OK. Over a month since I’ve typed a darn thing into this blog. Have I dropped off the face of the earth? Did I change my mind about this whole business thing? No, on both counts.
I’ve been working hard to complete the CDs and DVDs that were ordered back in March from Terry Nelson-Johnson’s parish missions called Running the Paschal Mystery. And life happens. Let’s see: my son finished his first year of pre-school, my wife and daughter went to Florida for a niece’s high school graduation (leaving my son and I home alone - he saw his first big screen movie, the excellent “Up” from the consistently awesome Pixar), my wife’s cat got sick (yes, ‘my wife’s’ cat(!) and it required multiple trips to the kitty ER), and finally I climbed a very steep learning curve with my Macs (using Audacity and Final Cut Pro for the CDs and DVDs).
I should be done with the Running the Paschal Mystery products by early next week. Thus, starting next week I will get to get back to my online projects. I will be launching terrynelsonjohnson.com as an independent website for Soul Play as well as start posting the free samples for Memindia (memindia.com) prior to a subscription service launch before the end of June. I will also be creating and posting moe promotional materials soon since I have a lot of Terry NJ footage to work with as well as more time for my own Memindia work. Stay tuned!
OK, so I must confess that I underestimated the amount of time it would take to edit the audio and video from our March Soul Play Running the Paschal Mystery projects! I’m still working on those, which is why you haven’t seen anything new on this site or Memindia’s in a month. I should be done with the editing and able to fulfill all my orders by the end of April and starting full steam on Memindia then.
In the meantime, I hope everyone has a blessed happy holy joyous Easter. And may spring arrive soon! (It snowed last week where we live, that doesn’t count as spring in my book.)
So what do you think? I think it’s pretty. And far more user-friendly and functional. While I still have some tweaks I’d like to make, the basic structure is good and content is all right. Soon, more will be happening with the other sites and content will actually be coming. So, to explain what I’ve been doing with my time, here’s a quick run-down of CMR these last couple weeks. Continue Reading…
I’m actually working on a new look for the site, cleaner, more user-friendly and ‘to the point’ so to speak. I’ve taken out the static home page at this point to facilitate the behind the scenes testing and designing of the new look. Check back regularly to see what I’m cooking up! Big things coming very soon.
Tuesday, March 3rd, 2009 | Author: Jerry | Business News | 1 Comment
Hey everybody. Sorry for the exactly one month delay in posting anything new to the site.
I have been working and am exciting about what’s happening. Here’s a quick rundown (is that one word?):
- simplified the site greatly, eliminating all the annoying ‘under construction’ or ‘haven’t gotten to it yet’ pages - unprofessional/unnecessary
- Cathclasses is on hold - more on that below.
- hard at work on my partnership with Soul Play, learning a ton about booklet printing, CD duplication, and the like
- just this morning sent to press our first Soul Play CMR production: Running the Paschal Mystery - more on that in a separate post soon
- Memindia is coming! I’ve decided to run it from it’s own website and merely link to it from here. I’ve got the beginnings of design well underway, have begun building the website (you can probably guess it and can go see the progress over the next week or so - since I don’t know how to design offline and implement all done - if you do, please clue me in!), and have a template for the actual resources. Again, more on that in a separate post soon.
- Finally, many things got delayed by a week or so as my mother (in New Jersey, while I’m here in Illinois) fell ill and ended up in the hospital. I went out to be with the family and am now back in the swing of things here at home. She’s home and better in case you’d wonder.
For those of you who have been following me for a while know, one of the projects I’m interested in seeing brought to reality is what I was calling Cathclasses - online formation courses for parish volunteers (as well as any adult Catholic who’d like a non-threatening venue to learn more). I have come to the conclusion that I just cannot tackle that project alone through this company. Luckily, interest in the project is high and it is not ’shelved.’ I’ve been in discussions with Pam Coster of Avanza Partners about the possibility of working together on this project. We complement very nicely: she brings a wealth of networking relationships and diocese-level ministry experience, while I bring technical expertise. We both have the theological background and share a vision and passion for this project. Thus, we are exploring some other venues through which to bring this project to fruition, perhaps a 501c3 or a publisher patron. I hope to report more soon.
I think this month will be a very exciting one for Catholic Media Resources. I hope you stick around to see it!
Tuesday, February 3rd, 2009 | Author: Jerry | Site Info | No Comments
Wow, that took me way longer than I anticipated, but the Talks section of the website is done!
Check out the main page for general information about all our talks, as well as the specific pages for each of the three series we’re currently offering. First, I’ve got Digital Age Parenting, three talks about being Catholic parents in this time of a rapidly changing technological landscape with specific offerings on the Internet in general, Facebook specifically, and finally current tech items and trends. Of course, we offer Sacrament Gatherings, providing parent meetings, parent/child meetings, and kid gatherings for Confirmation, First Eucharist, or First Reconciliation. And finally, we have a series of adult talks called Catholicism Plugged In, offering to adults the chance to reflect on hearing God’s Word in a busy noisy world, learn about today’s digital tech that brings God’s word to us in new ways, as well as ways to integrate prayer into that tech.
