See, every week people from mid-sized mega-churches ask me a) for referrals of web developers looking for work (I dunno if there are any) b) for general advice on getting a decent website off the ground, or c) how to improve what they have. Much of the time I save the requests and hit them all at once when I am in the mood. Last night though I couldn’t take it any more and went off a bit on one unsuspecting friend who really just wanted a). I kinda feel bad, but there are some big truths in my response that I thought I would share. You are just going to have to show me grace and look past the unprovoked, frustrated tone.

Here is what I said:
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The Church Webmaster is Dead

I took a look at your current site and your job description for the position. What you seem to be asking for is the old concept of a webmaster. Listen to me very carefully my friend, as I am going to give you what churches normally pay me to tell them. Having launched two of the largest church websites out there, I am going to step out here and give it to you straight because if you guys don’t get focus in this area you are going to find yourself spinning your wheels and wasting time in the quantity of years. I have paid the price of this mistake already, but take it for what it is worth.

The Webmaster is Dead. Besides, web developers don’t function well in dark rooms by themselves; they need community of other uber-nerds and have a high need to be understood. The type that would take your job listing are temperamental, naive, and really just want to work for themselves on a desert island or for Apple/Google/Yahoo like all the other successful web developers.

What a Church Really Wants

Ultimately, what you really want as a church is someone that is willing to take the responsibility for all things web and own it so you don’t have to. You think you need a geek since you aren’t one and websites are technical. But don’t think a web dev can just get some instructions from the CFO or Dir of Comm and go run with it. This stuff is much more complicated than that because it involves messaging, community, design, technology, planning, staff politics, and people’s preferences. One person can not do all things needed for web in a decent sized church.

My Not Humble Enough Recommendation

I would recommend you reconsider hiring a single web developer who neither reports to the Dir of IT or Dir of Comm (unless your CFO really, really gets Web 2.0 and digital communities), and do these three things:

• Read this article by me: http://churchcio.com/small-church-website-building-tips
• Read this article by me: http://churchcio.com/to-build-a-church-web-site-plan-the-project
• Hire yourself a great web marketer who can do web writing and blogging for you, drive your digital community, focus on search engine optimization so you bring new visitors in your local area to church, build inbound links from other sites, as well as steer/manage a quality vendor partner in the right direction. If they sneak in some programming and system administration in also, fantastic!

Next, consider….

• The site you have is 50% phenomenal and 50% unexecuted. The base design and artwork is brilliant and you should not abandon it. Rework the top navigation drop downs as they are old school, get over the fear of scrolling… cause your users are way past not knowing how to scroll, and have a better default on the left side column than blank.
• As solid as your design is, you need it implemented into a content management system (instead of custom scripts on a page by page basis that you can’t easily change) and it needs to be reworked such that you can expand the pages. Consider having http://www.busynoggin.com/my-approach/ implement the http://webempoweredchurch.com/ content management system like many other churches (including Stonebriar & Christ Fellowship) have done.

  This will allow your communications people, other staff, and your web marketer to manage content in minutes rather than hours. To do that, you will need to get the original artwork from the designer, have the changes you want mocked up (wireframed), and have the site design spliced up and coded for the content management system. Turn-key, expect to spend 2-3k on the design work and 6-10k on the implementation. This is a much better (and faster) investment than hiring a web developer and praying he “gets it”.

• Ask and teach every Dir and Pastor to blog three times a week within a defined set of guidelines and strategy that isn’t restrictive but purposeful. It is like sitting down and writing three information focused emails… most anyone can do it.
• Consider integrating Unifyer with your website and ministry.

