Mobile phones are revolutionizing MUCH more than just the way we communicate. According to the New York Times article, The Benefits of Mobile Health, on Hold, mobile phones are the key in making real change in poor countries. The fact that there are more mobile phones than toilets, toothbrushes, and lightbulbs (electricity) around the world isn’t necessarily a bad thing when you realize all the new information and opportunity they bring people who have never before had access to a mobile phone. In fact, the mobile phone “has the potential to improve many aspects of life in poor countries: commerce, health, agriculture, education … Africa has a billion people and 750 million phones, and mobile is growing so fast there that in a few years there will be more phones than people. In some countries this is already true.”

Have you ever thought about this?

There are more mobile phones than… these 3 essential things:

1. Toilets

In a world population of 7 billion, 6 billion people have mobile phones, while only 4.5 billion of them have access to clean toilets.

-”it is common to see people who live in metal roofed shacks without bathrooms surfing Facebook on their smartphones or feature phones.”

-”From an infrastructure investment standpoint, it’s easier to build a mobile phone network than a sewer system.”

More People Have Cellphones Than Toilets

World With More Phones Than Toilets Shows Water Challenge

2. Toothbrushes

“There are now more people on earth that have access to a mobile phone, than have access to a toothbrush, stated Ian Carrington, mobile and social advertising sales director at Google, speaking from Mobile Marketing Live.”

 More Mobile Phone Access Than Toothbrushes, says Google

3. Electricity

“In Uganda, only 10 percent of the population has electricity, and the vast majority doesn’t have microwave ovens, computers, or televisions.” More than a third of Uganda’s population, about 10 million people, own a cell phone.

“In a place where cell phones could outnumber light bulbs, several nonprofits have begun thinking that the best way to reach the country’s poor and get them much needed information is through their phones.”

UGANDA: Environmentalists point to worrying pace of deforestation

Extending Google services in Africa

It’s exciting to think about the positive change mobile phones can make in the world, but then you have to remember- it’s not the mobile phone that will actually make any change… it can’t… after all, it’s just a phone… however, we can.

“The tech is only as good as the people it is connecting or system it’s connected to,” Mechael said.  ”We can get excited about the shiny new object, but the real impact comes from thinking about the cultural and professional context in which it’s being implemented.”

We can build and download as many apps on our mobile phones as we want, but it’s up to us to take all these resources and make something good out of it.

That’s why we make mobile apps for nonprofits. Just last year we built over 600 apps for churches, and our mission remains the same: To help as many churches as possible. “That is the main goal and will always be the main goal,” says Matt McKee, CEO of ROAR.

How are you using technology for good? 

Look around any conference and you’ll see the majority of people multitasking on their smartphones. Are they just trying to avoid making awkward smiles with strangers? Maybe, but they’re also probably checking the conference hashtag on Twitter, editing a photo on Instagram of the last performance, or just trying to google where and when the next event is taking place. As of recent, you’ll now find people looking through a conference app. This is an app specifically made for a particular conference, like the Orange Conference App for all who attended last week!

Think of an app for your conference like handing attendees a virtual brochure. Some conference will hand you a fancy packet or lanyard on your way in loaded with information, hoping you’ll keep track of it throughout the entire conference. The papers usually get lost, and the lanyard often gets left back in the hotel room. But what do people NOT lose or leave behind? Their smartphone. It’s one of the top three things people don’t leave home without, along with their wallet and keys. Your attendees might be from all different places with different beliefs and interests, but one thing they’ll have in common is a smartphone. It’s a guaranteed bet that they will have it with them at all times during the conference.

A conference app can cover all your bases, with maps, schedules, speaker bios and outlines, as well as answering the question, “what is there to eat around here?” If you’re hosting a conference or event, we encourage you to enhance attendees experience and have an app made specifically for your conference. Here’s three reasons why:

1. Where do I go?

One reason to have a conference app is to give people directions… and peace of mind.

It’s simple, but often overlooked. You’re hosting an event, you know the area well, you understand how the building works, but your attendees don’t. Often times at conferences, people get lost, turned around, or can’t remember how to get back to where they just were. From traveling to the venue to navigating from room to room, people want to know where they are going! In an app, integrated geolocation and map functions can help attendees navigate through your conference from start to finish with ease.  The simple act of making maps and directions available will give attendees the peace of mind that if they aren’t sure where to go, they can simply pull up directions right on the app.

