We set out to create a series of Sunday experiences that would work through a 7 week liturgy to move people to change. It felt like we needed to create space for people to engage with their emotions whether physically or emotionally. The week kicked off with an Ash wednesday service at night for people to begin the process of Lent. The season culminates with a celebration at Easter.

We kicked Lent off the first year with a personalized liturgical book and journal. The book was 30 pages starting form ash wednesday and going through Easter. With scripture readings, prayers and blank pages for journaling, this book became very personal for people very fast. In the end the goal was that people would leave their own personal junk at the cross and celebrate the sacrifice that was made at the cross at Easter. Over the span of seven weeks people began to dig up their personal conflicts, inadequacies, and self awareness… the results were powerful.

The following years we provided the Mars Hill community with a bookmark, calendar and scripture reading schedule to compliment each Sunday experience. We wanted to create a reproducible piece that could be used each year without having to spend an exorbitant amount of money. We reduced costs by asking for volunteers to assemble the bookmarks.

Slideshow tied to this post via custom field.

SEO applied to post (update statuses, push to pings, update engines)

Select categories for where the post and related imagery will show up from the slideshow.

I also want to have a hidden div at the bottom of this with the playlist content and urls.. but this shouldn’t show up on the site when someone is viewing it.

Live the Life online inventory system

We have been hired to help Live the Life design and deploy an online premarriage inventory system. This system will allow them to do stuff and then also do more stuff with their couples. This is an overview.

“To this day, I’d say the best thing for Microsoft to do is buy Yahoo,” Yang said during an appearance at the Web 2.0 conference in San Francisco. He added: “We’re willing to sell the company.”

The embattled CEO quickly noted that Microsoft, which made an unsolicited $ 47.5 billion takeover attempt earlier this year, has repeatedly indicated it is no longer interested in buying Yahoo. In response to questions, Yang said he was “open minded about a search deal” with Microsoft, “but it has to make sense.”

Yang made the comments just hours after rival and prospective partner Google Inc. (GOOG) walked away from a search advertising pact between the companies as concerns mounted that U.S. regulators were prepared to file a lawsuit to block the agreement. The proposed deal had also prompted a backlash from advertisers, who worried Google was gaining too much power in the Internet advertising space.

The collapse of the deal, which Yahoo had hoped would generate millions of dollars in revenue, ignited a rally in Yahoo’s stock as analysts speculated Microsoft would be tempted to take another run at Yahoo.

Yahoo shares rose 4.3% to $13.92 Wednesday.

How empowered is your organization online?

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are you even showing up?

It is really hard to ignore the buzz surrounding Google. Google has emerged as the clear winner in their market and shows no signs of slowing down. Lately we have heard from many people that Google has become a concentrated focus for their marketing and online reach.

This seems more applicable today than a few years ago and even moreso with an economic slowdown. Increasing reach in google used to be done with PPC, of which accounts for XX% of google’s total revnue, however while pay per click campaigns can certainly drive new traffic to your web site they are costly and it is hard to gauge what traffic is truly the audience you are trying to reach. This article cites google, however this same theory would apply for all search engines, in fact when you begin to multiply out a broad search engine marketing campaign you begin to incur overhead that in slow economic times does not necessarily translate to the bottom line. blah blah blah blah!