Wrapping it up

So this was so much more than you asked for, and even a bit presumptuous on my part, but it is my gift to you my friend. I offer this instead of recommending one of my web developer friends come have a bad experience at your church… but if you stay centered on your current direction of wanting a single web developer doing the heavy lifting on everything, the ones doing stuff for churches mainly hang out at http://godbit.com
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Note that my comments on church web developers were focused on the type that would take the do-everything job that was being listed, and not a commentary on all web developers. I just have a prejudice that the best web developers work on a team, work at dev firms or large companies, or are hired guns who freelance and know how to rock it (these are my favorite). Sorry in advance to any of you web developers working solo for churches who are pouring your life into ministry. God may make a way for you that he hasn’t made for many before you. Best case is He brings you co-laborers who can help you at the church where you already are and bring you the relief and organizational alignment you need to be successful.

What I love about blogging is that I left a partially thought through comment on his site last week and then he gives me kudos today and places my thoughts alongside his wisdom such that I come out looking like a champ! The reality is that he has some great nuggets in that little post including Web Sort and Adobe’s Website Production Management Techniques.

In a beautiful example of what goes around comes around, I am today beginning work with my team on the Information Architecture for a new site we are trying to crank out by the first two weeks in December. David’s help could not have come at a better time!

Overall I am incredibly pleased with the outcome of the site. But l am also glad people are commenting about the good, the bad, and the ugly about the site. It’s the best way for us to get better! As I have said before, no website is perfect or will stay perfect. To all those churches out there struggling to get a new site launched, remember that the most important thing is to get something out there that is better than what you have and then improve it continually over time. Having a great visual design and sturdy front-end coding are great foundations on which to build out your site over time.

Require Project Sponsorship and Involved Stakeholders
Having fought through a number of IT projects in the past without executive sponsorship and involved stakeholders, I don’t think I would do it again. It isn’t fair to the team of people who are working so hard to get the site built. If the project isn’t important enough to the organization that an executive or Elder needs to oversee it, then the web project has a low opportunity for success and the outcome will be poor. When we say “executive sponsorship”, we aren’t just saying a dictum or decree is handed down that all staff will cooperate so the site gets built. We are saying that a) this individual is accountable to others for the projects success, b) he/she is engaged in every phase, and c) the person is clearing roadblocks for the web team that they can’t clear themselves.

Stakeholders are those individuals who have a stake in the success of the project. I define this as being either an internal person who has needs to be met, or a resource who is responsible for project deliverables. In the model we use at my church, stakeholders typically have needs and have deliverables. This is because we have chosen to decentralize much of the content management tasks beyond the base of the site (top 150 pages or so). It is important that stakeholders stay engaged at various levels throughout every phase. For instance, if your target audience are non-members, then you might change ministry names like “Junction 56″ to something like “Preteens” for navigation purposes. You will need their buy-in prior to doing this. If they understand the purpose for the site and the target audience, it is a shorter conversation to convince them that using a different name will actually get them where they want to go. Also, when stakeholders are engaged with other stakeholders, they will share best practices and develop new ideas for their ministry areas on the site.

Choose Vendor Partners Wisely
A few years ago, the web-master was pronounced dead. That is to say that no single person can deliver and maintain a sizeable web site on their own. The reality for a big church is that unless they have an unlimited budget and a lot of sites, they are probably going to need to outsource portions of their project to vendors. It may be writing, information architecture consulting, graphics design, front end coding, content management integration, hosting, photography, or flash video, but something will need to be outsourced. Our approach was to outsource everything but the writing and photography. However, we did not hire an agency to do the whole site for us. Typically this is more expensive and the church gives up a lot of the control of the project that helps to make the site their own. Also, you have to own the site after the launch, so having someone on staff that is central to the sites construction is the best way to go in my opinion. The project manager role is one you want as an internal competency if you can acquire and support it.

