Are you looking for a place to try new skills, to test new ideas? I’ve got a great place: December.
Look at December as part of 2010 ( month 0 if you will). Identify the new thing you are wanting to do starting January 1. Start doing it December 1. By the time you get to January 1, you will have discovered bugs, weaknesses, challenges, tricks, opportunties.
This works for personal goals (be nice, walk a mile a day). Will it work for business? You tell me.
Posted in just musing
I’m reading about friends working on their goals for next year. I’m always jealous of people who are doing that kind of goal setting.
However, as I was putting up Christmas lights today, having read about one of those people, I thought. “Why wait a month to start? If it’s important, start now.”
I could, I suppose, worry about what I won’t get done before the end of 2009. That’s a long list.
But what if I rolled December into 2010? I could have a 13 month year. I should be able to get everything done if I have an extra month.
And, by starting this week, I’ll be a month ahead of everyone else when they get to 2010.
Posted in just musing
I’m supposed to be writing a post on learning. More accurately, I’m supposed to be writing a post to learn. In the process of writing, I often discover what I am thinking.
Unfortunately, there are too many posts in my head to be able to focus. Here are some of them.
1. Has anyone ever used M&Ms as a way to illustrate why large pictures are too big to send through dial-up connections? (“Pictures are made up of lots of dots, like M&Ms. When you try to pour a million M&Ms through a vacuum cleaner tube, it takes a long time. If you use a fire hose, they are faster. If you are using a storm sewer pipe, the M&Ms would travel almost instantly.”)
2. What if a church used a .mobi and put just the church schedule on it? That way, people with smart phones could find out what time the event was starting, or what room they were supposed to be in.
3. What if you wrote a post that was a conversation with your daughter, describing why she may not need a smart phone, giving her the opportunity to explain why it would be of value, and inviting readers to help sort out the two sides? Would that work?
4. There are a couple cool posts at choralnet.org, pointing back to a couple posts I’ve written here. The comments on “It’s not just about attendance” (which is a post about my post “you gotta practice to sing in the choir“) are particularly delightful as real choir people talk about the community that forms around choirs. I’d love to write about how posts can resonate with unexpected audiences.
5. I need to make a list of all the video and photo projects I am working on, but there wouldn’t be time. However, it could be a useful primer on how saying no is a good thing.
6. Some friends in different industries are thinking about social media. I know that there are millions of “how to” posts, and hundreds of “why to” posts, but I’m thinking about a couple, “knowing what I know about you, I think you need to think about trying these two things. In particular, because this part of your audience isn’t on twitter, don’ worry about it now, but expand what you are doing in ___ and ____ and ___” posts.
7. My three words for the year were singing, focus, and deliberate practice. With a month left in the year, it is time to see how I’m doing.
8. One piece of my past caught up with me in a delightful and humbling way today. There are elements of relationship that I need to think through as a result. How and why do our relationships from long ago connect to those now?
See why I have a hard time getting one simple post done?
Give me some time and you may see some of these show up here or other places. In the meantime, thanks for listening. And, as always, feel free to offer suggestions.
Posted in just musing
Dear audience.
We are thrilled that you are here. We are glad that you have decided to spend an hour listening to your child and the other 150 children that are singing in this concert.
As you are waiting for the concert to begin, here are some thoughts to help all of us enjoy the concert.
Different kinds of choirs sing different kinds of music. When show choirs have soloists, the music is arranged to allow for applause. Most arrangements for children’s choirs do not have those breaks. If you clap, that noise overwhelms the singing that follows. After the song is over, soloists will be identified for applause.
We understand that too often we have said, “you don’t clap for soloists in serious music.” Too often we have acted as if everyone knows when to clap and when not to clap. We have made it be a measure of “appropriate concert behavior.”
We apologize for that elitism. We apologize for not explaining why to hold your applause. We apologize for not explaining the differences between styles of music and what that means for an audience.
