My (personal) highlights of Thursday and Friday:

• Saw Joshua Blankenship in the flesh after stalking his work at NewSpring.cc
• Listened to Andy Crouch dissect Ratatouille and sing a great Tom Waits song
• Gave away some VIN56 t-shirts and a signed copy of my very own book(!)
• Heard Steve Taylor say “I used to do some music”
• Saw the raw edit of Blue Like Jazz and picked it apart with a room full of movie geeks
• Hung out at the Ginger Man and talked about Kyle Steed’s beard
• Toured Woot! headquarters and got a free Bag of Crap!

Overall, the most important thing that I discovered from mashing together ideas and observing people that I look up to was that my passion is storytelling (not that I can do it naturally). This may seem shallow and obvious, but it clears up a whole lot of my wrong thinking and gives me more freedom. For one thing, this explains why I seem to love design, writing, films, and my role as creative director equally; I see all of them through the lens of storytelling even when the medium changes. This also clears up my particular viewpoint I offer at Vintage 56. I’m not simply the “detail-oriented” or “big picture” guy. I see both the details and sweeping arcs that matter for the emotion, story, and user experience of a site or design. I’m also going to stop beating myself up for not noticing when little details are not consistent. My job is to make sure we tell a consistent story, and we have other great people to be passionate about the things I’m not so good at (like little consistencies in visual design).

Most people these days will never experience internet over a wire, and many have never used a conventional keyboard.

Tech cycles tend to last ten years. (1980s personal computing, 1990s desktop computing, 2000′s mobile internet computing). There are winners and losers in each cycle. The winners and losers for this mobile tech cycle have not been set yet.

Changing usage: mobile Facebook users are twice as active as desktop users, twitter comprises 50% of mobile users, 50% of Pandora’s listeners subscribe on mobile (add 3M/month).

What’s the next big thing? Mobile eCommerce. Soon we will be buying physical items on mobile just like software, probably even ordering pizza thru an app more often than calling anymore.

What do you want to accomplish? Content delivery (text or video), Distribute information (location, hours, etc), Build community (twitter, facebook, blogs), Mobile donation (in-app, links). IHOP in Kansas City is a great example of a multimedia app.

Where is your data? Much of your information will already be on servers. Things like navigation and functions for information processing can be on your mobile device, but it doesn’t need to contain all the information itself. API’s facing your mobile devices need to be mobile optimized.

Mobile optimized websites v mobile applications. Mow’s work across all mobile phones, they’re easier to manage and they’re good for outsiders. MA’s have a better user experience, they’re currently trending with consumers, and they’re good for insiders.

Even sites and services that aren’t currently apps will eventually be built to mimic an app-like experience.

In deciding to develop on mobile you have to choose your O/S (Google, Nokia, Apple, Rim, etc). As a whole Android has the largest global market share from a software standpoint. RIM is diminishing along with Palm. Apple has the largest manufacturer-side share because Android software market share is split between hardware companies like HTC, Samsung, Motorola, etc.

“Process is king. It helps with everything.”

Processes are and should be organic*. Organic meaning they should be allowed to change, because they are only frameworks to help you get through.

• Process gets you ready to go.
• It gets your mind focused.
• Makes sure you start in order.
• Helps you know what’s next.
• Helps you find where you’re at.
• Helps you forecast.
• If you get lost, it can help you.
• Gives you a solid road map.
• Helps you anticipate the next move.
• See who’s court the ball is in.
• Tells you when to add or shift resources.
• Prevents you from wasting time.
• Helps you make accurate projections.
• Actually lets you say no.
• Helps you see where you are terrible at.
• Process can be your scape goat.

He posed just who should use a process and answered it by saying that everyone should have a process for everything. Just like people have a process for putting on their shoes and socks and their morning routines.

Write to-do lists. Be specific. Know your exact steps. And an important one: knock off your distractions.

For the Q&A, someone asked the question of how to build a process for a meeting.

• ask intelligent questions
• asks questions about what you’ve just done
• ask detailed, tiny questions: it shows dedication
• recap everything
• think 30,000 ft. perspective vs. 3 ft. perspective
• be their tour guide around the meeting
• do schedule meetings back to back
• know what’s before and after

When all is said and done make sure you have an “Is it done” meeting.

