While the western world focuses on the lively colors of red, white and green as we celebrate the Christmas Season, we’re going dark. By that I mean that Xpiritmental is going silent over the next week and a half.

Every year, we close our doors to allow our team some time with family and friends and to reflect on the purpose of the season. This year is no different as we are closing our doors today at noon and won’t be back in the office until Jan 5.

But don’t worry, we aren’t totally abandoning you!

If you’re an AdvancedMinistry user with a support issue, please continue to use the support system and although we’ll be away from the office, we will be monitoring our support system for any critical issues. Non-critical issues will be tended to when we return to normal business.

Similarly, for clients of Electricurrent, if you have any major issues, please contact us using our online form as someone will be monitoring it for critical issues as well.

On behalf of the entire team here, whether you are a client of Electricurrent, AdvancedMinistry or a member of the Xpiritmental community, I want to thank each and every one of you for allowing us to be a part of your story over the past year and for being a part of ours. Through serving you all, we are provided with purpose and true reward in our work – a gift that truly keeps on giving.

Merry Christmas and have a great New Year celebration!

P.S. To Ray - Yes, the weather got worse - but I'm sticking to my guns, it's still not Snow-maggedon worthy.

Turns out that Snow-Maggedon was a little bigger than Andrew expected. Last night, we got dealt about another foot of snow, piling on to the mess that we already had from the beginning of the week. So where was Andrew this morning when this all went down? According to his Blackberry email from 8:24am, “No way I'm making it - stuck in the street 20 feet from my parking spot”. He actually missed the word “feet” in his original email because his hands were sore from shoveling all of the snow. Looks like Snow- maggedon got its revenge. (The picture in this post was taken this morning of my daughter standing beside a driveway that had just been freshly pummeled by the neighborhood snowplow.) Enjoy your holiday!

Recently, an AdvancedMinistry customer came to us with a usability problem in their Administrative Control Panel – the area within AdvancedMinistry that they can go to make changes to their website. To summarize the problem: After making a change to their content, they found that they could not navigate back to the main page of the Control Panel.

After a few emails back and forth, I discovered that the user was in the process of trying out Internet Explorer 8 BETA (a previously untested browser) and that it was causing problems within the Control Panel.

The unfortunate thing was that during the process of determining the problem, the user became very frustrated with the service, which is understandable. So I wanted to take a minute to outline our approach to new browser launches so you all know where we’re coming from and to help you understand the risks involved with early adoption of new browsers (in general, but especially as it pertains to AdvancedMinistry).

It is an unwritten policy for us to delay jumping on just any new browser that comes up. We feel it’s better to wait until some of the bugs are ironed out before investing our resources into modifying the platform for these new browsers. Another key factor is the platform is aimed at servicing the widest range of users as possible. As such, it is difficult to justify modifications on a pre-release browser for 2%, or less, of the user-base.

You might recognize this approach as being similar to many businesses that waited until Windows Vista was no longer carrying a significant risk of disrupting operations before they deployed it to their networks.

So, we want to encourage all of you that if you are going to look into adopting early versions of new releases of IE, Firefox, or Chrome, make sure that you have a way in which to revert back to previous generation browsers until the new browser has had a chance to establish itself and we’ve worked on the compatibility issues (i.e. have an older, supported version installed on a separate computer).

So there is quite a bit of nervousness out there these days with an uncertain economic landscape on the horizon for 2009. I for one have spent a lot of time thinking about and reading on that subject. I spent the first few weeks of this economic downturn habitually going to CNN Money and checking what the markets were doing, which in hindsight seems silly since I don’t have any major investments to speak of. Why I mention that though is to admit that I was guilty of buying into the media hype and worrying myself with something that is by and large out of my control.

Then a couple weeks later, one Sunday morning at church, my pastor said this “if your faith is in man's economy rather than God's Divinity your life will always be marked in anxiety and uncertainty.” That hit me hard because I realized I was worrying more about man’s economy and not focused on God’s divinity.

