Notes from CMC New Media strand 2008

 

Churches Media Council

The Churches’ Media Conference 2008

Going Digital: searching for values in the new media environment

Online and New Media strand – write-up notes

1: Ideas session: 2day Microportals

Outline from Richard Searight

• Aim of portal is that it becomes a homepage for a community

• Communities add content

• Users are able to get to content x8 faster that Google

• Owners of the site use a series of templates which they can customise

• Primary focus is members of the community with no exposure to church

Current situation (6 years in)

• Persuading churches to stick to the core principle of being a community site

• Difficult to get diocesan interest and commitment to the project

• Baptist Churches are good users of the service (understand the concept)

• Still seeking a sponsor to be able to offer the service to churches to use for free

Suggestions from group

• Attend and present at diocesan communications conference in September

• Work hard to distil concept

• Find someone that can help you on the sales side

• Add video element (sites selecting the best and most relevant videos

• Increase the number of easy to use templates

… phrases and ideas to help sell idea

= the local paper 24/7

= the middle place between Google – service (i.e. taxi, plumber, school) and church

2: What are the new opportunities for Christian film makers?

Outline

• Barriers to entry are coming down

• Democracy of the content distribution

• Schedules are becoming less important and being replaced by on-demand

What should we be creating?

• Content that is accessible to non-Christians (i.e. cross rhythms)

• Themes that are relevant and topical (i.e. Bridgend suicides)

• Content that represents what church really is rather than how it is perceived

Understand your audience (i.e. non-Christians)

• High production values

• Follow how Jesus did it = storytelling

• Inspire hope

• Non-cheesy

• Avoid jargon

… Tim Finch gave us that really nice chart (which I have forgotten the name of) we all loved it.

- 12 ----------------------------------------------- 0 -------------------------------------------------- + 4

A lot of the population are at – 12 and the point of conversion is 0 with + 4 being on in the Christian story… the challenge is to get more people to point 0.