely valuable to marketers. If one of your users is a marketer or the email falls into the hands of a marketer via hack or snoop, it’s pretty much guaranteed someone down the line is going to go after your audience with a product or pitch. The more people you add to the TO: field, the more you expose your audience to third party communication.I recently contacted a church leader who exposed more than 200 emails on his list announcing a larch church-oriented music event. I explained the nuances of allowing others to have access to his audience. No sooner had I sent the reply, a singer who was on the list replied to all with an advertisement of his latest album and how to purchase it. Case-in-point.
It is a liability to you and your organization. No one can please everyone all the time. No matter who you are, there is someone who is disgruntled with your organization and your leadership style. There is a reason the Bible says bitterness is a “root”. You can’t see it on the surface, therefore you can never trust that everyone in your 200+ email list has the best intentions for your organization. When you disclose your email list, you in effect, are giving a microphone to those who are disgruntled with you or your organization.This is a very real scenario not only in church and organization splits, but also when an every day layman looks to get maximum broadcast and collateral damage when airing their grievances.

The Fix

It’s very simple. Use the Blink Carbon Copy or BCC: field when sending to multiple recipients. Place your own email in the TO: field.

A Better Fix

Use MailChimp to send one email to one person on your list until everyone on your list receives the email instead of sending one email to hundreds. Mailchimp is free to use for up to 1000 contacts and 6,000 emails per month.

Using a mailing list services gives you several benefits.

Credibility with your audience by allowing them to opt in/out of your emails.
Track each email so you know if it’s been opened and read
Gain new members via web form on your site
Better subscriber management
More stable email platform for mass mails than Outlook or web-based email.

There is really no excuse to continue using Outlook for mass emails (over ten or twenty people) when MailChimp is free for the taking.

Go to MailChimp

Dear Church Leader, Please Stop - is a post from: Mister Nifty

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2MPH – Slow Down and Connect

Brian Fegter — Fri, 26 Mar 2010 07:57:29 +0000

A few years ago I came up with an idea to help leaders stay connected with their congregations/leadership teams. This concept was birthed out of observation of many leaders only connecting with their congregation/leaders on a personal basis only during times of crisis or conflict.

We often view relationships as a time-consuming process that involves large chunks of our time. A leader who leads many people or leaders can feel overwhelmed with the burden of connecting. Many simply run from this burden and never make an effort to have any form of personal contact outside the functions of the church. Thus, the concept I call “2MPH” was birthed.

Two things about 2MPH

The Premise – Two Miles Per Hour
- Slow down from the busyness of life.
The Application – Two Minutes Per Hour
- Take two minutes out of every hour and connect with someone.

Get Your Calculator Out

I took this idea of two minutes per hour to the calculator and was amazed at the impact of these small time investments. Before I started my mad calculator skills, I factored in a 40-hour work week which equals 2,400 minutes of work time.

Here’s what I came up with:

2 minutes X 8 hours = 16 minutes / day
16 minutes X 5 work days = 80 minutes / week
80 minutes X 50 work weeks (minus Christmas and Thanksgiving) = 4,000 minutes / year (66 1/2 hours)

How It Works

These numbers really got my attention. By taking 80 minutes out of a 2,400 minute work week, I could connect with 40-80 people in one week. I realize what most people are thinking right now that one or two minute interactions are not truly connections, but I disagree. As I mentioned before, we tend to look at relationships in the large chunks of time that we spend with someone and discount the value of small consistent interactions.

The 2MPH concept means every hour you take two minutes to do one of the following:

Send a short text message to someone
- Word of appreciation
- Birthday/Anniversary wishes
- Encouragement for someone who is hurting

Make a quick phone call (I realize this is the most time consuming)
- A call to a patient in the hospital sometimes means as much to them as a visit.
- Call your kids and tell them you love them and are proud of them.
- Call a guest that attended last weekend and let them know how glad you were they came.

Send a quick email to someone
- A quick note in a businessman’s email box from the pastor or leader can make them feel a part of the family
- Share a thought from the Word with your leaders or a small group of friends/family
- Send a note to your mayor or city officials letting them know you’re praying for them

Write a personal note
- Prepare your desk with a box of pre-stamped envelopes and simple stationary to jot a note to someone.
- For someone struggling, find a few relevant verses, write a quick note of encouragement and include the references.
- Write a romantic note for your spouse and leave it for them to find.

