Ted Talks

by vernsanders on February 8, 2010

If you are not aware of TED, it is worth your while to spend a bit of time (be prepared for it to turn into a lot of time!). Here’s one of the most recent things I’ve found on the TED site, and while the talk is a bit frenetic at times, stay to the end to get the musical payoff.

One particular thing is referenced in the talk, namely that music is the last thing to which alzheimers patients respond, enabling the patient to remember things. It is also true that hearing is one of, if not the last sense to fade during the dying process, and very ill patients will respond to speech, and particularly music, right to the end. That was certainly the case for my mother in the last day of her life.

And the third interesting thing about this video is that it highlights some amazing research, including the origin of Guitar Hero.

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Building a Better Creator Website

by vernsanders on January 27, 2010

Perhaps I should have written “blowing it up and starting again.” Why?

Well…today I had a conversation with Gwen Bell about social media…or at least I thought that was what it was going to be about, because that’s her expertise. And we did talk about that…but we spent most of the time talking about the Creator website. (I’ll pause while you go there to re-acquaint yourself with it…)

The upshot? I now am looking at the website with entirely different eyes. If you’ve visited the site frequently, you may notice that the home page has already been tweaked a bit just this afternoon. But…

Gwen referred me to the work of Steve Krug, and what he has to say blows me away. Just for fun…read this sample chapter from his book. Very scary stuff…

So…you’ll pardon me…I have to get to work now…

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Can “Live” Reading Sessions survive?

January 26, 2010

Church musicians know that we are at the beginning of “the winter season.” Between the first of January and mid-March there are any number of conferences and reading sessions taking place across the US. I was at two of them — Winter Music Texas, sponsored by Kempke Music, and Music Atlanta, sponsored by Pine Lake [...]

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My New Ebook: The Choir in Modern Worship

January 19, 2010

Yesterday was a big day for me. In addition to getting up before 4am (ouch!) in order to begin my week of travel, conference speaking, and meetings (I’m sitting in a hotel room near DFW right now, but I’ll be in Atlanta later this evening), my first Ebook - The Choir in Modern Worship - [...]

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Valuing IP “Stars” in a Church Setting

January 12, 2010

If you are just joining us, we started by identifying just exactly what church musicians and worship leaders actually do…create IP. Then we explored how IP can be valued in the marketplace…including a description of the 1000 true fan economic model. Then we looked at how to value IP in a church setting. Yesterday we [...]

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Value Added IP in a Church Setting

January 11, 2010

If you are just joining us, we started by identifying just exactly what church musicians and worship leaders actually do…create IP. Then we explored how IP can be valued in the marketplace…including a description of the 1000 true fan economic model. Then we looked at how to value IP in a church setting.
The unfortunate conclusion [...]

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Valuing IP in a Church Setting

January 8, 2010

If you are just joining us, we started by identifying just exactly what church musicians and worship leaders actually do…create IP. Yesterday we explored how IP can be valued in the marketplace…including a description of the 1000 true fan economic model. Today: how do we value IP in a church setting?
We could use the 1000 [...]

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New Wine and 1000 Fans

January 7, 2010

Yesterday I posited that as a church musician or worship leader, our contribution to economics was Intellectual Property (IP). That’s what we do. But what can we do about it? Today’s post is also an extension of my article Music/Ministry/Equal Pay: Pick Two?
Back to economics for a bit… When I was growing up, most Americans [...]

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What do you do?

January 6, 2010

Bear with me…this is going to be a multi-part post…and today is the setup that you’ll need to capitalize on what comes next…
What do you do?
No…really…
Leaving aside the full-time versus part-time (aka “bi-vocational”) part of serving a church in music or worship ministry…and also one of my favorite rant topics — whether or not you [...]

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Mid-Course Correction…

December 31, 2009

Two things today…
First a personal note. As part of my end of year re-evaluation of how to make this blog more interesting/valuable I have been doing more thinking than writing lately…and that’s about to change. In the next week or so I have some consultations with folks who have agreed to give me some honest [...]

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