A blank flat screen television hanging in a lobby inspired me. Well, it inspired me to write this blog. The darkened sign symbolized so much wasted potential.

The screen was a gift to a particular institution—a  good gift, I thought at first. And for awhile the screen was filled with content—scrolling announcements, graphic images and other notes. Then, for reasons unknown to me, the screen went dark. It has stayed dark for the past couple weeks.

I just read a new post on Digital Signage Today that lent insight into why this may have happened. The flat screen in question no longer has a champion.

According to editor Bill Yackey’s article “Seven considerations for house of worship digital signage,” appointing a point person to the task of updating the digital signage in a church is key to keeping fresh, timely content interesting and available to viewers: 

"One of the reasons networks fail in these situations is because content isn’t updated on time, thus negating the advantages of having a network in place. The key here is to have an internal champion who makes updating and managing the network his responsibility. Some institutions are fortunate enough to have a director of communications or IT staff, but for most others this position is filled by an administrative assistant or lay volunteer.

"‘If you don’t identify the internal champion right away, the content becomes something that gets dumped on someone,’ said Mike Zmuda, director of business development for NEC Display Solutions. ‘The key is to lay out the content so that the champion can easily make changes to it. A tip is to make things text-updateable so that it’s as easy as updating a Web site.’"

Yackey also suggests churches put a written policy into place to define appropriate content for the digital signage.

More technical questions are addressed in the article as well. If your church is considering the use of digital signage, the points this piece makes are worth a quick look.

Tweetship

And in other tech-related—and communications-related news—check out the poll from Church Solutions concerning Twitter. Apparently some pedantic pastors are concerned that the latest craze in blogging in brief could potentially disrupt otherwise devout believers from worship during church services—or at least from hearing the entire message.

While I do think a preacher sending Tweets during a sermon would be impolite, I think it is unrealistic to think that other people won’t or don’t.  People text during services. In a way, encouraging this is similar to encouraging people to take notes. Yet, in another way, it is also encouraging Attention Deficit Disorder. How many things can we possibly do at one time?

While I’ve never sent a Tweet in church, I have sent one while driving, balancing a cup of coffee and taking a call on my cell halfway through.

But considering the growing number of people not in church, the potential of getting a Tweet from a friend who is may be some new sort of electronic evangelism.