Screens

I was listening to the radio the other day (some show on NPR, I don’t remember which one). There was a little commentary by a reporter who has been reading iPad books to his son at night. He said it was cool because it is really interactive. His son can touch a part of the story and hear voices, or see moving pictures. He concluded his story by saying that this reading experience is much more interactive and engaging then when he would read to his son from a book. When he reads from a book his son just lays back and listens, when he reads from the iPad his son is involved and part of what is going on. He did not directly say it, but he implied that the iPad experience was better.

I have to confess I worry about this a bit. Why did we decide that the only measure of engagement is physical activity? If you saw my parents reading to my brother and I when we were young it would have looked very boring I am sure. There we were, on our beds with words going into our ears. But in my mind I was creating. I could see High King Peter leading the army of Narnia into battle, and I could hear Aslan’s song as he created a new world. And the next day we would play these stories out in the real world, and we would expand on them by being the characters, changing the plot, or even making up our own stories and characters. We were fully engaged in the story.

Don’t get me wrong. I think that there is a place for interactive reading and that it can be really good, but I hope that we don’t ever let that take the place of creating entire worlds in our imagination.

I have some uneasiness about all of the screens in my world.

Just tonight we went to see the stage version of Beauty and the Beast. We had seats on the first row of the balcony, so it is easy to look down and see everybody who is sitting on the floor. At intermission of course everybody got out there phones to do very important things. There was even a row of three or four people who got out their iPads to play games. It made me kind of sad to see rows of people who seemed to be there together look down instead of turning to each other. What opportunities were missed for the sake of checking email? Opportunities to talk about the art that was happening right in front of us? To learn about the person you came with, or to understand the story we were watching a little better? You might argue that they were making connections with people through their phone, which may be true (the lady playing Wheel of Fortune on her iPad was not connecting to anybody), but why are the connections on the little screen more interesting then the connections with the people you came to the show with?

I feel like some sort of anti-technology person writing this. I promise that is not the case. I spend more then my fair share of time in front of a computer both creating and consuming media, and as soon as my current cell phone contract runs out Ill probably buy some sort of fancy phone touch screen and all. But like many I worry about the lack of balance that is creeping into my life. I have to be intentional to not spend all my spare time reading blogs, catching up on news, and checking the good ol twitter feed. I wish is was the other way around. I wish I would read a book and forget to look at facebook.

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The Weight of Story

You may have noticed I think that stories are really interesting. I like hearing people talk about their lives, who they are, and where they come from. Sometimes though you are in a place that is heavy with somebodies story, even thought they not there. I have had the honor of visiting a few of them recently.

First was a small cemetery in the Smokey Mountains. It was an old cemetery, from the 1800s. When you walked in you could feel the weight of the people who had lived in those mountains and of the hard life they lived. There were a lot of graves that showed lives of only only a few years or even days. Somebody maintains the cemetery, im not sure who, perhaps it is just the park service for the benefit of tourists like us. In my mind thought this is a family cemetery and the decedents of the buried come back to cut the grass, put flowers on the graves, and set the headstones back up. This is sort of a sad thought to me in some ways, there is nothing alive there, the people have long ago returned to the earth. So, I am not sure I relate to the need and drive to maintain the land they were buried in. But, then the weight of the place comes back to me. Here is a place that stands in memory of normal people who did normal things and lived normal lives. Yet they are still remembered. And I can stand there, in a place where 200 years ago real life was happening, I don’t really know why, but that is important to me.

There is a bit of a problem with all of this though. The story that is told by that cemetery, and the whole of the Smokey Mountain park neglects a really important story of the people who were there first and were forced to leave. The weight of that story is not felt, but it should be….

…which leads to the second place I visited recently. The story of this place actually starts with the Trail of Tears, and the end is not in site. The signpost in this story that I visited is the Reconciliation Park in Tulsa. The park is in memory of the Tulsa Race Riots. I had heard about these riots of course, but never really knew the full story. If you get a chance to visit the park you should.

 

 

Great Stories Have Memorable Scenes

I just finished reading A Million Miles in a Thousand Years. It is very good, and very quotable. Take this for example:

A good storyteller speaks something into nothing. Where there is an absence of story, or perhaps a bad story, a good storyteller walks in and changes reality. he doesn’t critique the existing story, or lament about his boredom, like a critic. He just tells something different and invites other people into the new story he is telling.

