We’ve been so busy over here that we forgot to announce that the City is in Beta!

What does Beta really mean?

Well, it means that the general functionality of The City is getting firmed up, and even though we’ve got a couple hundred things in the queue to work on right now, we’ve got enough functionality that we think The City is “useful” for alot of things. It also means that it’s pretty close to hitting our adoption target…as of today there are over 4,000 Mars Hillians on The City. Considering that it’s only open to folks over a certain age that are a part of one of our Campuses, that means we’ve cleared 80% adoption; that’s pretty exciting.

What’s in store for the future?

At this point, we’ve tackled alot of the main things that Churches and other organizations need to be able to do (campaign management, community growth and management, email functionality galore, massive community networking, file sharing, event planning/scheduling/assignment, content sharing, spiritual disciplines and discipleship plans, membership process, assimilation for community and service groups, families, distributed administration and oversight, secure and private email replacement, classifieds/marketplace/business listing/need sharing, email client integration with the City, in context video help…and so on and so on). In addition to all of this we’re going to build out a donor management piece and a bunch of other things to assist with organization-wide management…we’re really just getting going and are very excited about some of the ideas for the future.

Favorite Beta Feature?

I really like the new Families structure. Rather than having a profile page that links off to my wife’s, my wife’s picture is right next to mine (likewise on her page). I love this because it shows that we’re one and a good theology of marriage is built right into the page. In the same way, I can now see everyone in the context of their family (kids too!) which reinforces that The City is about community, not individuals acting individually. I love it.

Coming Soon

We’ve received alot of questions about what the City is all about, so we’re working on an informational website to explain more of the DNA. Nothing to announce yet, other than ‘coming soon’

The City is a Community Network, not a Social Network.

To address a common misunderstanding, I’ll employ a little self-Socratic method…

Why draw a distinction from Social Networking?

I mean after all, everyone understands what a social network is, and if we’re to be engaging culture shouldn’t we be engaging on the same soil?

I don’t think so. The redemption of different aspects of culture means handling them differently in some cases, and I think we must transform the traditional social networking experience if it is going to lead to the life transformation experience of a personal encounter with Christ.

No one is going to see the light of Christ through how big my Mob on Facebook is, or whether I ‘poke’ them enough, or through what ‘cities i have visited’, or any of the other diversions which a typical social network provides. There is a difference between diversion and depth and the medium reinforces the message.

Aren’t you being a bit tough on games/leisure as a part of the online experience?

Let me ask you this question…is our culture suffering from a lack of leisure? Is more leisure going to transform our communities?

What makes the City more Community than Social?

A social network is centered around the individual…my friends, my media, my blog, my connections, my thoughts, my experiences, my pictures, etc…whereas a Community Network is centered around the Community, groupings of people, real relationships forge the bonds, not imaginary ties that have aspirations to reality. My becomes our and I think that’s a significant change…significant enough to warrant a different name in my mind.

This isn’t just a clever branding technique to differentiate The City from other offerings…everything about The City is geared to build up a community of people and not the community of one.

What about…(insert objection here)

Yeah, I know that having a Facebook strategy is a good thing to have for us ministry folks…in fact, I think we’ve got a pretty good presence on Facebook and I think it is excellent for getting the word out. But that’s also a different objective than building a transformative community. Both necessary, but very different from one another.

Coming posts…I just realized that we’ve disclosed precious little about what the City actually looks like and what it does. I plan to change that!

Though the Alpha sticker is still on The City, it is really close to coming off. We’ve passed some major milestones, launched some really exciting new features, and successfully enabled the church-wide Call to Mission efforts. Praise Jesus, it has been a really exciting time seeing The City grow up so quickly and see it become part of the DNA of what Jesus is doing here at Mars Hill.

More than 3000 people have joined the City in the last month, mostly through the Kiosks setup at each campus. As we value real physical community, we wanted to make sure that everyone on The City has actually been through the doors of the campuses…hence no online signup.

