Tag Archives: mobile in marketing

The God Stamp

Have had the Halloween/Harvest Celebration comic from Wes Molebash (Insert [IMG]) opened in my browser for a few weeks now (it seems). Part of it is because Wes is the kind of artist-with-faith that its easy to support. But, there’s also the aspect of the community that he’s created which occasionally offers the kind of mature comments which shows there’s more to this life than the wonton opinions that many times fills the web.

Of note, in this comic there was a comment that made me stop – hence the reason for it being open for so long – and consider that there just might be other motivations at stake in this space that I’m watering – an unintended consequence of seeing an intersection of faith and mobile tech:

Where I do have a problem though is when we try to put a God stamp on something to make feel ok to participate. I think that this is what God is getting at when the Bible says, “do not to take the name of the Lord your God in vain.” The heart of the principle is that We shouldn’t put His name on something to curse or bless it for our purposes.

I feel like our attempts to create Christian adaptations of cultural practices do more harm than good.

Ouch.

There’s only so many ways to say it – and thankfully, Wes actually said it another way in another comic soon after – we can’t go about mobile ministry, doing mobile and then putting the God stamp on it, expecting that others will respect or honor those efforts, or even that God will. Just like we’ve said before that digital has to be native to your ministry, ministry has to be native to those things you do digitally. If not, its nothing more than a fish on a car as it cuts in front of you on the road. It gets there first, trumpets something about Christ is known in there that’s being ignored to get there first.

If you are like me and enjoy Wes’s work, support his efforts by donating or commissioning a work for your organization.

Using Mobile, The Skeleton of Twitter

A simple question came to mind while reading an article at Bloomberg Businessweek talking about the technology behind Twitter. Here’s the part which poked at that question:

…Another of Twitter’s discoveries was that mobile phones could work as a broadcast platform. This was something of a miracle of timing: A massive proportion of its traffic today comes from mobile devices. The short length of the tweet was perfect for celebrities in limousines to communicate with thousands, and later millions, of followers. The tiny payload of tweets could be easily jammed into narrow mobile phone data streams, giving people a real-time flow of information…

The article is really clear and simple about what’s going on behind Twitter in terms of how its technically designed. And here comes the question – specifically for those building mobile ministry projects?

Do you understand the depth of interactions that happen on mobile? Does your mobile ministry solution build on the basic behavior, or on top of another’s technology that does?

Post your comments here or on Twitter (@mobileminmag or use #mobmin in your response)

Updates to Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) Rules

Our partners at Symbiota (@symbiota) have written up an excellent summary of the revised rules under the TCPA (Telephone Consumer Protection Act).

Please be informed that a revised rule under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) goes into effect on 10/16/13 that will require “prior express written consent” for text or voice messages sent to phones for solicitation purposes. For informational texts and other non-solicitation texts, the existing “prior express consent” standard will continue to suffice. For example, the new requirement does not apply to purely informational or transactional calls or messages, such as sending a link to a non-solicitation web site, flight updates, surveys, or bank account fraud alerts; however, an informational text that includes an upsell – such as a flight update followed by an offer inviting the consumer to upgrade to first class – would require written consent. There is limited guidance on what constitutes a solicitation, but to paraphrase the FCC, “if the text, notwithstanding its free offer or other information, is intended to offer property, goods, or services for sale in the text, or in the future, that text is an advertisement.”

Read the rest of this summary at Symbiota

Of course, this counts only for those folks in the USA. Other countries have different and similar rules regarding communications. If you are aware of communication law changes which effect mobile for your region, do make us aware and we’ll get those posted also.

Rapid Mobile Phone-Based (RAMP) Survey Tools

Some folks have been asking for sometime about best methods to collecting data via mobile, or at least some best practices in doing so. For better or worse, those folks asking usually weren’t trained in the area of quantitative or qualitative research methods and so there’s a bit more of a learning curve when it comes to answering that. Nevertheless, there are some methods and practices out there and the Red Cross has pointing to a neat method/toolset called the Rapid Mobile Phone-Based (RAMP) Survey. Here’s a bit more about it:

RAMP provides a survey methodology and operations protocol that will enable national Red Cross Red Crescent societies, governments and other partners to conduct surveys rapidly, at reduced costs, with limited or no external assistance.

In 2011 and early 2012, RAMP was piloted by Red Cross societies, the IFRC and partners in Kenya, Namibia and Nigeria. In these countries malaria is a major public health problem. Programme managers were interested in finding out the extent to which malaria programme objectives were being reached. The surveys provided statistically significant data in a number of areas including: ownership and use of long-lasting insecticide-treated nets (LLINs), and the percentage of children under five years old that were accessing health services within 24 hours of the onset of fever. A RAMP survey bulletin was available within 12 hours of completion of the final survey questionnaire with a full draft survey report available within 72 hours.

Read the rest at the International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies

RAMP-slideshow

We’ll be getting this added to our listing of resources pretty soon, while the case studies section will link to the reports already posted. For some of you, this kind of info will speak directly to your efforts. For others, it might make for a means for you to move forward with mobile/mobile ministry, with some additional insight towards areas of opportunities.