Ben gave a lot of insightful information yesterday to help me in my process as a web designer. Process is king. If I don’t have a good process, how am I ever going to answer my supervisor correctly when he asks where I’m at on my project?

• Justin’s favorite missionary because of the way he chose to evangelize
• Was a missionary to China
• Adopted the style of dress of China
• Said that he was there to learn from them as well

Internet now leads television as the ‘most essential’ medium, meaning most people would give up television before they gave up internet. (Infinite dial) We, like Hudson Taylor, need to adopt the language of the culture. Study at Monk:

• 61% said a churches website was important in their decision to attend
• 85% said church website was important for them to participate in the church activities/community

2010 study by Oxygen media

• 1/3 women checked Facebook when they wake up before they use the bathroom
• 21% check in the middle of the night
• Same behaviors of addiction
• Statics from study show a huge trend for social media in 18-27 age bracket

Facebook just surpassed 750 million and has become the #1 place for sign in with a 35% market share over Google at 31%.

What is most effective in creating Awareness? Engaging your online community.

Two ways with two completely different goals: Engagement to build traffic & Engaging to build community.

• Key is “knowing the etiquette”, to be a “welcome addition” to people’s social media world
• Frequently updating your content
• Include a variety of content types

Most effective types of content: Multimedia (animated gif – making a comeback), Curated Content, Extraneous Info (stuff that doesn’t have to do with your organization but focuses on the people and the community)

Least effective types of content: Engaging a broad audience (i.e. “everything to everyone”), Monitoring online discussion about your organization

What is most effective in creating Community? Use these words a lot: Where , When, Would, Should

What is most effect in creating Facebook Community? Study showed the following:

• Facebook is used most for: grabbing peoples attention, responding to feedback and targeting and researching.
• Organizations used social media mostly for: posting links, event invites and pictures but not for blogs, external stories, and history because these are one way and not conversational. “Stop talking about yourself!”
• Facebook was most effective when used in: rewarding and encouraging the online community, growing the online community itself, and promoting events and activities.

What is most effective in Engagement? How are you building engagement into your strategy? Main answers were:

• Selecting social media tools/platforms
• Establishing org. presence on social sites
• Developing content strategy

“No/Not Sure” was the most common answer concerning the following:

• Setting goals for social media campaigns
• Identifying and researching their audience
• Monitoring external social media activity
• Identifying/measuring social media metrics
• Tracking metrics over time
• Taking action based on metrics or alerts

The following were typically not tracked: Engagement data, Sentiment data, Website traffic, Satisfaction rates, Total mentions, Actual income and total donations. (Note: Online donation are typically 140% higher than offline donations)

Ratio of social media budget to total budget is 1:100

Takeaways:

• Define your organizational “big idea” – not just “the gospel” – your unique mission
• Identify the “gunners” and allow them to build – gunners being the people that do know and care about social media
• Resource, resource, resource – staff, financial, thought buy-in
• Create context specific content
• ADD value

Q&A

Q. Best social media metrics?

A. Google analytics – social metrics, I use and recommend Sprout social

Q. How often should you post status, and what time is best?

A. Depends on your community. Don’t just spam broadcasts across all social mediums, but craft specific and custom messages appropriate for each medium.

The first two commandments were to have no other gods and no graven images. Why is that important? It’s because God is not just another idol lost in the sea of idols. He is not an idol at all. He did not have an image for us to worship, but His people were supposed to become His image. 100 years after the resurrection there was a debate whether or not we should still follow that second commandment of creating images. Can we create images of Jesus? They decided we could because it teaches the theology of incarnation which says that God became a man.

People either hate or love technology or are confused and don’t understand it.

5 layers of tech:

1. Power – There are many different things you can do with it (much potential).
2. Morality – Sexting? Identity theft? The bad side of tech becomes a moral hazard, but everything else can be too, right?
3. Physiology – When we use a shovel a lot we develop callouses. We’ve adapted our habits to technology. We search verses like recipes. We don’t really “know” how to cook, but we know where to find the instructions. We react intellectually with just words, but we can react emotionally with picture and video. Physiology + emotions. “The things we make, make us.” – Jeep ad campaign
4. Culture – Technology is anything that was invented after you were born. Anything invented in the first 30 years of your life is “cool”, and anything invented after that seems “foreign”. Something that is foreign to one person can be cool or even old news to another person in the same room, family or business. Oral culture Adam – 1500BC. Written 1500BC – 1500AD. Print culture 1500AD-1900AD. Digital 1980AD – present
5. Theology – Primary nature of tech is to transform. It’s transforms what we can do, us, cultures, etc.