We also wanted to do away with the typical “online discussion forum” as that is just another way to avoid real community and replace it with a virtual surrogate; by doing so, we’re seeing the level of communication skyrocket compared to the levels on our old member-only large-forum site. Having right-sized groups that mirror the real-world counterpart, has driven the stickiness of The City (how frequently visitors come back) to low days of 50% and high days of 75%. That’s three quarters of the people staying in touch with their communities on a daily basis…it’s incredible!

We are very excited about this, as it’s real relationships deepening through reinforcing actual community. It’s technology serving the mission, not being a mission to itself, and that’s something I’m very passionate about.

As far as the road ahead, we’re full of ideas. We still have several hundred things we’re working on, some of which are minor, but some are gargantuan possibilities for this framework. So stay tuned!

It’s difficult to adequately capture the enthusiasm that we have on the Technology ministry for how we’re seeing The City reinforce the many communities of Mars Hill…it’s way beyond the expectations of any of us.

Earlier this week I got letters, actual hand written letters (for a mostly email guy, this was a great blessing to receive) from a few Community Groups that were enjoying how The City is helping them stay connected, plan events, etc. There were even a few anecdotes on some of the neat things they’re using it for…I love it! We’ve made some t-shirts to give away to those with the best stories about how they are using The City (contest to be announced shortly, Codex readers get a little jump start).

We are four weeks into our Alpha and are four weeks away from a really big milestone. I’ll try to come up for air and write here a little bit more frequently, but I hope our generous readers will excuse our absences for a little bit longer while we march forward launching The City.

If you are a Member, The Mars Hill Technology Team could use your help.

As we traverse these next six weeks, we’re going to be massively growing The City from the 300+ folks on it now to 2000+. This will create several volunteer opportunities, even for those that aren’t Technically inclined.

Community Liason
This team of three volunteers could use a little more help in organizing all the feedback we get from people on The City, boiling it down to the key issues, prioritizing them, and then passing them off to the development team to incorporate the great ideas we are getting. You’d be a great candidate for this opportunity if you care deeply about community, enjoy interacting with people and their ideas, and can use some simple websites for organizing this info. This opportunity fits into any available timeslots, no scheduling required. Contact me at zack[at]marshillchurch.org and Adam will connect you with this team.

The City Kiosk
We are anticipating that as we get closer to launching The City in the campuses, that we’ll need people at each campus that can answer questions, help people get signed up, and assist those that might have a really hard time interacting with a website (we’re thinking of some offline solutions like a printed out sheet that the Kiosk could provide). You’d be a great candidate for this if you’ve got some experience in any kind of call center, help desk, deskside, customer service, or are in general a people-person that’s comfortable with social networking websites. As The City is all about real physical community, you get to be the face of welcome to many new people. This would be a Sunday Service opportunity. Again, contact me at zack[at]marshillchurch.org or walk up to the Serve desk at your campus to get connected to this opportunity.

As I’ve hinted at, this work is adapting daily to the needs of Mars Hill and plans might change in subtle or not-so-subtle ways. Whatever happens, we know that we need your prayer and that we need brothers and sisters that can stand shoulder to shoulder with us as we labor to bring about a community network for Mars Hill. The first weeks of Alpha have been very encouraging and evidence of God’s Grace is everywhere. We all feel very thankful to be working on this and to see how Jesus is using it to strengthen His people.

Being a big fan of the Greek language, I’ve always got a kick out of the fact that alot of software teams like to use Greek letters to designate how ready their product is for prime time. For those not familiar with it, let me give you a quick run down on what each of the stages of product development looks like..in a somewhat unofficial manner:

In Development (pre-Alpha) - This is the first stage of a project’s life cycle and can range anywhere from, “I had an idea for this thing and I’ll work on it some day” to “we’ve started to hack out some code and test the waters with this concept.” You’ll often hear of something being, “in development” which may or may not mean it will ever see the light of day. For instance, The City has been “in development” up until now. Not all of the features have been written; it’s really wet cement.

Alpha - A wonderful Greek letter (the beginning of the alphabet naturally), that indicates the first “real” release of a project (generally to testers, which in web app parlance means your friends). In this stage, new features and bugs are found as often as the system crashes, (ie. daily). It’s a stage where the etch-a-sketch can be shaken up and the screen reset anytime as the project is definitely in flux. Generally an “Alpha” is released in a very controlled fashion, as system stability, performance, and other factors can jeopardize public opinion if it’s too open.

