I have accepted a position as a part time growth consultant for the Ballou Channing Disrtrict of the UUA.
For information on this work
visit the UU Growth Blog.
Unitarian Universalist Growth, Outreach & Media Services
UU PLANET MEDIA is dedicated to moving our faith into the 21st century one video and one techno-saavy congregation at a time. In addition to offering video production, social media consulting and related workshops for our congregations, UU PLANET MEDIA has a number of web based outreach projects.
UU PLANET TV
UU PLANET.TV was launched March 13, 2008. This site brings together the best UU videos from the web making it easier for newcomers, members and friends to explore the world of Unitarian Universalism. This site allows for users to submit videos, upload videos, rate submitted videos, add video widgets to external sites -- yes, it rocks...
You can get involved by visiting the site, registering as a user, and sharing videos you make or find online. To make it easier for people to spread the word about uuplanet.tv a Face Book fan page has been created and grows daily.
After I married a UU minister I found myself constantly talking to people about our faith - more so than ever before. Makes sense. What does your wife do? She's a Uni-what minister?? Over time I found that people who seemed interested about our faith rarely seemed to go to the uua.org website after I gave it to them. Eventually I came to the conclusion that an "association" website is 100% not what a tentative person with mild interest in maybe learning more about our faith is lookin' for. Loving marketing, I developed uufaq.com as my own personal outreach site. Just a mish-mash of links, info, videos and so on. I found that people did visit this site. Not only that, they told their friends. Today the site is in need of much attention -- again, it is a time issue. Stats show that about 1/2 the visitors to the site enter the URL directly, they do not surf in. And many of these are first time visitors. This suggests that uufaq.com is an easy site to tell people about and I think friendly for newcomers. UU FAQ? I have UU questions. I'll check it out! t www.uufaq.com
Alice the Chalice
Amy and I developed the character Alice the Chalice as a tool for getting kids excited about our faith. I've developed a couple of Alice the Chalice coloring pages which have gotten lots of use. We'd like to make some Alice the Chalice childrens videos about our faith. We know what we want to make - just need to secure some funding and decide if we want to do puppet based or flash animation. www.alicethechalice.com
UnitarianUniversalism.org - Registered & Waiting
When I first stated workng for the UUA and was getting psyched about UU outreach I went exploring to see what an average person hunting for UU info would find. I was horrified to find that what I think should be the top site about UUism, unitarianuniversalism.org, was not registered and the .com domain was a mega Bible site! I registered the site and let it sit for years.
A number of attempts to give it to the UUA so they could turn it into a newcomer site failed as their energies were focused on the Uncommon Demination marketing campaign. I've been thinking of developing a UU PLANET Advisory Team to help me develop this site and other UU PLANET MEDIA projects.
My feeling is that this should be a clean, crisp site that explains what our faith is, features some videos, has a little history, and links to find a congregation and more information. Simple and sweet... Thoughts?
UU Media Foundation - Hmmmmmmm....
I've been thinking we need an independent UU media foundation, a non-profit that can work on developing amazing UU media separate from the UUA. I've heard so many tales of projects being killed by committee. Many friends of UU PLANET MEDIA tell me independent media is the way to go. Better to have separate fundraising, a separate board, separate accountabilty. What do you think?
Small Group Ministry on Youtube
In January 2009 I started to produce a new series of videos on small group ministry. A new baby gobbled up the time I had for this project, as well as feedback that a podcast would be more helpful. This project is on hold at the moment. http://www.youtube.com/smallgroupministry Will this project move forward?! We'll see if time, funding and popular demand inspire me to pick it up again... ;-)
Are
you ready for UU TV?
Though I have had limited time to work on this lately, a future project is doing more organizing around UU TV and higher quality UU television programming.
The
internet and television are fusing. "Television"
as we know it is migrating to portable devices. More
and more content is being delivered by independent
producers through the web. Digital video production
and increased computing power makes a new world of
communication available. It is time for us to get
organized and make UU Television a reality.
Imagine
a UU TV network or web channel, one with a wide
range of content for those new to our faith, existing
members, leaders and more... By organizing volunteers,
our UU media and video professionals, mapping out
a coordinated strategy, and raising funds from visionary
UUs, we can share our faith in ways we have only dreamed
of!
Would
you like to join me? Here are a few things you
can do.
1)
Join the UU TV e-newsletter Make sure you and anyone interested in Unitarian
Universalist television subscribes to my UU
TV producers and supporters e-newsletter. Until
other communication channels are created this will
be how I share news and ideas and coordinate our emerging
efforts.
2)
Introduce yourself to me
Tell me who you are and what your interest is. Contact
me with a personal introduction. You don't need
to volunteer in a specifc capacity as we aren't there
yet.
3)
Start brainstorming
Start generating ideas on your own, with fellow UU's.
Brainstorm ideas for different programs we could have,
specific segmetns on shows - go nuts! You can send
these to me as you generate them or compile a batch
to share later. As we talk and build a vision for
what UU TV can look like, energy and momentum will
build.
We
need you...
I am passionate about helping our congregations
and our faith move from the 19th century straight
into the 21st. I have some very specifc projects I
want to produce. But know that this is a larger effort
than anything I can do alone. Fully embracing technology
and sharing our faith through new media is a decision
to stay relevant, to keep pace with culture. This
is a new modern ministry.
As
we talk about the possibilities and move forward I
know many will join us in this modern media ministry.
In fact, the volunteers are already starting to email
me. I invite you to do the same and to keep in touch.
Tell others about this effort.
The video that made me see the potential for UU video outreach was the "Purple Alien Video". Be kind - it was an afternoon whim of a project and has yielded more than 25,000 views. Hear that? Cost, almost $0.00 and about a half day of my time... You can read more about how that was made and stats here.
That was followed by the "You're a Uni-What" Video... This was the first video I made after studying digital video production through Boston University. Also my first onine appearance. Getting a little outdated, but it still gets lots of views and I get regular emails from people who's friends sent them this video. I think for some people the humor makes it easier to share.