Personal contact
- When grabbing a takeout meal, order an extra meal for a coworker without them asking and bring it to them.
- If you’re in public, take time to ask a stranger you come in contact how they are doing today. A quick caring conversation can be a great witness

Keep a tally of your time. Your daily 16 minutes may yield sixteen communications, or maybe only two. Just commit to spend 16 minutes during the course of your day caring about someone other than yourself.

If you are employed in the secular workforce, I am not condoning stealing time from your boss to use this concept. Take time during your breaks to connect with others so you can be an honorable employee.

The Power of Small Consistency

The previous suggestions might not seem very impacting to you right now, but concerted, consistent, communication can reap huge rewards in the people around you over the course of a year. The purpose of taking time out of every hour is not only to keep ourselves from becoming self-absorbed, but also to create an awareness of others around us, and to extend the love of Jesus to others in two minute investments.

Certainly this concept is not a replacement for time well spent with those you love, but I see each of these small time investments as reinforcement for the relationship and friendship. These small snippets of time may not be the building blocks, but they are certainly rebar to strengthen the relationship over time. Thousands of small interactions per year bring people closer to your inner circle and give you easier access to deal with conflict when it arises.

You cannot be everyone’s best friend, but if you’ve showed a party in conflict that you cared about them multiple times throughout the year, there is a built-in trust that accompanies those precious two minute investments.

Consistent communication and caring will open doors with people in your church and in the community that otherwise would have been shut. By taking 3% of your ministry work week and connecting with someone, you can impact up to 4,000 people per year.

Leaders, you will spend a minimum of 2,400 minutes this week working. Are you willing to give up 80 of those minutes to care for others? If you’re so wrapped up in your task list that you forgot ministry was about serving others, try using this concept to get out of the rut.

Make a Connection Plan and Prepare

Take some time and write down the relationships you wish to strengthen over the course of the next year. Use this as a master list that you carry in your wallet or purse. Make a weekly or daily connection plan. This involves who you are going to contact and what form of communication you will use to contact them. Making a plan helps you stick to your guns on the process. No planning means you probably won’t follow through at all.

Don’t devalue the impact of minute things. It’s not hard to start connecting. It just takes a small consistent two minute investment. It’s time to put the brakes on at least one time per hour, and give to others.

Slow down and connect!

2MPH – Slow Down and Connect is a post from: Mister Nifty

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Set Up Your Own Twitter-like Communication Portal

Brian Fegter — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 21:28:42 +0000

If you’ve read my posts, you know I’m a huge WordPress fan. For those who don’t know what WordPress is, check it out at WordPress.org. One of the latest themes that has caught my attention is the P2 theme that turns WordPress into a Twitter-like interface. It’s a great way for your team to communicate and post items of interest in real-time on the web. When a user posts, it automatically updates on the post list of everyone who’s viewing the site. Users can reply up to five levels depending on your configuration. Here’s how I got my own installed and working.

Install WordPress

Install WordPress – I used a subdomain (http://team.mydomain.com) Most hosting companies have a One-Click application installer so you don’t have to mess with setting up a database or ugly FTP interfaces. All you have to do is fill out a simple form where you want WordPress installed, give it a few minutes, and viola, it’s up-and-running.

Install the P2 Theme

Log in to the admin interface (http://team.mydomain.com/wp-admin/) and go to Appearance->Add New Themes
Search for “P2″ in the search box and install the theme.
Activate the theme under Appearance->Themes
If you have problems, download the theme files to your computer and upload them to your WP directory using an FTP client.

Make your WordPress Private

You probably don’t want the world reading your posts, so let’s make your WordPress private. Go to Plugins->Add New
Search for Private WordPress and install the plugin (Install button is to the right of the search results table)
Make sure Private WordPress is activated under Plugins->Installed

Setup Your Preferences

Go to Settings->General and give your portal a name and description.
Go to Settings->Reading and enter the number of posts you want to appear on each page under: “Blog pages show at most”
Go to Settings->Discussion and enable threaded nested comments (Choose how many levels you desire – this is basically how many levels down people can comment on other’s comments)
- To keep non-users from commenting, check “Users must be registered and logged in to comment”
- Un-check “An administrator must always approve the comment” and “Comment author must have a previously approved comment

Force Posted Links to Open In New Pages

Go to Plugins->Add New and search for “Target Blank In Posts And Comments”
Install and activate this plugin. The functions will work automatically without any additional settings.