So, we augmented our staff with the talent we did not have in-house. We literally cherry-picked the talent from a network of folks we have built over time. I will talk more about the outsourced work in future posts, so for now, here are a few things to remember when choosing vendor partners:

1. Make sure they are comfortable with your project management process, including time reporting, to-do tracking, communication and discussion, project management software, etc.
2. Do business with those willing to put an agreement in writing. I don’t trust companies with long contracts and out clauses. It makes me feel they don’t have my best interests at heart. You should still have something in writing with every vendor, no matter the scope of their involvement. Make sure the terms are fair for both parties and various scenarios are laid out if the project runs long.
3. Find a vendor that will bill you straight time based on an hourly rate and be meticulous with their time reporting. I typically ask them to bill in 15 minute increments so I don’t get charged for a full hour every time something small comes up or we have a brief conversation. Agree on a cap for the work effort. This works a bit like a fixed bid approach, but you typically give the vendor as much as a 10% ceiling so they have some wiggle room. You want them to be successful too.
4. Check references and do you own investigative work. Don’t trust one reference. Anyone can crank out one great project. Look at their portfolio and contact the companies they have served in the past but are not on their references list. Also, Google their company founders name and find comments they have made in forums online. You can tell a lot about a person by reading their comments elsewhere.
   Most importantly, make sure they have a heart for ministry. They don’t have to be Christian, per se … but they need to feel like their work is contributing to something more meaningful than a regular project. This will get them going on that extra mile toward excellence on your project.

Use Agile Project Management
While there are numerous methodologies for project management, I believe the best approach when building a church web site is an agile one. An agile method fits the way churches work. Ministries typically lack the kind of command and control environments (atleast the healthy ones lack it) that older methodologies were designed for. Also, church staff cultures are typically more relaxed and grace-filled than other work environments. So, staff don’t observe deadlines in the same manner as other companies do. If you have ever talked to an interactive agency that works with churches, they can tell you nightmare stories of delays in the order of months and years. Note that sandbagging each milestone doesn’t exactly work either, because if people know that they can let one milestone slip a little, they will. Remember also that Gannt charts aren’t useful for most people on a church staff. What is needed is a way to encourage people to meet their deadlines without the project manager having to play the heavy and use the big hammer of escalating to the participants boss.

Some things that knowledge workers in churches desire are respect and to be found a good steward of the responsibility they are entrusted with. So, using an agile method with frequent, open communication with all parties creates an accountability scenario that isn’t about the project manager not getting his/her stuff. We opened up the process by having constant, open communication that everyone could see at any point. The accountability was with the group and not the project manager at that point. People delivered for the right reasons and on time.

Establish Communicaton Channels
The tool we used for managing the open communication channel was Basecamp by 37signals. We subscribe to the $50 a month plan so we can break things out into multiple projects where necessary and have as much file upload space as we would ever need. Basecamp provides a virtual space for following messages with associated comments, tracking to-dos as a whole and per person within to-do lists, watching milestones, uploading files for sharing or comment, time tracking, and writing collaborative documentation. It was a life-saver on this project. This web-based project management tool allowed the project to continue when I was out sick two days and at a conference for two days. When someone missed a milestone, it was listed in red for everyone to see. As people finished certain milestones or difficult tasks that others were relying on, they would post a message within Basecamp stating what had been completed and in what way. This allowed dependencies to be seen by everyone all the time. This ever-present communication reassured everyone the project was moving forward. It also implied that others were waiting on you to pull your weight. The relationship between what a stakeholder owned and someone elses deliverable was constantly in view. This created a healthy peer pressure that took personalities and preferences out of the mix.

List and Track To-dos and Milestones in One Place
Basecamp is just one of a number of web-based tools you can use to manage a project in an agile way. Most of them allow you to track your to-dos and milestones in one place in plain view of everyone. Failures to deliver can be seen by everyone. The responsible party owns the ut-oh, rather than the project manager. Each to-do list on our project was associated with a single milestone (hint: name milestones the same as to-do lists). Initially each to-do/task was entered by me. Each to-do is assigned to a person in the system, and their name is seen beside each item listed. Basecamp allows anyone to create tasks for anyone else, so this makes it simple when someone hits a road-block with a dependency. They simply create a to-do within the appropriate list for what they need. Since both our content management system guru and our front end coding guru were outsourced, they could create to-dos for one another without my having to be in the way. This shortened our time-frame for design integration to less than two weeks.

