Marketing and Strategy Consulting
“Symeon selected a three-metre-high column in the Syrian desert near Antioch, and there he stood day in, day out, eventually attracting such a crowd that the noise caused him to build his column higher, bringing him closer to God and 16 metres off the ground. Symeon managed to live like this for 30 years, and many other monks began to follow his example so that a whole stylite movement developed which was still going strong in the 11th century CE.”
“The truth, Scott proposes, may be the opposite. What if early civilization was not a boon to humankind but a disaster: for health and safety, for freedom, and for the natural world? What if the first cities were, above all, vast technologies of exploitation by a small and rapacious elite? If that is where we come from, who are we now? What possibilities might we discover by tracing our origins to a different kind of ancestor?”
via “What made prehistoric hunter-gatherers give up freedom for civilization?” by Jedediah Purdy in New Republic
I recommend this whole post for people starting out in a creative venture or pursuing a lifelong passion as a vocation or for profit:
Be humble, but always try to exceed expectations. When you accept an invitation to do a talk, or do a work for a commission, do something that’s a stretch, and then do it so well that it looks like it was easy. This can mean doing way more work in a small amount of time than people think should be possible, or learning a whole new technology to do a crazy idea.
Robert Rauschenberg, Mother of God, ca. 1950
I’ve made a series of “Bringing It All Back Home” posts here over the last decade charting my attempts to reign in some of the content I so freely pour out all over the social web. Some of those attempts have been successful and some less so (looking at you, Twitter). However, I enter 2018 with a renewed sense of purpose and direction for how I see this space and site changing with me as I continue to evolve.
Similarly, the web continues to evolve. There is now less of a need for flashy graphics or fonts or layouts and more of a need for real and authentic dialogue and expression. I recognize my place of privilege saying that, but I do think the sooner we unmoor ourselves from our socially constructed social media profiles and find spaces of genuine room for translation and interpolation, the better we’ll be.
Plus, I have years of Analytics data to show that no one is looking at my “Services” page and I get much more interaction, engagement, and yes… clients from my actual posts here than some elaborately designed page touting my consultation pedigree and skills. Those are here if you seek them out, but I doubt you will.
Having a web space in 2018 means much more about discovery and freedom of expression outside the walled gardens of Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Snapchat. Those places still serve their purpose, but the type of expression and sharing and learning I’m looking to do more of in 2018 both personally and professionally will be the theme of this space as we move forward. The marketing and consulting clients will come if I do a good job of that exploration and communication of what I find out about the world, tech, religion, strategic planning, and …well… myself.
For the first time in three years, I’ve fired up a brand new dedicated server and put this site there (previously it was on WordPress.com as I worked up the courage to make this leap). Everything from email to my calendar to to-do apps and items etc will be located on the server as I want to be more intentional about the services I use and recommend but also find more of that self-reliance and independence I’ve always aspired towards (both personally and with my clients). I’ve even been able to bring in my old Tumblr posts from 2007-2009 as a part of scooping up all of my old posts going back to 2006. In the hours I’ve spent setting up the server as well as this site and learning to love PHP and curl commands again, I already feel that the attempt has paid dividends. I can’t wait to see what else I learn (or re-learn) as I move along.
So forgive me if I do a lot more sharing here than before… some of it will make it over to Twitter and perhaps Facebook. However, I’ll try to keep the stream manageable as more of my content originates here as the hub and flows out to those spaces. Those spaces are great for sharing and hearing echoes of your own views and feelings and expectations. A space like this in 2018 holds a promise of the type of exploration that encourages me to learn more and therefore be a more creative and talented person as well as a better consultant for my clients.
Here’s to 2018.
Practice resurrection.
These are pretty popular plugins in the SEO world… I imagine lots more of these “supply chain attacks” exist due to older but still popular plugins being sold or leased:
If you have any of these plugins running on your site, we recommend that you remove them immediately and that you make sure that SEO spam hasn’t been injected into your site. Even though one of them, WP No External Links, has been updated to remove the backdoor, it has been closed, so it will never be updated again in the future.
American churches and nonprofits are in for an even louder wake-up call in 2018 and beyond. It’s definitely time to start planning for the near future to keep your church or nonprofit solvent, especially if you are smaller in size and rely on donors who make less than $75,000 yearly.
Churches must begin to explore income alternatives with an expected decline in individual giving in 2018 from the pending tax reform plan, along with year-over-year declining church attendance in all mainline Protestant denominations and increasing numbers of individuals with no reported religious affiliation.
The source of concern is how the tax bill is expected to sharply reduce the number of taxpayers who qualify for the charitable tax deduction — a big driver of gifts to nonprofits. One study predicts that donations will fall by at least $13 billion, about 4.5 percent, next year. That decline is expected to be concentrated among gifts from the middle of the income scale. The richest Americans will mostly keep their ability to take the tax break.
via Charities fear tax bill could turn philanthropy into a pursuit only for the rich | Washington Post
The tax reform legislation that was just passed by Congress and signed into law by the President will present an unprecedented challenge to churches and nonprofits in light of charitable tax exemptions. In short, because of changes to the standard deductions, far fewer taxpayers and households (particularly those making less than $75,000) will itemize. That’s now the only way to take advantage of the charitable contributions deduction.
So unless your church or nonprofit relies heavily on donors in the top tax brackets, you need to diversify income sources.
If you rely on a large number of smaller donations from members or patrons who are in “the middle class,” you need to diversify income sources.
“To use your charitable contributions against your taxes, you must itemize your deductions. This means for it to make financial sense, the combined value of all your deductions would need to exceed the standard deductions for 2017: $12,700 for married couples, $9,350 for heads of households and $6,350 for single filers and married couples filing separately.”
