Farewell Wordpress (new blog address)
Posted by: Doug in Uncategorized on December 23rd, 2009
I have finally begun to migrate my website over to Expression Engine. It is the CMS (content management system) I have been using for all my development work at the U.S. Center for World Mission. I decided to revamp my VERY aging website (done when html was very new to me) and use Expression Engine. That means I no longer need Wordpress.
This will remain active for a time, but eventually it will be replaced with :
http://www.dougeli.com/blog/ If you are using RSS, that old feed will eventually be gone and will be replaced with a new one.
Update your bookmarks and look for this change over the next few days.
I can breath again!
For the last several months we have been planning what we will do at Urbana. My part of this process has been to help make some of the promotional items we will give out.
We decided to pass out tote bags (the ones you use for grocery shopping) with our logo on them and include a promotional postcard, issue of Mission Frontiers, and a DVD. The theme we chose was “Ready for Missions? Think Again.” Urbana will have many voices telling these students to go change the world and make a difference. That is of course a great message. However all too often young people (and even older people) will rush out to the mission field unprepared for what they will face.
We wanted to speak to this ‘zeal without knowledge’. We are not trying to say we have all the answers. We just want to direct them to some resources (ours and others) that can help prepare them for some of what they will face. The DVD has a short video message on each of these topics:
- Just who can be a missionary?
- Can you be more effective by staying vs going?
- What are some strategic next steps you can take right now?
- Do missionaries create dependency when trying to help?
- What kind of community do you need so you will last on the mission field?
- How do you do short term trips effectively?
- How should you decide where to go?
- How do you raise a support team that will last?
Each topic is only 3-5 minutes long and meant to get them thinking and then looking for more information. There will be a web page that has all these on it as well (Here) but I just started that yesterday. Give it time 
This page will grow as we add more topics. We also hope to engage people by allowing discussion on these topic so they can wrestle through some of these ideas and decisions.
After a few busy and long days, the DVD went to production on Monday. We made the deadlines and did so without having to cut any corners. Sure there were things I would have liked to tweek more, but that can be done for the web versions of these videos (that will likely reach more people anyway).
Thank you all for your prayers as the days counted down. No major issues popped up and everyone was very happy with the final outcome. I’ll be posting the videos here as they are done and ready for the web.
A day in the life…
Posted by: Doug in Uncategorized on November 18th, 2009
I often wonder, what should I write about? I often get asked, “What is a normal day like?” Well there you have it.
Rather than do a blow by blow account of a day, I figure I’ll write about a new project. The University is developing a “Community Care” program. They want the agencies that rent office space, dorm residents, and local neighbors to be able to interact and develop a better sense of community.
This of course would benefit greatly from a website. The first step was to sit down with the Community Care director and ask questions about his goals and expectations. Thats the boring part. I’ll spare you those details. After a short time and looking at a few example websites I felt I had a good idea of what to do.
Next step, fire up Photoshop and begin pushing pixels around the screen.