While we’re at it, we probably should tell you that when you are 10 and you are trying to look at the director and remember your notes and words and listen to the piano and to the person next to you, a camera flash is really distracting. So is seeing you walking across the back of the room or having you walk out in the middle of the song. You understand how hard it is to concentrate.
Speaking of concentrating, you know how hard it is when you are trying to talk on the phone a two-year-old starts to talk or an infant starts to cry next to you? It’s the same in a room like this where there is singing without microphones.
This is, of course, an imaginary letter. We would never take the time to explain to our audiences how to be an audience. We would rather be frustrated.And, after all, they should know.
But what if we did explain? What could it change?
Posted in just musing
We share a phone plan in our house. A year or so ago, Andrew got a blackberry curve as his phone (his dollars, too). I never could quite justify the expense of a smart phone and so have ‘struggled’ along.
I say ‘struggled’ because it has been pretty easy. However, this week I started a 2 month test. Andrew downgraded (getting married next June is making money more real). I have his old BB.
My question for myself is simple: do I get a dollar a day of real value? Not fun, not sheer connectedness, value.
I’ll let you know.
Posted in just musing
Most days I share some time in an office. It’s small, enough for two computers, two desk chairs, two plastic floor mats, and not much else. I share the office with my social media partner.
Nancy Swanson and I have been social media partners since we said we were completely committed to each other 26 years ago last March 12. (For the people who think I am too indirect, that was the day we got married). Long before the term was invented–and before many people using social media were invented–we were learning how to connect with each other and together, with other people.
When I started asking some other people 5 questions, I knew I wanted to ask Nancy, too.
1. How do you use social media tools to stay connected with your kids? How is this different from and how is it an extension of how you relate to them off-line?
I love being able to have quick conversations with my kids via Facebook or text messaging. Andrew used Twitter to keep us informed of his location and experiences while he traveled the country last summer.
Some people think that social media tools are quite impersonal and cold, but we probably talk more often (or at least have touches) than we would by making phone calls. Of course, there’s nothing like a face-to-face conversation that ends with a hug, but we all agree that we’re communicating well this way.
2. You have become a social media advocate. You got the Fort Wayne Children’s Choir using a blog for a tour this summer (FWCCNotes.wordpress.com). You got your mom on Facebook. You have resisted tweeting yourself, but you have your husband’s account open often. What do these tools let people do, especially in your non-profit and family settings?
The FWCC blog came about as a way anyone could read about the choirs’ tour to Newfoundland in July 2009. Traditionally, the tour manager has written long emails just to the families of the singers on tour. With the blog, linked to our website (fwcchoir.org) anyone who looked at the website had access to the daily reports written by several people on the trip. Two other children’s choirs that are considering going on the same tour have called us asking for our advice, and we have directed them to the blog posts. One of the chaperones used Facebook to share photos and video of the singers.
My kids calls me a stalker on FB, because I keep track of them by following their status updates….and I make comments. I also know what’s happening with my niece and nephew’s families. It’s nice to be able to encourage my family and friends by commenting on their posts.
Recently, the choir joined twitter (@fwcchoir). I’m using it to announce concerts, fundraisers, special events, and rehearsals for the choir. We also have a Facebook fan page where we share more details about concerts. In June, I used it to announce a special performance to be given by the touring choirs, and several people came to the concert as a result of seeing it on Facebook.
We’re just getting started, but as other FWCC staff members begin to see the value of marketing/networking through Twitter and Facebook, we hope to increase our presence in Fort Wayne.
3. You have moved been a milk maid, secretary, community theatre pianist, dental assistant, missions major, bookkeeper, accounts payable clerk, gardener, cook for groups up to 120 people, college admissions office manager, children’s choir volunteer coordinator, and a couple other things. What are the common threads the run through all of those things you have done?
Most of my jobs have been about people–relationships. (Even growing up on the farm–there is a relationship that develops between the farmer and his animals.) I’m a listener and helper. I’m also a detail person, making sure everything is done correctly and on time. I’m usually managing things behind the scenes, rather than being the person on stage getting all of the attention. I like to help others be the best they can be.