2. What’s next?

A second reason to have a conference app is to give attendees the schedule of events… and eliminate confusion.

Believe it or not but not everyone will actually attend every amazing breakout, session, Q&A, luncheon, panel, speaker, and concert you have lined up at the conference! Sometimes people skip things, sorry! Your attendees want to know what exactly is happening when and where. If they don’t have that information readily available at their fingertips, be prepared for LOTS of repeated questions aimed at your conference staff. With an app, attendees can easily pull up the schedule as often as they like, and that alone will eliminate TONS of confusion. Further, by providing a schedule in the app, you will see a greater level of participation from your attendees as they are able to clearly see everything going on at once.

3. Who’s speaking?

A third reason to have a conference app is to give attendees information about the speakers… and their Twitter handle.

Lastly, people want to know, “who’s speaking?” Many conferences feature multiple speakers, sometimes even speaking simultaneously in different rooms, causing attendees to make quick decisions on where to spend the next hour of their lives. In an app, people can look up speaker bio’s, as well as links and outlines to additional information that they may want to access. This feature isn’t just to allow people to pick and choose who they want to hear speak,  but to allow them to find out more. For example, one speaker might really stand out to you so you want to follow them on Twitter, check out  his/ her website or books, send them an email, and just know more about their story. By including speaker bio’s on the app, all that information will be compiled in one place – so simple!

Really, the point of a conference app is to create an environment and community for attendees to call home during the conference; a place to connect and best utilize their time, and get the most out of their conference experience.

If you’d  like to explore your options in building an app for your next conference, connect with us here!

What do you get when you combine Tripp and Tyler with Jon Acuff? A “fun night” at Orange Conference 2013.

What did we learn?

1. Mexican Roulette: Go to a mexican restaurant, don’t look at the menu, order a random number, and see what you get. This is a really good date night idea.

2. Phone Roulette: Take your friends phone, blindly scroll through their contact list, pick one person, press call, hand back to friend. See how long it takes them to figure out who they’re talking to. Rule: They cannot ask the person who they are, nor can they mention this is a game.

3. I’ll Give You a Million Dollars: The next time you’re hanging out with your youth group/ small group/ d-group/ community group/ access group/ accountability group, say, “I’ll give you a million dollars if you can name what (cereal, color, car, just whatever category you want) I’m thinking of. Ready, go. See how many guesses it takes people to guess what you’re thinking. It may take 10 guesses, it may take 200 guesses, but either way, when someone guesses it, fun times had by all. By the way, when they guess the correct answer, the million dollars isn’t real.

Well anyway, hope you enjoy the video, “Shoot Christians Like,” by Tripp and Tyler:

If your church is trying to figure out what to do and where to go when it comes to social media and mobile apps, read on. We have the privilege to share some words of wisdom with you from David Brazzle with Immanuel Lutheran Church, Palatine, IL. Below he shares how his church stays relavent in a digital, mobile and social media saturated culture.

Like many churches these days, we are doing our best to balance and weigh the cost-to-benefit ratio of what we do. Our mission is to spread good news of Jesus Christ into the community and world, while at the same time meeting the spiritual needs of our members and nurturing their faith. So, that leads to the question of how does one best do this with the resources that you have?

As the saying goes, God’s message is absolute and does not change, but the method of delivering His message must. During the last year we have invested in upgrading our web site and in upgrading our ability to live-stream and record our services and special events. Our A/V team took up the challenge and honed their skills. Our church leadership believed in us and made some investments in microphones and such. All of this was foundational in adapting our message to the realities of today’s culture. In particular, the young adults of today that all churches are seeking to reach use the internet and social media. If you’re not keeping an eye on your church members’ median age, you looking for trouble. With that foundation in place, the obvious end-game was to deliver our already-existing media content, blogs, newsletters, event calendar, classroom information, late-breaking news via dedicated mobile apps on both the iOS and Android platforms. In fact, the app was always in the plan as our end-game. The beauty of the ROAR app and the ROAR architecture is that the app automatically updates its content, all by itself. We knew that we had limited people and limited financial resources, that a brute force approach was not a viable, sustainable option. Instead, we found an elegant solution, that proved to work perfectly with the ROAR environment. It just works, without us having to do anything extra.

