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gavin richardson

prezi for the presentation : not your mamma’s powerpoint

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i tweeted about prezi the other day. erin told me i needed to check it out (she was quite proud to know that she knew something tech that i didn't). i am doing a quick intro presentation on tech & church today for a small group of pastors and the rest of the time together is q&a and i thought, heck i'll try out prezi for this.

well, it is really cool!

what i've done is pretty simple. i've taken images that i've garnered for other presentations over the year and inserted them all onto my 'canvas.' i did the path thing for the few slides i want to make sure to start going through getting the session time going, but after that you can move in and out and focus onto each element on the canvas as questions or ideas come up. 

Prezi

i am super stoked about that. so many times in doing these church presentations on tech you get a huge gamut of knowledge, questions, and 'expertise.' now i can adapt for the audience as i see who is there and the questions they ask.. brilliant! i can also put a number of presentations on the canvas and then just re-route the 'path' of the presentation for a more specific focused presentation.

i'm stoked to share this with this pastors group and i'm stoked to share this with you & tell you to go kick the tires. it does cost an annual fee, but not an unrealistic fee. especially for those who use it on a regular basis.

note: for the stickler, i did correct the gutenberg spelling.

me speaking & talking : here & there for your amusement

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Pcn10_speaker_300x250next week i'll be doing some of that speaking thing that i do.

wednesday thru friday i'll be in and around the dallas area for the united methodist reporters communicators conference. i'll be leading a churchy discussion based off the keynote speakers thoughts on new media strategy. the possibilities of that conversation could be amazing, so i'm excited to get to lead that. the next day i'll sit on a panel with a bunch of social media geek / church nerd friends on, what else, social media. that will be easily enjoyable. hope we can bring some stuff to the table that challenges everyone in the room. that's the task i'm giving myself.

flying back on friday and then on saturday is up early to volunteer with podcamp nashville and put on my session of 'sex, lies, and social media.' that's going to be interesting & a whole lot of fun. vegas is betting my awkward statement and subsequent blushing will be an over/under at 4 (its just 20 mins of talking otherwise it'd be much higher).

unfortunately, if you are not already signed up for the communicators conference then you'll have to miss me this go round, but you can still sign up for podcamp & check out me and some of the other fabulous minds of technology and what they are thinking about.

#10yearsago : what i want back & what i’ll gladly leave behind

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so all my rowdy twitter friends are doing this #10yearsago tweets. i thought i'd actually create a little list and see what i can remember from the last decade.

  • i moved to nashville and began "my career" in youth ministry the first days of january 2000. since then i've staffed at three churches, one secular hiatus career, and a stint at rei.
  • i might not have owned a cell phone 10 years ago.. its hard to say. my first phone was some sprint flip open phone. i'll have to do some investigating on that one.
  • 10 years ago, socially, i wasn't married and didn't have a child.. so that stuff is relatively new
  • in the last 10 years i've had my work published in a few books, a cdrom project, and a number of articles.. i think that's pretty cool for someone who needed spell & grammar check to get out of university
  • i actually graduated from college 10 years ago. i wasn't finished with my degree when i left the university of alabama. i told them i was going to nashville to finish up (my internship) and take a job offered to me. they told me my gpa wasn't high enough to leave town for my internship, i said tough, i'm going.. a few months later & a lot of paperwork, i had a college degree. (i didn't do the graduation walk for another year when little bro got a grad degree)
  • 10 years ago Coe was my companion.. she was younger then and a little more spry & mischievous. she would open the gate to the house i lived in at that time and would go rolling in the dirt at the mulch company behind our house and thru some woods. would also take my brothers corgi with her. bath's were a regular occurrence in our house.
  • 10 years ago darren & i would pontificate the deepest theology for
    some 25 yr old dudes over cigars and cheep beer in our backyard..
  • 10 years ago my house had an answering machine… i suppose it also had some phone attached to a wall with like 500mghtz of power where you can walk down the street talking. big time!!
  • 10 years ago i was thinner… care not to expand on that further.. 'expand,' sorry, wrong wording
  • 10 years ago i remember watching the millennial celebrations all freakin day long
  • 10 years ago i watched the music city miracle on a fuzzy tv that didn't have cable hooked up yet (remember, check out #1, just moved to nashville)
  • 10 years ago had no idea what blogging, twitter, facebook, were (cause they weren't invented silly).. but i did build a kick-ass youth group & website with a bunch of java script enabled games

so the many things that did happen the last decade will have to wait for another posting.

