PastorHacks

Tokbox

Sorry for the lag in blogging here. I have a feeling I'll be back in the swing of things come the new year. In the meantime...

Check out TokBox.

Our staff right now consists of two Mac users and one PC user... and no office. We tend to meet in coffee shops for staff meetings, and when we all got snowed in earlier this week, that became a practical impossibility. 

So was connecting via iChat or Skype. 2 way conversations were doable- three way, not so much. Frustrating for this Mac user who believes his beloved Apple can do anything. 

Luckily I have an iPhone and can conference calls so easily. :)

Even luckier, we discovered Tokbox. 3 way video conference in under 30 seconds- seriously. It's that easy. And I'm fairly sure we could have conferenced in a lot of other folks as well. 

And more, there's social networking components, video mail... it's pretty slick and dead simple. 

I can see a lot of uses for this, including over a big campus, or to make people working from multiple sites seem as though they are in the same space (stay on during the workday and just intercom someone, basically), but ideally suited for conferencing in multiple people not in the same physical space. 

Check out TokBox.

Sendible.com

So- right now I have a number of reminders set up on Backpack that are there to help me remember to send specific emails to specific people at specific times. 

Whew. 

What if instead of setting up a reminder, getting said reminder, then writing and sending the actual email I could just compress all that into one step and write an email that would automatically send later?

Not sure if there's an Outlook way to do this- I imagine so... but if not, check out Sendible.com

Schedule messages

Plan ahead and send messages to your friends, colleagues and customers using email, sms and your social networks. Sendible integrates seamlessly with your email service and social networks and provides you with easy access to your email and social contacts.

There's another, easier way to schedule emails in Mac Mail, though it takes a couple of steps in installation- I detail that here

Other options or ways to send that reminder to others at specific times? 

Contacting

Two apps help me keep in touch with people- I'll use MAC examples, but you could easily do this with outlook, Gmail/Google Calendar, etc.

I looked and looked and LOOKED for good contact management software that would work for pastors- everything out there either suffered from bloat (doing too many extraneous things) or was way over the top in cost. Nothing I saw did exactly what I wanted, so if there are any software developers out there, I have a million dollar (or perhaps couple thousand dollar) idea...

At any rate, here's my current work around to manage contacting.

I took my list of everyone I wanted to be in my contacting schedule, and made sure they were in my address book.

I did some division (wow- my math teachers were right... you really do use this stuff!) to figure out how many contacts over the Tuesday-Friday week, and came up with contacting everyone once in a six week period.

I opened my calendar, created a new calendar set called "contacting" and began dragging names to days, starting with the A's and moving on. I set each one to repeat in 6 weeks. 

I started a mail file called prayer/contacting.

Everyday I email, call or visit with that days people- when I email, I try to ask about how I can be praying for them and place their reply in my folder. The next time they come around in the schedule, I refresh my memory by looking at past emails/notes from them.

The final step was placing "write/pray for contacts for the day" in my "dailies" or the to-do list I start every day off with.

And voila'! An easy way to make sure that everyone I'm trying to stay in touch with (in this case our whole church) gets contacted regularly.

How about you all- what's your system?

Prayer list anytime via Jott/Sandy

David Rudd sent me this...

"I've used Jott (everyone should use Jott)and Sandy (my church can't afford a secretary for me, so i have a virtual one) to create a highly functional prayer list which can be updated from anywhere and quickly accessed via email.

Anytime I have a prayer request to add, I use my phone to Jott Sandy (use Jott links to set this up) and simply say "remind me to pray for _________"  then I add the tag "@prayer".
I can also email sandy with the information, the key is always to add the tag "@prayer."

Whenever I sit down to pray, or if I want to review my prayer list, I send Sandy an email saying, "lookup @prayer"

BAM!

She emails me my entire prayer list!

(if I wanted to, I could set up a dummy Gmail address which would forward all emails to Sandy with the tag "@prayer."  then I could tell people to email their requests to me whenever they want.  I haven't done this yet, though...)

