When you do attend a session, workshop, etc. don’t just listen….in fact don’t just take notes. As a speaker, I don’t look at my part being that of simply a dumping of information. I have two primary goals whenever I speak:

1. Give everyone at least one idea, action item, etc. that they can take back with them.
2. Begin a conversation.

Too often conferences are just a blip on the radar. A successful conference is one that has an effect that spreads. I’m not just talking about spreading the content through twitter…though a great start (and I’m still kicking myself for not kicking off my session with my twitter ID and a hashtag) but it goes beyond that.

Don’t just take notes, process them later. Look over your notes and create action items based on what you’ve learned and experience. What good is inspiration if it remains static. Of course those action items can come from things outside of sessions and keynotes too.

Stay connected. This is the area I am terrible at. I just spoke at the HOW Design Conference and met some outstanding (these people truly stand out) people. What a shame it is to wait a year to connect with them again. Keep the conversations going, continue to develop the relationship. For me that means make a list of people to stay in contact with on a continuous basis. For me I keep that list fairly short, to help make it an achievable goal but I also have a list of everyone that I met that I will try to stay in touch with as well. Again, this is the hardest area as life and busyness get in the way.

In fact can I ask you to help me? If you’ve heard me speak will you do a couple of things for me?

• Connect with me at the conference.

Remember, I don’t usually go in with a team. And as much as I’m an extrovert, I don’t like to crash your group. So please say hi, let’s go to lunch, all that good stuff.

• Reach out afterwards

Again, this doesn’t come naturally to me and honestly, I don’t know if what I said resonated. If it does please stay connected through email, twitter, you name it.

• Give me feedback

I take my position as a speaker seriously. I want to be sure to give you everything that you are expecting out of your time at the conference. That’s why I always try to leave lots of room at the end for questions. If I can do things better, and I know I can, let me know so that I can bring the best content, engage you more, and ultimately give you what you need to do your work better.

But the top item on my to do list from the conference is something that wasn’t covered in any of the talks, not included in any of the handouts. It came from just being around some of the most creative people on the planet. Just being around them, sharing a lunch with them, watching them sparked my own creativity. My goal is to make the church the most creative place on the planet, what better way to do that than to be constantly surrounded by creativity. This to do list has the simple heading of Stay Creative. Here are some of the action items, for me, under that heading:

Take a pottery class
Take a Bob Ross painting class
Attend the architectural exhibit at MCFTA
Visit the Saginaw Art Museum
Make a sock puppet
Play with chalk art
Tour the Alden B. Dow house

Now this is just a beginning list for me and let me just say, if I can find this many outlets in my little town you can have even more fun exploring new perspectives of creativity in yours. For me it’s all about becoming a sponge for the creativity to soak in and surrounding myself with inspiring people and things. Then, later when I’m working on a project (which could be your project) I can squeeze that sponge and let the creativity drip all over it.

What’s on your list? Where do you go to find inspiration and creativity?

This year, not so easy.

Let me back up a bit for those that haven’t attended the HOW Conference before (and it’s still not too late to make it this year.) I really like a conference that takes the time to put things together that bring people together and HOW does it right. They put on a big bash the last night of the conference, food, music and yes…costumes.

That’s where you come in. This year’s theme: Keep Austin Weird

And I’m stumped. To start with, I didn’t know Austin was weird and I’m the “church guy” so what does weird look like? I’d really love to connect it call together (austin + weird + church – and a bonus to bring in Holy Cow)…but I’m at a bit of a loss.

Nothing is off limits so let’s here the craziest ideas you can come up with and let’s make everyone talk about how fun/cool/crazy that church guy was!

Ready, Set….GO!

After ignoring it for far too long (just like I tell every church NOT to do) we have finally updated the look, the software and the location of the blog.

Of course if you’re reading this you don’t need to change a thing. We will keep holycowablog.com and .org, but the actual blog is now hosted at blog.holycowcreative.org

My goal was to freshen things up a bit, get rid of anything you weren’t using or reading and better match it to our studio site.

While this blog is about us, it’s for you so I would love your feedback, comments, etc. If we’re missing something, please let me know!