4. You started meeting online people about three years ago when Chris Brogan spent the night. Has it been scary meeting people? (@robhatch, @megin, kat, @lizstrauss, @suzemuse, @g_reg)
To clarify, Chris Brogan came to Fort Wayne to attend a conference (an excuse to meet Jon) and needed a place to sleep. He visited a Children’s Choir rehearsal, stayed for supper, and we showed him around Fort Wayne. It was delightful to finally meet Jon’s “internet friend,” as Andrew described him. Just tonight at dinner we were bragging about, now famous, Chris Brogan sitting at our dining room table. I’m glad we get to call him friend.
Meeting Jon’s on-line friends has been delightful..and a bit scary. I am not a professional blogger. I don’t have a business blog. I only occasionally write posts for my own blog. Those mentioned above all had spent time conversing with Jon through blogging, email, Twitter and even over the phone. They didn’t know me, other than what they read about me in Jon’s blog. But, it’s been wonderful to meet some of those on-line friends and to be able to know them as off-line friends.They are as delightful in person as they are on Twitter! There are a few more I’m anxious to meet.
5. You are a careful writer (gnmparents, the hopeful gardener). You think and weigh and revise. As you write, who do you have in mind? How large or small it the audience you are seeing?
Most of my writing is just for me. It’s a way of getting my thoughts out of my head. It’s not a professional blog and isn’t about me being an expert at anything. My audience is small (unless someone Tweets a post), and when I started blogging, I was really scared of who would read it. I think that’s why I’m so careful. I want my words to convey the right message. To be encouraging. To be thought-provoking. I don’t expect to ever have a large audience. It’s gratifying to know that there are a few special people who appreciate what I’m saying.
——
Nancy writes at The Hopeful Gardener and makes pies at home.
Posted in just musing
In my ‘draft’s’ folder is the beginning of a post about why pastors shouldn’t tweet.
My point was going to be that people should tweet, not pastors (or CEOs or plumbers or any other role). My point was going to be that we should be people who turn out to be pastors or CEOs or plumbers. Rather than being about broadcasting our business, we should live and let that show the validity of our business (especially when our business is life).
I got stuck as I was writing that post because, after all, there are reasons to bring business to twitter. All the time we bring our positions to facebook. We create fan pages for our companies and our churches and our books. And so to say “should” is to be needlessly purist.
Sometime in the midst of thinking about the post, I read an article by Scot McKnight (twitter theology). He looked at the tweets of a bunch of pastors and discovered that we talk a lot about sports and celebrities He writes:
We also regularly discover who is meeting with whom (and the “whom” is always a notch above the “who”), or where someone is traveling. We hear about accomplishments but almost never any failures or disappointments, making the Twitter world largely a happy face community.
And he’s right. Though we pastors do talk much about our disappointments with not having coffee and we do yell about the failures of lousy drivers.
But it is hard to not just be positive or cranky. You don’t want to be preachy because you want to engage in conversations because you care about people. You know that there are lots of people who are feeling incredibly beat up by church and you don’t want to add to that. So you try to find a balance.
And then, life happens. As pastors, our jobs include talking with people in pain. When you are having conversations with people about things that break your heart because their heart is being broken, you just can’t share that information on twitter.
And so we, or at least I, often don’t mention those things at all.
Until today I tweeted this: there are some conversations I have that would break your heart.
and willconley777 said: Good. Break them. We need the emotional truth.
and Will’s right.
But I don’t know what it means.
I don’t know exactly how to tell in 140 characters that there are people who have huge gaping holes in their hearts and they do things that devastate the people closest to them and sometimes they do it in the name of God and sometimes they do it without thinking at all about anyone other than themselves.
And I don’t know exactly how to tell in 140 characters that in the middle of that immense pain I sometimes talk to those devastated people about a God who understands what it is like to experience betrayal and abandonment and insolence and misunderstanding and judgment…and mercy.