Ask my wife, I am a tight money manager. I avoid debt, and I’m a “how much is in savings” kind of guy. But I know that I am not alone in this. So I want to admit that I need to constantly be looking to the word to keep myself motivated to be Godly with what I have - not hoarding or being wasteful - and I want to encourage you to do the same.

We live in a culture of accumulation and that is brought into sharp focus this time of year. So let’s scratch the surface and take a moment to look at what God thinks of accumulation when it comes to money and stuff. My favourite parable in the Bible is Luke 12:16-21. It’s the story of the farmer who had good crop and had in such abundance he tore down his barns to build bigger ones so he could store all that he had and take life easy. Every time I read that it hits me so hard. Then when you combine that with Matthew 19:24 you have a pretty clear picture of God’s stance on the matter. A few other impactful verses for me are; Matthew 6:24 and 1 Timothy 6:10.

Assuming you read all those verses allow me to share some personal conclusions. With what is predicted for 2009, I am really working on my heart and attitude more than ever. It becomes clearer to me as I get older that I have to free myself from my sense of entitlement so I can walk on a more righteous path. I don’t want to be building barns in my life when I can be helping those in need around me. I don’t want to come to the end of my life knowing that my course was mostly determined by some paper, metal circles and some numbers in a computer somewhere. Anything that I hold on to holds me in kind with as much force or more than I hold onto it. So which master I hold and have holding me is my choice.

When I look in the mirror and see a 5’10”, 175lbs. man, give or take 20lbs (emphasis on give and figures may change based on holiday “snacking”), then look at the eye of a needle, being grateful and generous with what I have always gets a lot easier. So please, be encouraged by this. Look to God’s divinity first realizing this life is not even a drop in the bucket of eternity.

Be freer of burden in 2009. Merry Christmas and see you in the New Year!

One of the purposes of this blog is to give us a chance to communicate a bit about who we are and our culture here at Electricurrent. Sometimes that picture comes through as a bi-product of sharing a funny video or an article on marketing. But other times, like today, we just come out and plainly share a bit about what’s going on here at the office and in our lives.

Well, in case you didn’t know, we’re Canadian. More than that, we’re Canadian’s living in Canada in December. Now, in years gone by, we’ve managed a green Christmas or two, but this year doesn’t seem to be shaping up that way. Our first snow was over a month ago and we’ve had a number of flurries pretty consistently since then. But that’s ok, because a white Christmas is always welcome.

However, at least a few times a year, we get a lot of snow in a short amount of time. Others further north would argue that we don’t really know what a lot of snow is, but suffice it to say, we get lots. Today is kind of one of those days.

But for two days now, my Weather Network application on my Blackberry has been telling me that a major snowstorm was coming our way and is expected to drop between 15 and 20 centimetres of snow. Let’s put this in perspective, 15-20 centimetres isn’t really that much snow. It can be problematic for driving if the road crews can’t keep up with ploughing the streets, but we’re made of sterner stuff here.

Enter this morning where I went to check our local paper’s website (the London Free Press) and I caught a reference to the term “snow-maggedon” which is being used by Environment Canada to describe the storm we just came through and the one on its tail that is supposed to hit us on Sunday.

It’s a clever name, but it really feels wasted on what we got today because we’ve definitely had worse. In fact, we’ve already had worse this year and there was no mention of a snow-maggedon, a winter-clysm or a flake-tastrophy.

Weather people around here already have a bad enough reputation for getting the forecast wrong – it only makes it worse when they begin marketing the storm early and then don’t deliver – it’s a case of false advertising in the weather world and I for one want my money back.

Oh, and to the guy that I saw on my way into work and again at lunch who’s bombing around town in his convertible BMW coupe: “Good luck with that! You’re not from around here are you?”

"The logo wouldn't have worked unless it stood for something real. No matter how good a logo it is, no matter how well executed it is, if it doesn't stand for something that means something to people, then it's not going to work."

- Sol Sender

Spam is the bane of the Internet.

We all find it annoying and practically, it eats up valuable productive time as we sort through spam boxes to ensure we don’t miss a valid email (known as a false-positive).

