On Wednesday, October 5, 2011 Steve Jobs left us with a lot to think about. Death, life, afterlife, work, making a difference. These are some of the conversations that have ensued following his passing.
Steve no doubt has changed the way the world uses technology. I haven’t read his biographyyet, although it’s on my 2011 Birthday/Christmas list.
In so many of his keynotes, Steve would always say, “oh ya, there’s one more thing… .” Enjoy this one-hour documentary from PBS – Steve Jobs: One Last Thing:
If you are a worship leader and own an iPad you’ll quickly remember when Garageband for the iPad was announced. Your mind was racing with all the new ways you could use the iPad at rehearsal, during a service or in the studio but how do you plug into your iPad? With the Alesis iO Dock of course!
Having never been to an Apple Store grand opening before, besides the free T-shirts, Pris and I were clueless as to what to expect. The first thing we wondered was “what time should we show up”. Mapleview Centre opens at 9:30am on Saturdays, so we decided to show up at 8:30am. There were roughly 75 people in line and we were still fairly close to the front of the line.
This guy showed up around 5am and was first in line.
To back track a little, all I got was a simple email from Apple on Tuesday at 1pm stating the opening of the store and that they would be giving away T-shirts to the first 1,000 customers.
Back to waiting in line, Pris and I had a conversation that went something like this:
Pris: “I don’t get what’s so exciting about this. Are there any sales or deep discounts?”
Me: “Nope! They give us a free T-shirt and we’re here for the experience of it all.”
Pris: “This is LAME! Will people line up like this outside of Victoria Secret when they’re ready to launch?”
Me: “Only if they’re giving away free bras”
And that’s when this happened….
The Grand Opening
I could’ve simply described how it felt to see the actual grand opening at 9:30am – and they were right on time – but I know that these videos will be worth a million words.
Here’s my turn to walk through the line:
What the Church Can Learn
After an experience that has been unique in every sense, I couldn’t help but tie it to the church and what she can learn from the grand opening of an Apple Store.
Here are my takeaways:
Serve good coffee – they didn’t, but thankfully Starbucks was open #FTW
When you establish something meaningful and practical, people will get on board very quickly, in this case, even the first time it’s announced
People are willing to show up (really) early when they believe in a product, brand, or community (or want a free t-shirt of the brand they believe in)
Employees/volunteers are excited because they believe in what they’re doing.
Employees/volunteers will want to get involved and be there because they are a valuable part of the team.
Although not everyone gets “it”, the atmosphere can quickly influence the outsider and make them a believer
Don’t let the atmosphere/environment dictate your enthusiasm, instead let your enthusiasm dictate the atmosphere/environment
Noise/excitement will attract a crowd – passer-byers will stop and wonder what’s going on
Doing something totally cool and unexpected will jolt the momentum in your favour and make it memorable.
When you make something memorable people will talk about it and spread the word.
Based on the videos and pics, is there anything else you can think of?
How are you making your church experience memorable?
I’ve blogged about Sharefaith before, and how our church has found it to be an awesome time-saver! Today I’m pleased to announce that the guys at Sharefaith have been generous and are allowing me to giveaway a 1-year membership.
What You Will Win
Boasting 38,000 Worship Templates used by 18,200 churches, the winner will have complete access to all the goodies that Sharefaith has to offer. Here are some of their offerings:
Father’s Day was yesterday. Along with spending time with fathers, it’s also a time where we like to buy them special gifts. The iCufflinks, from Adafruit.com, are a perfect gift for any Apple-loving man.
Classy and elegant, these iCufflinks are designed for those nights when you need to dress up and with some flare! Now if you’re a pastor, I’d think twice before I wear them during a Sunday service. Why, you ask? Well, simply because these cufflinks actually light up. That’s right, just like when you power-up your Mac device, you have a steady “breathing” LED pulse from these iCufflinks – and that might be a little distracting when you are preaching.
They aren’t cheap, coming in at a price of $128 but be warned, they already sold out of their first batch.
This past weekend I had the privilege of serving at the CAOG Roots ’11 Youth and Young Adult Convention. I was responsible for the programming of the main sessions as well overseeing all worship and creative aspects.
Part of what I really wanted to do was to get a live twitter stream going whereby students can tweet using a simple hashtag (e.g. #Roots11) and have it show up immediately on a screen. I figured this would give everyone an opportunity to share what God was doing in their lives throughout the course of the weekend.
After searching for a little while, I found a solution that was perfect for our needs. Here’s a simple tutorial of how you can achieve a similar result:
In case you are wondering, I use “command-1″ to toggle the output screen in ProPresenter.
As per the 8Bit team, who now owns Beacon Ads, here’s why the bundle was created:
We create bundles because advertising in the Christian space can be confusing. By bringing together a compilation of the best Christian technology websites, it’s much easier to advertise across several of them at once.
I’ve been really busy lately on my WorshipDrummer blog. We recently launched a “Pro WorshipDrummers Series” featuring Josh McCabe, Dave de Smit (Article One), and Carl Albrecht (Paul Baloche). You should encourage your church worship drummers to check it out.
When I first started at my church, and being a savvy Mac user and such, media was somehow unofficially added to my portfolio. Being a borderline geek and perfectionist I would spend countless hours doing tutorial and trying to create cool worship backgrounds and countdowns with Adobe After Effects. That’s not to mention any website graphics or email newsletters.
