The BIG Idea

Being a leader in today's world has its share of hardships. One of them is getting things done. There are some leaders that have great ideas and large scale imagination, but it takes talent to take those big ideas and set them in motion so they become reality. 

I have worked with leaders who can envision unique actives, programs, or resources that seem really great but when it comes time to get from imagination to reality, many leaders lack patients in creating a path for success. 

In my minuet experience I have a little formula that I use when planning and developing ideas. I hope this can help you too.

What, Who, When, Where, Why and Whom, these (for me) should be first on your agenda when starting the "idea".

What - What will this program do? what makes this program different from the rest? 

Who - Who is benefiting? who should relate? and who needs the program? in short define your audience.

When - when planning an event, program or worship service, the "When" is important to the "Who" and should  be considered if you plan to reach out to the "Who".

Where - next to the "When" the "Where" has complications too. Your "Where" needs to be  relevant and a common ground for the audience. ex. Bringing non-church going folks to your local church might not be the best location for ministry, since they wouldn't be comfortable as to environments that they are used to.

Why - the "Why" will answer your purpose. Why do we have this program? Is it relevant to my audience? 

Whom – Hopefully Jesus Christ is the Point, Reason, and Center of the program or idea.

These basic questions give you a foundation that makes a complete, stable and centered idea from which you can develop and build up on. Once having answered fully the 5 Ws you can now start in making your idea more concrete by the following:

Cause and Effect

Many programs and events are created because of schedule (weekly service, yearly revival, ..etc), or of position and statues (preaching, sermons, teaching, ..etc). Not much though goes into what I call "cause and effect". Cause and Effect differentiates a habitual program with a deviative program. The Cause is based on the What and Why, issues at hand and the reality of life which defines the point of the program, . Effect is the out come of your program, will it change people for the moment or will it drive the motivation of change in total action.

Purpose

Defining your purpose will help in the overall planning and initiating of your program.

Content

I have attended some religious programs that are filled activities and events but no real content. At times speakers or worship planners just add activities just to fill up time and its Cause and Effect isn't taking into consideration.

Focus

A program that isn't focused can get confusing and your participants may not get the full message and Effect that you wanted to portray with your program.

Relevance

Topics should not only be focused but precise to the culture, issues, realty, and generation or the listener. The mediums of both presenter and audience should be compatible so that a connection can be made and the message conveyed clearly.  

Quality

Quality is important not because of perfection, but because of impression. The totally conservative may have their perspective of making impressions, but in reality 1rst impression lasts. Jesus gave powerful impressions, He reacted to the sellers in the temple, He turned water into wine, and He raised the dead! If you want to draw attention to Jesus, i really suggest that you do it in the best way you can.

Conclusion

This is only the tip if ice burg, after you completely understand the basis of your idea or program, you can then start on planing the road map that can lead you to completing your idea to a real functioning program. Great programs start with a idea that have a firm foundation. 

 

Dare to React?

There’s one unfamous story about the Bible that will help us understand and give us wisdom on when we need to Act.

It’s the story about Jonathan’s courage that took him out of his confort zone and do something really risky... or was it? I found it interesting when Jonathan took his body guard and left the security of his father’s army and went to where the Philistines were staying. You can read more details in 1 Samual 14.

I got to thinking that this guy really had guts! What was he thinking? How crazy was Jonanthan?

You’ve all heard the Netwon’s Law , so you know the Law of Attraction. Have you heard of the “Law of Reaction”? I think Jonathan know the Law of Reaction and how to use it.

What is Law of Reaction? The Law of Reaction has 3 level process.

1rst Law- Know when to react.

The Philiistines where occuping Isreal’s terratory, and Jonathan know this to be wrong. Knowing God was on his side and that it was God’s will that Isreal reconquer thier promised land, Jonathan know it was time to react.