Or this:

No girl who plays the role of a hero dates guys who uses her. She knows who she is.

I don’t want to get into the book to much here, you should read it. It did inspire me to make a little list though…

So, I have often thought that I have lived a sort of un-interesting life. Don’t take that to negatively. I live a good life which i like, but not a lot of crazy stuff happens to me. I don’t have nearly as many funny stores as Cass, I did not almost burn the last living grass in all of Australia like Rhett. In the book Donald Miller talks about memorable scenes. A good story has memorable scenes. Im learning that its not so important to have lots of memorable scenes, just that the scenes be important, and that you let them shape you. So, from birth to now, here are a few memorable scenes from my life:

My first memory (I think), was of a box fan getting blown out of a window during a storm. It was very scary.

I remember hikes in the woods behind our house in MA. I remember a boulder that we could climb on, and an really cool pine forest. I still love the woods.

I remember my brother sledding into the creek in the middle of winter, and I remember watching the snowplows at night.

I remember making huge snowballs. In my mind they are bigger then 4 year old me. Probably not. I still love the snow.

I remember having to evacuate the church because of a fire in the heater.

We moved to Arkansas, on our drive there we saw the Statue of Liberty, made snowflakes for the van, I got a really cool toy truck for christmas. My cousin Brian got a bow.

I didn’t want to go school at all. I got in trouble the first day at a new school for something I did not even know was against the rules (I climbed on top of the monkey bars), then i got lost trying to find my classroom. I hated school I think. I know I hated to read. I got a big sad face on my homework.

Ms. Nelson let us take apart a water pump. And she taught me to read. I still love to read.

We almost burned down the Haak’s farm.

There were people who I wanted to like me, but i didn’t think they did.

We got a dog.

One time Daniel and I were playing on our flooded back yard and i jumped into the water and cut my knee. I still have the scar. Really, there are countless scenes with my brother in them. Playing army, beating computer games, jumping from couch to couch being Peter, Edmond or Caspian.

My parents read and sang to us almost every night. I still remember those songs. Horris the Horse is still an inspiration to me, and if you ever run across a magic wardrobe please call me first.

I played in Mark’s hay barn, went to Luke’s birthday party, and borrowed Daniel’s toy riffle

I made 100% on a spelling test. Two times. other then that, i worked really really hard to spell well, but never, ever did. I still don’t spell well. I won the science fair. Twice. I still like science (nerd..sure).

I went to NLR…there are a lot of scenes from NLR, and it sets up an entire Act.

I went to Mendenhall Mississippi, where I saw inequality, and people trying to make the world better.

I remember a homeless guy coming up to our car on vacation while we were in the drive through at McDonalds, i was confused then about how you should react to somebody asking for money. I still am.

My freshman year of college actually has a lot of good scenens, but they probably would seem really boring if you were watching from the outside. Stuff like always being the last ones out of the dinning hall after dinner. Throwing napkins in the toaster (well..that could be exciting), eating pizza and watching Buffy (Cody was obsessed), playing basketball and shooting 22s with Zak and hanging out with Andrew. Eating snow ice cream, and driving home to Siloam Springs with Chandle. Amy helping with my first ever design class, and playing Frisbee with new friends (and getting destroyed at our first tournament). These are really important to me because it represented starting over with new people, and i guess in a lot of ways a new me.

I went to Europe. Traveling has a way of creating good scenes. Ill just share one. Brooklyn and I were stranded in some city and there were no hostels or hotels open. So we walked the streets for a night. I actually learned a lot that night.

Ok, another one from Europe, I almost jumped out of a moving train. The conductor grabbed me and held me on. That was kind of crazy,

NLR does of course have a lot fo scenes. Here are two: I met Beth. She jumped into the creek with her shoes on (not because I met her…). Heath and I climbed Jacobs Ladder. We both had something to learn from each other.

Josh, Dusty, some other guys and I got lost in the dark and rain at Sam’s. Then our flashlights started dying.

Sam and I climbed the Chapel at JBU.

Beth and I got married, but i dont really remember that. Weddings are kind of like that. Ill have to watch the video.

Chase and I drove across Colorado so I could visit Daniel and he could go to a funeral. Colorado is a beautiful place.

