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Pepsi just blew $1.2 billion dollars on a new logo.
Yeah, billion. For a logo. That really, I think, is lame. Why, Pepsi, why?
Here’s the new logo’s (I guess there’s four, actually, depending on the kind):
Pepsi is getting quite a bit of criticism in blogdom for this debacle, and most people are thinking two different things.
1. This looks just like Obama’s logo:
2. Or, it looks like a plumber who has bent over and, well, you know:
Awesome.
I’ve sometimes used Igniter Media for our media stuff at Crosspoint — they do some good work with backgrounds and movie clips, etc.
Anyway, Oprah showed one of their clips on her show last week (that’ll increase your website visits) called 99 Balloons, so I strolled over to Igniter today to watch it.
If you’re a parent and you can watch this clip in its entirety without shedding a tear, you have a cold heart of stone. A stoney cold heart.
We’re going on a staff field trip today to visit various churches in the province who will be able to teach us things about budgeting, staffing, multi-site, recruiting, vision-casting, and whatever else they deem worthy to share.
Sweet!
On a related note, Seth Godin had this quote on his blog this morning, “Being the dumbest partner in a room of smart people is exactly where you want to be.”
That’ll be me today. 
We’re wrapping up our latest series at Crosspoint next week — we’ve been going through some books (Velvet Elvis, Blue Like Jazz) for our “Chapters” series, and I’m on for next Sunday.
I preach on Shane Claiborne’s “Jesus for President.”
Two days before the American election.
It’s like we planned it that way.
So, I’ll go ahead and commit some social faux-paus and deliberately talk about Jesus and politics. Should be fun! And potentially awkward and/or tense! But fun!
What would you say about Jesus + Politics if given the chance?
I noticed a weird pain in my thumb/wrist area last week, and unfortunately, it’s only gotten worse. I’ve been baffled as to what it could be until tonight when Liz noticed me doing some work on the Macbook: it’s the way I hold my right hand to move around on the track pad, type, click, scroll, and so on.
I’m not sure what to do. I can’t exactly stop using a computer, and a lot of my work isn’t done at a desk with a mouse. Has anyone else ever faced Laptop Wrist? Any suggestions?
Our church has grown rapidly over the past 15 months; because of this, we’ve tinkered around with a variety of tools and programs to assist our growing staff team with the most simple and efficient ways to stay productive. The following list has seriously changed the way that we do ministry @ Crosspoint. Thought it might be helpful for some others out there.
1. Google Apps
Because we have staff members all over the place at any given time (some are upstairs, some are downstairs, some are part-time and thus are home or traveling, etc) we needed a great way to communicate and collaborate with one another; it’s difficult to work together when we’re not all on the same page. Google Apps has been the answer for us.
We use the ‘Talk’ portion of Apps to communicate in-office with one another, which is great, because it saves us the hassle of messing around with one more program, like MSN Messenger. It can also allow you to have group conversations with specific people along with an ‘everybody-in’ type chat.
We use the ‘Calendar’ portion to (obviously) create calendars. Each staff member can create their own on-line calendar (and invite others to read it or add to it) and there’s also the Master Calendar, which allows us to look at what everyone is doing. At any given moment I can check out our MC and find out who’s doing what, and where, and what room in the church is booked for what, and so on.
Finally, we use the ‘Docs’ portion of Apps to create and collaborate together on a variety of issues, most often our Creative Team brainstorming sessions. We’ll meet, someone takes notes and then creates a Doc for it. Everyone on the team can then read it, add to it, know what’s going on, throw in their two cents, and leave jokes. Which happens.
Apps has been fairly huge for us. This was especially helpful when I was in Indiana last week but was still involved in preparing stuff for the Sunday service. We were all able to communicate and chat and work out service details despite the fact that we weren’t even in the same country.
Oh, and it’s all totally free. Which helps.
2. Ta-Da
Simply put, this is the best way to keep lists on the face of the planet. Yes, the planet. This is the first window I open on my browser every morning and I leave it up all day. Ta-Da is an incredibly simple program that allows you to create a variety of lists, add items, remove items, along with archiving previous things you’ve completed. No bells, no whistles, just lists.
3. Bloglines
OK, I think I’m the only staff member who uses Bloglines, but since I’m writing the list, I get to add it. It’s changed the way I use the internet, and has saved me hours of time along the way. Basically, instead of wandering around the internet aimlessly and re-checking the same blogs over and over again, Bloglines organizes your blogs and updates you on when they’re updated. Thus, I don’t ever check blogs unless I know they’ve been updated. Bloglines is my homepage and it has allowed me to follow 35+ blogs a day in a matter of minutes. (Sadly, it was ‘broken’ last week and I missed a few things, but it’s usually bug-free.)
4. Read Getting Things Done
Everyone on staff has read it, or at least owns it. And it works. I’ve picked bits and pieces that I really liked and made them part of my life — the empty email inbox, the on-my-desk ‘physical’ inbox, etc. There’s an entire online cult of people who live and die by GTD (they’re a little too hardcore for me) but it’s definitely worth the read.
What are you doing out there to help you stay productive?
Prophecy?
Being in the heartland of the USA this week has really revealed to me the intensity of the current election. People are uptight and/or opinionated and/or obsessed with this whole ordeal, and I’ve discovered that it’s no joking matter (but I got away with it because I’m Canadian; phew!)
All that to say, the sensation that is Sarah Palin herself will sit half a mile away from me tomorrow. Half a mile. I’d go just out of sheer interest if not for the other 20,000 people who will be there in front of me. Better plan for ridiculous traffic.
Lessons learned today:
*Don’t joke or make light about politics with Americans.
*People in Fishers, Indiana are not Obama fans.
*If people in this state could vote for anyone to be president, they would pick Peyton Manning.
Oh yeah, my country had an election this week. I should go find out who won.
We arrived in Indy a few hours ago (we being myself and Ben Canney) and landed at the Hotel Indigo. This place is awesome. It’s a new facility and is modern and quirky and great. All of their spiels are in haiku, they have a hotel dog (with her own business card) and everything looks like it was lifted from IKEA.
Check out some pics I took of our room, along with some promo pics from the website.
Front lobby
Funky couch in our room
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