'Twas the day before Christmas and all through the office
Not an employee was present...well, except me.

But I'm heading out in a few minutes and at that point, our offices will be officially closed for the holidays.

As such, we're going to take a break from the blogging world and barring any unforeseen circumstances, things will go quiet on the Xpiritmental blog front until January 4.

However, even though the blog will be quiet, if you’re an AdvancedMinistry user with a support issue, know that we're still here for you. Just continue to use the support system as usual 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.

Have a blessed Christmas and a most excellent New Year celebration!

After the roller coaster ride of last year, 2009 has seen the world economy begin to turn around. And while many have been adversely affected, some of which have had to close their doors, we are so thankful to have been in a position to not only maintain our current staff, but to grow to be able to better serve our clients needs. For the team here at Electricurrent and AdvancedMinistry, 2009 held a number of important events:

Our family grew

2009 marked a year of growth as we added two programmers, Julie Exel and Walter Bax to our team. Our extended family also grew as Derek and Stephanie welcomed Lawson into the world on August 2nd, and Julie and Andrew welcomed Hailey Lynn to their family on November 13th.

The students

This past year, we've taken on a new opportunity by playing host to a few co-op students as they experienced a placement with us. Paul Mawdsley from South Secondary School joined us first and was with us from January til June, and we currently have Peter Argall from Banting Secondary School with us until end of January.

Our Marathon man

Our Creative Director, Hugh Pindur once again completed the Chicago Marathon. But this time around he shaved almost two hours off his time, coming in at a very impressive 3:19:34. Next up in 2010, he is shooting for entry into the Boston Marathon. No more M&Ms and cookies in the afternoon for Hugh.

But at this time we not only think of all memorable moments that we've experienced in 2009, we also engage the truth that we live in a time and place of great privilege while many across the world and even in our own backyard, don't even have enough to eat let alone a job to go to. And so, as we did last year, in lieu of holiday gifts, Electricurrent is once again making a donation to World Relief that will help to make a real difference in the lives of impoverished individuals across the world.



As we all take time to reflect on this past year and spend time with our families this holiday season, we wish you all a great holiday season.

As in past years, our offices will be closed during the holidays. We will be shutting down at noon on Thursday, December 24th and returning Monday, January 4th.
 For those of you on AdvancedMinistry, the AdvancedMinistry team will continue to respond to support tickets throughout the holidays. Please understand though that there may be a longer-than-expected wait time in receiving a response.

From the entire team here at Electricurrent and AdvancedMinistry, we wish you and your family Merry Christmas! To God be all glory.

This is pretty cool.

Yesterday, we got an early Christmas gift in the form of a box that was delivered via courier. I opened it to find some Davey Awards inside.

Turns out we have been honored for the following work:

Category: Religion/Spirituality
Client: CAM International
Project: Organizational Website
URL: http://www.caminternational.org

Category: Religion/Spirituality
Client: Biola University - 100th Anniversary
Project: Centennial Celebration Website
URL: http://100.biola.edu

For those who don't know, the Davey Awards are run by the same organization as the Webby Awards (dubbed the Oscars of the Internet). The only difference being that the Davey's are specifically for smaller budget agencies who have billings of US $25 million or less.

That still puts us in some very esteemed company, as there are many smaller agencies who are doing work for major corporate accounts and many larger agencies have taken to creating mini-branches that are distinctly branded but are technically still part of the larger agency, they just have smaller billings. So for us to win recognition by the Davey Awards is a real honor and a great note to end the year on.

Here's hoping for more of the same in 2010!

I have been blessed with 3 children who have Attention Deficit Disorder (A.D.D.) and am learning so many valuable lessons through them.

Because of this, I tend to be ultra-sensitive to this type of behavior in the people around me including the ministries we serve and don’t serve. There are so many roads I could go down to explain why this behavior is at the very least a waste of resources and at its worst, destructive, but I am not here to complain.

Rather, my hope is to encourage those that fall into this trap to take toll of their communications efforts and do the right thing. Plan, understand and stay focused.