Be Ever Present Most of the Time
In addition to Basecamp, there was one other tool that was instrumental for the technical professionals engaged on our project. Skype is more than instant messages. It’s instant messaging with history, searchability, status/presence, file sending, group chat, and link passing. Literally hundreds of non-voice conversations were done on Skype. Quick questions, points of clarification which didn’t justify a Basecamp message, and brain storming were perfect for Skype. It is one of the best tools I have found for allowing people to collaborate without being distracted from the task they were in the process of doing. As the project manager, I was in as many as 4 overlapping conversations at one time. This helped people get the answers they needed quickly. If someone needed clarity on a to-do, they pinged me with a simple question. Normally I could hammer out a few lines of text to get them an answer, without all the formalities that a phone call would have required. Other than a pleasant “good morning” and a “good night”, we had permission with one another to be direct and state what we needed in a matter of fact tone. With the five technical professionals engaged at points in this project, it worked flawlessly and without some of the bugs and limits of traditional IM services like MSN, Yahoo, and Jabber. Highly recommended for anyone who types fast and communicates well in text.

Know When to Meet Rather than Message
Even with using electronic means to communicate about the project, there were empasses which at times required a telephone or in-person meeting. Most of the time, these meetings were about philosophy or strategic decisions which simply couldn’t be hammered out easily in a Basecamp message thread or Skype chat. For instance, we had a devil of a time with content header use and design. We didn’t put enough time in to defining the requirements for the designer, and we paid for it with multiple meetings to decide how to nest content within headers. Also, we didn’t meet early enough on use of the WYSIWYG editor that sits within the Web Empowered Church CMS we use for our sites. We should have met earlier to talk about how it would be used when imputting content into the system. We burned precious time sending comments back and forth in the project management tool, rather than putting our internal team in a room to flesh out the issues. In general, if you have three or more opinions/perspectives on a topic that should be straight-forward, call a short and focused meeting to resolve the issue.

Have a Flexible Deadline, but NOT Too Flexible
The book Getting Real by 37Signals says to Fix Time and Budget, Flex Scope. To a certain degree, we followed this approach and fixed the deadline. We had to move back our launch date 20 days beyond what I had estimated 3 months earlier, but these 20 days were accounted for and acceptable. We flexed scope by not releasing our blog when our main site launched, and by making our Spanish translation and Google Sitemap individual phases for late May and June. The most important thing for churches to realize is that their site is not a one time event. The launch of a new site is just the beginning. It is where the really hard work begins. As such, release as early and as often as you can. Be willing to let the site go live if it is “great enough” and is better than what you already have out there. Be willing to spend the month after you big launch doing cleanup of all sorts of little things. That isn’t to say launch something that doesn’t work, but is to say that some things aren’t noticeable by the majority and will not prevent the functionality of the site.

Conclusion
This open approach assumes all parties a) genuinely want the project to succeed and b) are responsible people who take their ministry jobs seriously. This methodology will not work if the majority of the participants don’t have those two qualities about them, but then nothing would I guess. I am not able to flesh out all the philosophy and practices of this approach in this already long article. If you want to learn more, Getting Real and the Agile Manifesto Principles are the places to get started. Or, you could always hire me to consult with you on setting up the right project plan for your organization!

Know Your Users

There is a temptation with church people to try and reach everyone all of the time. Some churches egocentrically want everyone to be *their* audience. As a result, Church Marketing Sucks. Knowing and prioritizing your users will get you further than any other single thing you can do on a web project. When you have been diligent in this phase, hard decisions during the stretch become much more simple. Don’t allow your project to move forward until you know the secrets your users aren’t telling.

