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.

1. Put the invitation in their language, not yours.
2. Ask some of them if your event is what they need. (It may be only what you and people like you need)
3. Make sure invitations make sense to people who have been around for less than 5 years. (“We’ve done this every year” means that there may be decades of people who don’t understand.)
4. Don’t make them feel guilty for missing, make them feel good for attending.
5. Ask them to attend, don’t tell them it is happening.
6. Ask someone who usually attends why they didn’t attend last time. If you accept “I had three other events” from a fan, maybe they had three other events, too.
7. “Everyone needs this” is not an invitation.
8. If you have a speaker, explain how his or her words will actually help them. Don’t tell them that “he’s always hilarious” or “she attracts huge crowds.”
9. Don’t use yellow ink to letter the announcement.
10. Use different announcements each week. Show that you care about asking different ways.
11. Give people an email address for asking for more information.
12. “I put all this effort into doing this for them and they didn’t show up”  means you didn’t talk to them.
13. After the event, if “you just had to be there” is the only way to explain the value, then they may not attend next time either.
14. Explain where the event is, when it is, and where to find more information.
15. “When can I pick you up?” is more inviting than “we’re having an event.”
16. Consider answering the real questions people have about events: How late  can I be? How anonymous can I be? What should I wear? How much do I need to know ahead of time? How much will I be embarrassed the first time I attend?
17. If it matters that people attend, then personally, face-to-face, taking time to listen, invite them.
18. If you don’t have the time to ask them personally, don’ t blame them for not taking the time to attend.

—

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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.”

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.

I’m a pastor, but my primary responsibility isn’t preaching. So I struggle with explaining what I do in terms that make sense outside church (or even inside church).

This week, I figured out one way to understand it.

Every Sunday, there is a GOD conference in Grabill, Indiana. There are 3 keynote sessions, one a 9 and two at 10:15. The latter is split along age lines,  with those younger than 6th grade having their own session.

Every week there are nearly thirty breakout sessions during the morning. Most are grouped by age.

Yesterday, I led 2 of those sessions. One was about word of mouth marketing. We talked about conversations that are rooted in our own experiences rather than in scripts that we have been given. Because I wanted to give them something tangible out of the class (I was thinking “kit“), I asked them to write down the answers to six questions, just so they could think about conversations.  (By the way, the first question? “What is the biggest complaint you have about Christians or church?” Word of mouth has to be authentic.)

The other was about how to read a story. This was with the oldest group of people at the conference, looking at a story all of them had read or heard several times. Using notes I had developed in a series at 300wordsaday.com, I walked them through the story from the perspective of the original listeners. (Yes, I repurposed blog posts to teach. In that group, it was new.)

The best part of many conferences is what happens in the hallways. I spent some time in the hall. I had a couple of great conversations with people. Some of it is coaching, some of it is just “touching”. Because most great conferences depend on volunteers, I need to do more of this. I did, however, leave notes for some of the breakout group leaders.

I missed a couple people I wanted to see, but did see the dad whose son lives across the street from ground zero at Fort Hood.  The dad was relieved. The son had been away for training for a couple of weeks.

I also work with conference logistics, particularly tech issues. We run a loop of announcements through the venue so I did a bit of editing on that Saturday evening and started it Sunday morning. I’ll be troubleshooting a video that didn’t run during one of the keynote sessions. We already started talking about how to avoid the problem through a change in process.

There are a number of special interest sessions that meet at other times. I spent Sunday evening with one of those groups, talking about how to build community by serving. As a result, next Saturday they will be doing some work in a local agency and then telling the story with video. They are 20 something. They have the tools, both to serve and shoot.

I’ve been thinking about social media conferences recently. I’ve wondered what I would say, whether I had anything to say. Looking at yesterday, I know the answer. We do it here every week.

In the process of reflecting, however, I found a challenge. If I were doing a breakout at a conference, I would do everything possible to make the session as useful as possible, because there would be one chance with this audience. Just because we run our event every weekend, it’s possible to get comfortable, to think “I can wing it this time.” I don’t think I have that option.

I suppose we are supposed to start everything positive we say these days with disclaimers.

