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If you are a leader, designer or creative you know what I am talking about. Every few years and often sooner you have to reinvent what you do and how you do it. Today I stumbled onto Josh Hemsley’s design site. I am truly digging the attention to detail. Good work man. See Josh’s work and other talented designers on dribbble.com.

Is it time for you to reinvent? Post who inspires you.

Part I – Us

I am working daily to clarify my BIG DREAM but as of right now it’s making sure our kiddos know they are loved and that they have a solid foundation for life. To find out how to consistently love my wife Myra in the way she needs. We are both so broken it’s tough sometimes. By broken, I mean we have survived excruciating loss. I’ll have to write a book on all that but trust me when I say broken for us is sometimes best described as a black hole. So the first part of my ‘dream’ is to get ‘us’ right. That’s a huge deal.

Part II – Connected 

I would love to start a “connected” community hub that integrates tech/design/new media & a mentor/relationship with real accountability for people who want to step off a path that leads to nowhere onto a path with possibility. Accountability for personal goals but also measurement for real world – real impact goals.

To underline that while we have this awesome time on Earth we also are a part of a larger plan. We were created to love Him and love others. To share His story of sacrifice for us. He could have come to this earth to destroy us… to punish us… which is what we have seemed to do very well on our own. But He chose to send His son to let us know there is a different choice, even in pain, hurt and wounds — we could still choose to love.

Part III – Discovery

I think my dream is to be what I have always wanted. A real encouraging, loving, friend. The issue, for me at least to is being able to look past my own void and actually be just that. Most of the time I am the exact opposite. Especially to those I love the most. Not cool but true.

That’s a start for me. What’s your BIG DREAM?

Back in the good ol’ days when I started a small new media agency I used to love to tell clients ‘You pick the best brand and website in your industry and I’ll make yours better.’ I love a big challenge, I love the risk and the pressure. Give me a big vision and empower me to solve and execute that bad boy — you won’t be disappointed.

If you are the client. Pick a designer with a portfolio that you like! That’s the key. Then let them run with your project. If they are insightful and visionary and have some skills, you won’t be disappointed.

Design it like you own it. It’s like living someone else’s success even if for a short while. 

What’s on your desktop? Post Link.

Why do you think Android is leading Apple’s iPhone and how long will Blackberry last?

What’s on your desktop? Post a Link

Our staff is going through Cracking Your Churches Culture Code by Samuel Chand this month and BJ had us commit to a NO PETS policy on our staff.

No Problems
There are no more problems in our organization. Only challenges or opportunities. Problems are negativity and the solution is usually to get rid of them. Instead take some time to learn from whatever is going on and improve. Offer solutions and ideas instead of marinating on the issue. I talked with our Innovation Team about this constantly, that we are problem-solvers, we provide solutions — and we were not going to settle on complaints and issues unless someone wanted to figure out how to address it, creatively and constructively.

No Excuses
Excuses happen when things are not going so well. It’s a defense mechanism. How many organizations do you know that give an excuse for how and why they do what they do? Take Responsibility. Address the hard truth about performance and effectiveness. If one approach is not working then try a different approach. I read once how Michael Dell empowers his employees to take risks and if the venture fails or not working out as expected the leader had to know when to pull the plug. That’s it. We are all going to mess up, our ideas do not always work — we’re human. Just don’t expect to clean a mess up by pouring more stuff on top of it or even worse make excuses for why it is not effective.

No “They”
I hear this at least once a week. They said… Usually they is one person who decides that they are representing a whole group of people. How many times are we guilty of building a case and adding a few extra people? Stop giving power to they. If you have something to say, say it directly to the person who can do something about it. Matthew 18:15 says something about that.

No Secrets
We recently listened to The Speed of Trust by Stephen Covey. Every team and organization must operate in a culture of trust. Without it your cost will go up and speed will go down. Trust is simply “Character + Competence”. To have trust you must be able to communicate directly with one another. To kill trust, do just the opposite: don’t communicate directly others, just complain or gossip to everyone else — or keep “secrets”. Secrets are the not-so-silent trust killer. If you are going to solve problems or opportunities together you have to be willing to communicate openly and honestly.

Sorry, PET lovers. There not allowed here anymore.

When designing, developing, drafting a marketing plan or trying to problem solve in general I like to boil things down to the basics and use what is necessary and/or effective. Here is a quick list of the organizations and sites that I have peeked at most this year. Some are simple and some complex. Each of these sites have a different purpose and focus but all do a good job of carving out their own path.

BTW, All of these organizations have something in common — their culture, brand and purpose is clear and well executed. Online and Off.

• Parkcommunitychurch.org (just good)
• Marshillchurch.org
• Lifechurch.tv (smart)
• Apple.com
• Lakewood.cc (excellent database + crm + metrics under the hood)
• Marshill.org (breathe)
• Northpointonline.tv
• Livetheme.tv (good idea)
• Mtv.com
• Hillsong.com

Ready to rock out a new solution for my church. It’s clean and simple for sure but it needs to integrate better with what’s happening online. We should integrate a GFC blog stream video & text, add a layer over Facebook (API) and even look for a more integrated media toolset to feed the rapidly growing demand for mobile devices. Also, while we are under the hood, ramp up analytics and CRM functionality to improve our connection/communication.

• Gfcfamily.com

What sites inspired or influenced you this year? Or which did you use the most? Post a link/comment

Build it today, test on your iPhone today. (Release to app store 10 Days)

So I have wanted to build an iPhone app for about a year now and received several cost estimates from excellent companies SubSplash, MobileRoadie and a few others. We will most likely move ahead and invest a bit in the next year for mobile media but before we totally took the plunge I wanted to test just how popular and useful an iPhone mobile app would be.

If you have been looking for a simple way to build and fairly simple way to publish an iPhone app and really don’t want to invest thousands just yet, I would recommend AppMakr. You can design and build straight forward apps pretty quick and if you know some HTML and CSS you can push the functionality a bit.

Building is the easy part actually, it’s connecting and publishing to the Apple iTunes App Store that’s a bit complex, at least at first. I’ll outline that process in a future post. If you don’t want to figure the second part out AppMakr will publish for you at $1,000.00 (each release).

Give it a try, I think you’ll dig it. Here is the direct link to the Grace Fellowship Church app. Released today. Looking forward to checking out the stats. Have fun.