We work with churches and nonprofits to help identify and engage with alternative income sources. Get in touch if you need help.
There, I said it for all of posterity to record and one day synthesize into the VR / AI Sam-bot that my great grandkids can chat with in real time…
Dr. Thomas Whitley and the Rev. Sam Harrelson discuss nativity scenes, bad Christmas songs, Epiphany, the War on Christmas, and bad Apple (batteries).
Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!
Dr. Thomas Whitley and the Rev. Sam Harrelson discuss nativity scenes, bad Christmas songs, Epiphany, the War on Christmas, and bad Apple (batteries).
Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!
Links:
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 59:49 — 48.1MB) | Embed
https://samharrelson.com/thinking Apple Podcasts | RSS | More
Fascinating piece on Google Maps history and possible directions…
So Google likely knows what’s inside all of the buildings it has extracted. And as Google gets closer and closer to capturing every building in the world, it’s likely that Google will start highlighting / lighting up buildings related to queries and search results.
This will be really cool when Google’s/Waymo’s self-driving cars have AR displays. One can imagine pointing out the window at a building and being able to see what’s inside.
We’ve been working on this tech since the 1830’s and we’re almost to the point of mass adoption and use cases…
Magic Leap today revealed a mixed reality headset that it believes reinvents the way people will interact with computers and reality. Unlike the opaque diver’s masks of virtual reality, which replace the real world with a virtual one, Magic Leap’s device, called Lightwear, resembles goggles, which you can see through as if wearing a special pair of glasses. The goggles are tethered to a powerful pocket-sized computer, called the Lightpack, and can inject life-like moving and reactive people, robots, spaceships, anything, into a person’s view of the real world.
via Lightwear: Introducing Magic Leap’s Mixed Reality Goggles – Rolling Stone
We use Wordfence as a default on all new WordPress client sites that we create for good reason. Here’s a scary reminder that while building a website has become quick, easy, and relatively cheap your company / nonprofit / church / community group should not take WordPress security for granted with cheap hosting and no one overseeing these sorts of things:
This is the highest volume brute force attack we have seen to date. It may also be using the fresh credentials that were provided in the database released on December 5th, so it may achieve a higher than normal success rate. Please spread the word among the WordPress community to create awareness of this new threat.
via Breaking: Aggressive WordPress Brute Force Attack Campaign Started Today, 3am UTC
Interesting thoughts here from the NY Times CEO on how they are shifting focus in relationship to Facebook and Google due to the smartphone revolution … much of this applies to how nonprofits and churches can do better marketing as well:
It’s about how you think about the product and what you’re trying to do and what is the value you’re giving to users. The areas of weakness in the publishing industry have been not having an audience strategy or sufficient brain space to think about how you serve your audience. It’s very easy to get tracked into assumptions about who your audience is. In legacy media, journalistic parameters were set by the geographical limitations. [The smartphone] changes everything. You need to reinvent journalism from the ground up with this device in mind, and then try and figure out what you’re going to do on a laptop and the physical newspaper.
Working from home with our son this week. He likes to contribute to my setup with various design inspirations.
Left to Right: Google Pixelbook, iPad Pro, Samsung Chromebook Pro
Why two Chromebooks? I’m using Chrome Remote Desktop on the Pixelbook to run Adobe Illustrator via the Windows desktop in my office and keeping notes on the Samsung. The iPad is there for renderings in Pixelmator and for Trello.
I’ve got the Pixelbook Pen and Apple Pencil for the iPad but still really only use those when I’m in tablet mode and taking notes on a meeting or call in Evernote.
What you see on Facebook greatly depends on what Facebook thinks you want to see. It’s a complicated algorithm of past behaviors, your own demographic info as well as what people who you interact with often are liking or sharing. “Likes” and “Shares” on a post can greatly amplify the number of people who see it.
However, you shouldn’t be blatant and ask for likes or shares in a way that can be perceived as annoying or “spammy.” Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Google have all been throttling this sort of “engagement behavior” in small ways over the last year or so on their respective platforms. We’ve been encouraging clients to not use those terms regardless of how much goodwill might be behind a post.
But it’s great to see Facebook publicly discouraging people from asking for likes and shares:
Facebook is cracking down on a new type of clickbait: Posts that ask people to Like or share or comment to goose engagement numbers, what Facebook is calling “engagement bait.”
You’ve probably seen posts like this in your feed before. Like if you think cats are best. Share if you think dogs are best. It’s a tactic that publishers will use to game Facebook’s algorithm, which rewards posts that get better engagement and shows them to more people.
via Facebook is clamping down on posts that ask people for Likes or shares – Recode
Dr. Thomas Whitley and The Rev. Sam Harrelson are joined by The Rev. Lauren E. Larkin, Prof. W. Travis McMaken ("McBacon"), and The Rev. Merianna Neely Harrelson in an extravaganza of epic proportions. They discuss Clash of the Titans, why you should write a book, gendered religious language, Ancient Aliens, Alex Jones, flogging, and hate watching the world burn.
Special Guests: Lauren R.E. Larkin, Merianna Neely Harrelson, and W. Travis McMaken.
Links:
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:11:05 — 58.1MB) | Embed
https://samharrelson.com/thinking Apple Podcasts | RSS | More
Dr. Thomas Whitley and The Rev. Sam Harrelson discuss the #metoo Revolution, amplifying voices, and whether anything is worth trading your integrity.
Links:
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:03:40 — 51.7MB) | Embed
https://samharrelson.com/thinking Apple Podcasts | RSS | More
