My Flat Missions
April 8, 2009 - 4:42pm
April 9, 2009 - 9:18am
Neat Idea
This is a really neat idea and I have not fleshed it out in my head completely.
I think it's really neat to take photos of people and have those be shot at different places on the mission so people can see that they are involved. But, can a missionary afford to carry something like that around? Will it be abused by corporate sponsors? Are things like video of a missionary out in the field showing what's going on? Maybe using something like a flip mino which is small and portable.
Overall you have a good start to the site. I'd like the designers to give more input. But, I did notice a few things to work on.
First, I see some alignment issues. For example, there is a spot where the text goes right up to the end of a region. There should be some space. See http://skitch.com/mattfarina/bmrrn/my-flat-missions.
There is, also, a miss-alignment where text wraps around to the next line. See http://skitch.com/mattfarina/bmrrm/my-flat-missions
These things are minor, though.
Good luck with the project.
April 14, 2009 - 1:14am
Thanks For Your Feedback
Yes, it seems that the mis-alignment is with Safari...i'll tweak that and the CSS a bit.
Yes, video is a great way to convey a message! In some areas of the world it's necessary to conceal the fact that you are on a mission trip. It's not going to be the best fit for everywhere. There are sensitive areas of the world that we have to reach in other ways.
I've recently been working on an idea to better connect the Church body to missions. I came up with the draft (very draft) idea of http://myflatmissions.com, a spin off of the flat stanley kids project. Any feedback would be great at this point.
The site has a lot of the brainstorming ideas that I've put together so far. In short when a missionary goes into the field they take a folded board with the images of the sponsors (or logos for corporate sponsorship) with them. While on the trip the missionary documents the journey and has their picture taken at different locations with the board and images. At the end of the trip the sponsor is given a journal of the trip.
The message that will hopefully be sent is that it's your mission too. The supporting church is an integral part of the missions sending process. By taking the images of the sponsors into the field and seeing where their image has gone the can make a more human connection.
I'm still working with the idea but I would like to eventually integrate a payment gateway with image uploading on the team pages. Likewise as you can see on the "community" link I've messed around with an open source social networking community, I don't know if this would be useful. At this point I'm still in the idea stage.
So far we are planning on taking the idea to Nicaragua, Guatemala, and Uganda over the next nine months.
There are many areas of the world where keeping your identity is paramount to survival. I have some friends who work in these areas. I would like to introduce some missions eduction products to sell and be sold (resale/affiliate) to raise funds in these areas.
Like I mentioned, feedback would be appreciated.