BlakeAtwood.com

Kem Meyer told us to stop doing so much.

OK, she didn’t actually use those words, but that’s what she said. That’s what she always says. Her blog’s mantra is Less Clutter. Less Noise. so even though it may seem she’s contradicting the Stop Talking. Start Doing. motif of the conference, she’s actually reinforcing it.

People today are overwhelmed by choice, bombarded by advertising, and struggling to redeem their time. It’s up to us in the communications business to convey necessary messages without adding to the mess. Kem listed five myths, but here are my distillations in active form:

Reduce the gap between intent and perception.
See these unfortunate domains as an example. Be warned! Most are risque. But really funny.

Focus your audience’s vision.
Watch this awareness video for an example.

Every communication piece can afford liposuction.
Have you heard about the new stop sign?

Hit the heart within nine seconds.
Nine seconds is both the average attention span for a normal web user and for a goldfish. Trigger an emotional response to engage your audience.

Spend money on the experience, then on promotions.
A bad, personal experience is worse than a typo. A cool flyer that leads to an inauthentic experience is just more dead trees.

The distillation of the distillation? Effective and engaging communications wisely communicate concisely

Shawn Wood, Experiences and Creative Communications Pastor at Seacoast Church, and recent author of 200 Pomegranates and an Audience of One, told us not to touch the poop.

OK, he didn’t actually use those words, but that’s…actually, he did use those precise words. He’s afforded some leniency because he was quoting his two-year old daughter (who wanted to touch the dog doo-doo in the backyard), but I’d even go so far to say he’s completely absolved of any verbal wrongdoings based on Paul’s letter to the Phillipians where he considers everything “rubbish,” which, I’ve been told, may have referred to something a little more pungent than trash.

As it was, he was also reminding us in the church that we’re far too enamored with our stuff when our stuff should only be used to further the good news that Jesus loves us all and wants everyone to know and feel that in the very essence of their being. Yet, we want to “touch the poop” (or in C.S. Lewis’ much more masterful terms, “go on making mudpies”), when there’s something much greater out there to spend our time and effort on.

And it’s when we become so myopic in our own ministry areas that we begin to schism, to lose sight of the big-M, Meaning Of It All.

The distillation? The church is a continent, not an archipelago.

[Of course, he gets bonus points for two things: being on Twitter and using The Office as a metaphor for a day in the life of a pastor.]

Mark Beeson, Senior Pastor at Granger Community Church, told us all to shut up.

OK, he didn’t actually use those words, but that’s what he said. Stop Talking. Start Doing. Unending conversations accomplish nothing in the church for the betterment of the world around us. There’s a reason Jesus said “Go” and not “Discuss.” While there is a time and place for earnest, thought-provoking discussion, it should not last for eternity. Brian McLaren made this point in a different way in Everything Must Change, positing that the church is much too focused on it’s own needs (What color carpet would cause the least congregational uproar?) and not on the hurting, dying world around us. In many ways, the church can become all talk and no walk. He who has feet to walk, let him walk.

Then Mark Beeson told us he’s unbalanced. Which, after listening to him describe his driving habits, was easily believable. But he said that a balanced person never moves. You have to lean into life to get the most from it, all the while remembering that leaning means a greater chance for a fall. Mistakes and failures will most assuredly come, but your team, your spouse, your friends, your family, and your God will all be there to help you back up.

My distillation came from a wise, green, midget alien: Do or do. There is no do not

As led by the inimitable Kem Meyer, Communications Director at Granger Community Church, this all-day workshop was worth the self-induced hassles of the previous night’s drive to Granger.

The lessons learned have narrowed my focus, and, while it’s given me more work in the short-term, will prove invaluable to the future of the church I serve. To wit, in order to become a more organized and task-driven person, and because I wrote down so many action items as a result of this workshop, I signed up for a Remember the Milk account. RTM, in short, is an online to do list.