The good news is that there are simple things that we can do to help limit the amount of spam we receive. The bad news is that we find many churches, ministries and non-profits, not doing them.

One such simple thing that you can do to minimize the risk of having your email address added to a spam list is to not embed your email address in the HTML code of your website. For those of you who are technical laypeople, here’s an example of what you don’t want to do

fakeemail@pleasesendmespam.com

Spammers use tools called "spiders", "spambots" or "email harvesters" that systematically go through sites on an automated basis and search for key characteristics of an email address (mostly looking for the "@" sign). They then grab those addresses and add them to a database at which point you are now a target of their spam mailings.

So, instead of embedding your email address on the page, do one of two things.

1. If you really feel as though you want to show your address on your website, make a graphic (JPG or GIF) with the email address on it and put that on your site. Graphics can’t be read by these automated programs and so your email less available to spammers. It’s easy to tell if your email addresses are in embedded in HTML or not. If they are embedded in the HTML, you will be able to click and drag across the address and highlight the address (or portions of it). If it is in graphic format, when you try to highlight it, you will highlight the entire graphic, background and all.
2. The best and most user-friendly way to deal with this problem though is to create a form where the user can select the recipient’s name in a drop-down menu, fill out the form-fields and then submit the form. This way, no one can see your email address, but they still have a way to contact you. See the AdvancedMinistry support page for an example of this.

So, it’s been an exciting few weeks here at the office. We’ve had the pleasure of making a number of announcements for AdvancedMinistry: AM Development Language, the form-builder and the new ticketing system for our support services.

But today we have the pleasure of announcing a new site that we are particularly excited about.

As I mentioned in our news release when we launched this blog, Xpiritmental is a name that has been around for a number of years here at Electricurrent and in its original incarnation, we had set it up as a sub-section of a site and at that time it contained desktops designed by our design team.

It was a great tool for us as it allowed our designers the ability to break free of project constraints and just get creative. In doing so, it helped to show our creativity to the world and had the happy side-effect of increasing the quality and reach of our brand. It was also a great place for our clients and our friends to access free content that would dress up their computers and encourage them throughout the day.

So we thought, let’s bring it back!

But we’ve thrown a bit of a twist on it. Xpiritmental is now its own unique website that serves as a home for our past, current and future desktop designs, but also syndicates the Xpiritmental blog that you are reading now.

It is undoubtedly one of our more ambitious design projects and we are extremely excited about how it has turned out.

We’d love for you to check it out at www.xpiritmental.com and send us your thoughts!

Today, we want to announce something that we’re pretty excited about here. It’s a new ticketing system for our AdvancedMinistry support services.

Over the past few years, we’ve been using a service called Sprout It for support tickets which, although it is a great program and served us well, also presented some challenges.

The biggest concern was that we frequently had instances where we would respond to a support request by email within a few hours and then four days later hear from an understandably frustrated customer saying that they had never heard back from us. And while we’ve been able to retrieve the email we attempted to send and resend it as proof that we did in fact respond, at the end of the day, our customers were still left without an answer and that’s something we of course want to curb if possible.

Enter the new AM ticketing system which we have developed with a goal to minimize and hopefully eliminate the times that our customers don’t get their email support responses.

That said, email is still a flakey thing and we are only in control of what happens as the email is sent from our servers. From there, there are a number of other things that can go wrong (blacklists, spam filters, etc...). So, in addition to continuing to send out email responses, since we developed this system ourselves, we were able to integrate it into the AM database and as a result, all your support threads will now be recorded and available to you in your AM admin panel. So even if the email gets lost in cyberspace, you’ll always be able to check our response in your admin.

We are constantly striving to improve our services and we really hope that this new tool will make an important impact on our ability to serve you and your ability to use the system effectively for the important work that you have to do.

Stay tuned, we’ve got more exciting announcements to come in the next little while!
 

Good communication has everything to do with speaking to your audiences in their language.

Seeing that we are getting towards the end of autumn, we wanted to give our AdvancedMinistry users a quick update on the status of AMDL (AdvancedMinistry Development Language) and the online Form Builder. Both are going extremely well!