Luke and I drove the Outback way up into the mountains. It was amazing to see some of the most beautiful land created. Then we broke the sway bar on the car, and were really late getting back to the cabin…

Cass and i stayed up until 6 in the morning (or something like that) building a new recruiting display for camp. Actually Cass is a part of a lot of late night (or early morning) scenes. He is also part of a lot of projects, learning, and growth in me.

Beth and I climbed a mountain together.

We moved to Tulsa, and all our friends were really generous to help.

We tried to dig a well at church.

I met Margen and was honored to hear her poetry.

Our friends recited half of Oklahoma while standing around a camp fire. It was really funny.

Jared captured the attention of a crowd at an open mic night. That’s not easy and is kind of incredible to watch.

Just today, we walked in the snow, watched ice float down the river, and saw an amazing sunset.

Traffic

Here is a little video I shot of 5:00 traffic in Tulsa today:

I actually sat and watched this for a while and its really interesting to see that patterns that develop. So, the left lane is an exit only lane onto a surface street, the exit is perhaps 2/3 of a mile from where the two streams of traffic merge. The next two lanes go through and marge with the intrance ramp to the right.

The most interesting pattern is up in the top left of the frame

Most interesting is the top left of the video where the two streams of traffic merge.  It is sort of hard to see, but as soon as the two lanes come together people pull out of the exit only lane and into the through lanes, or into the exit lane from the through lanes. People seem to feel the need to pull in right away within the first 100 feet. I actually saw several people stop for 10 or 15 seconds to get into the other lane even though they had over a half a mile of empty lane in front of them to use to merge. I really think traffic would flow faster if people would just spread there merging out over the entire length of the exit only lane. I wonder why they don’t? A couple possibilities:

• my observation might be wrong. There could be something im not seeing. Most of the people driving in this video drive this every day. They may know something I don’t.
• Bad drivers, It could just be that all these people are bad drivers. They are on their cell phones and not paying attention. I don’t really think this is it. None of these drivers are dong anything wrong. They are just trying to get into the lane they need to be in.
• Bad design. I think this is part of it. There might be something that could be done to help people not feel like they need to switch lanes immediately. Something to indicate that there is plenty of room to merge.
• But, I think it has more to do with something people are really good at: getting tunnel vision and not seeing the big pictures. Or another way to think of it is that we focus so much on the detail right in front of us (i need to get into the other lane) that we never step back to see what is really going on (i have plenty for room, I don’t need to stop here until i can get over).

I do this kind of stuff all the time. I focus so much on the project I’m doing right now that I don’t make progress on the big picture of what I want to do and make progress on the big picture. And you can see this everywhere, politics, business, churches, non-profits, environmental debates, water wells, aid, development, money, economics, everywhere. I hope we can learn to think about the big picture, to think more then one step ahead.

 

That’s just how it is.

I have not blogged in a while…i miss it. Ill continue the guest service marketing series, but I have something else on my mind right now: dusruptive.

We hear about things being disruptive in an industry often (the iphone, google, threadless, wii, etc). I am not sure what all it takes to put yoursef in a postion to be disruptive, but I have noticed a couple of things that happen to people who are trying to do things in a new and different way.

Recently I went to the dentist. Mint Dental is a small dentist office near our house. They are trying to do some things different from how normal dentest do things. Some of this is about limiting waste (no paper, recycling, etc), some of it is about serving customers well. I had an intersting conversation with Dr. Avery about building their new office as she cleaned my teeth.

Think back to the last time you went to the dentist. Imagine sitting in the chair. Look to the left and right, do you see the cabinets? Probably. There are also some cabinets behind you, and there is a specific amount of space between your feet and the wall. Apparently almost every dentist office is built to the exact same specs.

When they built Mint they decide to change the layout. No cabinets on the left and right, a central storage space for tools to eliminate duplicates, and bit less space at the foot of the chair. Not big changes really. But the entrenched industry did everything they could to keep them from. The cabinet company told they they could not get just the cabinets for the head of the room, they had to get the side cabinets as well, because “you would need them.” Never mind that they did not need them. The cabinet company also said they had to make the room longer or they would not have enough room. Now, I am a bit taller then average and i had plenty of room.

