Cause to Pause

This past Tuesday was our second month of going “paperless” for our monthly Elder meeting. Let’s put that in perspective: As a denominational church with history and structure, our normal “docket” included:

• Agenda
• Membership Report
• Minutes of the previous month’s meeting
• Minutes from all six leadership commissions (Education, Missions, Stewardship, etc.)
• Minutes from the Council meeting of all six chairs
• Minutes from the Deacon’s meeting
• Minutes from the Sanctuary Guild
• Minutes from a few smaller committees
• Various other correspondence
• Closing devotional and worship

Total packet would be between 20-30 pages – or basically one ream of paper each month, plus a lot of time spent organizing and stuffing folders.
For years we have been emailing the information out prior with limited success. There were still several volunteer leaders who “brought copies” of their minutes at the last minute. With everyone having full copies of the minutes in front of them, and their focus being the table directly in front of them, it became a type of “story time” with each person reading their report. Needless to say, this made for some long meetings.

Solution: Paperless

So here’s what we did:

1. Created a private channel on our website. Login is tied to their member login and participation in the Church Leadership>Session activity group set up in AccessACS. As soon as someone is added to this group, their current login allows them to see this channel: 
      
   We have been putting reports online for a while getting leadership used to looking here. Minutes are still available to the congregation at large by contacting the church office, just not online. ‘Cause when it comes to visitors, nothing says “”love of Jesus” like committee meeting minutes.
2. Put minutes submission templates on this page (see right side of image). Submission is accepted via two formats. An MS Word template for download and an online form.
3. When minutes are submitted to Staff, they are added to one content block or “page” for each month. (see above)
4. Run the meeting completely from a projector.

Meeting result

1. Minutes submitted more timely. If the office doesn’t get them in time to be online, there is no backup plan.
2. No more “story time”. When it came time for each department’s report, it was either “My report is up there, that pretty much says it all.” or “My minutes are up there, I just want to highlight a couple items.”
3. Speed. Only the items that need to be addressed are given air time and not because of a mandate by the Moderator.
4. Efficiency. Those items that are discussed get sufficient attention and brains aren’t already fogged over.
5. Each month’s agenda is built as the month progresses. Instead of springing all the info at once, leaders can view the page (or RSS it) and have access to meeting minutes as they take place. They can view and comment directly from their browser.

For the last two months, it has made these meetings remarkably smooth. Next stop: Annual Budget process via wiki.

If you have been experimenting with MS Office 2010, one of the features you have probably noticed is the ability to “share” a document or PPTX presentation via SkyDrive. Makes it handy if you are starting a doc at work and are going to finish it at home, etc. Also, if you save it to a public folder on your Skydrive, you can pass out access to that folder and others can collaborate accordingly.
Unfortunately, this handy little feature is not available in OneNote yet. That will be great for managing projects. Especially if you happen to work on a given project across multiple machines – desktop at work, laptop at home or on the road, etc.
Too bad it won’t be available until the full release later this year…..
Unless, it seems, you are running Windows 7 and have your OneNote notebooks indexed to Live Mesh. Then, you can email a link that looks like this:
https://somedigits.docs.live.net/9dafunkykeycode/Documents/Study/
Anyone with the proper Windows Live credentials (ie: you at work) can open the link and the notebook is added alongside the others. All changes will be synched immediately as a default, however you can also change that.
Another potential solution is to map a drive letter to your SkyDrive (I use www.Gladinet.com) and change the Notebook location to that drive. If you map a drive letter on the new machine to that same SkyDrive, you should be able to open it there. I have not tried this yet though.

All in all, I am finding OneNote to be a handy tool for projects as well as study – and I don’t miss not being able to access it from my phone – there is too much going on with that thing as it is.

POST EDIT: After two days, OneNote began crashing w/3 seconds of opening. System Restore did not correct. Uninstalled Gladinet. System operating normally.
If you use OneNote, I would stay away from Gladinet for drive mapping of either SkyDrive or Google Docs. 

I have been extremely blessed the last few weeks to have had a very small part in a very large project. My part wasn’t all that important or difficult, but it gave me the opportunity to push myself and be part of a team. One I would not otherwise get to be so involved with.
Here’s what I learned:

• While I like to be in bed by 10:00-10:30 (because I get up at 5:00), if sufficiently stimulated, I can still crank way into the night.
• Cranking way into the night has its liabilities now that I am older.
• Compensating for said liabilities means changing screen resolution.
• Caffeine is not the best stimulant, enjoying what you are doing is.

There are a lot of other bullet points I could make, but it really all boils down to finding something you like to do and hammer it. Apart from your regular job. Sure, many of us are fortunate to actually like what we do all day. Some are even manic enough to pop out of bed like a toaster pastry saying “Whoo Boy, I GET to go to work today!”. That doesn’t count. What I am talking about is outside of work. Because by pushing yourself in a productive way outside of work, makes some of those difficult tasks at work seem much more manageable.
Hobbies don’t cut it. Because at the end of the day, a hobby is something you do for yourself. Which means it probably doesn’t matter or bring value to anyone else.
I think maybe this is why Jesus was so big on service. Because not only is it taking care of the needs of others, it is hitting a part of your soul that really needs tending.

So, find something you like to do, that you really enjoy, that has you operating in that “sweet spot”, to where time becomes completely irrelevant. Something that brings lasting value to others, and run with it for all it is worth. Even if it is only for a little while. You just might learn something about yourself.

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