Adapted from the book Rework. These are statements that you need to unpack.

No one cares about your church.

• While this is scary for some, it is really exciting. Now we can reenter the culture.
• We have the opportunity to show them we care.
• We assume that people just automatically care, but they really don’t.

Know your real competition.

• It isn’t the church down the street.
• It is the forces of darkness around us, and the things that pull people’s time.

Forget your mission & your vision.

• It is not moving.
• Our generation is one that is moved by passion, causes.
• Mission tells us where we want to go, vision tells us how to get there, but passion is the fuel.

Technology isn’t the savior.

Be inspired. Don’t imitate.

• If we are the most connected group to the creator, why are we the lease creative.
• The biggest sin we commit in our work life is copying and pasting.
• When we are copying, we are not really understanding what it took to get there, and understanding is key to growing.
• It is vital that you pull the creativeness out of you.

Constraints are a blessing.

• Often we use our limitations (things we don’t have) as an excuse.
• The constraints can force us to be creative and make us dependent on God to figure out what to do.

Flawed is the new perfect.

• In our day and age we don’t trust advertising.
• We connect with real people.
• It is ok to mess up, because that is how we show that we are genuine.
• It isn’t an excuse to be lazy, but to let our real colors show.

Stop speaking in tongues (Christianese).

• We have a confusing language in the church world.
• We have to find a way to explain the most important message ever with care.

You don’t need a marketing budget.

• Our culture is over marketed.
• We do a bad job at marketing anyway.
• Church Marketing is the some total of everything your church does.

Don’t Communicate… Curate.

• What matters most isn’t necessarily what is on the wall of the museum, but what is not.
• A curator decides what needs to stay and what needs to go.
• We have got to learn to stick to what is truly essential. Get to the core message.
• We can add more later.
• Sometimes we have to sacrifice good ideas for great ideas.

“Keith Richards exudes authenticity. There is no gap between what he claims to be and what he does.” Dan Merchant

Often times, we gather together with our laptops, listen to the event or concept that needs creativity applied to it, then the music people open iTunes and the designers employ google images and we use these mediums to gain inspiration and thusly share “our” ideas. And it’s from there that we apply “creativity” and “give life” to this concept or event.

And these mediums are not altogether bad because inspiration can be drawn from almost anywhere, but when that becomes the norm, made the routine and clichéd into a stereotype, that’s when our creative meetings are exactly the opposite of what we’re there to accomplish. We miss the mark in thinking that since our last creative meeting was so successful and so effective, we have to do it the exact same way and in the exact same place the next time in order to gain the same results. We attempt to stewart a method and build on it because it works, but what we have to realize and accept as creatives is that we constantly need to be changing our environment and our methods in order to spawn innovative and new ideas.

As creatives, there should be madness to our methods. The organic, unpredictable and spontaneous flow of inspiration is creativity at its peak. And sometimes that costs us comfort, settledness and control.

Carlos Whittaker shared some things he does with his creative team, specifically the meetings, which I thought would be worth implementing. They are below:

1. No laptops allowed. Pen, paper and original ideas only.
2. Never meet in the same place two times in a row.
3. Separate bucket meeting and creative meetings (bucket meetings being those that are solely used to throw out as many ideas as possible and the creative meetings being those used to extract the best of those ideas).
4. You cannot come to meeting unless you’re so full of ideas that you’re ready to vomit.

I believe these guidelines will create an environment that enables the team to learn and experiment with new concepts; empowers the them to consistently be growing and maximizing their creativity; and challenges them to dig deep for original, authentic ideas.

Breakout Session 2: Kem Meyer – Less Clutter. Less Noise – Beyond Bulletins, Brochures, and Bake Sales (Her book)
@kemmeyer – She is Communications Director at Granger Community Church. She spent 15 years in marketing for an ad agency before working for her church.

It is not what we say, it is what people hear.
Are people letting you in or shutting you out: It is not our job to send the right message, it is our job to release the right response.