So when do we know when to react? We need to react when Satan occupies our territory. We as Christians should know to Whom we belong to. When a part of our life is occupied by greed, anger, lust or pride we need to stop and react! When we see someone in need of help, we must react to become the good Samaritan. To react is to stand for an act of change, a change that from that point onward things willl be different.

2^nd law - Ask God for guidance

It doesn’t seem like Jonathan actually prayed as according to verses. But he seem prepared, as if he has been preparing himself for this moment or for moments like this one. Jonathan must have had a constant relationship with God that had him set and prepared for anything. For many of us we only get in contact with God when in serious need or trouble. Or when in the middle of crisis do we start communicating with God. Sad but so true.Its not that we live our life literaly in prayer, but we live our life in connection with God. The relationship will make you spiritual strong and will make you ready for anything that may come your way. Giving you the ability to react with confidence.

3^rd Law – When you react, people will follow

Jonathan was able to get the trust of his bodyguard. When we react, we hold an influence which called people of the same belief to join in. There are many reactionaries in the bible but Jesus tops them all. Jesus is the ultimate reactionary! He went against religious cultural flow and beliefs. He Cast out demons, He healed the sick on the Sabbath, He talked and communicated with prostitues. His reaction to sin was His mission statment which was His death and resurection. His reaction proved His cause, which had so much power that His story of reaction has called so many others to follow and stand up for the same cause, to react against sin.

Do you dare to act? How will you react?

Move to Chrome?

Its been one week since I first started using Goggle Chrome and I it has brought simplicity to my life once again! It does what they said it would do-- pages load faster, starts up quicker than FF3. Actually for sometime I have been wishing Google would come out with their own version of a web browser and finally its here. After one week of testing and tweaking i can say Chrome is for me, but as for now I can't fully move over to Chrome just yet because I still relay on FF3 w/ addons and plugin in my tech life. But for simple surfing and downloading Chrome is my favorite.

Tips and tricks:

Click and hold (or right-click) the Back or Forward button to go directly to a page far behind or forward in your browsing history.

When you've got a URL on your clipboard, right-click Chrome's address bar to Paste and go to your destination (and save yourself an extra tap on the Enter key).

Click and drag any text area corner to resize it to your liking; great for blog comments, web email, or forums with text areas that aren't big enough to accommodate your masterpiece.

Ctrl+Mousewheel to zoom in or out of pages in Chrome.

Drag and drop downloads out of Chrome's status bar and onto your desktop to save them there, or into any Explorer window to save them there. (You already know you can drag and drop a Chrome tab out into a new window, or back into an existing Chrome window to dock it there.)

Chrome's Keyboard Shortcuts

If you're not much for the mouse, you're in luck: Google Chrome has lots of built-in keyboard shortcuts, many of which mirror Firefox's—so you don't have to retrain your fingers. Here are a few of our favorites:

• (Chrome only) Ctrl+B toggles the bookmarks bar on and off.
• (Chrome only) Shift+Escape opens Google Chrome's Task Manager.
• Ctrl+L to move your cursor to the address bar.
• Ctrl+K moves your cursor to the address bar to enter a Google search.
• Ctrl+T opens a new tab.
• Ctrl+N opens a new window.
• Ctrl+Shift+T opens the last closed tab.
• (Chrome only) Ctrl+Shift+N opens a new window in "Incognito Mode."
• Ctrl+Tab cycles through open tabs; Ctrl+Shift+Tab reverse cycles through open tabs.
• Ctrl+J opens the Downloads tab.
• Ctrl+W closes the current tab.
• Ctrl+R refreshes the current page.
• Ctrl+H opens the History tab.
• Alt+Home loads your homepage.
• Ctrl+1 through 9 switches to a particular open tab position.
• Ctrl++, Ctrl+-, Ctrl+0 Enlarges, reduces, and restores default text sizes, respectively.

Tweak Your Options

Hit up Chrome's Options dialog (click on the wrench, and choose Options) to customize Chrome's behavior even more.