Church Mission and Vision

In some cases, your churches mission and vision will put you a long way down the road of knowing who you are building the site for. Our mission actually uses the language “All People”, so we did not have the luxury of being handed our target audience. We had to put together a cross-departmental team to profile our audience segments and decide who we would focus the site on. You might be surprised to find out, “the lost” won’t cut it as a target audience.

Who Should Help

There is no shortage of ideas in a mega-church about what a church site should be and what it shouldn’t be. All ministries want representation on the home page. Most ministries would love to have their own site that was executed beautifully. Both of those things are unrealistic for a ministry of any size.

In this environment of competing interests, a tendency some might have is to try to control the audience discussion. One of our executive sponsors on the project expertly suggested that we do the opposite and open the discussion to all the ministry leaders. Our invites were a bit tongue in cheek since we knew many of the ministries would choose not to participate in those early discussions. None the less, it is a great way to put accountability back in their hands for the outcomes of the project. If they opt-out of the discussions because they it’s not a priority, to some degree they lose their voice if they don’t like the finished site. So, we invited everyone and genuinely worked extra hard to take away excuses for their involvement.

Rely on the Pastors

Pastors work hard to understand those they serve. Also, in most cases, portions of their seminary work is spent studying the lost and other belief systems. This domain knowledge can be incredibly helpful when it is time to study your audience. Listen to your pastors. They were instrumental in helping us to profile our site visitors.

Brainstorm Together

We held three meetings with the group over a period of three months that focused on audience. We came prepared for these meetings with agendas and a plan to keep the discussions focused. One way we did this was by using mind mapping software and projecting our brainstorming sessions onto a screen for everyone in the meeting to see. We started by dividing and naming the segments. Then we created a description for each segment. Next, we listed what we believed to be each segments characteristics and needs. Finally, we explored the ways our church could meet those needs by creating purposes for each group. The end result was a profile for each audience segment.

Prioritize The Segments

What we did next might sound crazy to some people, but we voted. Yep, you read that right. We voted. We could think of no more anonymous and untainted way for us to get a starting point for determining what we as a collective group felt should be our target audience. I think we all knew somewhere in the back of our heads that one of our “outsider” segments would be our future target. After all, that is why we wanted to redesign the site anyway.

We had each member of the group list on paper how they would prioritize the segments, with #1 being the most important to focus our site on, etc. We collected the pieces of paper, assigning 8 points for every first place entry, 7 points for every second, etc. We then added up the totals. We then had great discussions about our findings and what would cause us to change the results. Every one had the opportunity to talk about what they thought.

The Findings

Rather than retype our findings, I am going to copy and paste from a few of the project summaries I sent out during this phase. I am giving you a peek behind the curtains here as a means of helping you in your process of building a church site. These discussions were difficult ones that we explored prayerfully. The results match who our church is and what we are focusing on right now. Your answers should be different based on your church and context.

In normal companies, audience questions are solved in business plans, marketing and branding strategies, segmentations of the customer base, strategic initiatives, etc. In our case, we don’t have many of these documents to rely on, so we have undertaken our own process of A) Identifying appropriate audience segments, B) Determining the segments characteristics, C) Narrowing down the needs of a given segment, and now D) Outlining our ministries purpose for each of these segments.

This process has in mind finding out not only why we need a redesign (a conclusion most of us have come to I think), but when we redesign who will we design for. “Design” is not only the color, page composition, font usage, and graphical elements that compliment the former… but also the information design and content creation. Our work here helps us write with a context and a poignance that we would not deliver otherwise, and to understand how we should prioritize certain types of writing over other types. This will become more clear as we move down this path.
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Priority 1: Churched (New to Area)
Description: Never visited SCC. Has previous insider/church experience. Most are believers. Looking for a church home.
General Purposes:
a Provide an authentic view of who we are & how we function
b Facilitate person-to-person contact
c Provide practical and repeatable information about our church
d Make the assimilation and membership process easily accessible/learnable

