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Vacation Email Strategy

Last fall I adopted a zero tolerance policy for my inbox being out of control. Some weeks I would end the week with several hundred messages that needed to be dealt with in some fashion. While I'm in the office it's been relatively easy to keep up. While my inbox has thousands of messages, they're there purely as an archive. Unread messages are dealt with rapidly. As I read each message it either gets left in the inbox to archive, responded to immediately, filed into a folder for later reference, or deleted if I don't need it. This has worked amazingly well when I'm checking email several times a day. Generally email doesn't pile up in a way that is overwhelming. When I'm out of the office on the the other hand...

I was away from the office for a week over spring break on a mission trip and the internet connectivity was sparse at best. When I returned it took an unhealthy amount of time to filter through all of the messages. I'm pretty sure it took me more time to deal with it than it took to receive it all. I determined that I needed a new strategy.

All of my email is in gmail accounts and I use the IMAP support, which makes remote access really easy. I've got the ability to manage it from my laptop, iPhone, or the web. My new strategy is to just read email whenever I get the chance, even when I'm not in the office. Generally that means reading email on the phone. Here's my new conference/vacation email strategy:

• Read mail when possible.
• Process immediately by:
  • Only replying to absolutely urgent email (most can wait a week or two).
  • Saving a draft of an empty reply. Basically I hit the reply button, then save the draft. The goal is just to have drafts started, not to actually have any content.
  • Reading and either saving into an appropriate folder or leaving in the inbox.
  • Saving into a "Needs Attention" folder if it can't be quickly registered.
  • Deleting if it doesn't matter.
• Try to have the unread count in the inbox as low as possible when I return.

I tested the new strategy at Q in April and it worked fairly well, it kept me in the loop without being overly involved and it dramatically reduced the reentry time the following week. It worked so well that I decided it might be a good strategy during vacation as well. I know I probably should 100% disconnect when I'm on vacation, but it's just not something I do well. Part of it is directly related to the volume of email I seem to get and how overwhelming having a huge unread message count is for me.

So this past week in Colorado I tested the theory. Over the course of the week I filed about 25 messages into the "Needs Attention" folder, started and saved drafts for another 30 or so messages, filed a bunch into folders, left many in the inbox, and deleted hundreds. When I returned to the office on Wednesday the only messages that needed attention were those that showed up overnight and my filed messages. By noon all of the email had been closed out and I was able to go about my day. My guess is that the same process using the let it all pile up model would have taken me all day Wednesday to process and several more days to close everything.

I'm really happy with how everything worked out. I flipped through a few emails at a time on my phone or on the laptop whenever I had a spare moment. It never really made me feel like I wasn't on vacation - all of the real work happened after I got back to work. It certainly was nice when I got back to only have a handful of email that needed attention.

How do you handle the pile of email while you're away from the office?

Mountain Biking - Givolo & Creekside Trails

We went biking yesterday afternoon, but never managed to find the trail we were looking to ride. This morning we had a different experience though. Biked from the condo out to Fraser then connected with the Givolo trail, followed it out to Northwest Passage and Creekside. Northwest Passage was through an area that has been clearcut due to the mountain pine beetles. Even though Sarah wasn't so sure about trekking from a blue path to a blue/black we hit Creekside anyway. A bit of mud, some nice rocky terrain, not a lot of climbing. Rode back home on the Fraser River Trail.

After Firepin not working well without cell coverage I decided to try out Trailguru. It worked beautifully. You can see the track of our trip below. It even connects with Google Earth. The afternoon rain has started, but we're planning to hike around at WP Resort and ride the alpine slide after lunch.

Welcome to Wilderness

Welcome to Wilderness
Originally uploaded by kerner

We did our first hike of the trip yesterday, making an attempt to go up Byers Peak. As you can see in the photo, there's still quite a bit of snow on the ground. I'm amused by the sign which says, "Welcome to Wilderness" buried in the snow. We ended up going about four miles, then turning around because of the snow and threat of rain. Not too bad for the first day, an eight mile hike to get acclimated. Today we're going to try to reach Cascade Falls on the Crater Lake trail.

