Friday night I was reminded of the huge technology gap that exists in the communications world. Since I work in netroots and am writing my thesis on the topic, I’ve encapsulated myself in that little world and forget how everyone else is just catching on to things.

Recently, I joined the Ebenezer’s events team to help with their concerts. I did a bit of concert promotion in Chattanooga with A Song for the Children  and have missed it. Plus, it’s nice to have a communications outlet that doesn’t include the words legislative, strategy or thesis.

Friday night, I found myself discussing social media at Ebenezers and jotting down a few ideas for a communications plan. Despite having amazing graphics and “trailers” to introduce sermons, NCC is just starting to capture e-mail addresses. While Pastor Mark has a blog and they podcast sermons, the church really hasn’t used any social networking to promote activities.

During the concert, the manager mentioned that she needs to put together a street team to promote concerts. Immediately I went into what Bekna has named “my scary planning mode” and started thinking of ways that the coffeehouse could use all the free stuff out there to announce events.

It just floors me that this giant gap exists between traditional communication plans and the web people. It’s not just politics, it’s really everywhere. PR Squared commented on this topic in the corporate sector this week. Should we slow down and wait for our publics and stakeholders to catch up or should we encourage them to try these new methods and push them along?

BTW, check out Bo Rains. She played Friday night and is great. I downloaded her album , Scarecrows from iTunes and Among the Clouds is my new favorite song.

This entry was posted on Sunday, April 15th, 2007 at 3:48 pm and is filed under addypod, communications, faith. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.