Getting things done with Jott

I love both Jott and Pinger- Pinger I use mainly to send short voice messages to people. Why not just call?  Well, when I'm in the car and have ten  calls to make, it's incredibly helpful to just be able to leave a message with folks with all the pertinent info and skip the small talk.
I know, I know... weasely. But I'm not the only one who's ever felt relief at getting someone's voicemail, right?  Pinger just guarantees it.

Jott I use mainly for myself. When I'm on the go and get an idea, need a reminder, etc... It's also great for sending emails to other people- just speak it and it's magically transcribed (I suspect elves. I think Jott uses elves) and sent.

Here's a great run down from Lifehack of how to get things done with Jott:

All it takes is a little set-up, first in your Jott account, then on your phone, and you can start Jotting things to any number of online services. Here’s how.

First things first: send yourself a message

The easiest thing to do with Jott is to send yourself a message — useful for reminders and quick collection of random thoughts while on the go.

1. Sign up for a Jott account. You’ll enter your phone’s telephone number, which acts as your username — any call from that phone number goes to your account.
2. Add a speed-dial entry to your phone for Jott. The number is 1 (866) JOTT-123 [1 866-568-8123, for those without standard phone keypads]. I have my Treo set to call Jott whenever I press and hold the “J” key.
3. Call Jott. 
4. The operator will ask who you want to send a message to. Say “Myself”. 
5. Record your message. 
6. Hang up. 
7. A few minutes later, a text message will arrive with your transcribed message. Goggle at the wonder that is today’s technology.

Send yourself a reminder

You can have Jott send you a text message 15 minutes before an event.

1. Call Jott. 
2. When the operator asks who you want to send a message to, say “Reminder”. 
3. Jott says “What time?” and you reply with the time. 
4. Jott says “What day” and you give a date, or say “today” or “tomorrow”. 
5. When you hear the beep, record what you want to be reminded of. 
6. Hang up. 
7. 15 minutes before the event, you’ll get a text message with a transcription of your recorded message. 
8. Get somewhere on time, for a change.

Send text messages (SMS) with your voice

1. Login to your Jott account. 
2. Add contacts under the “Contacts” tab. You can either enter them one at a time, or import them using either Plaxo or by uploading an exported CSV file from Outlook.
3. Call Jott. 
4. When the operator asks who you want to send a message to, say the name of the person you want to send a message to. Speak clearly!
5. The operator repeats the name back to you. Since the operator is a computer, she will say it in a funny way. Don’t laugh! Instead, if it’s correct, say “yes”, or say “no” to try again.
6. Record your message. 
7. Hang up. 
8. A few minutes later, your friend will receive your message, neatly transcribed into standard English. They won’t have any idea what it means, though, since they only read Textish.

Send a text message to a bunch of people at the same time

1. Log into your Jott account. 
2. Click the “Groups” tab. 
3. Click “New Groups” and walk through the wizard. You’ll now have a group whose name functions exactly as any other contact. When you call Jott, instead of saying the name of a person, you’ll say the name of the whole group, e.g. “Family” or “Friends”.
4. Call Jott. 
5. Record your message as usual. 
6. A few minutes later, everyone in the group will receive the message at the same time. They’ll look at each other in awe, wondering how you typed so fast!

Read the rest, including how to use Jott to schedule calendar event, add to-do's to an online taskmanager
, keep track of expenses, etc... here

Spokeo

Okay- this one may appeal more to the youth pastors out there, but still... I think it's pretty fascinating.

I'm the pastor of a church of almost exclusively 20's and 30's. MySpace and Facebook are pretty much de rigueur. Everybody's got one.

Even me :)

But what I don't have is time to surf around and read everyone else's, even though I kind of like to know what they're up to. (MySpace/Facebook don't exactly tell me, but I find they operate more like a barometer- looking at someone's page over time gives you a fairly good indication of how they are doing)

Enter Spokeo. Truly amazing- like an RSS reader of the social sites of everyone in your address book. I signed up, allowed it to check out my address book (after it promised not to spam everyone) and viola'... a minute later I'm looking at a rundown of who's posted what when getting a really nice snapshot glimpse of what's going on in folk's lives...

Like I say, probably more appealing to the youth pastors out there, but...