• Susan Murphy let me look at a free early edition of her free ebook.
• Susan Murphy has encouraged my video production
• Susan Murphy has given me Tim Hortons coffee.
• Susan and Greg at lunch with Nancy and I once.

So now you know that my thinking could be colored by friendship. But I still love the new ebook that Susan just published. Creating video for the web is available today. This ebook takes an approach to video that is for people who know how to record video and now want to tell stories with moving images.

Susan’s starting point is with the story. (This comes from her years of experience in media, from shooting to advertising). Before shooting, she says, think about the story, about what you are wanting people to know and experience and understand. Think it through, talk it through, sketch it out. (She reinforces the importance of preproduction by illustrating this page with pencils.)

She moves to the production process, identifying the basic tools. Her basic video kit, which includes duct tape, grows from actually working (rather than some textbook).

In the post-production process, Susan acknowledges the power of Windows Movie Maker (as well as editing products actually costing money). As a MovieMaker user (who has also used AVID PC-based editing software), I know how much can be done with this software IF you start with the story rather than the features.

Throughout the book, Susan is relaxed, factual, and helpful. It could be because she teaches production.

I have done several video projects and know basics of production. What this ebook does for me is challenges me to move to a new level of caring how well I do.

Download it for yourself: Creating video for the web

A year ago, George Johnson didn’t have a job.

I’m not sure he as a job yet.

He looked, I know that. But when you live in rural Indiana and the thing you know best is how to shoot video, there aren’t lots of jobs. And when you have four kids and family around, moving to the coast isn’t exactly an option.

On the other hand, George has a feature-length movie which, a year ago, wasn’t even on his mind.

It wasn’t on his mind while the weather got colder last fall. Other movies were on his mind, movies close to financing, movies that fell apart when the economy fell apart. It wasn’t on his mind while his family was finding out that they could pretend that they were camping, in their house, in the cold.

I knew George was looking for work. I didn’t know how tight things were.

A couple weeks before Christmas 2008, I was talking with George after church. I knew that some people had helped him out. He was being George, positive thoughtful. He was talking about how things were really tight, about learning to sing in a dark house, and about how much he appreciated help.

Somewhat out of the blue, I said “What’s the movie?”

“What do you mean?”

“What’s the movie?”

“I don’t know. Which one are you thinking of?”

“What is the movie you are writing out of this?”

George looked at me and got all energized. “I’m eight pages into a script. I want to get it done by next Christmas. It’s called Homeless for the Holidays.”

A couple weeks later, he had a copy for me.

A week later he said, “don’t bother finishing that one, I’ve already rewritten it a couple times and have a draft out for companies to look at.”

A couple weeks later he said, “We decided to just do it. We realized if waited til we got money, we’d wait for years, so we decided to it. And since then, money has come to pay our bills. And a friend has a RED camera that he wants to use for a project.” I loaned him a Flip for vlogging.

There were casting calls and location shots ar our church and a $1.000,000 movie being shot for $20,000. There were stories about George editing all night and all day. And then the sneak preview was scheduled for a Monday in October, two weeks before the opening. Early Saturday morning, two days before, George posted a video saying that in the conversation from standard definition to high def, the movie had become “discombobulated.” I believe it’s a technical term. He had to start editing again. On Sunday morning, as we were playing a trailer for the movie, I looked in front of me and saw George, movie discombobulated, sitting in church. We saw each other for a minute afterward. He smiled.

That Monday night they showed the standard def version. On October 16, the final edit opened in Auburn, IN. On the 17th, it opened in Fort Wayne. It ran a couple weeks both places. It’s being screened some other places as well. George is working with marketing to chains as much as he can.

Homeless for the Holidays is about a advertising guy (and family) who loses his job, is blackballed, and approaches Christmas by watching his power be shut off. As happens by the end of most movies,  the dad finds a job, but not until the family has lost their house, accepted charity from an 8-year-old, and wrestled with Christmas.

It could be a completely fictional story, made in his spare time, by an unemployed camera guy and some friends. Or this all could be a completely True story about a guy who did what he thought God wanted him to do.

