In 2001, the opportunity to work for the United Methodist Church came along. A lifelong United Methodist with numerous ministers in my family tree, I applied and was named coordinator of marketing and communications for the Kansas West Annual Conference. My first major project was a complete redesign of the conference’s website. I’ve undertaken this task three more times in the past 12 years, most recently in 2010. In 2006, my job was expanded to include the Kansas East Conference as well. My first project for Kansas East was redesigning their website, taking it from a very simple and limited content management system to the the more robust system used by the Kansas West Conference.
Over the past 12 years, I’ve embraced the changes in technology, and expanded my skills to meet the ever-changing needs of pastors and church members to consume information in new ways. Eight years ago, we started doing video production. I’ve discovered a knack for editing video developed skills in shooting video and script-writing. In 2008, I started using social media for myself and within a year had started Facebook pages and Twitter accounts for both conferences. Our social media strategy combines distribution of our written and video content and photos as well as sharing content generated by other denominational resources.
My responsibilities also include developing and delivering training on a variety of topics including hospitality, evangelism, technology for worship, marketing and communication strategies. I’ve completed two training certifications through United Methodist Communications and completed a course in using Blackboard for delivering training through Southwestern College.
As each new technology came along, I’ve studied best practices and experimented before developing implementation strategies and teaching other staff how to utilize those technologies to maintain conference websites, social media pages, facilitate online meetings and train others. We use Adobe Connect, Go To Meeting and have recently started using video conferencing and the Blue Jeans Network to connect additional sites with the existing video system.