Check it out!

Highrise

I've been testing out 37 Signals' Highrise. It's an online contact management system that allows me to keep information about contacts and my (and others') interactions with them all in one place.

Basically, I felt the need for this after realizing that
1. I was forgetting too many vital details in the lives of people in my church community and
2. I was spending too much time spinning my wheels trying to remember "Now, what did we talk about last time???" before meeting with someone.

With Highrise, and simply taking a few minutes to record pertinent info after a significant conversation or meeting, the details are captured and can be reviewed when needed.

Now, clearly, all of this can happen in Address Book/Outlook/whatever. The beauty of Highrise is that it lives online and can be shared among elders and leaders. Now, I don't have to ask my associate pastor to recap every coffee/meeting with people I want to keep current on. I can just check out Highrise and read the notes.

And I don't write EVERYTHING in there. Just stuff that is appropriate/needful for other pastors/elders to see.

Check it out- there's a free plan that allows up to two separate users. You can upgrade as well, though you probably can work around the two-user limit.

Here's a write-up of how one pastor uses Highrise...

Pastor uses Highrise to keep track of interactions with his congregation

Rev. Andrew Conard, Pastor of Congregational Care at The United Methodist Church, writes in: "I have found Highrise to be an excellent way to keep track of interactions that I have with members and visitors to the congregation both in the hospital, in appointments, at worship and around town. Highrise has become an integral part of my task of providing the best possible care for each person."

Read the rest

somwhere only we know...

Beautiful. If you spend HALF as much time meeting people in coffee shops and cafes as I do, you'll get this one...

a.placebetween.us will give you, based on where you are coming from, and where the person you are meeting is coming from, a handful of suggestions as to a post that most closely splits the difference. No muss, no fuss, everybody gets a map, we're all meeting each other half way and all thanks to the magic of Google.

Ah, Google... is there anything you can't do?

a.placebetween.us

questions about Pinger... and JOTT!

A question about Pinger from the comments-

"Do you give the people you are going to Ping the most, a heads up that you are going to be using this service. My concern is that will get the SMS or email and look at it and ask, "What the heck is this???"

Also, I have heard that after 10 uses per month, there either currently is a charge (to upgrade for a premium service)or if not currently a charge now there will be one sooner. Do you know anything about his?

And do you have any tricks or tips you care to share after having used the service for a while?"

The heads up might be good... but I've found that the novelty actually seems to increase "compliance" in response. People seem not to mind too much the opportunity to play with a bit of tech in the middle of their day...

As for the cost, not that I know of. I've certainly sent more than 10 Pingers and they certainly don't have any credit card info on me, so...

Their site says that Pinger is currently free and will remain so for most users.

And man, do I love Pinger. I use it a ton in the car, when all the "I need to email so and so" thoughts come into my head.

The ONLY thing I don't like is that in a "Hey! We need to move the meeting everybody!" situation, the message going to people's phone as well as their email is no problem. But generally, email would be enough.

And so I have found Jott! 

Same principle as Pinger- you import your contacts (MUCH easier in Jott, by the way), set up groups, dial the free number and you are good to go.
The difference is this: While Pinger sends a message to the recipient's phone and email, with a link to click that will play your voice mail for them, Jott actually transcribes your voice mail and sends it in an email. It includes a link so the recipient can listen to your voicemail, and it also sends the text to you in the form of a confirmation email.

This is great too for when you need to remember something, but have inexplicably left your Hipster at home. Just Jott yourself and find your message transcribed and waiting in your inbox.

Easy peasy.

I'm smitten with these programs. I drove down the freeway the other day, just Pinging everyone I knew. I know, I know... it seems like the ultimate in passive aggressive contacting- never having to talk to anyone. But in my mind, what would have been the gentle touch emails I like to send ("Just thinking of you" kinds of things) I can now do safely while sitting in traffic and people actually get to hear my voice.

Bonus- if you use Backpack, you know you can email to-do's to various pages. Now, with Jott, you can (I think!) call them in...

UPDATE: Yes, you can easily send emails to Backpack pages through Jott. Awesome.