One Prayer Starts Tonight

During the summer we're going to be experimenting with a variety of different Wednesday night opportunities. Starting tonight we're kicking off the month-long One Prayer series. One Prayer is a gathering of more than a thousand churches across the world coming together to worship, serve and grow. Last year our college ministry participated in One Prayer and I'm excited that we're expanding to include the entire church this year.

We're using the One Prayer teaching for a Wednesday night worship experience. It's going to be a great time for people of all ages to get together and learn more about who God is. In addition to music and outstanding teaching, we'll have group discussion time at our tables. If you've ever participated in Alpha it will be a similar conversational experience. There is a light dinner available at 5:30 or you can come for worship starting at 6:30. One Prayer is open to people of all ages, and there are children's ministry activities available through 5th grade.

John 17:20-23  -  My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me. I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one: I in them and you in me. May they be brought to complete unity to let the world know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.

Summer Reading 2009

Now that my classes are finished for the spring I've got a bit more time to do some reading for both professional development and fun/relaxation. Several of these books have been on my shelf for months. Several of them I've started, but never finished because other things were a higher priority. I read Story when I was an undergrad, but thought a refresher might be good. I had meetings late yesterday night, so I took part of the afternoon to get started on the summer reading plan. Right now I don't have any fiction on the list and I need to add some. Got any suggestions?

Right now my summer reading list includes:

• Killing Cockroaches, Tony Morgan
• Church Unique, Will Mancini
• Flickering Pixels, Shane Hipps
• Intuitive Leadership, Tim Keel
• ReJesus, Michael Frost & Alan Hirsch
• Tribes, Seth Godin
• Story, Robert McKee
• In Defense of Food, Michael Pollan
• My Stoke of Insight, Jill Taylor
• The Unlikely Disciple, Kevin Roose

Newest Staff Member - Zak Lampert

I'm really excited that Zak Lampert is going to be joining the arts team at Schweitzer in a full-time position as the Media Coordinator & Modern Worship Leader. I've known Zak since he was in high school and he's an amazing young man. He was the first PA who worked in the media office when I was hired and it's been a blast working with him all of these years. Two years ago Zak left working in the media department to become our Modern Worship Leader. He also finished a mass media degree at Missouri State. Zak has a great heart and has grown amazingly as both an artist and a leader since we first met.

Zak will continue in his role leading all of the modern worship teams as well as serve as the primary contact for media production of the church. It's awesome to be able to hire somebody into this role that already gets the DNA of the church and has relationships with people in both the media and modern worship ministries. I'm looking forward to all of the creative possibilities this staffing decision will open up for the church.

Clarity in Communication

It's unbelievable how important clarity is in communication. Too often churches communicate to the insiders in their congregations without any thought about how it impacts guests or infrequent attendees. This morning in our ministry staff meeting we discussed plans for how we're reworking Wednesday nights in the fall. This impacts almost every ministry in the church in some way. As part of that conversation we realized how many ministries have names that really don't mean anything.

We have Sonshine Kids, Sprouts, Tweens, Joyful Noise Choir, Promise Choir, Melody Choir in our Children's ministry. Stephanie made the comment that she's had kids in these ministries for 16 years and has no idea what age goes with each name. Buildings have names that don't mean anything. There are rooms that have names based on colors and rooms that have numbers. We refer to places using language that is significant to us as insiders, but outsiders end up being confused. One of our older classes is named Homebuilders (from when the group was starting families 30 years ago). We have acronyms that have cool meanings, but if you don't know that STEW means Schweitzer Together Every Wednesday or what happens at that event, the likelihood you'll try it out is slim.

We're starting a process of making sure names have meaning. It starts primarily with new ministries. It's incorporated into how we describe events and locations. Making sure there is clarity in communication minimizes confusion, reduces questions and helps everybody be more effective.

Questions that are worth asking:

• What does this name/acronym mean to somebody who doesn't know the history?
• Does this language decrease or increase the chance of somebody getting confused?
• How would renaming this ministry, room, group, etc. impact the group? What about others?
• Can the name accurately describe the ministry? activity? location?

Improving clarity impacts more than just names, but that's an immediate focus. Direct, clear communication in bulletins, newsletters, announcements, and pretty much everywhere else increases the chance that what you have to say will actually be heard. More importantly, clarity in communication makes it possible for people to act rather than ask questions or give up in confusion.