• Set multiple tab as your home page. While Chrome's default thumbnail page of your most visited sites is pretty cool, you might want to just skip that step and set the browser to open certain tabs every time. Like Firefox, Chrome can set several tabs as your homepage. In the Options' dialog Basics area, under "Open the following pages," enter the URLs.
• Open the last session's tabs automatically. Also like Firefox, Chrome can automatically restore the tabs from your last browser session. In that same Options area as above, just select "Restore the pages that were open last."
• Add the home button to your toolbar. Chrome's toolbar is pretty sparse by design, but once you've set your homepage(s), you might want to get to them in one click. In the Options dialog's Basics tab, you can also check off "Show Home button on the toolbar."
• Set your default Downloads save location. Also in Options—but under the "Minor Tweaks" tab—you can set Chrome's default download location to something other than the "My Documents" folder.

Master Chrome's Startup Switches

Like all good open source software, Chrome comes with a long list of "startup switches"—that is, parameters you can use when you launch the program to customize its behavior. While most of the switches are only useful to developers, a handful let power users do some handy stuff.

Quick primer: To use a startup switch, create a new Chrome shortcut on your desktop (or elsewhere). Right-click it and choose Properties. In the Target field, add the switch in question immediately following the path to chrome.exe. For example, your target using a -disable-java switch might look like:

"C:\Documents and Settings\gina\Local Settings\Application Data\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe" -disable-java

Here are some things you can do with Chrome's startup switches.

Tweak the number of suggestions the address bar offers. Increase or reduce the number of suggestions in the address bar drop-down using the -omnibox-popup-count switch. For example, to increase it to 10 suggestions, use -omnibox-popup-count=10. [via The How-To Geek]

Create and maintain multiple user profiles. Since Chrome learns so much from your usage patterns, you might want to create more than one user personality based on the task at hand. For example, you can set up a "work Chrome" and a "play Chrome" user profile (like you can with Firefox's user profiles). While Chrome doesn't offer a handy utility to create new profiles like Firefox does, all it takes is creating a new user directory, and then using Chrome's --user-data-dir startup switch to point it there. The Digital Inspiration blog runs down how to create and use multiple profiles in Chrome.

Themes

Dress up Google Chrome to your liking by downloading a Chrome theme and saving its default.dll file into the application's Themes directory. Update, 9/9/2008: Link to Chrome theme download source updated.

For Windows XP users, by default that folder is:

C:\Documents and Settings\User\Local Settings\Application Data\Google\Chrome\Application.2.149.29\Themes\

In Windows Vista it's:

C:\Users\UserName\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\Application\0.2.149.29\Themes\

(Note if Google Chrome updates, you may have to change the version number in this path.)

Reveal Chrome's Secret Diagnostic Info

While Chrome doesn't have Firefox's super-handy about:config area, it does have several about: pages that show you all sorts of interesting information about what's going on behind the scenes. Check out Google Chrome's full list of hidden about: pages here.

Get Extras: Bookmarklets, AutoHotkey Scripts, and More Chrome-Related Downloads

While Google Chrome doesn't support extensions (yet), several macros, bookmarklets, and other third-party extras can make working with Chrome easier. Here's a quick list.

• Block ads in Google Chrome with Privoxy. Using free web proxy and ad-blocking software Privoxy, you can block distracting advertisements in Google Chrome.
• Create Custom Chrome keyboard shortcuts with AutoHotKey. Our favorite Windows macro scripting language, AutoHotKey, can make browsing with Chrome via the keyboard even easier. Here's a full Chrome shortcut AHK file that adds nine keyboard shortcuts (including the much-needed "Paste and go" shortcut).
• Preview a web site's RSS feeds, or print a page in one click with bookmarklets. Without toolbars or extensions, plain old bookmarklets come in very hand. Here's a bookmarklet that auto-detects and previews a web site's feed. Here's one that will print the current page. (You can also just hit the Ctrl+P keyboard shortcut).
• Open pages from Firefox in Chrome. If you're browsing in both Firefox and Chrome and like to use Chrome for certain pages, the Open in Google Chrome Firefox extension does just that. With it installed, set certain links to open in Chrome, or select a link and choose "Open in Chrome" manually from the context menu.
• Run Chrome from your thumb drive. When you're in IT lockdown or traveling from computer to computer (but want to keep your Chrome settings), you want the portable, standalone version of Chrome (free download).
• Anonymize your Chrome surfing. Chrome Anonymizer scrambles your unique ID and makes it impossible for anyone to track what you're doing in Chrome.

