Branding a ministry

I was going through some archived emails this morning looking for something.
I found the following list of questions.
Nan and I had the opportunity to attend an Internet Ministry Conference a couple of years ago now. We really enjoyed it. I am not sure how much we took away from it in terms of concrete ideas but it was interesting nonetheless to see what others are doing with technology (specifically the web) for their internet presence.

Nan went to one seminar that talked about branding your ministry.
I tend to do a few ministry websites a year.
I need to keep these questions around to ask the ministry staff.
I realize that branding as a word might be out of date now, but the ideas that come from the questions are key in promoting a ministry I believe.

18 Questions to discover your brand:

1. Why was your ministry created?
2. What is your ministry’s mission?
3. Who are you called to reach?
4. Rank your target audiences in order of importance.
5. How do you want to be perceived by each audience?
6. What are your three most important goals?
7. What is unique about your ministry?
8. What does your ministry do better than anyone else?
9. What values and beliefs unify your staff and volunteers and drives their performance?
10. What other ministries do you admire most and why?
11. Why would someone who is unchurched want to attend your church?
12. How do you market your ministry?
13. What are the trends and changes that affect your ministry?
14. Where will you be in 5 years? In 10 years?
15. How do you measure success?
16. What are the potential barriers to your success?
17. If you could do or be anything in the future, what would it be?
18. If you could communicate a single message about your ministry, what would it be?

I am not sure whether I feel ALL of the questions are great, but it is a good start.

another relaxing day…

We are just relaxing this morning and enjoying another day as a family. Mom, Dad, Aunt Nan, Abi, and Rose have all made the trek into Saskatoon. Rose is working today but then off for the duration of the week I believe. The rest of the troops are trying to finish up their Christmas shopping today.

Nan spent some more time on the Wii this morning. I think she is hooked
The boys caught up on their daily journalling as I am doing right now. I really should put a couple of days work in while out here, but now that I am into vacation mode, I am having a hard time motivating myself to do that.

Rosemary has to replace the battery in her car today. The weather is pretty cold. They are picking a new one up today and bringing it home and we will install it this evening.

Rollout Part Deux

I did not end up rolling out my big project as most of the staff were not even in their office today.
That is okay. I had time to tweak some more things on the system and we will be even more ready for Monday. Specifically, I was able to get a good securities model in place into the system so we can have some control over users and their access. That is a great thing.

After we rollout this database on Monday, I will need to focus on their website and get their payment portal into the works. The SSL Certificate is now installed and we just need to wait for the developers in British Columbia to install the Moneris Payment portal part of the puzzle. After that, Moneris can verify that our website is secure and ready for payments… Yeeha!

I think it will be a nice weekend. I have a couple of hours worth or work that I can do if I desire, but I am not sure how much I will do. We are heading to Kitchener tomorrow to visit with friends for the morning and into the afternoon and then visiting Clara and Aunt Heather for a bit too.

Sunday is a potluck after church and then hopefully some downtime before we ramp up for next week again.

Have a good weekend.

Big day…

I am always a little concerned on days like this..
I have been working on a project off and on for about 6 months now and today we release it full blown to its users. Well, close to full-blown. Some of the elements are not yet written because the client has not fully laid out the specifications for those elements. Oh well, they will have a working system today anyways.

My concern and uneasiness always lies in the fact that the client can at any time say, “hey we should do it this way instead” Usually these statements revolve around a preference of doing things and not a standard…

I am hoping for not too too many preference changes today. I have worked through a good amount of the project with the client already and I think that they are pleased with what we have done thus far.

We shall see.

A new era…

I am a self proclaimed techno junkie…
I love technology. Particularly new stuff…
I have just made a move that is probably the largest jump for me in the last 20 years since I started playing around with computers.