Surround yourself with happy when you’re brainstorming…surround people with happy when they experience your design.

Next month I will be speaking at the HOW Design and Creativity Conference in Austin, TX. This is the premiere conference for designers, creative directors, and communicators attracting people from around the world to learn and connect with others. This is a very different type of conference for me as it’s not ministry leaders, pastors, etc. these folks are the best of the best in the fields of design and creativity. I remember sharing an elevator with one of the attendees who was a major player at the Disney Channel. Talk about serving a HUGE God, these are doors that man could never open on their own, I absolutely know that it is God’s favor that has given me this opportunity.

In case you haven’t heard, this year I will be talking about vomit and ninjas…that’s all I’m going to tell you for now but I do hope you’ll consider joining me in Austin in June. (if you sign up and give me credit I’ll probably end up with some goodies to give away)

I’ll get a bit of a rest for traveling until September when I kick off a number of exciting conferences:

September: ministryCOM
October: Cultivate + Story (read more about this here)
October: The Anabaptist Communicators Conference (complete with Amish farms)
November: Dirt

I’ll talk more about all these as we get closer.

PLEASE if you are going to be at any of these, or in the area, I want to connect with you. The best part of all these conferences really aren’t the presentations, the best part are the people.

Father’s Day seems to be a tough service for many churches, all the one hit wonders are. How do you make a big bang with one service, no momentum, etc.

Here’s an idea:

Taking Care of Dad

The message isn’t so much to Dad, but more to Mom and the kids about Dad and about the need to support the family leader, etc. There’s a lot of pressure being a dad, and we’re often wired to not let it show…mom and the kids would do well to take care of dad sometimes as he so often is taking care of you. Think of it this way, if Dad spends his time providing for his family’s wants and needs who is taking care of his?

The big idea: Setup a bunch of lazyboys and select dads to sit in the chairs for the service, fully equipped with pop and chips (yep there will be crumbs, that’s why the vacuum was created).

Thought I’d pass it along. In fact, for the first church to commit to doing this all the way we’ll do the sermon branding for free.

I’ve been juggling both writing for this blog and church marketing sucks for a bit now. That juggling increased now that my position of Director at CFCC is official. Often that means having to decide where a post will go, what to write for one and what to write for the other. In doing so neither has a very unique voice, sure it’s both me but why come here and there.

While one option would be to ditch Holy Cow a Blog for Church Marketing Sucks (which definitely has more readership), I don’t think I’m ready to do that.

But what about a change?

What if I wrote more about Holy Cow here? While that may still mean that I’ll talk about church communications here it would mean it would tie more directly to what we’re doing here. Maybe it would mean showing our process of a logo, talk about serving the church as a business who wants to be a partner, the ups and downs of owning a studio…that sort of thing. The writing at Church Marketing Sucks would be more general in nature, this would be more specific to Holy Cow.

What do you think?

What do you want to read?

I want to hear from you…I’ll throw out a carrot by picking one reply, at random, and send him or her a slinky. I know, not very flashy…but I think everyone should own a slinky, because they’re fun, I think they spark creativity and they show how sometimes the spectacular ideas just happen.

I love this! What a great way to tell the story and use billboards in a new, and even interactive way. Imagine a church putting up a billboard, next to a Hooters billboard, or better yet a Strip Joint billboard that said something like “We love you girls.” , “Come as you are.” or something along those lines?

I love this idea so much, that we will design it for free. We’ll come up with some great copy, killer creative…all free. You just have to be willing to step out and do something bold (and have some billboard space).

Anyone up for it?

I’d like to highlight #4 on his list of approaches (but do check out the whole entry):

4. Powerpoint or Keynote, but with no bullets, just emotional pictures and stories.

That gigantic screen behind you isn’t to regurgitate what you just said. Sure, it can be helpful to put up a scripture, etc. but it can be used for so much more. Forget trying to make everything start with the same letter, or a fancy acrostic…use that space to engage your listener visually. Would you watch TV if they just printed the script line by line? Not a chance, so let’s not do the same thing Sunday morning.

What are you doing to make your Sunday morning presentation of Christ engaging?