The conference has three tracks – theology, strategy, and
education. I’m speaking in the Strategy track on "Mobile 101: Understanding What Your Ministry
Needs to Do Now!" and "A Deep (But Non-Techie) Dive into
Mobile."
Why talk about mobile at a
conference devoted to ministry?
Technology is everywhere,
including churches. The Strategy track presentations reflect this, covering
topics like mobile learning, how to get one million social media fans, using
Pinterest… and mobile.
How does mobile fit in?
The smartphones and tablets we
see all around us are in churches as well, especially those with younger
congregations, and there’s more and more talk about needing to “go mobile”. The
problem is that just saying “go mobile” is too vague… Without defining what
that means, it’s easy to waste time and money and wind up with a disappointing
product or no product at all. My two presentations focus on this risk.
Session one, “Mobile 101:
Understanding What Your Ministry Needs to Do Now!" introduces the whole subject
of mobile. We’ll define:
·
Good (and bad) reasons to go
mobile in the first place.
·
Issues to think about when going
mobile (such as why your church app isn’t likely to compete with Angry Birds
and what this means).
·
Specific ways to go mobile
ranging from converting Microsoft Word content to PDF to creating a true “app”
for iPhone and Android phone users in your church. (If the latter sounds
terrifying, you may be surprised to learn that a new group of authoring tools
makes it possible to create an app with little or no programming background at
all.)
The second session, "A Deep
(But Non-Techie) Dive Into Mobile" picks up where the first session left
off. It introduces an iPhone/Android app created for a church outside Boston,
MA and shows how to create such apps using tools designed for non-programmers,
in this case a tool called ViziApps Studio (www.viziapps.com). You’ll look at the features in the app, the
tool, and modify the app yourself with no programming. The
result? A demo app that you can take back to your church to show how it’s
possible to go mobile now!
Hope to see you there…