Guest Blogger: Kem Meyer - Less Clutter, Less Noise Blog Tour

Kem Meyer, communication director  from Granger Community Church is doing a blog tour for her book, Less Clutter, Less Noise. It's a great read and will seriously impact the way you think about communication in the church or any setting. I've got a copy to give away to one lucky reader who leaves a comment on this post. Most churches are small, and I was really curious to hear Kem's perspective on communication outside of a large church.

My question for Kem:

In a smaller church setting, where most of the communication material is from volunteers, what can be done to coach all of those volunteers to reduce clutter?

Kem's Response:

Coaching principles are the same whether you’re in a large church, small church, working with staff or volunteers. There’s no sliding scale or different approach, although a lot of people think or wish there were.

Besides sharing articles, links and BOOKS (ahem) with the things you’re reading and learning, the next best thing is to create space for conversations. It is in those conversations where the vision-casting and coaching takes place.

If we’re not leaving time on our calendar—the white space—for impromptu conversations with the people we work with (paid or unpaid), then we can’t expect to see organizational and relational change anytime soon. You see, momentum advances over time through a series of conversations; it is not a one-happy-chat or email event. Bummer. It’d be so much easier if it was. Am I right? If you’re like me, you’re probably thinking this to yourself “I can’t afford the time for that.”

But, the reality is, we can’t afford not to. Every conversation we invest in on the front end makes the next project go smoother. At the end of the day, it’s all in our perspective, isn’t it?

My pastor, Mark Beeson, talked to a group of church leaders last year about what we need to promote forward movement, progress and next steps as an organization. Interestingly, everything he shared starts with an individual’s personal habits, not his or her accomplishments. He reminded us that we can’t get what we “could” have until we let go of what we “do” have. We all need to work on our:
•  Attitude—without this, you will hurt yourself.
•  Relationships—without these, others will hurt you.
•  Persistence—without this, problems will defeat you.
•  Priorities—without these, the insignificant will hamper you.
•  Credibility—without this, no one will follow you.

So, that gave me a little bit more perspective and courage to put down some of my workload to create the whitespace for coaching and relational investments. Although it felt like I was losing ground at first, it didn’t take long for me to see the difference. I went from adding individual value to multiplying team value. Conversations. White space. That’s your secret weapon.

Donated Hardware Rocks

Yesterday I got to drive down to Monett to pick up some server hardware that was donated to the church. None of it is brand-spanking new, but it's going to make for a pretty nice setup. We were given a 42U rack cabinet, and four IBM x346 servers. The servers don't have any drives or a RAID card (just the onboard SCSI), but they're all dual processor (one with dual cores), have 16gb of RAM, and are nicely equipped with fibre channel cards.

We need to come up with some sort of a storage solution for all of these servers. We also need to determine exactly what we'll be doing with them. I know that two are going to be used to handle our internet hosting needs, one may be used purely as a development system, and I have no idea what we'll do with the fourth system. What I do know is that this hardware really needs to be virtualized to meet the full potential. We'll be starting down the path of learning the ins and outs of EXSi soon.

My first goal is to buy a drive caddy and a cheap ultra320 drive and see if the those will work off the onboard controller. Part of the plan is to see if EXSi really needs a drive in the system (usb key boot).
We'll probably be building some sort of large NAS or SAN to hold the data from these systems and nearline video.

If anybody's got tips for how to configure or use this hardware leave comments.

Nearly a day of content every minute on YouTube

I just read this interesting article over at TechCrunch about the amount of video being uploaded to YouTube every minute. In January it was 15 hours/minute, now it's 20 hours/minute. It will soon cross the one day mark. At 20 hours of video it's nearly 50 days of content uploaded every hour and 3.2 years of content every day. If you ever wondered if video on the web was feasible here's the answer. It would take you 23 years to watch all of the content uploaded to YouTube in a single week.

I'm amazed at the amount of manpower that goes into getting this much video uploaded. Even if you discount the content that is never edited or is illegally posted, it's still a lot of work. The bandwidth, storage, and processing power to make the content available online is also staggering.

At Schweitzer we're going to be launching a media player this summer and we've decided to leverage the YouTube platform rather than build our own. We'll put together a wrapper that does search, categories, and a variety of features to make it user friendly, but the playback is all going to be handled by YouTube. It's hands down the largest video distribution platform available.