If you are working with freelancers, make sure they understand your brand and the way you want to communicate that brand. If you have the privilege of working with a professional communications firm, listen, learn and don’t let pride get in the way. If you have the extreme privilege of having in-house creative capabilities, encourage them to hold fast and flex their creative muscle within the brand parameters and be willing to truly listen to and consider their suggestions.

I guess that’s why I encourage anyone who will listen to let the brand drive everything. It’s the only path to honest consistency.

We are pleased to announce Xpiritmental wallpaper #61 entitled, The Lion & The Lamb, inspired by Isaiah 11:6 / 65:25.

Download the new wallpaper below or visit the Xpiritmental Archives for more wallpapers. Have a great weekend... Christmas is only a few days away!

Xpiritmental No. 61
The Lion & The Lamb
Isaiah 11:6 / 65:25



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Well it’s been a long time coming, but the third installment of my journey from Windows to Apple is finally here. I can’t say it’s been an easy road by any means, but it has been enjoyable.

The last time I made an entry was on April 7; at that point I had owned my new Mac for about a month and things were moving along fairly smoothly.

It has now been over 8 months and I have to say that I’m still impressed as a whole. Let me summarize my experiences in bullet points and if you have any further questions, feel free to comment at the bottom of this (rather lengthy) post. So here we go:

1. I’m still loving Spaces, the Apple tool that enables you create as many virtual desktops as you want and scroll between them all. On my machine I run 3 monitors (2 + my laptop) and have 6 virtual spaces. (Monitor 1 hooks up through my miniport adapter; Monitor 2 hooks up through a USB-DVI device that I bought from Gefen.) Essentially I am running a total of 18 screens (6 virtual desktops multiplied by 3 monitors)… kind of overkill I know, but you’d be shocked at how many I use. On one virtual space I run my mail, iTunes and Adium (an instant messaging client that ties all of your IM accounts together, i.e. Google, Facebook, MSN, Yahoo, etc.). On the second virtual space I run Photoshop (and all of it’s tab groups on separate monitors). On the third virtual space I run Yummy FTP and multiple instances of Finder. On the fourth virtual space I run Dreamweaver, Firefox and Safari (for beta testing). On the fifth virtual space I run OpenOffice (for documents, spreadsheets, etc.). Finally on the sixth virtual space I run Parallels (for testing sites in Internet Explorer on Windows) along with Remote Desktop (for accessing outside servers). Wow, it sounds like I need to add some more spaces for Flash, Premiere, etc. :)

2. I reboot my laptop about once every two weeks – seriously. I go to work and open my laptop. I leave for the day and close my laptop. Later that night, I open my laptop… and so on. I never log on, log off, etc. And the thing that blows my mind is – as soon as I open the computer, it’s ready to go. There’s no waiting for the operating system to load – it’s just there. No lag time.

3. Originally I had purchased Microsoft Office for Mac. I have to say that it was a mistake. I purchased it because I wanted some familiarity in my desktop applications (since I use Word and Excel multiple times per day). But on Mac (even on my laptop with 8GB of RAM), it is SO slow. I could open up a Word doc and go have a coffee before it opens. About three months ago I decided to give OpenOffice a try – a free open source product that has all of the same (general) features as Microsoft Office. Let me say – it is amazing. It’s fast, smooth and runs way better than Word and Excel on Mac. Their presentation software (that mimics PowerPoint) is great as well. I’ve had no problem opening up any MS Office files either. Now I know many of you Mac-heads out there might be saying, “Why didn’t you go with iWork”? Two reasons: 1. Although it’s inexpensive, it still costs money, and 2. I needed compatibility between Mac and Windows. OpenOffice is free and fulfills both of those requirements.

4. With the release of Snow Leopard comes Microsoft Exchange support. I almost had an emotional breakdown at the thought of switching from MS Outlook (in Parallels), but after some convincing from my friend Brandon Cotter, I decided to make the switch to Apple Mail. There were some major things that I needed to have in place before hand -- well one actually. It’s a program made by Lokiware called Mail Attachments Iconizer and it literally saves Apple Mail from disaster when it comes to sending and receiving attachments, particularly with people on Windows machines. I won’t go into detail but if you’re on Apple Mail (or thinking about switching to Apple Mail), it’s an absolute “must have”. Last time I checked the product was $15. Since switching to Apple Mail, my experience has been pleasant. Apple mail opens pretty much instantaneously (unlike Outlook, which sometimes enables you to go grab coffee #2 after you’ve just finished opening Word). The one decision I did make early on in using Apple Mail was to compose messages in plain text rather than HTML format. It’s not as fancy as it once was (i.e. signatures), but it simplifies things tremendously. I figure that if Mac is about “simplifying”, then I can give up HTML-formatted signatures.

