I’ve been blacklisted because of the word ‘sucks’ for the first time since starting work on Church Marketing Sucks more than three years ago. OK, so ‘blacklisted’ may be a bit harsh (but it makes for a good story). In reality one of my clients will no longer publish my work because of my involvement with Church Marketing Sucks, specifically because of the use of the word ‘sucks.’ You can decide if that warrants the word ‘blacklisted’ or not.
It wasn’t a personal thing and I don’t know enough details to take it personally. ‘Sucks’ is a controversial word (especially in conservative circles) so this wasn’t exactly a surprise. The bigger surprise might be that it took three years. (Check out my defense of the word ‘sucks’ if you agree I should be blacklisted.)
If anything, I’m bummed that I won’t have further opportunities to write for this client. You always hate to lose clients as a freelancer. And this one, well, sucks because I enjoyed the projects I had done for them. I was hoping to do more.
Oh well, that’s how it goes. Things may change in the future, so we’ll see what happens.
I’m proud to say that Monkey Outta Nowhere now offers sub-par video production services. Well, not exactly. But we can do low quality, home made video with the best (or worst?) of them.
I’ve been working on marketing for the Foursquare NextGen Summit ’07 (which has a fancy new web site). We were coming up with ideas to promote the What’s Your Cause? Video Contest and a video seemed like a no-brainer. But when Foursquare’s professional video department was swamped, I stepped up and said I could do it. The less-than-professional standards I could meet seemed more in line with a do-it-yourself video contest anyway.
So Monkey Outta Nowhere added video production to its portfolio:
Big time thanks to everyone who helped out with the video (especially Melanie, Bronwyn, Marie and Tobin). And stick around for the credits. I think the “I Like Puppies” song has some break out potential.
One of the projects I’ve been working on this year is the Foursquare NextGen Summit ’07. I haven’t talked about it in a while, but it’s the first youth event the Foursquare denomination has put on in over ten years. And it’s looking to be pretty huge, from the line up (Switchfoot, Rick Warren, Donald Miller, Shane Claiborne) to the causes (embracing orphans, stopping human trafficking and fighting poverty). It’s a lot of fun to be involved with an event that’s so intently focused on good causes.
I’ve been doing a lot of writing for the event, including a ton of blogging. I’m also headed to L.A. next week for some event-related meetings and earlier this summer I actually did something I’m really bad at and created a video. I’m not sure if the video is going to see the light of day, but let’s just say you can’t hide the Puppy Song for long. You can watch the student video for a tiny taste of my handiwork (at about 2:35 in you get a thumbnail view of some shots that were filmed by yours truly at the Monkey Outta Nowhere studios).
Last week Trout Lake Camps celebrated their 60th anniversary with a “Buddy Check” reunion and the launch of the Project 365 fund raising campaign. Monkey Outta Nowhere did some writing and editing work on the “Buddy Check” brochure last year and we worked extensively with Taylor Design Works on the 32-page Project 365 booklet, which included detailed history and personal stories.
Writing someone else’s history can be kind of maddening at times (like when a separate publication does a similar story that renders details a bit differently from how you had them, forcing you to re-check everything), but I really love digging into history (in case you couldn’t tell), especially when it’s personal and detailed. I love seeing the connections of time and place and having it all come to life. Even something obscure as a camp in Central Minnesota I’ve never attended.
If you head over to one of the blogs I write for, Church Marketing Sucks, you can check out an interview with yours truly: Ask a Kevin. Our CMS intern, bless his heart, thought it might be fun to do an interview with me since I haven’t been writing for CMS as much lately.
I’m not sure I say anything brilliant, but rather predictably U2 comes up and I go off about how cool web 2.0 is. You know, the typical fare around here.
For two and a half years, I worked in the Internet Department of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association. We were young, tech-savvy folks who could have worked at dotcoms but instead chose to work for an aging evangelist. The job had its share of stress—crashing servers, last-minute changes, and webmaster emails from people who didn’t know how to copy and paste.
We coped—in part—thanks to humor.
There were the Monday mornings when laughter would spread like the plague through our department. You could almost tell when the latest flash-animated cartoon had been released on HomestarRunner.com and nearly everyone in our department would pause to watch the disgruntled StrongBad answer his latest email in typical mocking style.
In an attempt to communicate better about myself I’ve redesigned the Monkey Outta Nowhere site. I’ve also merged the Monkey Outta Nowhere blog with my personal blog because really, I am the company. If it’s hard for me to keep up a company blog, how hard must it be for anybody to actually read it? It’s bad enough that I have my fingers in 20+ blogs, so maybe it’s time to condense and simplify.
I’m highlighting the Company News and Monkey News on the homepage, which keeps the business clients from having to read my ramblings about my daughter or my dogs. I’m also running headlines in the sidebar so they can learn about my dogs if they like, as well as headlines a few other blogs I oversee.
I doubt it’s a final solution and I’ll probably have bugs to fix and things to tweak, but for now, here it is. We’ll see how it goes. Hopefully this is a step towards making it easier to update my site.
The home office is going from a 6×8 glorified closet with no door to a full blown 12×23 office with–well, there’s still no door, but I’ve got my own balcony! Bottom line: It’s a big step up and we’re very excited.
The move will be effective April 2 and we’ll be giving the monkeys the week off. If you’d like the new address, please contact us.
The Foursquare NextGen Summit ’07 is coming to Anaheim, Calif on December 29-31, 2007. And Monkey Outta Nowhere is helping it get there. The Foursquare NextGen Summit ’07 is the first national Foursquare youth event in over ten years. It’s an opportunity for the next generation to embrace orphans, stop human trafficking and fight poverty. Plus there will be challenging speakers, informative workshops, kickin’ live music and extreme sports. Imagine that.
Monkey Outta Nowhere is managing the web site, coordinating the marketing efforts and writing copy for all the communications pieces. Check out the teaser trailer for a little taste of what’s to come.
One of the projects I’ve been working on this year is the 
An article I wrote for