Creation – Adams job was to till the garden or the earth, and to name the animals. Woodpecker/Bluejay – names for their function/appearance. Names have a powerful capability to guide perception.

Fall – Adam and Eve’s first act after the fall was to create something (fig leave coverings). Their first attempt was creativity apart from God but when He came in He affirmed it by showing them the right way to do it and made animal skin coverings. Cain built a city, which was a place setup to be apart from God.

Redemption – God gave the law to show how they can be effective image bearers of God, but they didn’t do a good job of it. Jesus’ job here was to be a “techne”. That greek word is translated carpenter by probability. In His death and resurrection He redeemed creativity along with our lives.

Restoration – The new Jerusalem (Rev 21) coming down from heaven is a city like Cain first built. Were aren’t going to return to the garden. We are going to live in cities with roads and things that have been made by humans.

Final Thoughts:

• Media is about the kind of connection people make to your content.
• You must constantly perform disruptive media experiments for yourself and with others.
• Just as media and content are inseparable, technology and theology are inseparable.
• Jesus is both the medium and message of salvation
• Evangelism is temporary. Creativity is eternal.
• Things that you create are eternal.

Situation: Day job vs dream job. We’ve become the “I am, but” Generation. “I am a mechanic, but I want to be an artist.”

What do you do with the gap that exist between who we are and where we want to be? What do you do with the gap between where our project is and where we want it to go? What do you do when you find yourself on the edge of that big change?

1. Ignore the voices
“What do your voices tell you.” Note from his counselor: I’ve never met an artist who had a positive internal voice.

Jon’s voices:
Nobody will ever buy a book from you that isn’t Christian satire

Our possible voices:
Voice – “Somebody smarter has already done that.”
Answer – Never compare your beginning to somebody else’s middle

Voice – “Who are you to do that?”
Tendency – We think we need to talk back to it and read it our resume.
Answer – That’s the wrong question. The right question is, “Who is God to do that? Is He big enough?”

If you think. You are a mess up, welcome to the club. The Bible is full of mess ups that God used.

2. Face your fears
3 fears we will face:

A. Fear of starting
The reason we face it is perfectionism. The challenge with perfectionism is that it looks like a character trait, but it is not. Perfectionism also presents itself as close and attainable, but it can’t be caught.

You have to murder perfectionism. 90% perfect and shared will affect more lives than 100% and in my head. Aim for the A-

B. Fear of failure
If you are going to risk and maybe fail, fail at something that matters. If you fail, fail gloriously. So if you fail, fail so people’s lives are still changed. The worst type of project is one where whether you succeed or fail, it doesn’t matter.

C. Fear of success
Success is awkward. It feels like clothes that don’t fit right.

What he’s learning about success he learned recently from gem mining. A diamond is just a rock unless you think it has value. There are a lot of things out there that tell you they are diamonds. Social networking places a lot of value on things that don’t matter (number of followers, Klout score, etc.). When you call the wrong things diamonds, you treat the truly valuable things like rocks.

As you get a little bit of success, hold on to your diamonds.

Example: Sometimes kids say profound things. He was supposed to be teaching his daughter, but was ignoring her to write witty twitters. She wrote on a napkin, “daddy pay attensio.”

Note: Social Media is a toddler. It is very young, and we are very bad at it still. Also, it is never done, it wants more and more.

3. Have friends
This seems like a no brainer, but in our striving for success, it is easy to lose sight of this.

When they were moving recently to Nashville, his wife asked, “Which of your heart friends are you going to miss?” He couldn’t think of any.

From a “practical” sense the ROI on friendship sucks. Think of Jesus, he spent most of this time with 12 people.

He was invited to dinner with Andy Stanley and several of his friends. They were a group of influencers in the Church, and they spent time together frequently and for long periods of time.

Since he has moved to Nashville, he has started making friendship choices.

Friendships encourage you
Friendships challenge you
You need people that love you enough to call you out

So What? Why does it matter?
God cares about art, more than you do. He is very creative, and creativity and craftsmanship matter to him.