Add Your Team Members

Go to Users->Add New Create profiles for your team members. Assign them the role of author so they can only edit their own posts. To assign a moderator, give them a role of administrator, or editor.
Team members can have their own personalized user icon by registering the same email address in their profile at: http://gravatar.com This is a universally recognized avatar that will work on any site they use the registered email address on.

Install Additional Features

Try installing other plugins for added functionality.
Allow users to be notified of additional comments with the plugin “Subscribe To Comments”
There are dozens of YouTube plugins that allow users to embed videos right in their posts.

Set Up Your Own Twitter-like Communication Portal is a post from: Mister Nifty

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TokBox Is Intensely Awesome Video Chat

Brian Fegter — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 05:45:55 +0000

If you’re like me, I hate meetings. Sometimes meetings are so inconvenient for your family because you have to leave the house and drive somewhere, exchange pleasantries, engage in small talk, and then get to the “agenda” if there is one. All the while, you could be sitting at home relaxing in your house clothes. Enter TokBox. This is a free service that lets you invite your entire team to an online meeting. The Box behind the name is part of this awesome function. Everyone gets crammed into a box on your screen. Those who have web cams can broadcast themselves like movie stars. Those who are cheap and only have a microphone will be represented by a simple black box.
This is a great way to get your team together for a quick tag in. The guys over at ChurchCrunch had over 60 people in their TokBox! You can also hook up your AIM, Yahoo, Gmail chats up. TB allows you to record video mail and send it to your friends. I recorded a nice Mother’s Day video for my sweet Mama. (Tip: Use the heart overlay – Mom went nutz!) It’s loaded with great features. Go try it out now!

Go To TokBox

TokBox Is Intensely Awesome Video Chat is a post from: Mister Nifty

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Yammer Is Twitter for Organizations

Brian Fegter — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 20:33:54 +0000

Many people don’t see the value of Twitter and the microblog community. I’ve heard people say, “I don’t want to know what others are doing!” Well, that might be true when it comes to casual friendships, but in a work environment, knowing what your co-workers and colleagues are doing can be productive. If you are working on projects or collaborating on ideas, Yammer.com provides one central place for everyone in your organization to communicate.

The beauty of it is that people outside of your organization are not able to join your private network. This keeps communication free from external distractions and allows tracking of important conversations. Another feature I really like about Yammer is the ability to create groups. For instance, during our leadership retreat, I created a group for ideas and the minutes of our meetings. I had several people with laptops join the group and begin documenting the meeting with short posts. All posts were saved in that group and are easy to find when I need them. You can create private groups for more sensitive conversations as well.

You also can use hash tags which help you search for posts later with keywords. For example, one of my posts looked similar to this: “#todo09 Increase the soda machine price to $.75 from $.50.” Yammer then gives you a link to all the hash tags you create and with one click of a button, you have a list of every post where you used that tag. By the way, I haven’t changed the price yet, so come by for a cheap soda.

Last, but not least is the portability of this app. They have a desktop software that is simple to use as well as the basic web interface. You can post just like using Twitter or an IM service. They also have an iPhone and Blackberry app that allows you to submit posts on the go. Receive SMS updates on your phone or right in your IM client. This is a free service for companies and organizations. There are a few paid features that you might want to check out. If you need to centralize your team’s communication, sign up for an account and check it out. You have nothing to lose.

Here are a few ideas for using Yammer in churches:

Creative meetings
Event planning and coordination
Weekly staff check-in with posts about what’s going on in their ministry this week
Corporate to-do lists of things needing completed around the church
Personal prayer requests group for staff members
Microblog about missions trips
Traveling pastors can update staff with minimal effort.

Yammer.com

Yammer Is Twitter for Organizations is a post from: Mister Nifty

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Google Apps equals super productivity.

