If you’ve been to Starbucks since June of 2010 then you’ve probably noticed that WiFi is now free access.  This service is no longer limited to exclusive gold card members.  Anyone who wishes to connect online in the stores may do so.

When Starbucks opened up the service for EVERYONE to connect for free, I thought to myself, “something’s up here.”  Now I couldn’t quite put my finger on it, but I knew that there HAD to be a motive to the service being free beyond the mere gesture of generosity to their customers.

Sony has filed a patent that has somehow dodged the tech press.  The technology behind it however is nothing new but simply ADAPTING technology that is already present and using it in a new way.

Many marketing and communications managers consider social networking a hassle.  They believe it’s something that isn’t worth spending personnel, or budgetary resources for.  If you do any amount of research on demographics, regardless of who you’re targeting, social networking can be used in new dynamic ways that give feedback results traditional marketing forms can’t deliver.

Bringing someone on that has a heart for ministry and who understands your vision and needs can often help in focusing goals and determining the proper steps to equip your ministry for success.  A point of reference outside of the leadership team in a church helps to chart out and establish points for fresh thinking and approaches to decisions.

Curtis Templeton found this out with his church when they were facing some technology decisions.  The effectiveness of bringing outside voices in helped everyone understand the needs and also VALIDATED decisions that were being made in their planning process.  Templeton said, “As a leader of the church I was looking at this group of leadership and realizing there were all these DIFFERENT ASPECTS.  I came to the determination that I needed to bring people on board to help facilitate that process.  Thank God it worked!  I was able to share with them [the church leadership team] and show them the information that made the light turn on in their head as to WHY we were NEEDING to do this.  As a result when I made the group presentation these people that ONCE were HAVING ISSUES were now RIGHT ALONG WITH ME.  In addition they were able to REINFORCE what I was saying and would BACK ME UP.  They would interject with sayings like, “Yeah, you know we did a little bit of research ON OUR OWN.  We think this is a good move.””

Here are four basic ways that bringing in outside voices can help you shape your technology decisions.