Dentistry is an old industry, and everybody does it basically the same. Because of this the people who supply the dental industry with their tools are convinced that there is only one way to do things, and even little changes are seen as wrong.

What is interesting about all of this to me is how powerful the need for sameness is among big established organizations and industries (churches, governments, schools systems…). It’s a bad place to be when your client is asking for a new and better way to do things, and your telling them it can’t be done for no better reason then “that’s how it is”/

 

Evaluating Group Needs

If we are going to think of marketing in terms of meeting peoples needs there is something really important you have to do: Understand people’s needs. In this case we are taking about understanding a retreat group’s needs, but this can be applied to any client relationship.

I would like to propose that there is a big rule you have to follow to understand needs: Don’t assume you know what people want and need. You don’t know best.

As soon as you stop assuming you understand peoples needs you end up with a blank slate. On your own you can’t know what they need, so you have to fill the slate up. The best way to do this is of course to ask. There are lots of ways to ask groups about there needs, each has its strengths. Here are a few and some thoughts on each:

Participant exit surveys: The idea here is that everybody who comes to your camp fills out a short survey before they leave. It will ask questions like “Rate the food on a scale of 1 – 5″ or Rate the cleanliness of your cabin on a scale of 1 – 5” or “Rate the friendliness of staff…” you get the idea. It can also ask open ended questions, Like “what was your favorite meal”, or just have a place for more comments. The big strength of these surveys is that you get a lot of data and can start to see patterns If, for example, the cleanliness of cabins is constantly rated low then you know you have a problem with your housekeeping procedures. Of course the opposite is true, you get to see good patterns as well, if the cabins are rated very clean then you know that your housekeeping procedures are working. The disadvantage is that each individual data point is not very valuable. Take a question about food for example. A foodie who normally eats $50 a plate meals an the finest restaurant may rate your food very low. But, a 5th grade boy who loves pizza may rate your food very high because he really loved your pizza. And both of these people may have been eating the exact same meals. So, you cant just look at the foodies card and decide you need to revamp your entire menu, but you cant look at the kid’s card and decide everything is perfect. You have to look at the data as a whole.

Noticing Patterns: This is all about taking notes and personal debrief, and the patterns can show up anywhere. A few examples to make the point: Lets say you have great sleeping facilities for 150, great activities, and a great location. Lots of groups call and you talk to them and they are really excited. Then they ask about meeting spaces, you tell them you have a little chapel that seats 25, and it does not have any AV gear. Soon you start to notice a pattern: nobody is booking, and the conversation seems to end when you mention your little chapel. A big extreme as an example perhaps, but the point stands: if there is a consistent point of need or frustration it needs to be addressed. This could be little, if every single retreat your host ends up running around trying to find a 5th mic for your meeting space then you probably just need a 5th mic. Or big, if every group feels the need to bring in their own sound system to supplement a sub-standard system in your meeting space then perhaps there is more of a need for quality sound gear then you realize.

Just ask: Really this is the most important one. At every stage of your retreat process you should be taking the time to talk to group leaders about what they need. While they are there having the retreat this is more immediate (is there anything I can get for your upcoming game), but at other times it is more long term and strategit. A couple weeks after a retrate would be a great time to call or take a group leader out to lunch and ask them how the retreat went, what went well, what can be better, and what they need that you are not providing. This is a great way for you to get information, but it is also (and perhaps more importantly), a great way to build and maintain real relationships with retreat leaders.

 

Your Abilities Meet Their Needs.

I have not gotten back to this guest services marketing series very quickly. So, here we go.

The first part of of the workshop was about matching the abilities of your camp with the needs of potential groups.

Let’s start with some definitions.

When I say “your abilities” this relates to what your camp is capable of, as well as what is efficient. So, to evaluate your abilities you should look at physical things like capacity, dinning room space, activity space, meeting space, breakout rooms, and location. But you should also look at some less concrete things, for example how good is your food, are you willing to and capable of responding to last minute requests, how flexible is your mindset and policies? You have to consider the complete package of your camp, not just the buildings that you can see.

“Their need” is of course the needs of the groups. Again, this is about more then just how many beds a group needs. For example, what are their AV and meeting space needs? Do they need the ability to change their schedule on the fly or do they stick to a schedule they planned a year ago? What time of the year do they need to come? What is their budget? Do they need help planning or are they experts already?