5. One of my main concerns (which should be one of your main concerns as well) is backing up data. Apple’s program called “Time Machine” could possibly be the best backup application I’ve ever seen. You literally plug in an external drive (i.e. a 1TB Lacie drive) and it asks you, “Would you like to use this drive as a Time Machine backup?” You say, “Yes”, and the rest goes on behind the scenes. Every hour (or how ever often you want) it backs up any files that were changed (in the background). I have it plugged in all the time and I haven’t found that it slows my computer down any. Three months down the road if you realize that you accidently deleted or overwrote a file, all you have to do is click on Time Machine and your machine brings up a screen that looks like outer space. From there, there is a slider bar that enables you to scroll back to any date and browse your hard drive ON THAT DATE. I’m not kidding. You can literally browse your hard drive (through the backup device) like it was three months ago and recover any file you want. It’s brilliant!

6. Now some bad news -- Macs still crash. They (Apple computers) were made by humans (not robots), and as we all know, humans are not perfect. The Apple operating system does a good job in recovering from most crashes, but nevertheless, there have been a number of occasions when I’ve had to do the old “hold the power button down for 5 seconds” trick and wait for the machine to come back to life. Remember though – I am a power-user (as per point #1)… I am hard on my machine and still don’t appreciate the fact that I have to wait for an application to load. :) I find most of my problems come when I have Firefox open. I love Firefox and it’s still my favorite browser (because of its wide variety of add-ons), but Safari is much faster overall.

7. I also help out at our church in various ministries, particularly in the audio, video and technical areas. Recently, our church expanded and built a new youth wing that required its own A/V equipment, projection system, etc. Being familiar with Song Show Plus (a Windows application), the simple thing would have been to stick with that for our projection/worship needs. However, I decided it was time to venture out on a limb and instead we purchased an IMac and ProPresenter, a Mac application that does the same thing (generally speaking). I’m pretty sure that I can speak on behalf of the entire team in saying that ProPresenter has been way better at meeting our needs than Song Show Plus ever was. And once again, it’s fast and simple.

There’s so much more I could go on about, but let me summarize with a couple of things.

First of all, people always ask me, “So do you think I should buy a Mac or PC”? My response is this: I own a copy of Windows 7 as well and I have to say that in my opinion, it’s a pretty amazing operating system. Microsoft has done a good job in moving in the right direction. Ultimately I still think that Apple’s Snow Leopard is a better operating system by about “20%”. It’s a little smoother, a little simpler and really easy to get attached to very quickly. At the end of the day, if you have the money then I would say “go Mac” but I have to be honest with you – dollar for dollar, it’s not a comparable operating system. It’s way cheaper to buy a good Windows 7 laptop from HP or Dell laptop with (generally speaking) the same hardware in it vs. a Macbook or Macbook Pro. Understand that when you buy an Apple, you ARE paying for the “Apple experience” (and they know it). If you are a business and want the best product (not necessarily for the money), then Apple is the way to go. Ultimately though (and I’m starting to believe it), being on an Apple DOES indeed feel like I am being more productive. It feels like I get things done a little faster. Maybe I am, maybe I’m not. But the overall user experience has convinced me (and many others) that I am getting more work done with less stress. Regardless of whether its true or not can be submitted to the TV show, Myth Busters – they can figure it out.

And now for my second and final summary point – today we switched our entire company over to Apple. It was a surprise actually – we stuck everyone in a room and told them not to come out for a few minutes (while we unloaded the car)… then we introduced them to their new computers. All of our old Dell computers will be donated to our local church / used for other purposes. I believe it was a good decision for our company; whether it’s the best decision for every company is another story. But for all of the people in our company that were on PCs, the journey from Windows to Apple will now begin… again.