Priority 2: First-time Visitor
Description: Has decided to visit or has already visited SCC.
General Purposes:
a Convey clear pathways through visitor experience (front door through 2nd visit)
b To assure our love, concern, and safety for their children
c Reassure of our intentions to not embarrass, draw attention to them, or otherwise inconvenience
d Make them feel significant and valued as our guests

Priority 3: Regular Attendee/Member (Worship AND Fellowship AND Serving)
Description: Considered a fully functioning part of the body.
General Purposes:
a Create catalysts and mechanisms to break out of church routine and circle of friends
b Inclusion and to have a voice in the inner-workings of the church
c Meaningful recognition of their service/sacrifice
d Help achieve balance in living out the WIFE model such that they stay involved and not burn out
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5) But then, John drew our focus back to a comment from a previous meeting that Priority 1 and 2 should really be merged into one. The online discussion about purpose kind of died, but offline discussions have continued and we now see two distinct groups:
Priority 1 – New to area and Visitors
Priority 2 – Regular Attendee/Member who is living the whole of WIFE

6) Through these discussions we have come to the conclusion that the balance between these two groups is somewhere between 60/40 and 70/30 with regards to:
a) Content volume, tone, voice, etc. Phrases like “Looking for a church home?” and “What to expect on your first visit!” will dominate our front page over things like “Funerals” and “Volunteer now!”.
b) Navigation scheme and information design.
c) Redesign effort and programming budget.
d) Color and emphasis in the design.

Conclusions

As you might guess, the process to arrive at these straightforward conclusions above took many, many hours. Looking at it now, one might think this stuff is simple, but beware that we have over 300 man hours invested (this includes web analytics work which I will write about in a different post). My guess is that if we had more strategic plans in place for our ministry at large, this burden could have been lowered significantly. Even so, be sure to get this phase right if you want a successful web project. Remember that it isn’t just the answers you are looking for, but getting everyone bought-in to those answers such that decisions during later phases are more clearly made.

Some statistics suggest that as high as 60% of all IT projects fail. With the added difficulty of getting IT things done in non-profit organizations, the challenge may have actually been a bit bigger for us. I am of the opinion that each project requires its own path. This path is largely determined by the goals and size of the project, the length of time for project completion, and the budget. A single approach won’t work for every web project.

Our project was really broken into these phases:

• Study the Audience
• Plan the Project
• Plan and Create Content
• Focus on Findability
• Design the Site
• Code the Front End
• Configure the Back End
• Cleanup, Test, and Launch
• Rollout Post-launch Deliverables

A couple of things to point out about our approach on this project:

1. The phases above are for the most part listed sequentially in the order in which they began, but this does not imply a stoppage of one phase prior to the next phase beginning. For instance, Content Creation and Back End Configuration continued until we moved into the Cleanup phase.
2. We put in a heap of time studying our users and our communications needs before defining the scope, budget, and milestones.
3. The first three phases are what makes or breaks a site. Without solid execution in those phases, everyone from executive staff on down will be displeased with some part of the outcome. We dove into the actual web design and site construction only after all stakeholders were in agreement about where we were headed.

As I have said, our approach on this project is not the only one or necessarily the best approach for your organization. Each project should take on a life of its own. Over the next week I will be posting an entry for each phase, so feel free to comment about what has worked for your church web projects under the relevant blog post.

I can honestly say there are almost no learning techniques from Jr. High that I have carried forward through my short academic life into business. However, there is one gift that a now nameless, faceless teacher once gave me. That gift was the ability to put my thoughts on paper first, and then dork with them and refine them. She (I think it was a “she”) called them “Bubble Graphs”, but the point was to brainstorm about a topic for a speech, a paper, or an argument and document things. Then go back and do the organization and structuring of those thoughts, with a final output being an outline.