Saturday, January 17th, 2009 | Author: Jerry | Site Info | No Comments
So, after having played with the Wordpress theme that acts more like a content management system than a blog theme (called wp remix) long enough to get a pretty good handle on how it works, I’ve decided to take the site live and on the main domain just so I can start referring people here, even if all the pieces aren’t quite put together yet.
So, I’ve decided to get transparent and blog about the pieces as they come online. I’m happy to report that as of this morning (technically morning, it’s approaching 1am!) the home page is in decent shape (although I’m feeling more and more an urgency to get my own intro video in that center spot - just need to you know, record it, edit it, and create CMR animations for opening credits and closing logos, that’s all!). I’m also happy to note the the About pages (all three of them so far - About CMR, About Jerry, and About Terry) are complete and looking pretty good, if I do type myself.
My next priority is to get the Presentations section of the site complete so I can start sending out promotional materials about those as well as begin shaping the Soul Play products descriptions since Terry and I will be working on a set of those very soon to go on sale in March.
Very soon, I plan to post a CMR timeline to describe what’s coming when in these product lines.
For this post: what do you think of the site in general? User-friendly? Look good or ugly? Easy or hard to navigate? Feedback, please! Thanks.
What is CMR?
Catholic Media Resources helps parish leaders excite and enliven the faith of their parishioners.
What does CMR offer?
We have four main product lines, all complementary but aimed at specific areas of ministry.
The first product is well, me! CMR Talks describes the talks, retreats, and reflections that I can provide your parish. There are three main presentation series. First, Digital Age Parenting presents three different topics designed to help today’s parents bring the faith into the everyday technological life of their child. Second, the Sacrament Gatherings series refers to the parent meetings and retreats that I’ve provided to different parishes. Finally, Catholicism Plugged In refers to the reflections and talks I can provide about either bringing today’s tech into our faith life or helping to bring our faith life into today’s busy technological life.
CMR’s second product line is called Memindia. Memindia are resources that put the ‘min’istry into ‘media’ - get it? Me-min-dia, ‘min’istry in media. Well, whether you think the name is clever or silly, the resources it provides is just plain useful. Providing a combination text and audio resource each week via a digital subscription model, learn how Memindia Weekly works here. I hope to begin Memindia Weekly before the end of March.
Our third product is a personal storytelling audio podcast called Brain Unclenching: Stories of a Catholic Stay at Home Dad & Entrepreneur. This program is completely free, but donations are always welcome if you enjoy listening.
Finally, our final product line comes to Catholic Media Resources from another company, Soul Play. Dr. Terry Nelson-Johnson has made a career of presenting the Catholic faith through engrossing storytelling, accessible theological explanation, and passionate personal engagement with life! He and I are partnering to bring his unique and life-changing presentations of the faith to a broader audience than just those lucky enough to attend one of his live presentations. We are producing and will soon begin selling his materials through this website in CD and DVD forms, beginning with his parish mission program: Running The Paschal Mystery. Look for these products to go on sale in March.
What’s this ‘blog’ thing about anyway?
A blog (abbreviated from ‘web log’) refers to a method of publishing information, usually chronologically (the newest stuff on top and the older stuff continually being pushed lower on the page). Blogs can serve innumerable purposes - personal diary, commentary on other material, links calling attention to interesting things, original material distributed serially, or any combination of those. I will use this blog to communicate with you what’s going on with Catholic Media Resources. I hope to post every few days, at the very least I pledge one post per week, on what I’ve been up to and what’s new and exciting with the company. As I’m just beginning this journey and building everything from scratch, there’s plenty to write about!
I will either type out the information, like this post, or I may just record an audio file and post that. I will confess that I have never been particularly successful at text-based blogging but feel very confident that the spoken word of audio recording is far more my preferred media. We’ll find out together how this blog develops!
My first question inviting your response.
Another crucial element to blogging is that the content creation is not just one way. You can contribute and dialog with me through Comments, that appear below each post. Thus, my first question for you to comment upon: Do you want me to create a section of this website that explains some of the more current web tech features of this website and our products? (For instance, a page explaining RSS and subscribing to a ‘feed’ in an ‘aggregator’ of some sort so you could have this blog delivered to you, instead of coming here to visit.) Please leave me a comment below.
I will begin the normal posts focusing on what’s going on and asking for feedback about particular products, services, etc. very soon but wanted to begin with a general overview and introduction. Please be patient with me as I fill in all the blanks. If you check out the About Jerry page, you’ll see that I’m a stay-at-home dad to two toddlers as well as building this company, so everything won’t be perfectly put together all at once. I figured it’s better to get out there and provide a forum for information and discussion before all the bells and whistles are in place so we can work together to build something special: a company that uses today’s technology to help you bring the faith to our modern world. Thanks for reading!
p.s. - most posts won’t be nearly this long or formal!