For those of you that requested we convert our newer Xpiritmental desktops into Powerpoint backgrounds, the wait is now over. Twenty-six new PowePoint backgrounds were released this afternoon, making it seemless to integrate them into sermons and worship slides. You can preview most of them here, or download them by logging into your account and clicking on Download Materials > PowerPoint Slides.

Newton said it best and we try to remember this very simple law of physics when putting into practice some of the strategies we have been hired to execute for our clients.

For example, just recently the environmental movement experienced a heavy blow when emails from some of the very scientists trying to prove the human role in environmental degradation were uncovered as revealing their doubts on what they where communicating to the general public.

Their action – hiding important information. The opposite reaction – loss of credibility.

Once again, not rocket science, and yet, by our actions we seem to think there are no consequences. When dealing with your brand, why do marketers, advertisers and brand builders not realize that inconsistencies in their brand presentation hurts the brand.

Is it really just not thought about, or are we so arrogant that we think our brand is strong enough to withstand our whimsical approach to communicating our organizations values? Either answer is bad and will damage the brand you should care so much about.

Here's some positive reinforcement: I went to McDonald's the other day with my 10-year old daughter and a bunch of her friends during a grand opening (I had no idea until I walked through the doors :-(). Although it was crazy, I did have an opportunity to sit down and talk with Ronald McDonald himself. I had no idea, but did you realize that McDonald's has hired one guy to be Ronald? He flies all over the world representing McDonald's at special events including the summer Olympics in Beijing and upcoming winter Olympics in British Columbia, Canada.

Consistency is one of the cornerstones of this incredibly successful company. Wouldn't you love to be able to put up a sign that says “billions served”? 

Recently, I logged on to Facebook to get an update on what was going on in my live feed and as I scrolled through the list, it struck me that I have developed some distinct patterns as to how I peruse that feed.

On any given day, that feed might present around two to three hundred posts to me and I really don't have time or desire to read each one individually. So, without even realizing it, what I've started to do is to perform triage on the posts as I scroll through the list. I realized that within a split second, my brain evaluates whether or not I wanted to read a post based on who was posting and what the post looked like (length, graphics associated, etc...), without ever reading a word of the post proper.

Furthermore, what has also happened over time as I've performed the above-mentioned triage, is that I've begun to categorize people as either those that post things that bring value to me or those that regularly say stuff that don't bring any value to me or that I can't contribute to...and for those in the latter group, I nearly always skip over them.

The reason I tell you this is to provide a really clear example of what happens with the messages we send.

When we as an audience are bombarded with information...and we are all the time...our minds find ways to perform triage on those messages so that the unrelated and inapplicable ones get discarded in favor of spending the time and brain power to digest those that might be of value to us.

So my question to you as a ministry or non-profit is, as you consider using or are already using properties like Facebook and Twitter, or taking up blogging, do you stop to think about whether or not what you are about to communicate is really and truly of value to your audience?

Often, the reality is that the messages that get communicated by organizations are more about the organization than they are about the audience. This is a sure-fire way to find yourself pouring more-and-more time into an unsuccessful online strategy. Bring value to those people that you are reaching out to. Provide offerings that motivate and enliven them and then continue to add value to it.

The thing you do, whether it be running a church or feeding starving children (and anything in between), isn't all about you. It's about who you serve and in a lot of cases, who helps you to serve them. I suppose we all like to think that those two perspectives are synonymous, but in reality, often they are not and the only way to make them mean the same thing is to actively work to be all about others.

Getting that in perspective will totally change how you communicate and what messages you send as a ministry or non-profit...and the happy by-product will be that you will undoubtedly be more successful at what you do.

We received this email a couple of days ago with the subject line, "Best Christmas Decorations".  Be sure to read the commentary underneath the picture as well.  Have a great weekend!

“Good news is that I truly out did myself this year with my Christmas decorations. The bad news is that I had to take him down after two days. I had more people come screaming up to my house than ever. Great stories. But two things made me take it down.

First, the cops advised me that it would cause traffic accidents as they almost wrecked when they drove by.

Second, a 55 year old lady grabbed the 75 pound ladder almost killed herself putting it against my house and didn’t realize that it was fake until she climbed to the top (she was not happy). By the way, she was one of the many people who attempted to do that. My yard couldn’t take it either. I have more than a few tire tracks where people literally drove up my yard.”

