Transcript of Interview with Matt Warner about FlockNote.com. This interview and others like it can be found at http://www.catholicspotlight.com
Listen Now to the audio version of the show.
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Chris Cash: And today in this Spotlight, we have Matt Warner. He is the creator of a brand new Web service that has a lot of great tools to help out you and your parish in keeping communication lines open with everybody in your different parish groups, as well as the parish as a whole. So, Matt, why don’t you tell us what well – first off, welcome to the show man.
Matt Warner: Thanks Chris. I appreciate it.
Chris Cash: And why don’t you tell us a little bit of a general overview about what is flock note? And of course, you could find flock note at flocknote.com. That’s flocknote.com.
Matt Warner: That’s right, Chris. Flock note is basically what it says in the name, it’s a way to send notes to your flock. It’s an innovative Catholic Website that helps you share notes with your flock, and that’s your group, your team or whatever it is, anything in your Catholic community. And it’s totally free. And especially, at work since it’ll allow the Catholic peer, like I said of a team, a group of ministry organization, your peers, your dioceses or whatever it is to send notes out to all of them and moves from one place.
And then, it reaches their members, however their members have chosen and preferred to receive that information. So, the subscribers to that information can receive it via email, text message, Facebook or just on the Website itself flocknote.com. So, from a leader’s perspective, you don’t have to worry about updating all of their different things that they do to reach members. You know calling some people or e-mailing others or updating the Website here for this or that. They just put it in one place and then, FlockNote distributes it accordingly to all of their subscribers in that list.
Chris Cash: So, now, how does this work differently than other social networking sites that are out there already to help you to keep in touch with each other?
Matt Warner: Sure. There is a big difference and the main difference is that it’s made more *** [02:49] is to get between all of these different social media sites and other tools that we have with this great technology we are developing online. So, the idea is that you know as I mentioned, a lot of leaders are having to update a lot of different things to reach their members you know. Across the group you may have to you know update your Website, you have to send e-mails to some people, you may have to you know send a Facebook note to these people or call these people, you know just to get one message out. So many time you got to change to an event, you need to send out a reminder or you know whatever it is, you got to do all these different things to reach all your different members. The goal is FlockNote on a very basic level is to try to pull those things together, so there is one place where you post information. And the way that you post that information is it’s only called the FlockNote feed, and basically that’s the way to feed information out to your group members. And when you post a note or any kind of information on that feed, it gets blasted out to all of their other different social media, so you know send it to – you know e-mail people, text message people, send the Facebook notification to people or they can log in and feed all in one place on FlockNote.com.
And we’re constantly working on new ways to a new more additional options that people could be able to use to communicate across other media as well.
Chris Cash: Now, where did you originally get the idea for putting this service together?
Matt Warner: Well, the idea came from a growing frustration working within my Parish, of our ability to share information and work with the rest of the Parish. And also, to work with the Parish’s down the road or the entire *** [04:37] and just the greater church in general. We also act like a bunch of little churches instead of the one big family that we are as Catholics.
And with the technology we have these days, there is no reason we shouldn’t be using it to the fullest to help us do those kinds of things better. In this day and age, why cannot I get an e-mail or a text message from my pastor, well that’s a bit important you know, why am I not getting e-mail or text message from my Bishop? All these things we could be doing, we just need to come together and make it happen.
Chris Cash: Now, do you have many people who all have adopted this already or is it still in the very early adoption stages?
Matt Warner: It’s very early. It’s still on the beta phase, so we’re still making some early improvements and getting a lot of really good feedback from the users we do have. We have about a 1000 members or so, so far. We just launched a site, the beta version last fall and just invited a few groups around, our dioceses here and what were in Texas as where my home dioceses. And I’ve got a number of groups you know using it, getting good feedback on how to improve it and you continue to make a lot of improvements. And in that time it’s starting to get some other attention from podcasters and bloggers and a few other things that are on the country.
