We did it again

Robin was gone for 2 weeks. We showed her how much we missed her.

NRB 2010

We’re down here in Nashville again for our annual trek to the National Religious Broadcasters Convention. This year we’re video blogging, too. The best way to keep up with the action is to follow us on Facebook: facebook.com/reframemedia

Todd update

Day 5: Still feels like Todd is just visiting the office.  Or at least a temporary consultant.  It’s gonna take a bit of time to get used to it.

The New Guy

We have a new guy starting at work today.  I know Robin is thrilled.  She’s been the last one hired for quite some time, so she’s looking forward to someone else being “the new guy.”  Me?  Okay, well I’m thrilled too.

I mean how often is it that your company hires one of your best friends?

Yes, Todd got the job.  I did my best to persuade everyone in the office he’s the best candidate, which was hard to do without sounding too biased.  But truth is, he earned the job himself.  He wowed everyone in his interviews (we do group interviews – the whole department sits in, although I chose to sit out his first one).  And in the end, as a department, we all decided he was the best candidate for the job.

What’s the job?  Todd is now our new online marketing specialist.  His job is going to be to get to know the users of our programs.  He’ll be interacting with people who comment on our programs.  He’ll be using Twitter, Facebook and any other social media tool we can think of to help promote our products and get people excited about our ministries.  He’ll write email newsletters too.  For the most part, he’ll be our online voice, interacting and managing the users.

Which is a big relief for me.  He’s really going to help me a lot.  With “web” in my title, anything online has generally fallen on my desk.  But my role  is really systems and code and the web server.  Responding to users and promoting our programs is just too much for me to handle.  The cool thing though is that our jobs will certainly overlap a lot, so we’ll be working together a ton.

It’ll be interesting.  Hopefully not too weird.  I doubt it will be since we have a pretty relaxing work environment.  However when we were at CTI, we were in the same building, but didn’t work together.   We didn’t sit in on the same staff meetings or cross paths on projects.  That’s all going to change today.  And I’m pretty darn excited about it.

Imitated

I had my first good web idea copied last week by another site.  It uses Google Maps, which is a public service, so it’s not a copyright issue, just an idea that had never been done before.

I designed and developed the site http://rafaelrivadeneira.com for a friend who’s running for State Representative of the 41st District of IL.  I couldn’t find any information on where exactly the 41st District is and what towns are included in this.  Rafi provided me with a street-by-street description of the district provided to him by the State Board of Elections.  I took that and overlaid an outline using Google Maps, which you can check out here. (I don’t know who figured out these districts – but they are crazy confusing)

So, a couple weeks after that page went live, Rafi’s competitor put up a similar map (copycat here).  They say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, right?

NRB

My mom joined Facebook today because I was out of town and not making any blog posts.  I found a nice way of doing Facebook updates (or microblogging) by using a service that can accept post updates via sending a text message by phone or AIM, so I use that when the mood strikes me.  I don’t often sit on Facebook and make an update.  This feature was useful this past week while I was in Nashville because I could send a message from my phone in the moments when I was bored … sitting in the airport, manning the booth, driving in cars.

This service also sends the same posts to my twitter account, but really the only reason I use that service is so I can pull in the twitter feed into my blog.  I think only 1 person I know follows my twitter.

At any rate, yes I was at the National Religious Broadcasters convention in Nashville, TN this past week (Friday until Wednesday)  We had a 10′ x 40′ booth on the show floor again this year.  However, we were able to announce that the English ministry of Back to God Ministries International is now called ReFrame Media – and we had our booth reflect that.

All our programs were highlighted in LCD tv screens hanging on a truss and surrounded by frames.  It was a pretty slick look.  We made a lot of contacts and had a lot of visitors this year.  Part of that was better booth placement – we were more in the center of the room this time.  The NRB estimates that attendance was down this year about 30% and yet we were able to collect more contact information than we did last year (we were also giving away a Macbook, so we had the best prize on the floor, too)

We also hosted a night of music again, this time in the hotel so visitors could come and go and not have to worry about a bus schedule.  It worked out ok, but we didn’t do too much advertising of it – that was one area where we did have to scale back on.  Still, it was a great show put on by Ginny Owens, FFH, and Randal Goodgame.

We were incredibly busy.  I had many meetings with vendors this year that I didn’t have last year.  Most nights we were working until 9 or so, although the concert night kept us up until 1.  We had the booth to set up and tear down and the concert to set up and tear down.  You wouldn’t think a convention would be so physically demanding.

I did make it to a couple of education sessions, but way less than last year.  Still, it was good to be busy.  It meant time went by fast.

I can’t say the same for Sara and Alex, though.  Friday night Alex got really sick and was throwing up most of the night.  They spent several hours in the bathroom trying to get Alex to throw up in the toilet.  Around 4am he finally felt better and was able to get back to sleep.  Saturday he took a 4 hour nap.  Then Sunday night, Sara got the sickness.  She was able to find the strength to get Alex to school Monday, but then came home to sleep.

It’s hard enough being gone, but then hearing everyone is sick and not being able to help out makes it tougher to be away.  Although part of me is glad I wasn’t there for the clean up.  I’m not sure I could have done that.  Sara is amazing.

But now I’m home and everyone is feeling better.  Hopefully the illness is out of the house.  I picked up Alex from school and he gave me a huge hug before I could get his coat on.  He’s learned new words since I’ve been gone and I’m pretty sure he’s grown 6 inches.  He’s learning new words at a rapid pace now and it’s probably not 6 inches.  Maybe only 5.