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Today was just one of those days.
It’s been a long day. I put in a 9 hour day a the office. then came home and ate dinner with the boys and put them to bed, then started working for another 4 hours.
Finally got to hang out with my wife for a half hour and just talked.
The big struggle for me today was being simultaneously aware of my strengths and weaknesses and the battle royal going on between them. I dream about the big picture, and the management of the small details drives me flippin’ crazy. I have huge dreams tempered by the lack of people to fill niche roles within my ideal staffing structure…It’s just me. I’m managing IT which means purchasing tech, strategizing, networking, security, troubleshooting and more. I manage communications which means bulletins, website, promotions, graphics, announcements and more. I manage a bookstore, that has an amazing team of committed people. At times, I have my hands in media worship design…And my heart is in strategy, big picture, big vision, where are we going and what does it take to get us there?
I’m not trying to whine, I promise, just sharing why there’s a thousand webs of information blasting in my head all day…
Last week, I created a multi-nodal org chart that includes all areas I want covered with staff or volunteers. It was mind-blowing. I sometimes feel like I bit off more than I can chew. And my dear friend Neeraj asked me today…
If you don’t do it.. then who is out there that will? If your answer is nobody.. then you know who it’s on?
That’s an invitation that I warmly accept with great hesitation…
I guess it’s on me. I guess it’s on you. I guess it’s on us to decide whether or not we want to be a part of pushing this big rig forward…
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League of Typefaces
This is hilarious.
I heard about it on Net@night last night, then Holy Cow and Neeraj posted to it as well…
By the way, don’t cliclk on the link to College Humor, it’s vulgar and well…Frat house humor…
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Proofing Matters
There are people out there who would love to check your work and weed through the small details.
Find someone who can help…
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This week in Prefab: MK Again, Sunset Breezehouse
I wish I could find a plot here in the city, and order up one of these beauties. The Sunset Breezehouse is exactly what you’d imagine: A place for the breeze to flow.
Outdoor/Indoor living are seamless in this model. There’s literally a glass door, an entire wall of glass doors or clearstory windows in every room…even in the bathroom in some models…could be dicey. Outdoor living space with decks and verandas built right into the plan are also included.
The prefab/modular nature means you can also build to suit your needs. just add another section as needed. MKD also uses sustainable materials as available and factory building processes. Rather than workers driving to a buildsite everyday…and delivering materials to the worksite everyday…everything goes in bulk to the factory where it’s built assembly line style…it’s the IKEA model…reduce transportation and material waste and drastically reduce the build time as well. Good for you, good for the environment…
Next week, we’ll check out the SwellHouse from the Office of Mobile Design.
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A Few Ways Twitter has been useful…
Twitter.com is not just fluff. There’s a fair share of “Making a sandwich” and “drinking my seventh Starbucks,” there’s also a lot of useful ways to use Twitter.
A few ways i’ve seen Twitter be a useful little web app.
- Comcastcares – Comcast has a person on twitter who scans twitter for complaints about Comcast. I’ve done my fair share in the last 3 months. Comcastcares actually responds, and apparently is a customer service big wig who can make things happen and get problems resolved. This is a great customer service tool, even if you’re usually pissed with the service by the time you make a post on twitter (tweets as us nerds call them)
- I put up a post on twitter about how I love getting food from our CSA share (community supported agriculture – we own a share with some friends and get a bag of veggies straight from the farm each week). One of my twitter friends was interested but had never been able to get connected to a farm before. I was able to quickly pass on info to her and hopefully she’ll be supporting a local farmer soon too.
- A while back I posted on twitter that I was working on some new web strategy ideas. A twitter friend, and well respected authority on the issue, responded that she would review my strategy docs and give feedback. It was very helpful in framing this new project.
- Had a friend who needed a recipe for chicken breasts. Hit reply, great dinner.
- Book suggestions
- Music suggestions
- Software suggestions
- Idea sharing
- Link sharing
- Useful work-related connections
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New Recipe: Pasta with Summer Veggies and Chicken
I’ve got a new homemade recipe over at Tastyplanner.com
Sarah said it’s one of the top recipes I’ve ever made…I loved it too.
It’s easy, but I do suggest slow cooking the chicken. I came home for lunch and tossed it in the oven, then just took it out when I got home later in the day.
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Context over Dogma?
Sometimes we get stuck in the rut of thinking the church should have one look, one feel, one experience, one message that hasn’t changed in two thousand years. The reality is that even Jesus put his message in context for the people he was communicating to. When he talked to fisherman he used fishing metaphors. When he talked to farmers, he spoke of the grains in the field.
Dogma is the hard and fast rule. The way things were, and to the dogmatics, the way things should be. Context is the variable that is constantly changing. The mold isn’t fixed. People are different. People who live a mile apart can have tremendously diverse contexts. Things that were once solid, welded, defined, are now taking new shapes and providing flexibility in our experiences.
The Gina Project at BMW represents an aggressive shift in thinking about how we can experience our environments. The user defined experience is going to change the way we do things. Even in the church. Whether it’s through providing content at the touch of button or having our people be a part of developing content and the community around it.
Are you flexible? Are you ready to reach people in their context? Put your innovative foot forward and think about how people experience Christ in your community, or how they could? Be there.