Shuck off Google's Branding and Go Open Source with Chromium

Switch to the more frequently updated and open source version of the Chrome browser, called Chromium. Google expert Phillip Lennsen explains:

Do you want Google Chrome without Google's branding and with an open source license (BSD license)? Check out Chromium, the open source project created for Google Chrome. You can install the latest snapshots for Windows or download the code and build it in Windows, Mac, Linux.

To install Chromium in Windows, go to the most recent directory from this page (it should be at the top) and download mini_installer.exe. Note that these snapshots could be less stable than the version available at google.com/chrome and you may need to manually update Chromium.

Speaking of updating, you can keep on top of frequent Chromium builds using the Chrome Nightly Builds Updater utility.

Look Forward to What's Coming

Word on the street is that Chrome is coming for Mac and Linux users, as are extensions—plus it'll be in Google's upcoming mobile phone operating system, Android. (Linux users, if you can't want for Chrome and don't want to build Chromium yourself, here's how to run Google Chrome in Ubuntu with WINE.)

MS Word to PDF

Ever had to search the web for a tool that would take your Word documents and convert them to PDF? Well I found myself in such a dilemma. And just my luck I ran across Bullzip ! This free app installs and acts like a printer. Try it you might just find yourself surprised as I was.  

Fwd: EEEPC 1000h

I'm back! my old old trusty laptop of 6 year finally broke. I'm sadden that i didn't back up all my files, but the fact that the Averatec 6100 i had lasted me more than 3 years is a blessing. So now I found myself mobile less and in need of a new toy that would cater to my needs. 

I needed a toy that would give me mobility, easy to carry around, long battery life, handle basic tasks while i'm away from my desktop, and be able to with stand my cruel treatments (on 24/7). Ultra Portables popped in my head.

I had to decide between MSI's WIND U100 and ASUS's EEEPC 1000. Acer was out of the competition because of its lack in hardware such as no blue tooth and smaller screen size in compression to the U100 and EEEPC 1000h. So after a whole day of walking around the mall i finally made up my mind and bought the EEEPC 1000H. The fact that it had Wireless N and 6 cell battery was what tipped the boat towards the EEEPC. 

Since having my new toy for a couple of hours I've started scavenging the net for my favorite programs. And to my surprise actually helped in making my EEEPC more usable.

Desktop Media - Its more of a accessibility tool than  of a productivity tool. Basically when a thumb drive is inserted a icon will appear on your desktop giving direct access. Sorry MAC followers.

Image Resizer - This PowerToy enables you to resize one or many image files with a right-click. It does what it says it will do.

Virtual Desktop Manager - Manage up to four desktops from the Windows taskbar with this PowerToy. EEEPC has a small screen, so getting the most out of your viewing real estate is better right?

Clear Type Tuner - This PowerToy lets you use ClearType technology to make it easier to read text on your screen.

Tweak UI - This PowerToy gives you access to system settings that are not exposed in the Windows XP default user interface, including mouse settings, Explorer settings, taskbar settings, and more.

Pismo File Mount - Windows system extension that enables application controlled virtual and user mode file systems. Using Pismo File Mount, applications can expose all kinds of program and user data through the Windows file system interface. Since EEEPC doesn't have an optical drive, PFM acts as a virtual drive and all you need to do is to right click on a ISO and mount it. Pesto if you look in my My Computer you'll notice you have a new drive.

There are tons of other free applications out there that can add productivity to your digital world. These are just a few of which add simplicity to my life.