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After a few months, I am finally able to access the 'Diocesan Information Systems Conference' discussions online (it uses some sort of Lotus Notes system), and it's actually a pretty good resources for IT administrators. There are a lot of great discussions about social networking, network stacks, and information management.

If you work in an (Arch)Diocese, you should head over to the DISC site and request access.

[He] sends his own personal emails. He does!

So says Archbishop Claudio Maria Celli, president of the Pontifical Council for Social Communications, confirming that Pope Benedict XVI is technologically savvy. (As seen in Our Sunday Visitor).

Just like the art of letter-writing, people can tell when you are being personal, when you are actually giving your own time and your own words to a response. How many times have you emailed or written a politician, or a famous person, and received either a form-generated response, or something that sounds canned?

Your organization can always benefit from giving personal responses. I write every single response to every single email I receive; for a short time, I had a series of canned copy/paste responses for certain questions, but I gave up on that once I realized that taking an extra five minutes out of every day would help me to be able to connect more personally with those who went out of their way to contact me.

If you are the leader of an organization, or a person held in high regard, you have the power to greatly influence people and help them feel closer to your organization (or Church) through your personal touch. Take the time to write a response—whether that be through email, a hand-written or typed letter, or even through a secretary. People on the other end will tell you took the time for them, and will remember that.

[Good post on making a self-published book —Ed.]

When I began writing a book on the liturgy back in March of this year, I was looking for ways of getting it in print easily and cheaply.  I have no funny letters after my name, which means I have received no degrees (or schooling at all, for that matter) in the realm of liturgical studies.  But I didn't want that to stop me from getting my research out to the people.

I considered lulu.com at first, because I had heard good things about it through the Church Music Association of America.  Unfortunately, my experience with lulu was plagued by unexplained error messages, customer service that was at least a week behind, and expenses that, while not prohibitive, were disheartening.

It was in the forums on lulu.com that I found out about Amazon.com's print-on-demand division, CreateSpace.com.  Because they are directly connected with Amazon, there is no additional fee for listing the book on Amazon.  (The royalties you get through Amazon are less than through the CreateSpace portal, but that's a small price to pay for such visibility.)  CreateSpace is barebones when compared to lulu (which provides many additional services, some free, some not), but it was more than sufficient for my needs.  The one additional expense CreateSpace got me to accept was a one-time $39 fee which results in increased royalties and a reduced price for buying my own book.  That $39 will pay for itself in a matter of days. Continue Reading »