Those of you who have conversed with me for more than a few moments know that my brain multi-threads pretty well when thinking, speaking, and typing. It doesn’t do so well with multi-tasking actual work, but it is highly optimized for thinking. This becomes problematic when my environment puts certain constraints on me, like for instance time, energy, and sleep. So, in time I developed a method of getting my rapid, fluid thoughts out of my brain and onto one of these “Bubble Graphs”.

I started using them in Junior High in Extemporaneous Speaking contests, and then used them at Baylor on almost every paper I wrote and every speech I gave as a Speech Communications major. This approach even helped when I entered the business world as I created Powerpoints, training documentation, technology proposals, project plans, and conducted audits of companies. For me, it was simply the best way to get the unstructured data that flowed rampantly in my brain onto paper, and then decide how the concepts were related, what was worth keeping, and how the final deliverable would be structured. I now know this method to be the same as a concept map.

Mind Maps

About four years ago I stumbled on some software that would allow me to do “mind mapping”. The differences between a mind map and a concept map are subtle. Basically a mind map tends to be more structured in format and there is typically no direct grouping of concepts other than by what the structure and hierarchy of the mind map document provides. That said, the process for creating a mind map and a concept are essentially the same.

Mind mapping software enables a person or persons to quickly document ideas on a screen with almost no technical difficulties that would hamper the creative process. And yet, these ideas can be restructured very speedily by simply dragging and dropping an idea underneath another idea. This creates a very agile approach to document individual or group ideation, whether it be mission statements, business plan outlines, venture capital pitches, or things as abstract as meal recipe organization. It can even help with brainstorming about lengthy blog posts (see my mind map for this post below).

FreeMind Mind Mapping Software

After trying many different mind mapping software products over the last four years, I have finally settled on one that I can’t get enough of. FreeMind is the tool I have recommended recently to a number of other internet professionals. Regardless of the varying ways they think, they almost always come back and say “the more I use this, the more I use this”. Once you really “get” this process and this kind of tool, you begin to find heaps of other ways in which it will help you.

I recently used FreeMind on a consulting engagement where I was asked to make recommendations about how to turn their business around. I took notes of each stakeholder conversation in individual text documents, but then used the mind map to tie all the concepts, problem spaces, and solutions together. This aided me in understanding a large, complex problem at a single glance. It came in handy when it was time to draft the deliverable document of my recommendations.

Also, recently, I used FreeMind on a 150+ page web project to develop the navigation scheme (Information Architecture) that will easily expand in the future to more than 500 pages. The two freelance designers I was working with were able to collaborate on my work by simply opening my file and changing things up. On this same large project, 15 of us used FreeMind during a series of meetings to create a massive mind map that profiles our eight core audience member types. We included each of those profiles characteristics, needs, and the many ways we felt we could meet their needs based on what resources we have available to our organization. This was an invaluable tool in not only understanding our audience, but in helping us as a team to decide which of the 8 types of people coming to our website would be our core focus, which would be of secondary focus, and who we would try to serve as we could.

Why I Love FreeMind

• Free to use(yep, it’s open source)
• Cross platform
• Scalable for very large maps
• Easily installed and updated
• Has numerous export options (images, PDFs, outlines in various file types)
• Built with Java and XML

There seems to exist a little online community around the FreeMind software, which is maybe best illustrated in this online list of mind maps that you can explore for ideas on how to do your own. I am especially fond of this start on Calvinist “Sects”.

Mind Map for This Blog Post

I did heaps of research on Church web sites, and was fortunate enough to partner with some of the greatest design and technology folks doing stuff for ministries. BUT, I missed one site that would have changed my entire perspective on this deal. Unfortunately, I am almost done… and it is too late to reverse course. I am just sick I didn’t see this before starting my project.
Bobby Chandler, one of two designers on our church staff, has the scoop.

This month they listed a little-known person named Robert Adler, who literally changed my life. Co-inventor of the TV remote control, Robert Adler was quoted at a later point in life as saying “This thing has so many buttons. I don’t know what most of them are for and frankly I could not care less.” Proof that the people who invent the technology are not always the first to value its use. Zenith has a great write-up on Rober Adler’s work for them.