I purchased a macbook from apple.
There have been scads of people telling me that I should do this for ages.
Admittedly there have been a few things that have held me back.
Cost. They are not cheap, but I believe that the lifespan of this thing should be at least twice if not three times the average lifespan of a notebook pc. Therefore, total cost of ownership actually goes down.
(there is my accountant side justifying…)
Secondly, the fact that I do a ton of work in Microsoft Access which is not available in mac format.
Enter a nice little program called Parallels. This little proggy allows me to run windows within the mac.
And it runs so smooth. I won’t say it runs better but it certainly runs just as well as my current pc laptop.
Crazy.

It is taking me some time to get used to the user interface of the mac operating system as well as the fact that it is based on a unix kernal. That changes some things for me in terms of how I run the machine. It is taking time because I am so ingrained into the cult of Bill Gates’ way, that I am having a hard time getting out of it. Not to mention that I do not have 3 days to set aside to simply learn the mac. It will have to be a process for me.

So far, I really like it. I have not done much other than surf, talk to people via Adium (msn…) and check out cute programs like IphotoBooth.
I will delve a little deeper into some others in the next little while.

uh oh….

So, Nan and I have been wondering since we moved into this house 6 years ago about when we would have to replace our furnace. I think that the day has come. Last year, I decided that the thermostat was not working correctly so I replaced it with a nice new high-tech one. It did not work. So, we had our neighbourhood heating contractor come and look at. He let us know that our gas valve was getting weak. To fix it, he installed one of the old style mercury switches and it worked fine for the season.

With the advent of some colder weather this weekend, we popped the furnace on. Or we thought we did. Turned it on, and no heat…. hmmmm. I flicked the switch a couple of times and it started. OK, that is good. Then once it got up to temperature, it did not shut off… Oh brother!

So, we have put the call in to have them come and look at it. I am thinking that we will not have to replace the A/C as it works wonderfully right now. I hope at least.

Secondly, my laptop went on the fritz this week. That was stressful. I keep EVERYTHING on my laptop. I could not even log into it. It turned out to be a services thing.. Yeah, like I really know what that exactly means too. But it is still not 100% it seems. It just seems off. I can’t really explain that, but man oh man, did I boogey it over to Costco to pick up a portable hard drive to back everything up once it was up and running.
So, know I have the decision about what to do with it. Truly, I want to buy a mac. They are so stable. I have never spoken to anyone that has had ANY issues with them. Not a single one. That being said however, they are quite a bit more expensive. But this is my work. It could very well be worth the investment I think. I could run mac for most of my stuff and if there was something that I absolutely need windows for, I can run xp or vista from within mac if I want..

So, all of this is weighing on my mind. I am sure I will stew about it for a couple of weeks… The furnace not so much. You need a furnace. Well, unless you live in Miami I suppose. I do not live in Miami. I guess if I did then I might need to buy
more sunblock than I do right now.

Busy!

Man, it just does not seem to stop these days…..
I am not complaining, just saying…

I sometimes wonder if I will get to the point where I need to hire someone. A little birdy from Grand Rapids Michigan said he wants to work for me

It would be nice someday. It has its scary parts though…. Another set of mouths to feed. yeah, that is very scary I think

Done deal.

Rogers is gone for internet, Grynet is in. All set up and up and running like it should be. phew!

Now if I could only get my motorbike back from the shop, I would be all set….
I hope I hear from them today or tomorrow…. sigh

Changes coming.

That’s it. Rogers internet is outa here.
I am fed up with them.

Stupid Internet Service Providers….

Bah!

I installed an exchange machine at home a couple of weeks ago. It was working just tickety boo until this week Rogers (in their ever growing wisdom) decided to changes some setting somewhere and now I cannot send email from my server. bah humbug!!!

I am frustrated by these guys! I am not sure what they are trying to do, but they sure are bugging me. I have a friend who spent 6 hours (unsuccessfully I might add) on this very problem the other day, and Rogers swears that they have not changed anything.

If it is not resolved in the next couple of days, I will be be putting in a dry loop dsl circuit at the house as we have no standard phone line in the house anymore. Oh the joys….