I just know that a year ago, George didn’t have a job. And a couple weeks ago I sat in a theatre and watched his movie. It looked like a real movie. And I cried. And wondered about leaps of faith. The ones George took because he had nothing to lose. The ones I don’t.

—

If, of course, you happen to run a theater chain, George might like to hear from you.

Homeless for the Holidays (IMDB)

Breathemotionpictures.com

I work at a church. Today, a bunch of people set up displays to talk about what they do and to invite other people to support them. As I was providing tech support, I realized that I needed to offer some suggestions for those of you who might be working in similar environments, places where non-tech people are trying to tell stories with technology.

• If you are going to set up a display somewhere, take an extension cord. And maybe a block plug so you can share power.
• If you are going to have someone show a presentation for you, clearly explain (in writing) what is on the disk.
• If you say that you are going to need a DVD player, please send a DVD recorded to play as a DVD, as opposed to a DVD used as a way to store several kinds of media.
• If you are sending a PowerPoint, compress the images so that someone doesn’t have to try to load a PowerPoint that is 268M.  (I recorded these tutorials a year ago for PowerPoint 2003 and PowerPoint 2007. Oddly, the whole world has not paid attention.)
• If you are wanting people walking by your table to watch what you are showing, use a DVD player with a screen larger than 4″ by 6″.
• If there will be a lot of noise in the room, don’t make the sound track be the only place you are telling the story.
• If you are putting titles on a slide, be sure that when your show is on a video monitor, the words are visible at the edges of the screen (because what you see on your computer screen isn’t the same as on a TV screen.)
• If you are putting titles on a slide or movie, use a clear simple large font.
• If you are wanting involvement with people walking by: large pictures, large font, simple story. Then, when they stop, you can talk with them.
• If you are really excited about what you do, have someone who isn’t help you with your project. You know too much of the inside story. You will skip the ideas that are important to people who don’t care yet. I promise.
• Smile.
• Figure out how to get part of your display off a table, higher than the crowd.
• Figure out how to get part of your display off a table, low enough for the people for whom table height is eye level.
• If you don’t understand technology, don’t assume that someone will. I’m not everywhere.
• Remember that the point is not the display. The point is how you are trying to change the world. The display needs to help others understand how they can do that, too.

…and remember, in the middle of all the important, huge, significant, life-changing work you are doing…take an extension cord.

A parable for Friday morning

Nancy and I were talking about a choir friend.

He directs a college-level choir. A singer has missed 20 rehearsals. He wants to sing at the concert.

His claim? “I know the music better than anyone else.”

He won’t be singing in the concert.

It got me thinking: what counts for singing in a choir? Knowing the music as it is on the page is an important part. Others things matter, too.

• Knowing how the director interprets those notes.
• Knowing how your voice sounds when you are in the middle of 16 or 80 or 300 other voices.
• Knowing how to hold your part when mixing with three other parts.
• Knowing how to take turns breathing so a note sounds seamless.
• Knowing how the director indicates starting and stopping (so you don’t stick out).

A solo act doesn’t worry about these things. A solo act can stand out, can be distinctive.

To be a choir, however, means knows as much about the community of singers as you know about the notes on the page. And to be willing, for the heart-stopping beauty of blended voices, to submit yourself to not standing out, to find joy in alignment.

This kind of submitting doesn’t mean ceasing to be you. Not at all. You are fully aware of how you are making adjustments all the time. And the more you practice, the more you know how to make your contribution to the best possible blend.

But developing a rich understanding of choral music takes practice. It takes presence. It means understanding that a choir isn’t an event, it’s a community.

This is the first in an occasional series expanding on the 8 ways to get invited back post. I talked about several things to give audiences that will let you have another chance to speak.

Lots of people really like Ikea. Good design. Functional products. When people buy from Ikea, they often get boxes. Several boxes. These boxes don’t look like what they see in the store. They look like boxes full of boards and bags.You get a kit. A very simple kit.

Many of us grew up building cars. Small cars. From Revell. We could never afford a real Mustang, but we could build one. Paint it. Keep it on our shelf.  We got a kit. A more complicated, less expensive kit than the Ikea.

Whether we want the look of fine furniture or the delight of owning a model of a dream, lots of people want kits.

