September 2009 Please note that some links may have expired due to the ever-changing nature of the Internet. Let us know if you find anything unexpected or offensive so we can remove or change a link. Youthwork magazine and CCP ltd are not responsible for the content of external sites accessed from youthwork.co.uk Communicate John Allan discovers that despite phones, emails and texts, sometimes we still can’t get it together. He offers ten team communication improvers to keep you connected. Is it just me, or are communications getting more difficult? Seems like a strange question to ask in the heyday of Twitter, Facebook and the iPhone… but let me explain what I mean. Currently I’m involved in two youth work situations. I’m helping with the 14-18 group at church, and I’m chaplain in a fairly posh private secondary school. The leaders of the 14-18 group are brilliant, but we have a problem: we just cannot get together! Most of our communication is by e-mail or text… and we’ll meet maybe once a term. For an hour. If we’re fortunate. At school, I have an assistant for ten hours a week, and he works hard. But he’s rarely there for an hour without his mobile ringing several times, or without needing to check his e-mails. All this communication obstructs communication, if you see what I mean. Indeed last week I sent him home a couple of hours early; he was getting so many texts, neither of us could concentrate… Now if youth ministry is a team job (and it is), and if communication is vital (and it is), maybe it wouldn’t be a bad idea to spend part of the summer peace and quiet in ensuring that your systems are in place well before the autumn strikes. So that’s my excuse for offering you this month ten Internet-based team communication improvers. First of them: XYWriteit. This website allows people who aren’t in the same room to create new documents together, share them, track versions, and export them in many different formats. Why would you want to do that? Well, in planning your programme for a coming term you could start with a blank grid, then fill it in together - adding ideas, scrubbing some, altering dates when your planned guest can’t come, improving your titles – the lot. And if you actually go to a real meeting, but forget the document, you’ll always have the latest draft available online. There’s also OneDrum, pretty similar except that it also permits real-time chatting as you modify the document together online. Afterwards, you could save all completed documents at DocShare (‘pretty much like YouTube for documents’, they claim) so that they’re always retrievable. (You’ll learn a lot by looking at other people’s documents too – type ‘youth ministry’ in the DocShare search box and see what comes up!). If you’re planning a meeting, though, you’re better with WhichDateWorks or Diarised. Both work similarly (you state the possible dates; the information is automatically e-mailed to your team; they fill in their available dates online; you get the results). But both have different advantages: WhichDateWorks stores e-mail addresses so that you can contact everybody next time with one click; Diarised sends you a summary e-mail when everybody’s responded. Both work brilliantly. Organising a social event for your group? Try WhoAreIn, which lets you create an event then invite people. As invitees respond, their data is combined online (so kids can see who’s going and who isn’t!) and there’s a messaging board to let them chat with each other about it. If it’s a seriously big event – a concert, say, or an ambitious party – Eventbrite is even better. It lets you create a customised web page for your event, where people can actually acquire tickets (the service is free if the tickets are free, otherwise they take 2.5% of your proceeds) and a personal web address to let people find it easily. You can also put the ticket sales box into your own website or blog, and Eventbrite will send personal e-mail invitations to punters you specify. Instant sales statistics at any point - automatic name badges for ticket-holders - bar-code-checkable tickets… It’s no wonder they’ve already sold 6,770,906 tickets. Sometimes you want to do more online, like having an extended discussion. The easiest way by far is ReSubj, an ‘online group discussion space’ where with a couple of clicks you can name what you want to discuss, invite contributors, and start arguing. People respond by e-mail or through the website. There’s no sign-up required – it couldn’t be simpler. Alternatively, Phuser offers a similar service, with the extra attraction that you can share files and photos too. It’s a great way of keeping conversations going with group members away at college – or team members who can never get to planning meetings! Just space for one more: AudioBoo. This British website allows you to upload sound files directly from any phone; it’s a kind of audio Twitter. Great for letting people know where you are and what you’re doing. Sending regular ‘boos’ as you walk around the site at Soul Survivor or Greenbelt, for example, could be a great way of involving kids who can’t be there. So there you are – ten ways of improving communications without any… Oh, you’ll have to excuse me, the phone is ringing… John Allan is based at Belmont Chapel, Exeter, UK, and is a regular contributor to Youthwork magazine. Back to main page