RSS feeds for congregational announcements?
Greg M. Johnson
One thing I observed is that using Microsoft Word, it's difficult to compose an email that makes it easy to see and comprehend a long list of some fifteen items. It comes across in an email where the user has to keep scrolling and scrolling. My take is that it's much harder to grasp the content in this presentation than it would in a paper sheet you can hold. If you are forced to grab with your mouse the long list and scroll through it, I believe there's a temptation for your eyes to glaze over.
An idea I had is RSS feeds. There are some blogs I follow and with a blog reader like bloglines.com or Google Reader, I can get an-up-to-date accounting of all the news that's coming in. I can see the titles in a convenient list, and the choice to ignore or read all is a very easy one. I'm wondering how well it would work to have this as a way of communicating congregational news. For my own internet habits, it's the perfect choice. I can see however two drawbacks:
1) Privacy. While an email can supposedly be read by many tech-savvy villains who choose to do so, an RSS feed can be read by anyone in the world, perhaps even some "bots". I wonder if that's a significant breach of privacy to have phone numbers in an RSS feed.
2) Technological hurdle. We already have some folks in the congregation who aren't on email, and I wonder if asking folks to go to an RSS reader could be too much for them. I know of some folks who chose to put Vista on their computers, and I think that these folks might have a hard time with changing their ways. I guess you don't want to make grasping a particular internet technology trend a prerequisite for serving in the church. (But email is already doing that!).
As an aside, I heard that a major charity in my county started sending out emails that are un-readable unless one goes and downloads some kind of reader from Microsoft. I am Seriously Unimpressed. It speaks to me of a CTO for the charity who is blowing cash on bells and whistles that are negative-value add. Besides, what about the donors who are on Linux and Mac?
--
"Too many lifetimes are consumed by an irrational rebellion against the bullies of one's youth."
Greg M. Johnson
http://pterandon.blogspot.com
John M. Hudson
The question is not, "How can I save some trees and some money?" Instead the question is, "What is the means or what are the multiple means for getting out the most information as possible about their part of the Body of Christ so that as many people as possible can participate in their chosen activities?"
Looking through the latter lens instead of the former will bring you to the conclusion that RSS feeds are a WONDERFUL idea -- ALONG WITH emailing (a PDF of the same thing you send out in an RSS from a blog), printed-and-mailed matter (a postcard is cheapest), inserts in the Sunday bulletin, text-messaging to Crackberry owners, the main page of your website, pages in Facebook and MySpace for your congregation, a message board in front of the church, a moving marquee in the narthex, blogging, as you mentioned, and simple phone-calling.
The means of communicating with many people effectively is incredibly fragmented. One now must use the most means possible to reach the most people. And the very savvy will receive the same message in redundant ways -- something about which I've never heard the very savvy complain. They will only be impressed with your use of multiple channels.
Now, about those trees: Trees are renewable and souls are not (at least not in the same manner of speaking as trees; you know what I mean). If you have to kill trees to reach souls, then kill trees. There are lots of other ways you can save energy and resources. You can still impress your congregation with the desire to begood environmental stewards, but DON'T stint on communication.
(Which is exactly what I'm telling council when I give them the very same presentation for an action plan for multiplying channels of communication in our congregation.)
Blessings,
joHn
P.S., right now Facebook is reaping blessings for us and we haven't even created a St. Philip page.
Greg M. Johnson
> And the very savvy will receive the same message in redundant ways --
> something about which I've never heard the very savvy complain. They will
> only be impressed with your use of multiple channels.
I don't have "text" for that reason-- I don't want my personal hour-to-hour life interrupted by garbage communication. I'd be willing to give the congregation one good read of a perfectly formatted email, or add it to the RSS feeds I check. But I would be very bothered if more than one electronic means were to ping me actively and directly. Hearing the same thing twice will make me put up my defenses against Information Overload. Would you want a recorded telephone message on all your voice mails-- cell and house and work?
I think what happened in our congregation was that it started out as a financial question. We had a big budget crunch and one thing that was looked at was how we print four pages of paper for every worship participant. If a staff person were already formatting a document for print, why couldn't they format something electronic? The first fix was putting all the needed announcements in a document that was multiple pages LONG (as emails are formatted, especially with Word as the composer). I started thinking about alternative electronic means.
Here's my question: how many folks who have mastered reading emails would object to being asked to start using an RSS reader (bloglines, my.yahoo.com, google reader, etc.)? If the staff were asked to send an email to anyone, I think the use of the RSS feed becomes a bust. Either you triple the work for the staff (maintaining a list of those on email-dist + putting into blog+writing original announcement), or you double the number of times someone gets "pinged" with the data. I think the RSS feed from a blog could be sold to the staff, as it's less work, and instantaneous to everyone.
The funny thing is that sometimes the "green" approach can also be the "fiscally conservative" approach. Sometimes capitalists and tree-huggers get embarrassed when that happens.
One time over ten years ago, our congregation's council decided to put the kibosh on long messages or repeating a announcement for more than "X" weeks. This was enforced on the boring, regular committees. The rule went out the window as soon as a specially-called and important committee needed to say a lot of things in the bulletin.
John M. Hudson
I was giving examples and perhaps got a little carried away. Much of this stuff does have to be "invited" or approved by the recipient. I know, the savvy aren't impressed by multiple channels. But younger folks are impressed when we "adults" work hard to communicate on their level. And that takes a lot of keeping up with. It changes constantly. As my son-in-law says, "Email is for old people -- no offense." I took none. My daughter texts me. I email jer back. Can't handle text. Mike Bennett on the other hand, a really old guy, texts like mad.
Yes, there are those who lack computers, cell phones, etc., etc. There also are those who toss the mail without looking at it. So that's were narthex bulletin boards, sandwich boards, kiosks and marquees are handy.
No one's going to do all or half or a quarter of these things, but I really do believe the more the better.
As far as ownership, I'm sure a workflow could be set up at a church just as we set up at the paper I used to work at where info could be dropped into a watch folder where various scripts massage the same info in different ways to sent to different media. And you'd seem like just the guy to set it up. ;-) ;-)
I just love to brainstorm.
John
-----Original Message-----
From: "Greg M. Johnson"
John M. Hudson 895 Brunswick Forge Road Troutville, Virginia 24175 Home 540.992.2058 Cell 540.293.0478