I’m sure some of you have heard the buzz surrounding Local Labs, and you’re even considering getting involved, but it’s a little intimidating. What will they do there? Will I be singled out? What if they hate me? Well, have no fear. Kent Shaffer is to the rescue, telling us a little bit about the Tulsa Local Lab:
The first Tulsa Church Communications lab went pretty well. Six people showed up. Four people were staff at churches, and two worked for design and marketing firms. There were graphic designers, web developers, marketers and IT professionals.
Prior to the meeting, we set up a Facebook Page. It helped us get to know each other a little better.
We began the meeting sharing about who we are and what we do. We tried to discover some common topics that we would all be interested in discussing. We told our “war” stories from the church communications trenches. And we discussed how to establish credibility with church staff and clients. Another helpful topic was how to improve communications materials even when church staff and traditions slow it down.
For a first meeting, it was a great test run. We will use the Facebook discussion thread feature to keep in touch between meetings and to prepare topics, times and locations of future meetings. Facebook’s event feature and invite capabilities proved quite valuable in organizing this first meeting.
I’m sure this experience is about par for the course, so if you have a Local Lab near you, you might expect something similar to this.
Anyone else had any interesting experiences with Local Labs?