If the church really is the body and Jesus the head, then we should have in mind the human way of doing things. Responding and anticipating the felt needs of our communities.
Check out this video on the GINA project:
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This Week in Prefab: MK Solaire
The MK Solaire is another prefab design from Michelle Kaufmann Design.
MK Solaire incorporates outdoor and indoor living spaces with the intentionality that Michelle Kaufmann is known for.
Some elements that connect the inner sanctum to the outer world:
- Light court skylights for natural lighting
- Green roof
- Clearstory windows
- Decks and Patios as living space
- Natural materials
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More Shots of the Offspring.
Taken this weekend at the park with Elliot, Levi, Mommy, Daddy, Erin and Ezra. What a great park, right on the edge of north Minneapolis. Also, a few shots from Daddy’s day with Elliot and Levi at LegoLand at Mall of America…
The extended gallery…
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Time Capsule
Time Capsule will be my new wireless network at home. It will also be the first layer back-up for the family photos, the music library, and all those Redwire Files that are just waiting to be zapped by a hard drive crash. Still need some redundancy and offsite back-up, but I’m excited about this first layer being accomplished with the style and intuitive usability of an Apple product.
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Living and Working
I just watched the 2007 TED Talk from Jaime Lerner. He’s an architect and city planner from Curitiba, Brazil, often looked upon as the most progressively planned city in the world.
I love how Jaime Lerner starts with,
“City is not a problem, it’s a solution.”
One of my growing frustrations since I came back from France, is the dependence I have on our cars. Even in North Minneapolis, which is an urban area, the reality of using our public transit to get anywhere is largely hopeless. It takes forever. One of the problems as Jaime pointed out is the lack of mixed use space in our city and the relative lack of opportunity to Live and Work in the same neighborhood.
My wife and I are fortunate. We live on the northside and we both work on the northside. Unfortunately, our childcare is rarely on the northside. This means, we have to drive to make life efficient. It sucks.
Economic, social and environmental justice are all interconnected. But it seems like with intentional design, fast action and planning based not on what I want, but based on what we need will make all the difference.
If we think about how bringing jobs to a community, hiring within a community and making the jobs accessible from the community can impact the economic, social and environmental justice of a community, then we would just do it. Because it seems like the right thing to do. Because God wants us to think about the interconnected web we all live in. And about each other. And because justice is the business of the church.
I want to live & work without making a huge dent in the ozone over New Zealand. Don’t you? The church needs people who are thinking about this stuff. And there are people thinking about these things for sure, but it seems like the voice isn’t loud enough. I had to go to another country figure these things out for myself….how are other people hearing the message…
I’m trying hard to keep this from being a rant…it’s not working. Now I’ll quit.
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Levi at the Cabin…
I took some ridiculously cute pictures of Levi at the cabin yesterday. Some below, and a few more here.
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Audience Participation
The impact of your message is far greater with audience participation. If your audience doesn’t have to interact with your message, they probably won’t.
The World Wildlife Fund put together this brilliant PR campaign that forces the audience to be the message. When you take the towel, you see yourself as part of the problem. You can’t help but pause and think about how in the world can my impact be minimized? I don’t want to be responsible for that!
Forcing the audience to interact with the message leaves a mark and carries the message farther.
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This week in Prefab: Enovo House
Totally enamored by the enovo house. It’s unbearably beautiful. I love the clean lines, the use of different textures (wood, metal, glass) on different planes, and the amazing use of outdoor space in this model (car port, upper balcony/deck, pergolas).
The brilliance of modern prefab comes down to a few factors:
- The use of largely sustainable materials.
The speed of build time.
Designing for energy efficiency.
Re-imagining what living space can be.
Configurability
The enovo house is all of these.
If you don’t get Dwell magazine, you should. Even if just to push you towards new ideas about our shared future. We have little choice but to change our footprint. When will we start?
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Apparently, Vimeo, killed my video…I'll try again…
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I've been re-thinking the kindle
I have previously bashed the Amazon Kindle as being “not quite there yet.”
Basically, when the Kindle first came out, I wasn’t for it. But, I’ve been reading a lot of thick heavy hardcover books lately. I’d love to have a lightweight handheld device to read on. I just think the kindle still needs a design overhaul. It’s simply not elegant. I don’t buy a lot of tech products, mostly because I can’t afford to, but when I do, I revert to Apple products every time. The products look superior and generally run the way I want them to.
I wish Amazon would change the look, modify some of the quirky buttons and give it a new ad campaign. Then, I think I would be in. And I would use it all the time. (oh, and cut the price, or give me 10 free books with my $359 device)
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seinfeld on marketing
This is a great little manifesto over at change this. For fan’s of seinfeld, you’ll remeber all of these scenes that Bill Gammell uses as metaphors for marketing lessons. Quick read. Worth 5 minutes for a a quick bit of inspiration.
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5 Things I've Learned Working at a Multi-Ethnic / Multi-Cultural Church
- Just when you think you have the right answer, you find out there is no right answer.
- You don’t know what loud means, until you go to lunch with our staff.
- Life is more fun, when you put your differences out on the table and don’t expect everyone to conform to your way of thinking.
- We all really do just want to be loved. Just what that love looks like is often different.
- Diplomacy is the act of listening, before making your case.
