On people and movies and connecting and such...

Haven't blogged in a while because... there is a lot of noise out there and I haven't felt like adding to it. And twitter has been a much easier way to communicate and connect. This might be helpful to someone though.

I am not a "people" person. It is very difficult for me to get to know people and be around people in general. Once I do get to know them I'm fine but prior to that it makes me very uncomfortable to be around them.... like panic attack uncomfortable. So building community for me has never been easy. It's one of the reason I like the web. I can communicate when and how I want and stand at a distance and watch.

A couple weeks ago at a team leader meeting we were challenged to  continued to build community.. which again I think can be an "oxymoron" for tech folks...but.....

Here are the steps that I am currently taking to build community in the context of our technology teams at Crossroads.

More presence on web: I think I'm going to ramp back up my blogging. If nothing else it will be good for me to work out all the banging in my head. I'm going to begin to encourage the team to connect through Twitter and facebook. Training will begin in the fall. If your on the Amplify team and not on twitter or facebook go sign up now :)

Monthly team newsletter: I'm going to start back up a monthly team newsletter. One Page. Short. Info and training links. ( I did this a couple years ago, but didn't have good infrastructure in place to keep it going, now I do)( This Months is Attached to this post) Download august_monthly.pdf

Couple big get togethers a year: August 31 will be our first one. All Team Party blow outs. 1-2X a year.

Monthly Movie nights: We are lucky/blessed enough to have a guy on our team who has  a full blown movie theater in his basement. He has agreed to open it up to the team once a month to just hang out in a small group atmosphere and watch a movie. Starts in September

Song Writing Nights: Once a month the arts team (which is connected to our tech team) is going to be doing songwriting nights, to create community, to build our original songwriting repertoire and to be used as training for recording and producing.

Field Trips.  Field trips used to be a big thing on our team a couple years ago. There coming back. In the past we have gone to concerts, museums, stores, other churches, etc.

What ideas do you have to build community or what works for you?