Beta - The second letter in the alphabet and the next step for a project, it generally designates a more stable environment and a much more open invitation policy. This is when the press releases go out and the buzz starts to build, as more and more people are experiencing the project and can comment positively or negatively about what they see. Being “in Beta” is actually quite nice from a software perspective because you aren’t actually done, so it’s ok to be rough around the edges. Some companies like to stick the “Beta” label on their products indefinitely, kind of like a warm security blanket for the project manager.

General Release - The golden copy is ready to ship and the project is done. This doesn’t happen with web applications in the same way as, say, Office 2008, but there’s still a point where pretty much everything is good to go and the Beta sticker can be taken off.

Last night, The City went Alpha.

After a few weeks of silence, it’s time for an update on all the activity going on behind the scenes in The City Labs. In short, we have been very busy, which only makes sense as we are launching to the first Community Groups on February 18th! We still have quite a few things to do before we’ll be ready, but the Lord has blessed us with alacrity and features are getting implemented pretty handily.

What are some things we’ve recently worked on? Well, at the top of my list, even though it was trivial to build thanks to the hard working crew over at Crossway, is a little feature that allows anyone in The City to reference Scripture in a very easy fashion. Here’s my announcement from The City:

We also implemented some customization tools, so those of you that are coming from a Facebook background will feel right at home as you can drag and drop things on the screen and hide certain portions, if you want. All of this The City remembers for you, so the next time you come back, you see just the things you want to see.

In the events portion of the site, it now supports an easy to use date entry (no crazy click on the calendar and spin the wheel sort of thing), just type in human-speak and the system turns it into computer-speak. You can also see the potluck system in the screenshot below (allows you to identify items for an event, and attendees to sign up to bring them).

We have also extended the neighborhood concept so a new person in The City can see the groups and people around their home or work address and reach out to join those communities. Pretty simple addition with all the nifty mapping capabilities out there but one that reinforces the locality of each person.

I have alot of help pages to write before the 18th, so I’m going to keep this somewhat brief. If you’re in the Greenlake area, I look forward to seeing you in the first wave!

One of the things that I hear pretty frequently from people who first walk through the doors of Mars Hill is that they’re not really sure how they’re supposed to get connected. They might have a desire to serve on a particular team or join a community group, but they’re not sure who to talk to. And with how quickly ministries grow and change, it’s tough to keep track of that information in any sort of centrally managed repository (we’re long past the days where a spreadsheet, even online, could be accurate).

Of course, the ideal scenario would be to give the various info desks and community group desks all the information they need to be able to connect those dots for the newcomer standing in front of them at the desk. So why not build an environment where that can take place?

As I mentioned in the design principle discussion, Administration at the Edge and Content Finds its Target are key principles for The City. In this scenario then, The City would be home to all the Service Groups at Mars Hill; it would be a place for ministry team leads to surface their needs (”we need two more greeter leads”, “we need one more for the beverage ministry”, that’s the Administration at the Edge piece) and for the helpful people that serve on Sundays to connect the interested volunteer to the right ministry (Content Finds its Target, ie. no dropped communications).

The experience for the Info Desk volunteer would change to have a prioritized list of serving needs that they could use in their dialog with the potential volunteer to help match them to the right area of service. Likewise, the experience for the potential volunteer changes to a personal interaction aimed at connecting them into their area of gifting, and then allowing The City to carry the administrative overhead of making sure that they get a timely response from the service lead. No email lists, out of date spreadsheets, or massive central effort to keep up to date with all the happenings…rather, every info desk would be a portal to the needs of every campus.

This same pairing system would be used to help people find a community group to participate in. The community group desk would have The City at their disposal to look for a group that matches the physical locale of the interested attender and, with a click of the proverbial button, forge a digital bond between the community group leader and the potential attender (emailing confirmation as appropriate). With the approval of the group leader, directions could be sent, along with their own “welcome to our group” message, without having to surface phone numbers or addresses in any way.