Lots of people want life kits, too. They go to a presentation wanting to learn how to build their own success, their own model of your project, your story, your company. They attend a workshop promising that they will “walk away with a website/book idea/practical hand-on applications.” They take a class to learn math formulas or programming shortcuts. They want to build a resume.

They don’t want to do all the hard work of measuring and cutting and drilling and stamping from scratch. They know that they will still look like you, but that’s fine. They want something that works.

(Lest you think this is something I am ridiculing, one of my best examples is what we know as “The Lord’s Prayer” or the “Our Father.” Jesus, in the middle of a longer teaching, says “here’s a prayer model.” It can be used as is. It can be expanded on. It has proved to be pretty durable.)

If you are doing that for people, you are giving them a kit. To make that kind of presentation successful, whether it lasts 15 minutes or a day or a semester, here are 8 guidelines:

1. Provide all the necessary pieces.

Every board. Every screw. Every necessary idea or relationship or reference or example or theorem needs to be included in your presentation to give to your listeners. Whatever you want them to be able to build, whether it’s a plastic car or a business plan or a dream, has to made available to them.

2. Include adequate directions.

This is a linear kind of presentation. First you find this piece, then you add this piece. You aren’t trying to be creative, you are trying to be clear. So please be clear.

3. Make sure they are in the language of the kitbuilder, not the designer.

Ever read translated directions? They make us laugh. Then they make us cry. Use words that your audience knows. This isn’t the time to impress, it’s the time to not lose anyone.

4. Provide spare parts of the kind most likely to get lost.

A good kit always has some spare bolts or nuts or washers. A speaker giving a kit gives repetition.  At those points where people are most likely to be confused, repeat. If they are likely to drop the line of thinking, pick it up for them with a clarification, a reconnection to your theme.

5. Have someone who understands test the kit.

Many of us hate to do a presentation more than once. I understand. But you’re trying to give away understanding. You are trying to give success. So have someone who knows what you are talking about listen and critique.

6. Have someone who doesn’t understand test the kit.

What? Present again? Exactly. If you are going to help 30 people build this kit, this model, you need to have someone who is like them in ignorance test it. Otherwise you will frustrate 30 people.

7. Include a picture of the completed kit.

There are some jigsaw puzzles that come in plain white boxes. The challenge is the point. In most cases, however, you want to give your audience a picture of what the business plan or the prayer or the lifeplan will look like, sound like. That way, they can see whether they are getting it right.

8. Show how it can be customized.

Once you have clearly shown how to assemble the kit, show them how to make it their own. What kind of paint works best? What wears out? What do you with the geometry when you are measuring a lot rather than a piece of paper? How does this scale?

——-

Do you give people kits when you speak or teach? How do you make sure the audience understands? What kind of kits are you giving?

I used to read business stuff. Fortune, Harvard Business Review, BusinessWeek, management books. I gave up on that habit a few years back.

Last night, however, I saw a picture from by friend Shashi Bellamkonda. It showed several magazine covers, including the latest Harvard Business Review. On the cover, a picture of Peter Drucker.

I looked online for the issue.

In this post about the issue, Ellen Peebles reports on a conversation by business executives in celebration what would be Drucker’s 100th birthday. The leaders discussed four functions of a CEO. After discussing each function, the facilitator asked a Drucker-inspired question: “What will you differently on Monday?”

The question slapped me. I’ve taught a couple times this weekend. I’ve written. I’ve talked with Nancy. I’ve slept. I’ve seen a movie that made me cry and at least one TV show that did, too.

In this middle of all that direction and emotion and clarification and resolve, I desperately need that question. What will I do differently?

Notice, by the way, that this isn’t necessarily a question about my todo list. The question is not just about what  I will do. There are many things that are on the list because they belong there. They are part of my responsibility, my calling, my life.

However, as I look at what I am doing, how will I do it differently?

How will I respond to challenges to love, care, balance, simplify, focus, listen, go, stay? How will I take the Monday that has been handed me this week and live it differently? What, exactly (precisely, intentionally, concretely, specifically), will I do differently today?

Or won’t anything I heard or said matter?

(It can, by the way. Matter, I mean. It’s up to me to remember (and you, too).)