Integrating Missionally

At the end of 2009, I was doing a test of the beta google browser Chrome. I am notorious for opening a bunch of browser tabs, and on this night I had 41 open. That’s 41 websites that I wanted to look through and read. And then it happened.

Have you ever worked on a document for hours and forgotten to save it only to have the program crash? If you’re a PC user, you know what I’m talking about to well! Well, with 41 browser tabs open, my beta browser crashed. Now, I didn’t lose my tabs because google chrome has a nice little feature that will open the last tabs you had open when you start it up. But just as I have learned to save my documents often, I now use a browser plugin to keep accidents like that from happening again. It’s called Read It Later.

Read It Later is a browser extension for Firefox and Chrome with a companion iPhone/iPod app. The browser extension sits in your browser’s toolbar with two simple icons: one to save your current page to a reading list, and another to provide your reading list for your. It’s as simple as that. If you create an account online, it will sync your reading list and you can access that list with your iPhone/iPod Touch app. While looking at your reading list, you can search through it, sort it, or remove items. Now when I go through my rss feed and open a bunch of articles I want to read, I just one click them into read it later, and I am able to declutter my browser while still having access to sites and articles I want to read later.

Read It Later is a small yet powerful extension that you should implement.

Below is a short video that discusses the Firefox extension

Popularity: 4% [?]

When I was working in the IT industry, one of my responsibilities was to manage the various projects we were working. We had software projects, hardware projects, web projects, and maintenance projects that I had to keep track of. In those days, the best we had was Microsoft Project. That worked pretty well but did not function well in a distributed environment.

As a pastor, I have found myself doing some of the same kinds of project management tasks. It is just that we don’t necessarily call them “projects”. They are called ministries, mission trips, retreats or some other ministry-sounding name. Yet so much of the processes and tasks of project management are appropriate for so many of our church ministries, trips and events.

If you are going to be efficient with those, why not consider implementing some project management software. And since your church, like mine, has a lot of lay involvement, why not put it out on the web so it can be used by everyone?

Collabtive is open source project management software. It is a PHP based (which means it can be run on almost any computer) project management system. Collabtive allows you to manage projects ministries by setting up different tasks and assigning them to different users. The progress of these tasks can then be tracked using the easy interface of the application. The administrator can add multiple users to the application and each user can access the interface through his/her browser. There’s no limit to the number of users that can work simultaneously on Collabtive. Although it doesn’t provide advanced features such as Gantt charts, it does provide for a very simple and efficient mechanism to keep track of your projects.

In order to use Collabtive, you need to have PHP support on your system(s). I mentioned last week how to put WAMP on your internal windows network server. However, if you want to make it available to those outside your internal network, find a good web host that runs LAMP and for $3.99/month or so, everyone has access to this powerful tool.

The software will come as a zip file. Extract the zip file, and place it in the appropriate place on the server. Then you just need to point your browser to the install.php file to launch the installer. Once installed, you are greeted with the following login screen.

Once you login with your credentials, you are greeted by what the Collabtive team call your Desktop. The Desktop shows you a list of all current projects, a tasklist, as well as a calendar showing your tasks and milestones.

Clicking on a project name takes you to the project page. This page is also called the Project Dashboard. The Project Dashboard consists of a calendar specific to a particular project. It also consists of a Timetracker that can be used to track the amount of time that you have spent working on the project. There is also an Activity Log, which contains a step-by-step listing of all the activities pertaining to the project.

This page also contains a number of icons at the top, which allow you to visit your Milestones page, review your Tasklists, access the Messaging system, as well as access the file storage for a particular project. There is also a User tab, which shows a list of all the users currently using the Collabtive system for a project.

The tasklist allows you to create tasks, which may be critical to the project. Each task can have an associated due-date and can be assigned to one or multiple users. These tasks, once completed, can simply be “finished” by clicking on the tick-mark next to them.

The Milestones can be looked upon as distinct phases in the project timeline. Each milestone may have a number of tasks associated with it. As and when tasks are finished, a status bar for the project under consideration keeps increasing on your Desktop.

The right hand side pane across all pages provides a search bar, a simple text-based calendar, and a list of users who are currently online. The search bar searches across tasks, milestones, as well as entire projects. Also, each user can fill out his/her profile page so that different team members have ways and means to contact one another.

Collabtive provides for a very elegant project management system. While it is not as power-packed as its commercial counterparts, it provides more than a decent feature set to keep track of all the tasks and milestones associated to your project, or um…ministry!

Popularity: 4% [?]

Recently, Google released its Chrome web browser in beta for Macs. I have been a huge Firefox user, employing it early on as an option to the laborious and dull IE browser on the PC. When I moved to a Mac in 2006, I again installed Firefox because of its plugins and familiarity. I’m always a little hesitant to use the browser of company whose operating system I am using, call it the Microsoft conundrum, and thus was hesitant to use Safari. Other browsers for the Mac, Flock and Camino, were just not interesting despite their uniqueness.

I’m a big Google user, using everything from their email, apps, adsense, and analytics. I was anticipating their release of Chrome and when it was made available in beta I downloaded and used it.

The first thing I noticed is that it is indeed a beta product. Many of the features of the PC version of Chrome are not available, such as bookmark management, extensions, themes, and a dropdown history in the address bar. I know those items will be available when the product is released out of beta.

What I did notice, however, was the speed of the browser. It is extremely fast. It handles the javascript of websites really well. This is a huge benefit over Firefox, though Safari is also fast.

