ARE you techno-phobic?

Dave Daubert - Three months ago I had never been to a webinar – since then I have helped lead two and we have one the fourth Tuesday of every month! Three months ago I had never spent a lot of time listening to podcasts – since then I have learned how to make them (including learning how to mix in music, narration, etc!). I have used a web/phone combination for meeting with a church council in Tennessee and conference calling for a meeting of a dozen leaders in a dozen communities along the border of Mexico and New Mexico. And in the last couple of weeks I have seen our functional A.R.E. web site nearly stop functioning due to servers crashing at our hosting company and we have had to scramble to get things back up again (I can take almost NO credit for fixing that – Kelly Fryer performed amazingly well doing things she didn’t know how to do, either!). My point is that if we (or you) are going to function in the new world in which we find ourselves, communicating effectively with a busy, fast paced and diverse world requires that we learn the medium of the day.

Technology is not optional! In my previous work with a large organization I saw how important it was to making things happen and how often it prevented things from happening. Now, in a smaller and more nimble group it is just as important. What I previously used (if it worked) or grumbled about (if it didn’t work), I now have to make happen or suffer as a result of not doing so. If you are in a small business then you will need to learn, partner with people who know, or find ways to contract to get what you need at affordable prices but also with good quality results. This is true whether you are a for-profit business, a non-profit organization or a local congregation. Fail to engage this at your own peril!

The April 2008 issue of Fast Company just arrived at my house and there is a timely article on Major League Baseball’s (MLB) Digital Dominance. This is timely now that baseball is back in full swing and spring has finally arrived (did I say finally?). Taking a game developed two centuries ago and adapting it to today’s world MLB has now got a cutting edge web site (http://mlb.mlb.com/index.jsp), its own cable TV subscription plan, internet viewing options, fantasy baseball leagues and all sorts of ways to engage people. This year, for $3.99 a month MLB will even send video highlights to mobile devices within 90 seconds of the play happening on the field! In addition, edited versions of games (with dead time between pitches removed) are now online and it takes only about 25 minutes to watch every pitch of a typical game. MLB’s web site averages 11 million hits a day (and many are paying subscribers).

At A.R.E. we are starting to learn and think about how this new reality impacts us. We are admittedly newbies at this but I dare say that by this time next year we will be pretty competent players. We will most likely have to pay for some services and some training that we can’t do now – some services to set things up quickly and competently and some training to learn skills we don’t yet know. This is both exciting and scary all at the same time – but we can see clearly that our ability to serve effectively in today’s world mandates that we step to the plate. We are going to take a shot at it.

Are you?