All of our leadership who have seen a preview of the app are so excited and highly complementary of how well it turned out. Our PK-8 grade school is already viewing it as a competitive advantage in the marketplace. Our Board of Elders and our Outreach And Assimilation ministries are also viewing it as a powerful new tool in reaching out into our community, our members, our surrounding community and to our non-member school families. Our A/V and web teams are excited because we are leveraging all that they are doing and making what they do even more valuable. ROAR and our app have exceeded our expectations in every way. Compared to the alternative of hiring a consultant to program apps in both iOS and Android, the challenge of maintaining them both, the flexibility that ROAR offers in importing existing media assets, at the relative costs involved… combine to make the ROAR solution a literal no-brainer.

If you’d like to see if a ROAR app is a good solution for you, please contact us and tell us about your church!

My personal favorite quote from Warren goes like this:

Prayer for the Warren family spreads like wild fire as leaders rally their communities together:

Do you see the impact? It’s not just in the “Christian community,” but influencing main stream media as well:

Let us remember the example of our leaders and comfort those who need comforting in hard times to come.

“Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves have received from God.” – 2 Corinthians 1:3-4

Other resources:

Christian leaders offer support for Pastor Rick Warren -Los Angeles Times

Christian leaders rally around Rick Warren after son’s suicide -CHRISTIAN TODAY

With The Death of Rick Warren’s Son Matthew, Christian Leaders From Around The World Send Prayers On Social Media -BREATHEcast

Vitriol Infests Rick Warren Family’s Grief -Sojourners

A recent post by Lindsay Christians with The Capital Times highlights multiple churches using social media.

To reach seeking or “unchurched” families, local churches have had to upend their print- and Yellow Pages-based marketing strategies in favor of Facebook pages, photo-saturated websites and carefully worded Twitter feeds. The change has happened fast — many churches report website redesigns and a shift to an online focus within the last three to five years.

After talking with several pastors, Lindsay points out a common theme: The old ways of advertising your church, like listing it in the Yellow Pages, are just not effective anymore. Pastors are quickly starting to see a great need to use social media in order to reach this generation of unchurched people.

“The front page of your website has replaced the front door for young adults and millennials,” said Pastor Brian Konkol ofLake Edge Lutheran. But making a web presence a high priority is harder for mainline churches. “We pay, like, $70 for a Yellow Pages listing,” said Jason Mack, an associate pastor at First Baptist Church. “Why are we paying for this? Who opens a Yellow Pages anymore? Zero people.”

It seems that social media is important in the church largely because according to the Pew study, “one-fifth of the U.S. public — and a third of adults under 30 — are religiously unaffiliated today.”

Just what does this mean?

the ‘nones’ — those with no religious affiliation — are on the rise, growing fastest among young people.

In the last five years, the number of self-described atheists, agnostics and those with “no particular religious affiliation” grew from about 15 percent to nearly 20 percent of all U.S. adults.

If a third of adults under thirty are religiously unaffiliated, and adults under thirty are the most likely of any demographic to use a social networking site of any kind, then some dots need to be connected… asap.

Attracting those “unchurched” people starts with a bright, engaging online presence. Most churches have a Facebook page (though some remain infrequently tended) and websites that include a tab like “I’m New,” “For Visitors” or simply “Welcome.”

Some churches will be spending all its marketing money on making sure their website looks good and is easily accessible. Many churches will be incorporating Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, iTunes, LinkedIn, Google Plus/ Google Places, FourSquare and Pinterest into their marketing efforts.

Linsday explains that a Facebook page can be an ideal space to give potential members a window into a church’s values in a way a quick ad or a long, carefully worded mission statement might not.

Read the rest of the article here: Marketing God: Churches turn to the web, social media to attract members

LINDSAY CHRISTIANS | The Capital Times | lchristians@madison.com

Does your church use social media? What platforms do you use? Facebook or Twitter? Let us know! 

Yesterday my church showed this powerful video before the Easter service started. It certainly caught everyones attention, including my own. At first I thought, ‘how cliché to show a video combining Jesus and one of the most popular social media sites of the day… Twitter.’

