I expect there is more to what John calls the “Post Method”, but the challenges covered in this short MP3 recording of their talk include:

• Who is your audience?
• Who will champion this plan and strategy?
• Who will execute this plan and strategy?
• Who will not be participating?

I speak later in the afternoon, but some of the speakers ahead of me are entertaining some great questions from the audience about how to get their organization focused on the right site visitors and how to select the best Content Management System. My hope is to be able to address some of these kinds of questions in the Q&A time after my presentation.

There is a matrix that has been around for a long time that allows you to select the Content Management Systems you have heard about and compare them functionally. Check out CMSMatrix.org to do that comparison. [Update] John mentioned that http://php.opensourcecms.com/scripts/show.php?catid=1&cat=CMS%20/%20Portals is a good option for actually test driving the CMS you are interested in checking out. [/Update]

I’ll include my presentation slides in this post after I speak this afternoon. If anyone has any followup questions on my presentation, post them in the comments to this post.

1. You have to be old to remember it’s good-old-days.
2. It doesn’t come with any training at all.
3. Has it’s own etiquette and cultural norms, which you only find out by doing the wrong thing publicly.
4. Signing off and on isn’t easy… the commands aren’t self-evident.
5. Finding your friends is hard.
6. It is used in emergencies when more traditional communications are down.
7. You fire a message and can’t forget… you have to wait for a response before moving on to other things (unlike Skype or Google Chat which will obnoxiously make noises at you).

There has been a lot of noise recently about Twitter as communications platform for the future. I don’t mind the projectionists prognosticating about Twitter killing other mediums, but one thing that bothers me is that unlike Ham Radio and IRC, Twitter isn’t built on standard protocols or an open network.

Don’t get me wrong, my 2,050 Tweets shows I am a real supporter of the thing, but I don’t think I’m going to depend on Twitter during a government overthrow, during a hurricane on a satellite phone, or in the midst of a battle. Twitter just isn’t dependable or open enough yet, and if it were I would imagine our military would have jumped on it before we got to it.

How’d I do it?

Starvation! Ok, not really starvation, but I did do my own version of the Atkins Diet. From what I remember of the book, the idea is to trick your body into believing you are in a famine so the body burns reserves of fat. See, when you eat lots of carbs, the body assumes the grains and sugars indicate there is plenty of food accessible and stores fat for leaner days. I would suppose in a famine situation, the only thing left to eat is protein from the few remaining animals who are dieing off. So Atkins is an all you can eat protein fiesta (which works great for a carnivore like me).

Food Tastes Change

The Church IT Biggest Loser contest was a jump start to help me get in shape again. I still have a long way to go to get back to a level of fitness that allows me to dominate sports made for tall skinny people. But, an interesting thing happened in the process of doing away with sugar, soda, and carbs. My taste changed. I grew up gagging on vegetables, all things salad, and pretty much anything mushy. Stayed that way until this year, and then I started branching out and tasting foods I hated. Sort of a form of punishment and I still had a hard time choking down vegetables, soft cheeses, etc. Because during the last 14 weeks in this contest I gave up the carbs I love, my tastes h0ave changed and I now like green beans, peanuts, salad, eggs sunny side up, cottage cheese, squash, avocado, and mixed green salads (but not all together at the same time).

Swim Like You Like It

Besides changing my carb intake to less than 20 grams a day, I started swimming three times a week for up to a half mile. Not really a swimming type guy; it always seemed like a sport for girls who couldn’t run or guys who wanted to wear next to nothing. What I knew though was that at 6′4″ and 268 lbs, I was too heavy to do traditional exercise and not be injured. So, I got in the pool. I tried once without goggles, nose clip, and ear plugs, but that didn’t last more than a few laps. The next time I was ready to go. It took two weeks to really start enjoying swimming, but it was probably the biggest contributing factor in kicking my metabolism back in gear so I could really drop some pounds and keep losing. It will definitely be part of my routine as I branch out into more Cycling, Sand Volleyball, Basketball, and Elliptical Trainer now.

Congratulations To All The Biggest Loser Contestants

Well, I have a bunch more fitness stuff ahead of me, but those updates will go on my personal blog. Let me congratulate all the people who attacked the CITRT Biggest Loser Contest and lost some weight. It isn’t so much about winning as it is about a camaraderie of the saints/sufferers. And if you are looking for some motivation to get in shape, just look at your kids and ask yourself “What kind of big loser will they think of me as?”

• Exploration of Online Campuses & Digital Congregations with hard-learned lessons from our 18 months of building and running one.
• Scoping, resourcing, and project managing your ministry web projects, with a particular focus on using outside people (freelancers, agencies, and volunteers) for an inside job.

I can’t tell you how honored I was to be asked to be a part of this event. Check out the Ministry 2.0 website at http://www.ministry2.org/ and be sure to register for the event in Austin.

We are also going to try something new that I am calling Vendor Flavor. Rolls off the tongue doesn’t it? VENDOR FLAVOR. Here is the bottom line of that part of the event:

6 vendors each demo their product in 7 minutes and then have 3 minutes to answer questions and get off the stage.

I’m really excited to be able to host this event at our church and to get to know all these very capable IT people in other churches. If you know anyone working in IT or Web in a Florida church or ministry, please be sure to let them know about the upcoming event.

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