289 – Minding Your Members
Today on WELSTech we look at online, collaborative solutions for managing member and prospective member information. Sallie kicks off her very own picks of the week series geared at summer vacation, and we debut a brand new promo video for the upcoming WELSTech Camp event. All that, and the answer to your burning questions about Martin’s jet lag as well!
Podcast: Download (25.4MB)
The discussion:
Software to manage your church – Keeping up with information about members and prospective members can be a huge job for church pastors, secretaries and volunteers. Now many software solutions are moving to the cloud for online sharing or data updates and inquiries. Martin and Sallie discuss a variety of considerations including, most importantly, security of your data.
The interview:
(10:29) Church in the cloud – Peter Frank, Manager of Concordia Technology Solutions, talks with Martin and Sallie about one of their newest products, Church360: Members, a full-featured online church membership database. Watch for a look inside a demo installation.
News in tech:
(30:39) Google+ gets a feature-packaged redesign – Tips for navigating the new Google+ stream
Picks of the week:
- (32:44) Sallie’s Summer Vacation Tech Series #1 … Family-friendly podcasts
- Yahoo Overhauls Flickr, Provides All Users With 1TB Free Storage
Of interest:
(43:51) We hope you enjoy our promo video for the first ever WELSTech Camp unconference. Join us September 14th at Martin Luther College. For details and tickets for this free day, visit our event wiki.
Community feedback:
- (44:30) The case against grades
- Richard Byrne from Free Technology For Teachers recommends a Google Reader replacement, The Old Reader
- How Safe Is Cloud Computing [Infographic]
Coming up on WELSTech:
(49:11) Episode 290 – What’s on your learning bucket list? Tune in next week as Martin, Sallie and guest host Jason Schmidt share ideas for kicking that particular bucket (list). (Release date – 05/28/13)
The featured artist:
(50:01) We close the podcast with the music of Corban Creek – Psalm 46
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I have another podcast recommendation for your summer! It is actually an NPR radio show that also has some shorter podcasts, but all of their episodes are available online in podcast form. It is called Radiolab (http://www.radiolab.org/). They explore interesting phenomena from everyday life and for not so everyday life. They feature scientists and stories from people with personal experiences. The show is very well produced, it is actually an experience with sound that is really cool.
I would only caution one thing, they don’t have a Christian perspective of science and creation, so occasionally (it is pretty rare) they will say some things that go against creation, so if you are listening with your kids, it would be good to have a discussion about it before and/or after listening.