So why do we rip off popular culture.?

Exodus 31 ¹ Then the LORD said to Moses, ² “See, I have chosen Bezalel son of Uri, …³ and I have filled him with the Spirit of God, with wisdom, with understanding, with knowledge and with all kinds of skills ⁴ to make artistic designs for work in gold, silver and bronze, ⁵ to cut and set stones, to work in wood, and to engage in all kinds of crafts. ⁶ Moreover, I have appointed Oholiab … to help him. Also I have given ability to all the skilled workers to make everything I have commanded you:

Exodus 36 ¹ So Bezalel, Oholiab and every skilled person to whom the LORD has given skill and ability to know how to carry out all the work of constructing the sanctuary are to do the work just as the LORD has commanded.” ² Then Moses summoned Bezalel and Oholiab and every skilled person to whom the LORD had given ability and who was willing to come and do the work.

Between these verses something truly scary has happened. At first it was every one who had the skill, then is became everyone who was willing. This means there were people you were given these skills, and they sat on their art and missed their opportunity. Don’t miss your opportunity by not recognizing it.

Of course with great size comes great responsibility, so we immediately learned that (1) we can unintentionally block a huge hallway, and (2) we can cause a herd mentality by all going to get coffee at the same time. To prevent any major blockages or stampedes, we tried to break up into smaller groupings to meet a whole bunch of the awesome people at Echo.

A few things that our group learned today:

• There are more cool people to talk to at Echo than time, which is sad.
• Giving out free Starbucks cards is great way to meet new people, which is awesome.
• You can raptorize anything, according to Ben Jordan.
• Our Shirts Don’t Suck can make and brand basically anything that we can imagine (notebooks, bouncy balls, tattoos).
• Neil can fix anything, including Carlos Whittaker’s laptop, in a pinch.
• Jon Acuff is still a great speaker despite being driven even deeper into Deep V-Neck Syndrome.
• Stop listening to the voices that tell you what you can’t do.

“Stop listening to the voices that tell you what you can’t do” seems to be a recurring theme to some of this year already. The funny thing about recurring themes, though, is that they’re very subjective. In the past years, when I’ve been struggling with getting people engaged, I picked up “everything is storytelling” as a recurring theme. Now that I’ve internalized that as much as possible, I’ve been noticing the number of times a speaker has said “you need to stop listening to the voices” or “comparing yourself to others can kill your work”. At this point, it’s like a personal lesson:

Jeremy, stop looking at Dribbble.

Jeremy, stop saying I’ll never be as good as that person with completely different talents and a unique calling.

Since this seems to be such an important lesson this year, I’m going to try to learn it. I’m going to try to stop listening to the negative voices, and I’m going to see what I can do when I stop letting fear control me.

Anyway, that’s just day one! Tomorrow I’m sure I’ll have a whole day’s worth of notes to squeeze down to 500 words. For now, I’m just going to finish my drink, go to bed, and get ready for another intense day.

Our first iPhone app, built for Trinity Church, was released today! It allows anyone to watch the live stream on Sundays or watch on-demand sermons from the past few months. If you don’t like watching it on a small screen, you can use AirPlay to send the live stream or on-demand sermons to your Apple TV. I’ve been using it for the past few weeks when we haven’t been able to make it to church (as the husband of a busy wedding photographer), and it’s seriously been awesome. Check it out on the App Store!

I documented my writing and creative process for “cross-training” at work. The tools I use in the video to write and design are Scrivener, Byword, and Photoshop.

Like when I write, Radiohead (Like Spinning Plates) plays in the background. I recorded and edited everything using ScreenFlow.

There were a couple of Federal Acts passed in the 1980’s outlining this procedure. There is a PDF on their website that describes the program in full

Whether you understand any of the technology posted or not, it’s pretty cool to browse through (especially if it’s all old news to them).

One of the technologies I first found in the late 1990’s (only because it was one of the only entries I remotely understood) was called the Processor-In-Memory or PIM chip. Since I had just learned to build computers and had a basic understanding of how they worked, this intrigued me. Modern processors now have something called L2 and L3 caches which are getting larger by the year, but they still have dedicated RAM. This basically combined the RAM and processor into one single chip similar to a processor with a huge L2 cache.

I still like to browse that part of their website every once in a while just to see what’s newly “outdated” for them.