what were the things you were doing 10 years ago?

chris brogan on evangelism : being there before the sale

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chris brogan : be there before the sale : relationship in marketing & evangelism from Gavin Richardson on Vimeo.

so i took in that live web event last week with chris brogan and i've been pondering on some of what he said and i'm reading in "trust agents." he wasn't at all speaking to a church context, but as with most things (but is becoming much easier in todays business environment & language) i turn it around into some church framework.

one of the things chris brought out were some stories of 'trust agents' who were "there before the sale." it was one of those quotable moments as you could see heads dive into notepads and laptops typing.

it reminded me from a time last summer where i hosted a conversation with regular church going folk & those who are disenfranchised with the church and might call themselves non-religious or spiritual but not religious put together by my friend jim palmer. one of the stories that really stuck with me from a participant was how they were put off that the friends they made in their neighborhood, invited them to church, eventually helped them come into Christ, then left them hanging as they moved onto some other couple. this person then found out that this was a process of that church and they were to go befriend new people to bring them to the church as well.

so what makes up evangelism in when our common framework makes up some commodity sale & that conflicts with how people want to be treated & how we improperly fix some consumption to grace? is there a way in which one could just "be there" with people and not try and control the workings of God to force a sale of salvation, but allow God's mystery to work?… i don't know, maybe you have some ideas

help me help children find a new home : miriam’s promise & my heart

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many of you have been with me for a number of years on this blog and you know quite a bit about me. you might know that i like trips to crazy monasteries, make fun of my celebrity look alike status, used some of the worship resources i've put online, shared in some deep conversations, and some not so deep.

one thing i have not shared openly is my care i have for children & youth within the foster & adoption process. as a child, looong ago in my birmingham years (those i call my impressionable south years), our family was a foster family. we hosted many kids of various ages that were needing a new home. some were abused children, some were given up for adoption for whatever reason and young and older ages. the older kids would generally stay in the same room as my brother & i (sporting some massive double bunk beds). the younger ones would stay closer by to my parents.

i vaguely remember names and as the years have gone by the faces get blurry, but the impression of having so many kids coming through our home hopeful for a permanent home placed in me a heart for them. tho, at the time, admittedly i wasn't always the nicest of boys to them.

fast forward some 20 plus years i have adopted Miriam's Promise as one of my causes that i champion. they are a methodist affiliated program (which means they get support from our church in name and personal devotion alone, they are not funded by the umc) and that partnership has allowed me to get to know them very well. they have a wonderful staff and board of directors made up of people i respect tremendously. i have a number a few youth from our youth community who have been adopted through Miriam's Promise which is neat to connect with. and who knows, even though we have Brooks now, erin & i have talked a number of times of adopting into our family because we know the need is out there.

they are having their annual golf tournament fundraiser on October 12th and i am trying to raise $4,000 dollars for our teams totals.

as i see some numbers, if everyone in my readership of blogs, twitter, facebook, and newsletters "chipped in" $10 then we could easily achieve this goal. $10 dollars is not ordering 1.5 starbucks drinks, 1/2 of a meal on the town (for one person). that isn't much. if you can give $20 or more, that'd be amazing too. you can set your giving, but please give. just use the "ChipIn" little meter above, it is secure, i've used it many times in giving to other causes.

help me help children find a new home, give to Miriam's Promise

shalom, -gav