Echo 2011

Good conferences like Echo can leave you with a little bit of information overload.  While I shared some notes from most of the sessions I went to, I want to share some of my personal takeaways.  Consider it a tasty tidbit from each presentation.

• What is your social media mission?  When we start using a tool, we need to ask why we’re doing this and what we hope will come of it.  Get more focused than just a digital extension of your organizational statement.  If we don’t know where we’re...

(Kem Meyer is the Director of Communications at Granger Community Church and is the author of Less Clutter.  Less Noise.)

• Lots of times we’re doing everything right, but we still keep hitting roadblocks.  It’s easy to get frustrated especially when certain strategies aren’t going anywhere with certain people you’re working with and they don’t get it.
• There’s an underbelly in ministry.  There’s an underbelly in leading change.  Underbelly is a vulnerable area; a corrupt or sordid...

(Scott Belsky is the author of the national bestselling book Making Ideas Happen.  He’s also founder and CEO of Behance, a company that develops products and services for the creative industries including the 99%.)

Most ideas never happen. Even great ideas suffer great odds.

Why don't ideas happen?

• Energy is high when a new idea strikes. A few days pass and we enter the project plateau where most ideas die. We want to return to the high, so we use our creativity and we come up with a...

(Drew Goodmanson is the CEO of Monk Development and the co-founder/pastor of Kaleo Church.)

Six church web strategy problems:

1. Skymall Syndrome.  Someone in leadership sees something they think is cool and says we need to do that.
2. Ministry schizophrenia. Every ministry within a church is trying to run the website and get prime placement.
3. Enough about you let's talk about me. A website totally designed for the organization. Users look at it and say it's a waste of time because...

(Joshua Blankenship is the Design Director for New Spring Church where he handles overall design, brand and web strategies.)

Big idea: if you don't value design, then you don't love people.

What is design? It's not just aesthetics, Photoshop or the last step in a process.  Design is every decision made about an experience, product or service.  Design is decisions, so everyone is a designer in some way.  People can contribute in their specialized area. For example, people with no web...

(Jon Acuff is best known for his website Stuff Christians Like,  He's also an author and his latest book is called Quitter.)

We are the “I’m, but” generation.  I’m a ________ but want to be a _______.

What do you do in the gaps between where you are and where you want to be.

• Ignore the voices.  The internal voice is rarely positive. You may think someone is better or more creative than you.  Social media makes it easy for us to play the comparison game. Never compare your beginning...

(Scott McClellan helps put the Echo Conference together and is the former editor of Collide Magazine.)

Anyone can set up a social media profile.  People set up accounts acting like cats. But can we have a strategy?

Two basics ways to grow social media (you can use a mix of both):

• Connected first.  When Oprah joined Twitter she had a millions followers fast.  She’s already established.  It’s not Lady Gaga’s content that got her 8 million followers.  You can leverage your connections...

Howdy y’all.  I’ve landed in Dallas for Echo.  It’s one of my favorite conferences because I always come back equipped with practical tips and strategies.  Plus it’s just fun to be at a big gathering of church creatives and tech geeks.

If you’re here, I’d love to say hi.  And if you track me down, I may even have a set of those retroly fantastic orange Church Juice sweat bands for you.  (I'm really not as mean as the picture looks.  I'm trying out my best muscle man pose.  Yikes.)

On...