And I don’t know exactly how to say in 140 characters, without sound trite or cliche, that I care or that I understand. (I have a hard time doing that face to face with infinite characters. )
And I don’t know how to say in 140 characters that some people wanted to help some other people have Christmas on the same day that some other people were fretting about how they were going to have Christmas and that a friend got to pass that news along.
And I don’t know how to say in 140 characters that after 10 years with a group of (formerly) young people, their leader is moving on but cares much about them and is working to make it be a smooth and challenging and forming and stimulating transition. And that I’ll be working with the leadership team to help it work.
And I don’t know how to say that I’m kind of tired but it is a good tired but draining but I love what I get to do even when it exhausts.
I don’t want to be a pastor tweeting. I think we probably need fewer, not more. But people struggling to be clear and helpful and caring and healing who end up, much to everyone’s surprise, being employed as shepherds? I’m guessing that we could use more of those.
I could, anyway.
Because sometimes I’m human, too.
Posted in just musing
I hear it all the time. I say it some of the time.
“How to I get more people to come to our workshop, party, social event, choir rehearsal?”
We plan an event. We put out some announcements in whatever the usual announcement channels are. And then, when people don’t attend, we say “We asked them. They knew about it. It’s their loss. They must not care enough.”
Maybe they do care. Maybe they just don’t think that you care about them.
Here are 18 ways to help you help them attend an event.
—
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Posted in just musing
As you approach the training session, it’s clear that everyone already knows this material. At least they think they do. It’s a safety procedure that has been around forever, but people are still getting hurt. It’s the history of the company that gets reviewed at an annual retreat. Or, like tonight, it’s the Beatitudes.
Lots of people have heard of the Beatitudes, the beginning of the sermon on the mount, the words of Jesus in Matthew that start, “blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” People who barely remember Sunday School, people who went to Mass occasionally, people who have memorized the whole Bible, these are people who think they know this text.
Tonight I will be talking with a small group of guys about these words. And I thought, “where do I start?” And then I remembered that I wrote a post about “8 ways to get invited back.” I listed 8 things that speakers can metaphorically give away. One of them is lens cleaner.
Think of the too-familiar subject matter as a pair of glasses. They give the group members a way to look at the world around them, to understand how the organization sees things. Sometimes glasses get smudged, we lose our ability to focus. We need to clean them off.
Here are 8 ways that help.
1. Have them take off the glasses so they (the glasses themselves) become the focus. You can’t really see smudges. They are too close to the eyes. You just aren’t able to see clearly. In order to see that there is a problem, you need to take your glasses off and look at them.
Tonight, we’ll read slowly through the Beatitudes. We’ll talk about the images. Rather than using them to look at how to live, we’ll look at them. That will help us see where they have gotten blurry for us.
2. Rub gently so you don’t make permanent scratches. It’s possible to rub so hard with the wrong kind of cloth that the glasses are ruined. You don’t use sandpaper. You don’t use acid.
I could get in their faces, complaining about everyone who has ever taught them before. I could, in the process, undermine the very idea of teaching. It won’t help. It will hurt.
3. Do a before and after vision test to find out what they really see. If I look at a light before I clean my glasses and then look at it after I clean them, the difference is evident. If I never looked ahead of time, however, I wouldn’t know that there was a problem. If I never looked afterward, I’d never believe there was a change.
We’ll start tonight by saying, “what do you remember of these, without reviewing?” We’ll start by saying, “what do you think it means to live by these?” After our conversation, we’ll say, “how does that help?”
4. Help them understand why the glasses get smudged. I grilled burgers last night. Today my glasses are smudged with grease spatter. It always happens. I always forget.
Tonight, we’ll talk about how we pile expectations on these words that Jesus likely never intended. As we bring agendas to the text (“Christ followers are supposed to be wimpy – see that ‘meek’?” “poor in spirit. That means that you can have as much money as you like as long as you stay spiritually humble.”) we end up in peculiar places, places Jesus never intended. By moving slowly, looking the words, we’ll see how to go back to the words.