What’s the goal? At the end of the day we want to enable everyone to know what is the next step in their walk with Jesus. If it’s getting connected as a Member, then it should be trivial to find out how the Membership process works and to kick it off without having to spend time researching. If it’s getting involved in a Community Group, then they should be likewise drawn into the community through the “neighborhood” from my last posting, as well as a highly equipped community group desk system that plugs them into community without barriers getting in the way.

So in this way, The City is designed to be developmental.

Over the last couple of days, Anthony and I have been kicking around the idea of ‘neighborhoods’. Social networks are replete with friendship based networks, and while I love the wonderful friends that I’ve been blessed with, they mostly know Jesus…so who’s my mission field? Stated another way, how can I meet new people that I can share the love of Christ with and invite into community?

This is where ‘neighborhoods’ come in.

Simply, your neighborhood is everyone that lives near you. Pretty basic eh? So why is this a cool concept? Let’s look at a concrete yet fictional example.

John is a community group leader in Ballard; he hosts his group just a little down the road from the public library off Market. He’s got a relatively new group with just five folks in regular attendance. He invites people to his group regularly, but they live all over the place! Ballard draws people from all over Seattle (and beyond), and finding the right people has been tough.

Jim is new to Mars Hill. He attended his first service, stopped by The City kiosk afterwards, and signed up to be “connected”, whatever that means. The volunteer that helped him was nice enough, but Jim doesn’t know what he’s supposed to do next. He lives near the old firehouse on Market, in fact, he works as a Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu coach at the studio there. If only John knew Jim was in his backyard…

This is where the ‘neighborhood’ thing I checked into the code this morning comes into play. John would see in The City that a new guy showed up in his neighborhood (without having to dig for it), maybe The City would even say, “hey, you’re the closest community group!” and John could reach out to Jim with a couple of clicks.

A similar scenario could be played out with a business network downtown…ever wonder who works in your building that goes to Mars Hill? Could be cool to have a lunch group once a week, talk about your life in Christ as you work at the Columbia Tower.

That’s the idea.

I’ve written just briefly about The City, but as we get closer to launching the pilot version, I’m going to write much more. So let’s kick this off with a high level review of what The City is all about.

What is it?

The City is an online meeting place for Mars Hill that ties together existing community groups, service groups, and interest/strategically-based affiliations into a social network. This social fabric undergirds many forms of ministry and greatly enables the Ground War. It also enables linking the Ground War of many large communities (ie. networks of churches).

What are key themes in The City?

• Attractional - The City invites those not yet connected to form deeper relationships, get more involved, and become on mission with Mars Hill
• Developmental - The City is designed to show you the next step according to serving in your area of gifting
• Content Finds its Target - The City shows you information that you need/want to see (which you can fine tune). It does not deluge you with so much unimportant information that managing your involvement at Mars Hill through The City becomes a part time job. It also doesn’t show you information you shouldn’t be able to see.
• Administration at the Edge - The City is not centrally managed; every group leader is given the tools and ongoing training they need to effectively lead those they’ve been entrusted. For those business book readers, it’s more like a Starfish than a Spider.
• Real, not Virtual, Community - The City is all about real relationships, real ministry, real life and community change.

How is The City built?

The City is a Ruby on Rails 2.0.1 custom application developed and designed internally at Mars Hill. If you’re a developer or designer and a member of Mars Hill, come hang out with us and get involved.

Why not use another white label social network? (like Ning, etc.)

Stated simply, Mars Hill changes frequently and we need to have the agility to keep up with a rapidly changing organization. I also didn’t want to be tied into a vendor’s release schedule for new features…if we want to make something happen, we can do it.

When will it be available for Mars Hill?

Pastor Brad and I are working through the deployment schedule, but the bottom line is that it will be with Community Groups first, so get plugged into your group, go to the Syncs, and you’ll hear more in the next two months. A lot more.

Over the next several installments, I’ll describe each of the design principles in more detail, giving examples of what those principles mean in the life of The City. My last post, “Location, Location, Location” gave a preview of what favoring Real Community over Virtual Community, but I’ll outline this more fully.

I’m personally very excited about what will be happening through this avenue in the coming year, and I’d ask for your prayers for the team and the faithful volunteers that make all this happen.