Once you have evaluated your abilities it seems like there are several ways to go about matching them up with your market, and in truth it is going to be a cycle. The place to start is to determine the potential market. It does not matter how great your facilities are, how good your food is, and how friendly your staff if there is no one to come. So, for example, if your camp is in the middle of nowhere, and there is one church of 50 people in a 1500 mile radius, you’re probably never going to build a sustainable guest services ministry focused on serving churches with youth groups of 500. An exaggeration for sure, but the point is that you can’t develop your abilities in a vacuum. You must be relevant to the potential market.

I want to keep these posts bite sized, so we will stop their for now. Up next, some thoughts on how to evaluate the needs of groups.

 

Marketing for Guest Services

I just got back from the CCCA Ozark section. It was fun to get to connect with some people, hopefully help some people out, and hang out at New Life Ranch. A taught a workshop called Marketing for Guest Services. I want to write a bit over the next few weeks to get a bit deeper into some of the stuff I talked about, but, a summery is probably a good place to start.

Basically we talked about three things:

Your Abilities Meet Their Needs. The idea here is that any given camp has a set of things they can do well. This set is defined by a lot of things, size, staff, location, culture and more. Potential guest groups have a set of needs defined by size, program type, group type, and more. So, any given camp needs to figure out how to get connected with the groups they can service well based on ability. Now, there may be some gaps in what a camp can do that need to be filled or less people will come. If a camp, for example, has no beds, they probably wont get any groups. To do this you have to understand what groups need and constantly adapt to changing needs, but you also have to recognize that you wont serve everyone well. You have to define your market and figure out how to be great at serving them, but you don’t have to be great at serving every possible group.

Relationships – Friction vs. Smooth. We talked about how you relationships in a key to serving groups well, and to increasing the number of groups who will return. Relationships are also key to impacting peoples lives, so if you are about more then money building relationships is a big part of having impact on people. I tried to think about what it means to say “we are about relationships in how we handle guest groups” Im not sure i really figured that out or explained it well in the workshop. I guess the first thing is just to see people as people who have value. A spirit of servanthood is part of this as well, thinking of serving people as on honor goes a long way. How you define success is also part of this. If you see success as helping a group be successful then you will do everything you can to make sure they have what they need.

The next part of relationships is friction vs smooth. This is one way you can evaluate your processes and camp, in every interaction there is potential for friction or smoothness. So, if you think about everything that happens in the course of booking, planning and hosting a retreat and evaluate its contribution to friction or smoothness i think you are going to learn a lot about places that can be improved.

Filling Capacity or Getting People to Come. This is about filling beds. We talked about 3 ways to get people to come to your camp: returning groups, word of mouth, and connecting with people with influence in your target market.

Returning groups kind of take care of themselves if you are doing a good job. If you serve people and meet their needs in ways that exceed expectations a lot of them will come back.

For word of mouth it seems like one of the big things to do is identify your fans and ask them for help. They may really like you a lot, but it has never crossed their mind that they can help you fill unused space. I think though that it is important to equip them. Give them ways to spread the word about you.

Connecting to people with influence is just a way to think about networking. A camp has a target market, and there are people with influence over that target market. basically the idea is to fend hose influencers and connect with them.

More on all of this later…

CCCA Ozark Section – Marketing for Guest Services workshop

Hello CCCA people. Thanks for coming to my workshop. I hope you found it helpful. As promised here are the documents from the class:

Notes

Worksheet

Slides

As I mentioned I will be blogging some more in-depth thoughts about a lot of what we talked about, if you are interested check back and join the conversation. If you want to be notified about new posts there are two great ways to do it.

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Feel free to e-mail if you have any questions about what we talked about today (or other stuff…). I would love to talk to you.

Getting Unstuck

I am working on a class I will be teaching at the CCCA Ozark Sectional Next week. I will be talking about Marketing for Guest Services, which is kind of a big topic, there are lots of angles to approach it from. So, I opened up a google doc and started planning. But I was stuck. Just a page with lots of random disconnected ideas on it. So, I turned to a blank page in my sketchbook. Five minutes later the ideas are connected and there is an outline. It’s amazing how much good getting out of the linier confines of a word processor does me! There is something good about being able to draw, make random lists, and connect things with lines. I have to remember when I am stuck to change settings. It helps a lot.