Goooooood morning. It’s 7:30AM on Thursday. It is the calm before the storm. As I was sitting in the war room / web center / communications center at GA, I felt the strong urge that I should be smoking a cigarette along with my coffee, diet Coke and cold pizza.

People have been drifting in and I am only starting to remember their names. The two Lances (Lance 1 and Lance 2, also known as Thing1 and Thing2 or T1 and T2) have been getting things ready for streaming video. they’ve been working on it all week so right now it seems to involve sitting at a computer and working very very intently.

We started the coffee going and soon after the hotel staff came by with buckets of coffee. We were chatting and Janet says, “Oh! You’re Dean Goddette!” Not quite sure how to take that but it turns out that Janet is Janet Hayes teh UUA Public Relations Director. She had seen one of my posts on PR-L. “I wanted to ask you to tell that story at my workshop but I thought it was rude to ask someone only a week before the session.” After more coffee, she reminded me of what I had posted (ok, it was early) and I said I would be glad to do it. When is the session? “Oh, it’s at 10:30, so now I feel really bad asking you to do it two hours before the workshop.”

I’m glad to do it. As a matter of fact, I have to head out now to get ready. I probably should have eaten something…

I’ve struggled with cassette tapes, Sony minidisk recorders (multiple kinds), mp3 recorders. Finally, I did some research into small recorders and invested in a Zoom H4 and boy I have never been happier.

There are other field recorders that you might want to check out such as the Sony MZ-M100 or 200, Edirol R-09, M-Audio MicroTrack 24/96 among others. There are some great reviews of all of these units in gory detail, particularly by Mark Nelson.

Why is it handy for church work?

1. It’s easy to use. On the top panel, four small buttons select between MP3 and the three WAV sample rates. The relatively large Rec button does what you think. Press it once and it flashes to signify “standby.” A second press starts recording. Couldn’t be simpler.
2. Records up to 16 hours. The Zoom H4 uses SD memory up to 1 Gb. That’s good for about 1,000 minutes (that’s 16 hours) of recording in mp3 format. Two AA batteries are good for about 4 hours of recording. So, I get in early, set up the recorder, turn it on and go have coffee (yes, before the service!). There is no rushing around to flip tapes or changing disks.
3. The two built in microphones work great for capturing the whole service: sermons, music and anything else that goes on. You can attach the Zoom to a tripod. Or, what I typically do, attach the Zoom to a mic stand (with an Edirol  microphone stand adapter) which lets you hoist the unit up higher with a smaller footprint than the typcial tripod.
4. Download the file directly to your computer. The USB port allows you to connect to your computer and download the files directly rather than re-recording them in realtime. 

But wait, there’s more!! There are two combo 1/4″/XLR jacks that let you use, well, quarter inch and XLR cables meaning that you can use REAL microphones or take the feed off a sound system. The Zoom also comes with 24 & 48V phantom power for condenser microphones (but be sure to be using the AC adaptor, phantom power will chew through batteries fast fast fast).

But wait, there’s even more!!

For the geeks, it has an onboard limiter or compressor, numerous mic models, easy gain settings, the list goes on. You can even use it to record directly to your computer if you are so inclined. Great for multitrack recording.

 
You can use the on-board mics OR the two jacks but not both simulataneously. You can set the gain on the side panel, hi, medium or low. It’s not continuous but at least it has fixed gain settings and not autogain (although that is available through the menus).

Annoyances

Every unit has its annoyances and problems. To get at some of the advanced features you have to use their navigation system which involves a menu button (the one directly under the screen) and an a tiny scroll knob on the right hand side to move between menus and edit parameters. Yikes! I can’t tell you how many times I have overshot the menus. It is counterintuitive but luckily, you don’t have to delve down into the menus that much. The toggle switch is at the right of the view above. You can just see it in the picture at the top of the page as a bump to the right of the record button.

The screen is a bit tiny and, er, hard to read depending on your eyesight. And because of the way you use it, sometimes you have to try to negotiate the display upside down. It would have been nice if it had been a little bigger. There is a post (somewhere) describing a home-made magnifier setup that attaches to the Zoom.

Summary

The Zoom H4 is very “handy” because its small, easy to setup for recording and easy to transfer to a computer. And, beyond that, it has a parcel of additional features that make it a great tool for serious recording in a small package. Its features vastly outweigh its annoyances.

How does a person move from having never heard of your congregation to have a deep commitment? The Path to Commitment is an easy way to understand how people become members and what you can do to make it easier for people to become members. The Path to Commitment allows you to evaluate your process and identify your strengths and areas that need improvement.

Each of us has traveled a Path to Commitment. Have you ever visited a congregation and not returned? What happened that made you decide to return or not return.

Below is a diagram of a path to commitment. Each of the arrows in the diagram are interactions (or, in marketing lingo, impressions). Each subsequent interaction represents an increasing commitment on the part of the visitor. It takes upwards of 6-10 impressions for someone to become committed. And each subsequent impression requires more personal interaction on the part of someone in the congregation.

You can use the Path to Commitment to visualize how your congregation works.

• At the very top, how does someone become aware that your congregation even exists?
• Do people greet visitors or ignore them? (See below…)
• What are your strong points along the Path?
• Are there gaps or impediments in your Path to Commitment?
• Why do people exit the Path? Why do people stay?
• Are there events that you promote in the community?

Each one of these point is a long discussion. We tend to focus on the biggest, easiest chunks like a website. But why spend the money on advertising if you only lose them after their first visit.

My wife & I had moved into the area and were visiting congregations. On our first visit to one in particular, they had a great service that we enjoyed very much. After the service, we stayed for coffee and stood around, a bit nervous as we did not know anyone. No one talked to us so we looked about and found someone who had just gotten a cup of coffee and was not in a big group. After chatting with her for a few minutes, I asked her “How long have you been coming to this congregation?” Her reply, “Oh, this is my first time! It’s nice to meet people like you.”

People make their decisions quickly at each point, within seconds. It is important to take an integrated approach because what is the point of doing good advertising if they get turned off at the website or at the door? It is easier to think about point solutions such as direct mail or fix the website or get more greeters. But if you don’t have the whole plan together, you are wasting a lot of time and effort and losing many visitors who might have become committed members!

Technology, no matter how neat, does not create an audience.  Lots of technology gets implemented but never used.  So, how do you create services or content that people will actually use?The key is to find an existing process in the congregation and find an application that’s actually useful to the people involved without changing the process. After a great deal of effort, we now have an online calendar that the administer uses which also generates tons of dynamic content for the website. But the process is essentially the same as the paper process that she had in place before.Some time ago, I implemented an online calendar several year ago but it was soundly ignored. I could not get anyone to use. And because it was not accurate, no one used it. The problem was a process/social/requirements issue not a technological one.