As of today, AdvancedMinistry users that are using 3.0 templates have two more features in their toolbox.

The first item is one of our most requested items – the ability to increase the font size in one's navigation. That is now possible (under the Navigation tab in the 3.0 editor).

The second new item is an added bonus. For those users that would like to put background images behind the text in home page and secondary page columns, you can now do so. This is very useful for applying slight gradient effects and patterns to columns (as was introduced in some of our later AM 2.0 templates). This new feature can be found under the Layout tab in the 3.0 editor.

Enjoy!

By popular demand, we have converted our latest Xpiritmental desktop to a new AdvancedMinistry 3.0 template entitled "Midnight Clear" (view preview).

As usual, all AM 3.0 templates are fully customizable including the ability to change the number of columns, colors, fonts, etc. If you would like to use a simplified version of your home page, edit your template, click the Layout Tab and choose "Show All Columns (Simplified Home Page)". Resource files for the new template can be found in the "Download Materials" menu under "Template Resource Files".

To change your template at any time, login to your AdvancedMinistry account and select “Choose My Template”.

For those AdvancedMinistry customers that were having problems using their native character sets, we are pleased to announce that all of our AM 3.0 template modules are now compatible with non-Latin character sets (i.e. Chinese, Korean, Greek, etc.)!

Before when you entered (and saved) an incompatible character, it would just come up as a question mark (“?”). With the new expansion, that is no longer the case.

Additionally, for those users who wish to use non-Flash supported characters in your homepage and secondary page headers, you can now select “Standard HTML Font” under the “Title Fonts” tab in your AM 3.0 Template Editor.

AdvancedMinistry is pleased to present 12 new PowerPoint slides (with more on the way). You can download them by logging into your account and clicking on Download Materials followed by PowerPoint Slides.

We are pleased to announce Xpiritmental wallpaper #60 entitled, Miraculous, inspired by Matthew 1 and Luke 2.

Download the new wallpaper below or visit the Xpiritmental Archives for more wallpapers. Have a great weekend!

Xpiritmental No. 60
Miraculous
Matthew 1 & Luke 2



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As promised in our post from yesterday, we are pleased to present the latest AdvancedMinistry 3.0 template entitled "The Glorious Morning" (view preview).

As usual, all AM 3.0 templates are fully customizable including the ability to change the number of columns, colors, fonts, etc. If you would like to use a simplified version of your home page, edit your template, click the Layout Tab and choose "Show All Columns (Simplified Home Page)". Resource files for the new template can be found in the "Download Materials" menu under "Template Resource Files".

To change your template at any time, login to your AdvancedMinistry account and select “Choose My Template”.

Well it's that time of year again... only 24 more days until Christmas! To get you in the Christmas spirit, we thought we'd revitalize a couple of desktop wallpapers from last year -- "The Glorious Morning" and "Randorf". We're actually going to be turning The Glorious Morning into an AdvancedMinistry 3.0 template in the near future, so stay tuned. In the meantime, download the desktops, below.

Xpiritmental No. 29
The Glorious Morning
The meaning of Christmas.



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Xpiritmental No. 29
Randorf
Reindeer have feelings too.



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Have you ever wanted the ability to make some minor tweaks or changes to some of our AM 3.0 template banners and backgrounds? As of today, you can! Resource downloads for all of our AM 3.0 templates are now available for Green, Orange, Red, Blue and Purple Suite users.

For example, if you wanted to make a change to some of the verses on the graffiti wall of the “Be Encouraged” template that we launched last week, it’s now possible.

Resource downloads contain a variety of design files -- some include JPEG images, while others include Adobe Photoshop PSD files.

As we continue to launch more AM 3.0 templates, resource downloads will be made available simultaneously.  To download resource files, login and click on "Download Materials".  You will then see a link called "Template Resource Files".

Note: To edit PSD files you will need to have Adobe Photoshop (or another piece software that can open PSD files). If you don't own Adobe Photoshop (and don't want to pay the high price tag), you might Google following software: Adobe Photoshop Elements, GIMP, Paint Shop Pro or Photopaint.

Have fun!