5. Usually, the glasses themselves are fine. Most of the time, we don’t need a new set of glasses, we just need to clean them.
I will not walk in tonight and say, “Toss out those words, those ideas. We’re starting over. Blessed are the greedy.”
6. Teach them that they can clean their glasses themselves. You don’t have to go to the optical shop to have your glasses cleaned. You can learn to do it yourself. It may take practice, but you can learn.
This group has been meeting for awhile. I’m doing what I can to model this process of looking carefully, of being thoughtful, of taking your time to look at the things you usually look through.
7. Remind them that they can build cleaning their glasses into their schedule. I always forget. I end up squinting. I end up with headaches. I wouldn’t need to, if every morning when I put them on and started looking at the world around me, I spent a couple minutes cleaning my glasses.
8. Have them put their glasses back on. You have clean glasses. Very nice. They are useless for seeing unless you put them back on. You have to take the focus off the glasses and use them to focus on life. The goal of life is not clean glasses. The goal is to live, seeing clearly.
Tonight, we’ll close by talking about how things look now, how things can look tomorrow morning. We’ll practice looking through.
So that’s it. 8 ways to help an audience clean their glasses, renew their vision about your organization, project, group, goal. If it helps, let me know.
—
For a discussion of this text in Matthew, see “what counts as” and “dear friend” from my blog 300wordsaday.com.
For another in this series, see “8 ways to give an audience a kit.”
Posted in just musing, teaching
General Fentiman was found dead in his chair. It wasn’t really his chair, but it was where he always sat by the fire in the common room. He always arrived at 10 and sat in his chair until supper. Until the day he was found dead in his chair, late in the afternoon.
It was shocking and sad, but not unexpected. A week and a half later, things became more complicated. There were questions about the time he died. If he died before 10:37, this time his sister had died, her heirs would get her substantial estate. If he died after her, his heirs would get the estate.
After much work, Lord Peter Wimsey works out an explanation of a death the night before. Everything makes sense, but the theory involves moving a body through a busy private club. That seems impossible. Until Lord Peter says:
“Wasn’t there just one period when one could be certain that everybody would be either out in the street or upstairs on the big balcony that runs along in front of the first-floor windows, looking out–and listening? It was Armistice Day, remember.”
Mr Murbles was horror struck.
“The two-minutes’ silence? –God bless my soul! How abominable! How blasphemous! Really, I cannot find words. This is the most disgraceful thing I ever heard of. At the moment when all of our thoughts should be concentrated on the brave fellows who laid down their lives for us–to be engaged in perpetrating a fraud–an irreverent crime.”
In 1928, the time of the story (and of the first publication of The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club), Dorothy Sayers could count on everyone understanding that at the 11th minute of the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month, everything in Britain would stop. The country remembered the death of a generation of men less that two decades before.
We don’t understand that. In our lives there is no time where everything stops and everyone understands. It’s not the same hour and the same day for “everyone” any more. Our connections across cultures and countries and continents make finding common time, let alone common ground, impossible. And it is not unusual for many of us to have connections with people who were, for our parents generations, enemies. Speaking in World War Two terms, it is possible for the child of an Allied soldier to be friends with the child of an Axis soldier.
All of our busyness and our confusion about sides may lead us to overlook the people we each know who, in spite of politics, have decided that protecting the lives of people they love and values they saw as worthwhile were worth risking their lives, and often, losing their lives.
We aren’t in the US good at finding a common time to be quiet in respect and honor. Today, at least, let’s find a common moment to softly say thanks.
To Arnold (dad) and Eugene and Gordie and Ken and Kermit (who I never had a chance to know) and Jerry and Nels and Ben and Chuck and Paul and Nate and Ken and Jason and Ed and Margaret and Brad and Bill and others who I cannot remember right now, thank you.
Posted in just musing
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