3 Keys to take away
1. Check Your Ego

• So often we create clutter because we overestimate what we have to say and we underestimate how it will effect those that we have to say it to.
• A lot of times we care more about the what and less about the who
• People are not motivated by your need, they aren’t motivated by your change prescription, and they are offended by insider language
• Less about what you have to say is what you want to spend your time and and more about how it affects people

2. Get an Image Consultant

• Sometimes the picture we are drawing is not telling the story we think it is
• You are often the last person to realize what you are really communicating
• You should always have someone check your words for context
• You have to have people that check your ideas and work -People with other perspectives
• She has two at work, and her spouse at home (life and work)
• Your communications adverbs will be exponentially more effective if we tune our M.O.
• You have to know about your audience before you craft your deliverable. (Google the yahoo commercial where they introduce their new homepage.)
• Don’t expect the person you are talking to to do the hard work (more psychological)

3. Keep it Simple

• If you want to maximize response you need to minimize options
• People not looking for more information, they are looking for how to handle all the information that is coming out them
• Think progressive dinner, not potluck.
• Think what do they need right now. and then now. (Food pyramid vs. 3 months or 3,000 miles)

Example: If you want to buy a pair of size 8 running pants, what do you do:

• Go to a store
• Look for a general area – women
• Then looking for a rack that is Adidas
• Then browse the inventory
• The brilliance is, anyone in the store would be able to send you to the right area. (and then you can drill down)
• You don’t drive down the street looking for a sign that says size 8 running pants
• Everything can’t be at the top of the list.
• It is not the volume of content, it is about how we present the info.
• Her church broke everything down into 8 major categories, and then anyone would be able to drill down to the right info.

A generation ago, the question was, “What is Truth.” Now it is “What’s the point?” – Billy Graham

The biggest secret to navigate people’s egos is asking questions instead of just telling them what should be done. And then work through it with giving them options. If you help to communicate the worth of the chaos you are about to create for them, they will buy into it. You have to leave room in your time budget for a lot more conversations. You need to increase your budget by double. You will have 1/2 the deliverables, 2x the conversations, and exponential amounts of effectiveness.

What do babies have to do with communication skills? I know we all fail at times when it comes to communication, because we’ve forgotten where we’ve come from. I think everyone can tell when a baby has a poopy diaper. Not just by the smell, which always is horrifically pungent, but the dirty deed is written all over their faces, followed by a giggle or a scream. Simple. The scent of their uncomfortable disposition floats across the room into your nostrils and they don’t even have to do anything, yet they’ve already communicated with you. What am I trying to say? Communication isn’t hard! It’s pretty easy as poop.

I have never stepped into a public classroom growing up to go to school. I was at home. All day. I home-schooled with my two older brothers while my sister was in college. Because of the obscure classroom I was incubated in, I didn’t get out much and I didn’t talk much. I was the most rambunctious of my family, being the youngest, yet I had two older brothers. They were stronger and better than me. So, I learned to be quiet. Along with mother always telling me young ladies needed to be gentle and meek, which was entirely the opposite of what was inside of me. I always felt I had something to say and whatever it was was muted. So, in the process of the whole “being seen and not heard” syndrome, along with the dorky label “homeschooler”, I have always felt socially awkward. I felt I could never communicate what I wanted to say because of my concealed childhood. But, I was born with a natural sense of communication.

So, I guess it’s time for me to start from the beginning.

Communication should be the most natural thing for me. At least, the basics of it. As I grow older, I learn different forms of communication. So, why is it when it comes to doing things that I absolutely love to do, I forget how to communicate the message?

Now, I don’t think a baby thinks about that. They don’t go through a series of questions like:
Why am I communicating?
What am I communicating?
Who am I communicating to?
How am I communicating?

These questions may be effective to a certain extent, but are they necessary always? If communication is the most natural thing to human beings… why do we have to think about who we’re communicating to, what, why, how.. etc…

I’d rather think… what or who are your surroundings?

Let’s dive into this. People can be categorized by personality types. If you notice, most personality types can only be categorized by either a response to a situation or the way a person communicates. As we grow older, we tend to lean towards a more familiar and comfortable communication structure (if you will) categorizing us into a personality type. Some people talk, some people don’t. Some people are aggressive, some people are passive. It’s all in the way you attack communication.

We spend years in school learning the languages of science and social studies, words and art, english and law, health and computers, not even realizing it, but to find everything communicates in this world and everything has a language.