Another item I noticed was its stability. Even as a beta product, Google Chrome is a very stable product. In fact, I had 41 open tabs at once before I could get it to crash. And that is the only time it has crashed. I had a lot of sites in my feed reader that I wanted to look at and thus opened that many tabs. It finally crashed. However, on restart, I was able to re-open all 41 of those tabs at once and close them down one by one after bookmarking them. For some time, I’ve been having issues with Firefox hanging up and thus having to do a Force Quit and restart it. Chrome handles a large number of browser tabs easily.

Despite the fact that it is still in beta, I would highly recommend Google Chrome for Mac. While I have not made it my default browser (yet), it is my primary browser. My only hope is that Google doesn’t take as long to get it out of beta as it did Google Apps!

Popularity: 3% [?]

The founder of Twitter, Evan Williams, reveals that many of the ideas driving that growth came from unexpected uses invented by the users themselves.

This is an incredible talk from the 2009 TED’s conference.

Popularity: 1% [?]

In a past post on the new year, I mentioned that I hired a personal virtual assistant. A couple of you asked me for more details and I’ve talked with folks on the phone and they have mentioned it. So I thought I would put together a post on the why and how of this to give you more details about the process.

Here’s why: I hate administration. I am not a details person. Big vision, big ideas, seeing the whole picture? That’s me. But making it work…not me. I can if I want, but it’s really hard work to be detailed oriented and to even remember to pay bills. That’s why my wife handles our finances. I can tell you what’s on my schedule in regards to meetings, but not much else; I’m a people-oriented person and those things stick out to me. That’s just who I am.

I had read parts of Tim Ferris’ The Four Hour Work Week and saw a clip or two of him talking about outsourcing his administrative stuff to a virtual assistant in India for $5/hour. I thought, “Hey, that sounds like a great idea. I need to check that out.” So I did, and placed an ad on elance.com. Elance is a site where people who are freelancers bid on projects from folks who need projects done. I had used the site before for a logo, and had used the site to find someone to create executive summaries from big documents. I’ve had good success from the site. So I posted a project for a virtual assistant. And I waited for the bids to come in. Several did. Some were from overseas, but I really wanted someone who I could get during the day if necessary. The bids from Americans were higher than the overseas bid, but I chose a person from Michigan for the job. Her name is Erin.

Before I accepted her bid, I contacted her to make sure she was fine working for a pastor. I knew that I might ask her to do some “pastoral” oriented administrative stuff, and I needed to make sure she was comfortable with doing that. Her reply was that she was fine with it, and that she was a Methodist. So I accepted her bid and off we have gone.

I asked Erin to share a little something about what she does and why she is a virtual assistant. She said:

I could go on, and on, and on! Because I love it so much and benefits are numerous. Like you said in your last post your church is small and does not need a full or even part time administrator. Someone like me can step in on an as needed basis and stay out of the way when you don’t need me. No taxes, payroll, vacation, sick time, 401 k you just pay a small fee for services rendered.

When I started this business I tried selling this idea to my surrounding area. I live in a small town here in SW MI but I am within 20 minutes of South Bend, IN (Notre Dame), St. Joseph, MI (Lake MI), Kalamazoo (Western MI University) and so on…why wouldn’t everyone want this????? Well they didn’t. It was once that I explored the online world and “virtual assisting” that I started making a presence. I am assisting everyone from a business coach in Florida to a small bicycle touring company in Italy and I adore every one of my clients. I like that I can have a personal touch even though I may be several thousands of miles away from my client. When someone calls and says, “Erin my shower is leaking and I need it fixed” or “Erin I need 10 60 page documents printed and Fed Ex ASAP” I can make it happen and they didn’t have to take the time out of their busy schedules to get it done, that is what I am here for!

I live my life and proceed in my business with one rule always in mind, “Due unto others as which you would have done to you.” Taking care of peoples needs and getting satisfaction from it gives me pride that I never got from the 9-5 world.

So what does Erin do for me? She has organized all my personal and ministry expenses by category and month in a spreadsheet. I have a second email account set up so that when I get email receipts – which is where the majority of my expenses come from – a rule forwards them on to the second email and she will pick those up and put them in the spreadsheet. She acts as my assistant in scheduling. She also manages my calendar. Another thing she does is gives me a summary each week of three blogs I consider important reads. That way I don’t have to read all of their posts each day. She does that for me and I get a document each Friday with the summaries.

In addition, I will be sending her some of my sermons and she will transcribe them for me. Since I am preaching through part of my doctoral research, she will be giving me the foundation for my dissertation. Two weeks ago, I called her and asked if she did video work. She didn’t but was able to outsource the development of a video for a song I wanted to use in a sermon last week. As we speak now, she is doing some research for me from the Bible for my sermon this week. She is finding that really interesting. She’s reading passages from Genesis and 1 Samuel – 1 Kings to look at how the sin of Abram and David was passed down to their descendants.

Since I have offloaded things that I find either boring, am not good at, or that would just give me a little more time with people or in preparation, I’m more productive personally, and it has reduced some stress. It will also help me financially. For example, I spent WAAAYYYY more than I should have on books last year. I had no idea I spent as much as I did. Now that someone is providing that information for me, I’m better able to keep track of the budget. So what I may pay her will help me save money.

The best part is that she works when I need her, so I only pay her for hours worked.

You have to be able to let a person do things their own way. She might not do things the exact way I would do them, but that’s fine. It’s actually refreshing and stimulating creatively.

Would I recommend getting a virtual assistant? Yes, if you can find one you are comfortable with and does a good job. I would recommend Erin, but only if she can take your work without compromising mine .

Outsourcing opens up a lot of avenues for you to accomplish more than you could on your own. Since I was a freelancer at one time in my life, and have been a contractor as well, it’s not that difficult for me to let go of that control. Some people can’t. But it does make you more productive in the long run.

Popularity: 10% [?]