Greg Davis - Technically Speaking

This evening I created a couple screencast tips on how to change your blog email logo (photo) which is published by Feedburner.  You can watch Part 1 below or click here.

 

Part 2 is is about how to easily edit or resize a photo (to use above) with Flickr.  You can watch that part below or click here.

I was trying to keep track of the many different church conferences that I am interested in this year.  To help organize the information and get a better handle on it I created this spreadsheet.  Feel free to use it yourself or if there is another good conference out there for 2008 that I don’t have on the list, leave me a comment and let me know.

• Creative Church Conference
• Unlease 2008
• Awaken 2008
• ministryTECH
• The BIG IDEA Practicum
• Buzz Conference
• National Worship Leader Conference
• Echo
• ministryCOM
• Innovate 2008
• Catalyst *
  

* Added since last update

There are a couple of ministry related technical conferences I have recently learned about that I thought I share with everyone.

The first one is the Web 2.0 Conference sponsored by Geeks & God.

It will be held July 17-19 in Michigan.  It looks to be a good overview of web 2.0 stuff including blogging and podcasting and buidling community in your church with interactive websites. The optional 3rd day looks interesting as it is a hands on exercise in building and interactive website for you church using Drupal.  Check out their website for more details including the conference schedule.

Let’s just say you’re a pastor or ministry leader. Or,maybe you’re a Christian geek that wants to help your church…you’veheard the terms: web 2.0, rss, podcasting, or blogging but you reallydon’t know what they are or what they have to do with building churchcommunity or spreading the gospel. We’re here to show you.

You can also read more in this post over at the Innovating Tomorrow blog.

 

The second one is Ministry Tech and will be held in Oklahoma City on April 3-4.



It looks to be a good one with fantastic presenters including Tony Morgan, Terry Storch, Paul Braoudakis, Anthony Coppedge and others. You can check out their website for more details including the list of workshops.

MinistryTECH is a new national conferencededicated to church information technology, audio-visual, andproduction professionals. Come join some of the leading church ITprofessionals to learn how they are using technology in theirministries.

I am seriously considering going to this one.  Anyone interested in going to either one?

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Storme at Eleven 72 posted a good summary about the basics needed for shooting good interviews (technically).  Important things to keep in mind:

1. Don’t use the camera mic!
2. Lighting
3. Focus and exposure
4. Check your footage (don’t assume it is working)

I think there is encouragement that with a little grounding in the basics we can do more to tell the story of our church better.  There are a lot of stories out there to be told, we just need a few willing volunteers to help capture and tell those stories.  Don’t let the technicalities scare you from trying!

Have you heard that term “RSS” and wondered what it was? John Mahoney has put together a nice video on what is RSS and how to use it effectively. It’s as good a basic introduction to RSS with practical, easy-to-understand tips for improving the RSS experience. Watch it here.

Thanks to the NewsGator Daily for highlighting this reference.

I mentioned in a previous post that new training tutorials were coming about the new features in the Planning Center Online.  They are now available and you can view them here.

 

There are currently 10 videos and you should be able to get a good overiew of the new features from these.  

I thought this might be a good time to document where we can find reference materials for SundayPlus.  While version 3.0 should be released near the end of this year, it doesn’t hurt to stay fresh on the current version 2.4!

 

You can find several on-line reference items including:

• Quick Reference Guide
• Getting Started Tutorial
•  Guided Tour

I will also have a hard copy of the Quick Reference Guild in the binder next to the PC in the balcony. 

We have or will be having some new folks on the team and these are good resources not only for them but also for the “old timers”.  Sometimes we learn something, but then we forget about it because we don’t use that feature very often, so it is good to have a “refresher” now and again.

Also, we must be very careful about changing any settings in the “preferences” area of the software.  Unless you really know what you are doing in this area you should not go there at all during a Sunday service.  If you want to experiment and play around, you can download a copy of SundayPlus and install on your own PC and try it out (email me for the BVBC unlock key).

If you have any questions about any of the features or functionality, please ask!