Regarding AMDL, we are hoping to offer a private beta to a select group of candidates within the next 3-4 weeks. What that means is – we are going to start collecting beta applicants through an online submission form. Potential candidates will need to provide us with their level of programming knowledge, time that they can commit to the beta program, bug testing experience, etc. A link to apply for the beta program will be available within the next two weeks.

The form builder is even closer. Our goal is to release this to the general public by mid-January!

The form builder will be available to Red, Blue and Purple Suite users, while AMDL will be accessible to Blue and Purple Suite customers.

Whether you're a fan of either candidate is irrelevant. The point is, perspective is everything in communications.

Who is shaping your audience's perspective of your organization?

I remember walking into a Tim Horton’s in the U.S. one time and asking for a large double-double and the lady behind the counter saying to me, “You’re from Canada aren’t you?”

You see, up here in Canada, we have a coffee-franchise known as Tim Horton’s which in recent years has pushed south into the U.S.

Tim Hortons, or Timmy’s as we affectionately refer to it up here, is far and away the biggest coffee franchise in Canada (they control something like 75% of the coffee-drinking market up here from what I can gather on the net).

What struck me about the exchange above though, is the fact that I presumed that I could take my Canadian Timmy’s jargon into a Tim Horton’s in the States and that they would understand me. Obviously, I was wrong.

How often do we do this with our work? As a guy with a background in computer programming, I know what it’s like to have a large vocabulary of terms, phrases and acronyms that the general public won’t understand, but when you are steeped in that language on a day-to-day basis, it’s easy to forget that the people you are communicating to don’t get it.

What terms or phrases do you use in your area of expertise that when you stop and think about it, not many people would understand without clarification? I’d love to hear some!

I love this video.

What mission are you organizing your ministry or non-profit around? And if you have defined a mission, are you sticking to it?

It’s a real challenge to be consistent in this area, but as hard as it is, it’s foundational to the success of your work.

So, while this week's casual Friday is a video and it's pretty funny to us, there's a really clear message that's conveyed through it. Hopefully, it's not lost on you all as we head into the weekend. Enjoy!

Did the title catch you off guard?

For those of you who have been waiting for my post on Apple vs. PC: Round 3, it’s time for me to let the cat out of the bag. I admit, I do slightly prefer Windows over Apple, but not as much as I’ve led you to believe. In fact, I do think that in many ways, Apple is a better operating system than Windows and at some point in the future, our company may consider moving back to the Apple platform.

My ultimate interest in writing those posts was to see how many people would come to the passionate defense of their favorite brand – Apple. Call it an experiment if you will. At the end of the day, a computer is a computer, but for some reason, the second I challenged the Apple brand, there were a number of people (both on the blog and through my personal email account) that became passionately engaged in proclaiming its name and coming to its defense. I see this every day – people swear by Apple, almost (figuratively speaking) willing to lay down their life to defend its integrity as the “be-all and end-all of super-brands”. It’s in their veins like it’s become a part of “who they are”.

Apple is merely one of many brands that I could have experimented with, but seeing as my friends know me as the guy that likes to challenge the Apple brand, I figured I’d use it as my test subject. I could have easily done the same thing and flipped the table on Windows or argued that “Any Brand X” is better than “Any Brand Y”. But I chose Apple because in my experience, I’ve never been able to get such a rise out of people than when I try and throw a little dirt on their Mac.

So my question is this: If we were half as passionate about Christ as we were about our favorite worldly brands (i.e. Apple, Windows, Blackberry, Starbucks, etc.), what would our world look like? If we were as charged up about proclaiming Christ and coming to His defense at every confrontation as we were about our worldly brands, what would be the outcome?

Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world— the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride in possessions—is not from the Father but is from the world. And the world is passing away along with its desires, but whoever does the will of God abides forever. (1 John 2:15-17, ESV)

Are we living that verse out? I know for me, I need to call myself on that every single day. It is SO easy to get entangled in meaningless debates and worldly brands that we miss the point. We need to remember the big picture!