But then I realized, wow. This video really captures the message. We are so worried about offending people that we brush over some very important truths… Jesus’ message was offensive to many, and so should it be today. It’s easy to follow someone who everyone likes, but what do you do when that person steps out of your comfort zone?

It may seem dangerous to follow Christ, and it should be, but it is much more dangerous to choose not to follow Him.

Take a moment to watch the video and tell us what you think:

This video is from Igniter Media. Check out more of their videos here.

Try saying that thee times fast! Nothing like starting your day off with some good ol’ alliteration (That’s for all you fellow English majors… please tell me I’m not alone…)

So I was brushing my teeth the other morning thinking about what differentiates a good tweet from a bad one (anyone who does social media for a living understands how this sort of thing doesn’t easily shut off…) and I immediately made a list of three “tips” I’ve found to work particularly well. You can’t force people to like or retweet your content, but you can definitely encourage them. I’m not talking about saying, “hey, retweeeet this!” or, “pleeeaasee like this tweet!”

NO. Please, don’t do that. I will unfollow you. (half kidding)

I’m talking about techniques that simply make a good tweet. Nothing flashy, just delivering and pertinent information to your twitter audience. There’s no guarantee that these tips will give you a retweet (unless you’re paying someone to do that…) but they’re certainly worth a try.

I think it’s important to mention here that the goal of my tweets isn’t just to see how many RT’s I can get, but to truly encourage and facilitate conversations and engagement.

Alright, enough chit-chat, here they are:

Three Tried & True Twitter Tips & Tricks:

1. Use Google Alerts to find information pertaining to your topic, interest, or cause.

When you think about the fact that in one day:

• 2 million blog posts are written
• Enough information is consumed by internet traffic to fill 168 million dvd’s

… it can start to get a little overwhelming.

Hopefully you aren’t just trying to push as much information out there as you can find, but rather filtering through it all, picking the best and most relevant news, articles, posts, and videos to tweet to your audience.

That’s why I use Google Alerts. It’s helps me filter through all the information online in an efficient, easy and timely manor.

In Google Alerts, you can search through news, blogs, videos, discussions and books. The nifty part about Google Alerts is you can search keywords on the spot, or create a topic alert to deliver search results right to your mailbox as frequently as you like. I do both to make sure I get the most up to date information. If you tweet for an organization, focus on topics relevant to your industry. Google Alerts makes it super easy to stay true to your brand.

2. Don’t just tweet the title of the post. Once you’ve found an article or blog post that you find tweet worthy, don’t just copy and paste the title into your tweet. One, that’s borring, and two, if it’s really that good of an article, someone has probably already tweeted it, making your tweet old news. So my advice to you would be: actually read the article, and think about what it’s saying. Find an interesting point and reword it to fit in 140 characters, including the link back to the article. Again, if it’s a good article, chances are it’s already been tweeted a couple time, so you want to be creative and new. For example:

Would You Rather…. click on a tweet that said:

“Start with a Strategy on Pinterest.”

or

We went with the second one, and it worked pretty well. Just use your own voice!

3. Add your two cents. So now you’ve written about the article, included a link, now what? What’s going to make your tweet matter to anyone? Give your two cents about it! I think people want to know what you honestly think- even if they don’t agree. Adding your own thoughts makes your tweet real and personal, shows you aren’t a robot, and opens the door for others to share their thoughts as well. Just as with any relationship, it’s easier to open up with someone whose already opened up to you. You may be thinking, “… and how am I suppose to fit all of that in one 140 character tweet?” Don’t overcomplicate it. When I say add your two cents, I just mean add a word or two of your own. For example:

The point is to be real and honest, so if you like something, say that you like it! Chances are, others like it too and will want to agree with you. For those who don’t agree, it opens up the door for a friendly debate. The more engagement you bring on Twitter the better, so let the conversations roll.

Takeaway:

Do your research and be a real person. Don’t be afraid to have a personality, say what you think, and have an opinion.

Personally, my goal isn’t just to get retweets. It’s to truly deliver good information to my audience and encouraging them to speak up as well. Sure, retweets, likes and follows are nice, but at the end of the day, you have to ask yourself, “am I helping people or just adding to the noise?”

So what’s your goal on Twitter? Do you have any “tried and true tips” that you can share with us? Please do!