Are you following me? No…well you can.

Go to Twitter.com and get your own account. Then go to www.twitter.com/jeffwilson and keep up with what I’m doing, thinking, and everything else in my life.

Let me know if you start ‘twittering’ and I’ll follow you.

I knew he was the right guy immediately after the interview. His work was solid, cool, hip, and edgy. He’s a team player. He’s even keeled. And best of all he has tats!

Eric does some of his best work combining Flash animation with graphics. We regularly advertise on News9.com and NewsOK.com the online version of The Daily Oklahoman. I can’t tell you how many compliments he has received from his work. In fact, we were told they have a contest at NewsOK.com for graphic work that is done in-house and that many have voted his work better than those who work for NewsOK.com. I’d have to agree!

We’ve been working on some really neat ways to advertise VBS this year. I’ll say more about that in another post. But here’s a quick look at why I say…’He’s So Stinkin’ Creative’…(click here to view Eric’s work)

Great job Eric! I’m glad you’re on our team.

Read more about this…

• Ed Stetzer

Watch the interview…

• MMI Weblog

What is your reaction to this news?

You can read the book as well by downloading it from this link: Facebook for Pastors.

Great job Chris!

EMHS Prom 2008

• Weekend bulletin – articles are agreed upon by a team of people on Monday. Each article is 80 words or less. There are no graphics in the bulletin. It is written from the perspective of someone who is new to the church.
• Bulletin inserts – periodically we allow bulletin inserts that would inform people of a specific need or opportunity. Examples might be Ladies Retreat, Men’s Retreat, Camps, VBS, etc.
• Web site – this is our major form of communicating with those within and outside of our church. Weekly 35% of those visiting our web site are first time guests. Doing informal surveys, we have found that almost everyone has visited our site before coming to our church for the first time.
• eNewsletters – different ministries currently have eNewsletters that they send out monthly. These are phasing out at the end of this month. They are being replaced with the blogs that are available through our website.
• Email – our pastors correspond with our congregation and teams through this media on a daily basis.
• Interior signage – posters, banners, rotation slides on our LCD TVs throughout the building. We limit the number of slides to 8 so that they can be viewed in a short period of time.
• Small Group Newsletter – it is produced for our Small Group leaders weekly and distributed through Small Group boxes on campus and electronically for the groups that meet off campus.
• Blogs - we are able to use blogs through our web site. Individuals can subscribe either through an RSS feed or email subscription. They are the new way we are communicating with specific groups.
• We do not use platform announcements – about 4 months ago we stopped giving platform announcements on the weekends. This has helped our worship experience but caused panic and some confusion within the congregation. We are having to retrain them to read the bulletin and go to the web site.
• We also have ‘potty’ publicity – this is information in both the men’s and women’s restrooms in the stalls and above the urinals. I know…this sounds weird, but it’s very effective.
• Facebook – both our college and student ministries are using Facebook to communicate with students in and outside our church. In fact, it’s one of the reasons why we took more High School Students to camp last year than any of the other previous camps.

How do you communicate to those attending your church?

• Larry Harrison, Worship and Teaching Pastor at Henderson Hills, led a devotion. It was on why we do what we do…it’s all about the Gospel, the Good News. Larry did a great job as usual.
• We gave away another flying monkey.
• Terry Storch’s keynote was titled, ‘I’m an Idiot.’ He totally changed his keynote after being led by God to do so. I’ve noticed that when speakers do this it’s AMAZING. This was true of Terry’s talk. He hit it out of the park. Great job Terry!
• I announced that Terry was now a representative for ‘Bed Head’ hair products. He’s still talking to me.
• Breakouts went well.
• No more electrical problems in the Vendor’s Expo. Thank you God!
• Met with Nick Nicholaou to discuss the progress and process we are using to find a new ChMS. Glad to put a face with a voice.
• Paul ‘Batman‘ Braoudakis gave the final keynote. I was really glad to see that so many stayed for the final keynote. Paul challenged each person to be a ‘Change Agent’. This was the first time I’ve heard Paul speak. He did a great job.
• Many of the guys and gals headed to LifeChurch.tv for a tour of their production dept.

Thanks to Terrell Sanders and Mark Bennardo for asking me to be the emcee. I really enjoyed it and from the experience gained a new friend.

One thing I really enjoyed was meeting so many REALLY smart IT professionals. They have a passion for IT but more than IT they truly are passionate about the church and Jesus. It’s great to see how they are making a Kingdom impact. Thanks for the encouragement and I’m glad to have met each of you!

• Meeting and working with Mark Bennardo has been awesome. Thanks for the opp Terrell and Mark!
• I’m the emcee of the conference. I agreed before I saw what they wanted me to do. Duh…seems like I should know better after so many times.
• Tony Morgan hit it right on the money with his talk ‘10 Reasons Why Techies Scare Me’
• I hugged Tony on stage after his talk. Tony’s not a big hug fan.
• Got to hang with Terry Storch and Tony this afternoon.
• It was great seeing guys network throughout the day.
• I shot a flying monkey over two light fixtures and an air duct.
• Designing a gym to be a gym doesn’t mean it will work for a Vendor Expo. Especially when all the A/V guys bring in all their toys. Toys=watts which we didn’t have enough of today.
• New Cisco routers are holding up, but still seem a little slow with all the IT guys connecting.
• Hooked Mark Bennardo up with twitter. You can follow him at www.twitter.com/markbennardo.
• Jeff Hook really did a great job with his talk to conclude the day.
• It was almost comical watching Paul Braoudakis search everywhere for his keys. Reminded me of waiting after a youth event for a parent to pick up a kid.
• After a full day…my feet were KILLING me.

Tomorrow…

• 3rd keynote - Terry Storch (Can’t wait to intro Terry!)
• 4th keynote - Paul Braoudakis (Should I tell everyone about the keys?) oops…just did.

If you want to keep up with the conference (live) you can follow my twitters at www.twitter.com/jeffwilson.

• It’s focus is for the casual photographer.
• Offers 2gb of online storage.
• It offers these tools: cropping, red eye correction, sharpening, touch-up and more,
• Additional tools include: effects for changing colors, distorting images and converting photos to black and white.
• It uses easily understandable words to help the amateur make the changes they desire.
• Integrates with Facebook, Photobucket and Picasa, but not Flickr (boo!)

If you’d like to see some of my photos on Adobe Photoshop Express go to: http://in2photo.photoshop.com

I’d suggest trying it out, but I’m leaning more towards Picnik for my online editing.

Sunday night is a good example. From 10:30 past midnight we were under two NWA (National Weather Association) Alerts: a Severe Thunderstorm Warning and a Tornado Watch. If you’re wondering…”What’s the difference between a Watch and a Warning?” that would be a clear sign that you’re not from Oklahoma.

What’s the difference between a watch and a warning?
A watch means severe weather is possible during the next few hours, while a warning means that severe weather has been observed, or is expected soon. (information provided by the Storm Prediction Center)

Two things that help keep me alert to the weather are available free on mobile phones.

• Weather Alerts - via text messaging and email. To subscribe click this link ‘Weather Alerts’
• Animated Radar - via mobile phone with data. To view go to: www.k4togo.com.

Both of these services are made available for FREE from www.kfor.com TV. If you live in the OKC Metro area, or are planning to visit during April or May, I’d highly suggest subscribing and bookmarking both of these services.