Pastor Estevan Montoya

When I first sat down with this account (after I secured the contract), we got together with the primary site stakeholders for what I refer to as “VisionShaping” meeting … during these VisionShaping meetings, I try to equalize the knowledge base of the various players since everybody has different technical (or not technical) set of skills and understanding … these meetings are also part of capturing the intersecting business, communication/brand, and technical drivers … during this meeting, after introductions were made I asked the Pastor if he wanted to go first or me in combing thru the various agenda items … he stopped me and said, “We’ll go first” and with that they said a prayer for their new vendor (me) and our success … I was blown away (a good thing) in that they were actually praying for me … I told them latter that normally most of my clients are beating me up on pricing and timing and this was first time I had a positive, prayerful account commencement … thus the funny thing is, can you imagine if all of corporate America actually took that approach (prayed for highest good) vs the political back stabbing, ego centric alpha-persona approach so common with too many but I digress …

The 2nd part of the meeting and real reason for this post is about getting in touch with real brand value and not just design … During the VisionShaping process, I often ask questions that sometimes seem really basic like “who is your customer and what do we know about them…” … When I asked this congregation that question, they actually laughed and said, “Chuck that is really a good question.” … turns out they have multiple customers … teens are one, wedding couples are another, death and funerals another, etc … So then we got to the part of what is unique about their “brand” and one of the things we unveiled was their prayer line … They had active phone tree of 40-plus clergy and volunteers so we said, “hmm. what if we automate that process and create a corresponding web application.” … the rest is history, a year plus later, over 1000 e.prayers and their site is getting prayer requests from around the world … e.g., people in Ireland asking for help with depression, people from Ohio who lost their only son asking for prayers to deal with their grief, etc. …

I’ve found over the years building and designing sites, that many teams get lost in the juice of design – the wow cool factors of flash, etc, when in reality the coolest part of design is getting in touch with an organizations core capabilities, then mapping that to the web … yes, good design is critical, but information design, that process of getting in touch with a brand’s “value proposition” then designing around that = killer win (IMHO) …

And in spirit of gratitude, thank you for your WordCamp slides and the heads up with Woopra – bravo! … here’s wishing you all to best of ongoing success in 2009 and beyond :>) cordially, chuck scott

ps – when designing the prayer line application, we borrowed from e.commerce code but had to be sensitive to wording like “Click here to checkout” as often people pray for themselves and “checking out” might be the very thing they are praying for that does not happen :>0

Recently I was saved by Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit has told me to make a blog about how to help other people also get saved. I have been praying for inspiration. Perhaps this answers my prayers.

I want this new blog to be eye-catching. I want it to get people’s attention. I do believe that content is king, however, it is important to have a good design, so people don’t just pass over the blog for something else, especially if the content is important. In this case, I believe that it is God’s will, so obviously it is extremely important.

It is interesting to note the church designs as something unexpected. When you think of church, typically you thing of colored glass windows, crucifixes, and while all of that is great, it is also important to remember that the point of this is to appeal to the target audience, which is of course, young people — people without much religious experience (yet).

Kudos to your post Lorelle. Great work. I hope that this helps me in my journey.

And by the way, I just want to mention that this does not need to just apply to wordpress. I’m actually going to be using Blogger as my platform for this blog, as instructed by the Holy Spirit. I do not see the platform as being the relevant issue though.

God bless you and your family.