Today, I sat in two breakout sessions/workshops and a keynote speaker tonight at Echo Conference 2010. Subliminal messages kept popping up everywhere I went. It seemed an overall theme of the day. The theme was communication. But it wasn’t communication alone. It was communication married to language. And I realize, I can’t communicate to anyone until I learn their language. Communication is a natural thing, but the studying of a language increases the capacity and ability of your communication. Like babies. They may scream or giggle, but as they get older, they learn to speak the language of their surroundings. Communication hasn’t changed, but the language has. So, you’re actually getting nowhere saying you have great communication skills, because you’re really trying to say… I speak several different languages so I can respond to people better.

I used to be an introverted person. Until, I learned the language of people.

I work in media. It’s hard to communicate. It’s hard because, I can’t speak this generations language sometimes. I just don’t. Because I was home schooled? probably not. I just am not interested in learning. But as long as I’m not interested, there is a whole sect of people that I need to connect with and haven’t because of my acknowledged and ignorant lack.

One thing I’ve learned though, presentation is great, but communication, well… it is the action. Like, the man who will tell his wife everyday that he loves her, but when it comes down to saving his marriage in a time of crisis, he stays faithful and clings to his beloved. The action love is more powerful in communication than the word and/or the presentation of love. These are the different facets of the language of love. The action being more aggressive in communicating the language.

One thing about babies is that they communicate purely what is from their heart. Their communication is completely unhindered by near anything of what we let our creative languages be hindered by. They don’t care about relevancy or what’s the newest trend when communicating they are hungry. Neither should we. Because it’s not what everyone else is saying, it is… what you are saying.

Dan Merchant brought a great presentation tonight. It was great to end the night off with a more focused goal and walk away with something mentally tangible (if that is even possible). Now my brain has a ball to play with all night. Great.

If you need help reading this one, see previous post.

Can you make this in your basement?

Have you heard the song “Fireflies”? It’s a synthpop tune off the album Ocean Eyes by Owl City. In my mind it is a soundtrack that accompanies the idea that I have no excuse when it comes to producing great music… at least I can’t blame my equipment.

In an interview (on propellerheads.se), Adam Young (a.k.a. Ocean Eyes) talks about the equipment used to create most of his music:

“I ran Reason 3 and a freeware single channel recording program called Goldwave on an old Dell with 255 RAM. I used a friend’s borrowed Behringer C-1 condenser microphone and an 8 channel analog mixer to record vocals and a bit of acoustic guitar in Goldwave. I then cut them up into samples and fired them off in [Reason's] NN-XT.”

Reason is a great program and often used in studios to supplement other tracks. But the rest of the gear would be considered subpar by any professional studio. Also, since Reason 3 doesn’t support direct recording of audio, he had to creatively record his vocals in another program and import them to a sample player in Reason. That’s quite a workaround, especially for vocals, and it appears the recording was going straight to the line-in of the computer, rather than through even a low-budget audio interface.

Minimal, low-budget equipment. Very Creative.

For those wanting to rush out and get his setup, I priced it:

1. Reason 3: $30, ebay.com
2. Goldwave: no longer free, $19 for one year license, goldwave.com
3. An old Dell computer: $105 for a laptop, ebay.com
4. Behringer C-1 Microphone: $36, bhphotovideo.com
5. 8 channel analog mixer: $40, ebay.com

That comes to $230. Let’s add in $120 for shipping, cables, cheap headphones, computer speakers and a mic stand. This brings us to $350.

Let’s make a couple modifications.

If you already have a computer, you can strike the Dell. Substitute the Goldwave program with the free Audacity audio editor. Skip the Mixer and opt for the $60 Behringer C-1U that connects via USB. That also eliminates the need for additional audio cables. Add $30 for a used copy of Reason 3 and $20 for total shipping. Since headphones and computer speakers usually abound we’ll also leave them out. This totals about $110. Quite a studio! I’m being sarcastic because to most audio pros this setup would be a joke.

Did I mention that the album Ocean Eyes sold about 18,000 copies its first week in digital downloads alone? As I write it is less than a year since the physical album was released and it has sold around 609,000 copies, hit the top 10 albums listing in the USA, and had tracks that topped the Billboard Hot 100 twice.

For some of us in the creative field, it’s easy to spend too much time admiring the gear that we wish we had, rather than making full use of what we already have. While I am interested in upgrading my equipment, the truth is that I already have the tools I need to get started. In fact, my greatest creative asset and liability is not the equipment, but only myself.

Today, I give props to Adam Young. Thanks for jumping into the creative process with the tools at hand. No more excuses.