I spent the last 30 minutes or so inputting item after item. 25 items later, I felt overwhelmed, yet gratified, because they represent my first steps into helping create a better communications platform for what I hope will be a continually growing (in breadth and depth) church in Georgetown.

It’d be remiss of me to explain the details of the workshop. (Hint: Kem’s blog is an excellent start, and she does other workshops as well). But the gist, to me, seems to be the same thing I learned at a breakout session last year regarding video work. The prep-work that no one sees is the most important work you can do. The why’s that dictate everything else need to be properly answered before going live with a “deliverable.” This is something I’m not good at, whether it’s because of my own need for a quick, tangible goal, or because of our staff’s (or just our culture’s) preconditioning to immediate gratification.

So my first action step is to figure out why we’re doing things the way we are, how that can be streamlined, and how we can make sure not to lose anyone along the way. It won’t be easy, but change seldom is.

Finally, we managed to mention Twitter more than a few times, as many of us in there were twitter fanatics (Shout outs to Kem and Jeremy). I also suggested Yammer for inter-office communications, though I have yet to try it out myself. But I plan too.

I’m not a fan of driving. When allowed to relinquish the reins to a competent driver, I nearly always defer. I’d rather enjoy the ride.

But sometimes you have to drive yourself. Tonight, I drove myself crazy.

After enjoying a nonstop flight to Chicago, in which the plane was only half-full (or half-empty, depending on your POV) and, I think, challenging the guy next time to a new game I like to call “Who Can Bob His Head More Coolly To His Music While Wearing Headphones” (I won), I got off the flight to take the longest walk I’ve ever made to retrieve my baggage. Fortunately, and for the first and most likely last time of my life, my bag was first off the plane.

I grabbed my rental car. I brazenly declined insurance. I wholeheartedly refused the GPS. I had, after all, an iPhone in my possession. It would not lead me astray.

My first turn out of the airport was the wrong way. With planes zooming into land inches from my head, driving back and forth into the sun, trying to figure out the car’s transmission, and staring at the small iPhone screen, it’s a wonder I didn’t smack the many, many buses around. As a Texan, I’m used to open roads, not cramped lanes. Getting from the airport to the first major highway proved difficult enough. I’ve never seen so many people out on the street. Granted, it was a very nice day, and I probably would have been outside too, but I had places to be.

Eventually I made it onto I-90, the interstate that would lead me to my destination. Except that I missed my exit, and the next exit was 10 miles farther down the road. And then I couldn’t quite make it back to the interstate. And did I mention this was a tollway? At this point (still 10 miles past my destination), I had to eat, and Arby’s answered the call.

I got back on the tollway, retracing the route I’d just taken, and took the correct exit for my hotel. Just one last tollbooth to pass through. One unmanned tollbooth. Where there were a line of cars. Immobile cars. For what seemed like an eternity.

I almost thought an apocalyptic movie was starting to happen as people got out of their cars, wandered to cars in front of them, then wandered back to their cars. I might have seen Will Smith. I have no idea what was wrong; I have to think the machines weren’t being nice. Overworked maybe? Regardless, I eventually got through. Only to take another wrong turn.

After U-turn #34, I was less than 2 miles from my hotel. Then I tried to turn onto an unfinished road. As in a road that was not meant to be driven upon. Once I realized my error (and I was so close to the hotel), I continued on that “road,” while remembering two things: It’s a rental! and I didn’t get the insurance!

Finally, I was on the road that was supposed to lead me home. And I missed the last turn. Seriously. After righting that wrong, I was never so happy to see a hotel sign.

Apparently my debacle merited some kind of providential remuneration. The hotel offered me a “spa room” at the same price as my conference discount. I’m not entirely sure what that means in the grand scheme of things, aside from the fact that there’s a large bath right next to my bed.

And this is how the Innovate Conference begins for me. Although technically it doesn’t begin until tomorrow, and I can’t really hold them responsible for my idiocy. Steve Jobs, on the other hand, better get turn-by-turn navigation on the iPhone soon, or I’ll probably be flying out of Dulles later this week.