Last night I adjusted my Select Comfort bed’s Sleep Number with a remote control. This morning I awakened my Mac Mini computer using the remote control which came with it. I used the TV remote to turn on the TV which the Mac uses for the display, before using my Apple wireless mouse and keyboard. As I walked to my car in the apartment parking lot, I opened and closed our garage with a remote control to get some things I needed. I unlocked my car security system using a remote control. Tonight when I go home, I will use a remote to open the security gate of the apartment complex in which I live. When I am at my buddies later in the night, we no doubt will use his TiVo remote a hundred times during Lost and last week’s The Office episodes.

The remote is an integral part of my life that I take for granted. I grew up with it, so I use it without much thought in the same way kids use cell phones today as an extension of their person. Sure, Robert Adler was just one of the ones who perfected the idea, and now it takes on many different forms using many different wireless technologies (Adler’s used ultrasonic waves). Still, the convenience the remote control brings to my life makes the original nickname Zenith used way back in 1950 of “Lazy Bones” a really great tag for its presence in my life. Thanks Robert Adler. You made things easier on all of us!

Apparently, Blockbuster doesn’t want all of my comments or a true discussion with their would-be customers. So, I am posting this to my blog for the world to see and adding the link to the comment field in the Blockbuster.com subscription cancellation field (I doubt they will read it). The first amendment has never been so sweet, has it?

Basically, you guys don’t understand the value of a life-time customer. I went into the store as a Netflix customer who was having a lonely weekend, with not enough movies to entertain me. The wife and I had decided to rent three movies. I saw your TV ad earlier in the day, which communicated to me that I could sign-up for your service and pick up/drop off movies either in the store or online. So, I went to the store to sign up and get three movies.

The high-school aged kid that was there communicated that I would even get a third-movie free tonight with a special coupon they had there. So, I signed up while in the store with him by my side. Filled out the preferences, all my account info (which you already had because I have been a customer for over 10 years), and entered my credit card detals.

I then took my three movies to the counter, where the kid gave me a total of $9.94. I said, “What are you talking about…. I just put in my credit card information in for the monthly service, now I am ready for my movies”. He informed me that the service was only for movies that come through the mail… and that when I return movies at the store that I receive through the mail, then I can get coupons for movies through the store while I wait for more movies to arrive through the mail. I was shocked and confused. I simply said, “But *I am* waiting for my movies to come through the mail”. All he was empowered to do was blink I think, cause he didn’t even call over the manager.

Not being one to quit easily, I communicated that part of the reason I had signed up in store and was willing to move away from Netflix was because it seemed like I could get get the benefit today of Netflix plus in-store pickup. He could not clearly communicate to me the reason why picking up a movie in-store is different than getting it through the mail. From my perspective, I signed up for a Blockbuster service that allowed me to have X number of movies out at any given time, and return in store or via the mail. All I wanted was three movies so I could snuggle up with my wife.

So, Blockbuster, If you really want me as a life-time customer, give me the benefit of what I have paid for NOW. Keep the details of your inventory system, your cost centers, your work-flow, your finances, etc. out of my way and out of sight. Customers don’t care about your pain and are apt to forget you if your pain in getting products to market gets in our way… which is why I am sitting home with the flu today, unwilling to drive down the street and rent from blockbuster.

Thankfully my single Netflix movie came last night… and guess what, they sent it to me when my list was empty, anticipating the type of movie I would enjoy. And it looks like they got it right. They understand that to keep a customer you have to lower the barriers that get in the way of the customer relationship. Blockbuster, you could learn a lesson there.

Now, to all you other companies out there, if you care for me as the customer and want me to evangelize your products, you will empower me to do so as early as you can… with no hassle or waiting, or uninformed high-school kids.