Another example I’ll use is a softball team that I coach. About three years ago, we decided to move our “church league team” into the beer league so that we could be a light and a witness to others (rather than just playing with Christians). I made it very clear to the team that our #1 goal was to be a light to the umpires and the players that we were to play against, followed by being competitive. In the second year of playing, although I stated our goals again, there was something inside of me that made me become ultra-competitive… call it my pride. My #2 goal had become my #1 goal without even realizing it. In the second month of the season, I completely tore my ACL, MCL and lateral meniscus sliding into second base. Sitting on the sidelines during the following week (coaching first base actually), I had a lengthy chat with one of the players form the other team. Following the conversation, I felt like God completely hit me over the head and said, “Ray, you had forgotten why you were here.” I had missed the point completely. Literally, I felt tears well up in my eyes because I immediately realized that my fundamental passion had somehow become about the game rather than about Christ.

The question that we need to be asking ourselves is: “Are my words, actions, resources and time management glorifying God?”

Then he said to his disciples, "The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few”… (Matthew 9:37, ESV)

I would challenge each and every one of us to carefully consider what we are laboring over. Let’s be a generation that is passionate about proclaiming the gospel of Christ, while remembering that the tools and resources in this world are merely that – tools and resources that will one day pass away. We only get one chance in this world – let’s make it count.

My wife and I moved into our first house back in late summer this year. Since then interior decoration has been nearly a full time hobby for the both of us. I have worked on some various digital art pieces to fill frames that we had purchased for our bedroom and it was quite frustrating. I’ll tell you why.

We now have an office at home so I have been working there, but there are some key differences between my office at home and at work, namely the absence of a Wacom Tablet. Two years ago my employer bought Wacom Tablets for the designers and work has never been the same. For those of you that don’t know, a tablet is a flat surface, maybe a half an inch thick that works in coordination with a pen that replaces the use of a mouse. Let me tell you, for an artistic person, it’s a b-e-a-utiful thing.

The pen allows a much more natural use of the hand, wrist and arm while working on projects in any application, but most importantly, Photoshop. Imagine trying to use a mouse with a pencil jammed in the bottom to draw something on a piece of paper, it would be nearly impossible. Or better yet imagine Michelangelo was half way through his famous Sistine Chapel and had his fine paint brushes and artistic tools replaced with those jumbo crayons we had to use back in kindergarten. I was only 5 when I last used the jumbo crayons and I found those things insulting. Colour within the lines? Whatever! That was an exercise in futility! The difference is that significant. Also, using the pen is much more ergonomically correct. In the past two years I have ceased to have any wrist soreness I was experiencing before using a mouse 8 hours a day.

So this is my shameless endorsement. I HEART MY WACOM TABLET!!!
 

“I remember waking up to such a face one day long ago and thinking ‘the world would have been no different if I had not been here the past six months’. That’s a terrible feeling of regret.”

- David Heinemeier (37Signals)

Click here to check out the full post. It's well worth the read.
 

Whenever we deal with faith-based organizations, we often feel as though we need to start out by explaining why we believe that branding, marketing and advertising are not concepts to cringe at when it comes to applying them to Churches or faith-based Ministries.

One of the reasons that I think people cringe when they think of marketing a Ministry, is because they have a view of Church marketing that looks something like this:



What we try and communicate is that although there are no doubt examples of massive Ministries that do exactly what this cartoon implies, that doesn’t mean that they are good examples of applying marketing to the Church, or for that matter, good examples of marketing in general.

Good marketing, whether in the Ministry, Non-profit or Corporate world, needs to be consistent. I’ve mentioned before that good marketing involves having a good story. Ideally the marketing starts with the product or service itself. That said we believe that the Christian Church has the greatest story in the world and so the only thing that remains is for us to learn to tell that story in ways which do it justice.

At the end of the day, it’s about authenticity. We need to be authentic in communicating the story that we have to proclaim and authentic to who we are in the context of that story. A component part of that authenticity comes from consistency.

Putting up a big facade might result in superficial interest and growth, but it doesn’t result in long-term growth of people with a meaningful role in your Church, Ministry or Non-profit.