Brian Fegter — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 03:39:08 +0000

Everyone and their brother uses Gmail these days because of its pure awesomeness. I have converted most of my friends and they love it. The usefulness of a gmail account extends far beyond email to online documents, calendar, rss reader, and custom websites. Individual accounts are great, but they really don’t meet the needs of an organization. So, Google packaged these services together to bring churches, business, and organizations Google Apps.

In short, GA uses your domain. You can map it to a subdomain like: http://email.yourdomain.com When you send email from GA, it sends like this: yourname@yourdomain.com. It allows you to easily create new email boxes for your team members with just a few clicks on the administration panel. You can create mailing lists and assign others to help administer the accounts.

With their calendar application, you can create calendars that can only be shared within domain. This is a great way to keep up-to-date with what your team members are doing throughout the weeks and months. It also centralizes main team event/schedule data as well.

Google Docs is just pure productivity for your team. You can create docs (text documents, spreadsheets, presentations) online. The best part is you can share them with team members. Two team members can be working on the same file and chat about it at the same time. There is a great setting that does not allow documents to be shared outside of your domain. So, if you are working on sensitive information, there isn’t a chance of someone without an account getting their hands on it.

Google Sites allows teams to create simple websites that contain embedded documents, lists, presentations, videos, shared calendars, and much more. Each page of information contains a discussion forum (if enabled) that allows a digital conversation about the subject or event. This is a great way to plan and post team information for events. This could easily be created to be your church intranet.

Now, installing Google Apps is a bit of a techie process, but I hope to explain it in simple terms. First of all you have to have access to your domain from the hosting company where you purchased it. The most important thing is to have access to the DNS settings.

Once you get to your DNS settings, find where it says CNAME record. We need to map our sub-domains to send them to the proper Google services. If you use GoDaddy I’ve included some screenshots of their back-end system. Don’t worry, Google also provides instructions for most of the major hosts. Add the following CNAME records:

email (points to) ghs.google.com
calendar (points to) ghs.google.com
docs (points to) ghs.google.com
sites (points to) ghs.google.com
home (points to) ghs.google.com

Next we need to map our email servers to the Google servers. Find where your MX records are stored. Write down your current MX records just in case you want to revert to that server one day. Next delete all your MX records. GA will only work if you point to their servers. Add the following MX records.

Priority     Mail Server (You must include the trailing period)
10     ASPMX.L.GOOGLE.COM.
20     ALT1.ASPMX.L.GOOGLE.COM.
30     ALT2.ASPMX.L.GOOGLE.COM.
40     ASPMX2.GOOGLEMAIL.COM.
50     ASPMX3.GOOGLEMAIL.COM.

Great! Now you’ve prepared yourself to open a Google Apps account. The reason you should do this first is sometimes servers take a while to propagate your settings to the internet. This means you will be sitting, twittling your thumbs and waiting until GA recognizes your settings.

Now, go to http://www.google.com/a/cpanel/domain/new and enter your domain. Make sure you click that you are the administrator/owner of this domain.

Once your sign up is complete you will have to verify your domain ownership.

It will give you two options to verify your domain ownership. The easiest is to add another CNAME record as follows.

It will usually take about 20-30 minutes before your domain is verified. Just be patient. In the meantime, customize the URLs of each service to match the sub-domains you entered at your hosting site. (docs, email, calendar, sites, home)

Make sure you active the services, and it will take about an hour before your email is set up on the google servers. From here, everything is pretty self explanatory. If you can set this up, you can figure out the rest. While you wait, try adding users and mailing lists.

After all services have activates, your domain is verified, and your DNS settings propagate on your hosting server, you should technically be all set.

To access your GA go to:

http://email.yourdomain.com

http://calendar.yourdomain.com

http://docs.yourdomain.com

http://sites.yourdomain.com

http://home.yourdomain.com

Enjoy this wonderful free service from Google! If you have any questions, leave a comment and I’ll answer so everyone else can see.

Google Apps equals super productivity. is a post from: Mister Nifty

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5 Things About Working With Artists

Brian Fegter — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 15:18:38 +0000

Thanks to Ray Deck from MinistryLive.org for putting this together.

5 Things About Working With Artists is a post from: Mister Nifty

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Twitter in Plain English

Brian Fegter — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 12:34:30 +0000

Twitter in Plain English is a post from: Mister Nifty