Valinda and I have spent the past two years in the Silicon Valley (San Jose, CA) working, exploring, and enjoying a very exciting first chapter of our lives together as a married couple. The time came to decide what chapter two would look like for us. Ultimately we decided that although we love the Bay Area, it was time to be closer to at least one of our families and live in an area with a more sustainable cost of living.

Last week, we packed everything up and moved to Martinsburg, West Virginia, where Valinda grew up. I received an awesome opportunity to continue the work I’ve been doing for Venture Christian Church remotely, and am very excited to continue my working relationship with such an awesome organization. Many times when someone suddenly relocates, people want to know what really happened. Like I said, we loved the life we had in San Jose and the friends we had there. So what really happened is, we had to act quickly to take advantage of this new opportunity and avoid locking into another VERY expensive lease. Sorry no dirt to share.

Anyway, before the waterworks and sad goodbye’s begin, one of the awesome parts of this new chapter for us in West Virginia is that it both frees us up to, and requires us to travel much more so you haven’t seen the last of us quite yet. We love being close to some of our friends/family and look forward to being able to bounce back and forth between the east and west coasts to hopefully get to see more of the people we are close to more frequently.

And now for a brief clarification of what exactly “West Virginia” is. Surprisingly enough, we’re not surrounded by coal miners and inbreeds! West Virginia, the Mountain State, is a beautiful place with tons of really great people. We are located about 1.5 hours from both Washington D.C. and Baltimore, MD, so we look forward to appropriate doses of the urban lifestyle mixed with a more “laid-back” semi-rural setting. While there isn’t a Whole Foods here, organic and free-range foods are in abundance. You just have to make friends with a local farmer (or become one yourself).

If you have any questions or want to know more about mysterious West Virginia, just leave me a comment below and I’ll try to respond ASAP.

Thanks,
Sam

Here’s the Google map if you are wondering where in the world Martinsburg is.

As of tomorrow, Facebook is going to turn your brand page into a timeline whether you like it or not. Once we’re done shedding tears over all the work we’ve put into custom apps and and FBML content, our only choice is to pick ourselves up and make the most out of the new timeline layout.

There’s actually lots of good things about the transition. Early research is showing that the layout increases fan interaction with your page. It’s also very easy to toggle between posts from different groups of people. Most notably, however, is the cover photo. While some people find it to be an annoying feature, it undoubtedly has the power to make people hate your page immediately or want to learn more about you.

Do:

Do use this area to communicate something about your brand (preferably without adding text to the image). Remember that your brand and your logo are very different things though. Say you are a non-profit working to alleviate the effects of poverty. Use this picture to show people who you are helping and how (this isn’t a logo, but it is definitely branding). Assemble some images that show the work you do and the people who you have helped. This is not the place for a giant logo, thats what your profile picture is for (but more on that next). Assume that the page visitor will not see anything other than your cover photo, and then think about what your image says about you.

Don’t:

Please please please don’t make your cover photo a giant arrow pointing to the like button!!! Everyone knows how to like a page. Let your fan-base be about quality rather than quantity. If you are offering consistent quality content, then the right people will connect to your page and the people who don’t matter won’t. It’s better to have 10 fans who are deeply connected to your cause than 100 fans who don’t really care.

As with any communication effort, remember that everything you do says something about you. Don’t just put up any old image on your page. Be strategic and use every space and feature on your Facebook page to help achieve your organization’s goals.

Want to see a Facebook page I recently upgraded to timeline? Visit facebook.com/VentureChurch.

If your answer is “providing money to bring about good” that’s fine, but you have ruled out lots of groups that are saving lives and changing the world.

Since the launch of Invisible Children’s Kony 2012 film, there has been some criticism of the organization, which is probably to be expected of anyone who can share a message millions of times within a 24 hour period. Today, an article from The Daily What calls Invisible Children into question, essentially saying that they mis-manage donated funds and support the wrong people in Africa.

This brings me back to my original question, “what is charity.” If charity is wanting to see your money go directly to the field, then there are some great organizations like the World Food Programme where  about 90% of donated funds go directly to providing food (last time I checked, don’t quote me on that number). However, the WFP has been around since 1963 and there are still about a BILLION hungry people in the world. Please hear me, I am not criticizing the WFP, they are a great organization and save countless lives. I am just saying, maybe it’s time for a new strategy.

Invisible Children was created about 9 years ago by three guys from the San Diego (one of which, I was fortunate to meet around that same time). They now have the influence to trend multiple topics on Twitter, gather huge crowds to demand action form the government in Washington D.C., and (oh yeah) they have successfully brought international attention to child soldiers who were unknown a few years ago. Joseph Kony, the man they set out to stop, is on the run and effectively unable to enslave children and terrorize villages at anywhere near the scale that existed 10 years ago.

How did Invisible Children do this? They traveled and made films. So why do we criticize an organization that has brought about huge, tangible change in the world for spending money on the methods by which they have accomplished this change.?

I acknowledge that there are decisions made by the organization that perhaps could have been better, but I cannot help but having a ton of respect for an organization that created millions of advocates for victims of injustice in the world in such a relatively short period of time. We must acknowledge that in order to bring about big change in the world, we may not be able to watch our money go directly to a starving child. In our media-driven culture, supporting organizations that also put their resources into avenues that will reach our world’s leaders just might be the new recipe for change.

Click for image source page.