So to spread out on its own, just recently we’ve released a couple of press releases and others things announcing it, so we started to get some other people coming in and signing up and even some interests from some diocese as well. We’ve talked with the Dallas diocese *** [06:15] is here. Also talked with the Kansas City dioceses and a number of other one’s who’ve contacted that are all interested you know how can we use this? They are definitely starting to recognize that we need to take advantage of this kind of stuff. You know even the Bishops themselves have expressed you know to their communications directors, you know find out a way that I can you know communicate better with my dioceses. And find out a way you know I can send an e-mail out to everybody and the dioceses and how that’ll be easy for every – you know this whole thing to happen you know.
People are very sensitive about their information being gathered and receiving on unsolicited stuff and flockNote helps with that, because you know when you subscribe you subscribe it in different *** [07:02], but the people that you are subscribing to don’t know any of your contact information. You know they don’t ever get your e-mail address or any of this other stuff, so that they just post the note flockNote and then, the Website itself is what distributes it out for you. So, you are gaining from that. So, your information is secure and private and in way it enables these huge mailing list to be you know accumulated for dioceses for bishops, for pastors, for these big organizations to be able to reach and communicate people – to communicate with people. But it allows those people to decide exactly how they want to receive it so they are not getting e-mails they don’t care about or getting annoyed by whatever other things. They get to tell exactly how they receive all the information.
Chris Cash: Great, if you’re a teenager you can send, so that you get notification by text message when there is a youth group event coming up or something of that nature as well, right?
Matt Warner: Oh, absolutely. Yes, a lot of youth groups have. They’ve probably been the most excited about it. I think because of the text message feature, although you know that the straight up e-mailing has been most popular that people are using, its just allows – its sort of like a glorified mailing list manager in that sense you know. A lot of these parishes are looking for ways to build the mailing list, well flockNote is perfect for that and you don’t have to manage it at all. You just create your feed and then people that want to subscribe, subscribe and they can unsubscribe it anytime, so you don’t have to worry about gathering up all these e-mail addresses or taking off the ones where people don’t want to get anymore or else you know that the actual person controls, you know its an often mailing list kind of thing, which you get to control all of that. But in addition, having that test message feature has been pretty popular because a lot of the youth and younger groups you know they communicate that way far more than they actually get online and check their e-mail. They’ve already got their phones and always text messaging, so a lot of youth ministers have been excited about the idea of being able to just post a note and having left a text message out to the entire youth group.
Chris Cash: Okay, we’re going to take a short to hear from our sponsor, but we’ll be right back to speak more with Matt Warner about flockNote and how it is going to revolutionize parish communication, as well as diocese in communication. This is the Catholic Spotlight.
[Break]
And we’re back on the Catholic Spotlight with Matt Warner of FlockNote.com. Now, Matt, a lot of these social networking tools, they are having some adoption problems with the older generation because you know a lot of people feel like why should I do something different or why do I need to do all this new-fangled computer stuff. What kind of feedback are you getting from people in the older generation in terms of usability and the adoption rate with them?
Matt Warner: Sure. That’s an excellent question. That’s definitely one of our biggest obstacles in trying to get a site that will work across the entire spectrum of the demographic of the kind of church you know we’re dealing with, everybody essentially. So, we don’t have the luxury of utilizing – someone was saying that ability is that technology is that perhaps would you know scare people of or be too intimidating or basically make the – you know the whole experience too confusing. Well that’s not to say that you know they can’t figure it out, its just like you said a lot of ‘em aren’t living to because you know they’ve been communicating for so long in their life a certain way, and when they run into something that they don’t understand yet or don’t see the potential for like a lot of these tools, social networking tools, you know they sort of opt to just stick with what they’ve always done you know. And so, that that’s definitely one of the challenges for flockNote and that’s why we made the site so focus, and its not like a lot of these other networking sites that do all these fancy things. Like I said before, its focused on pulling all those things together if people so choose, but at the very basic level it’s a very focused and simple site that is really for you to sign up, it only takes a minute, its totally free and it locks you through on how to do it.
Now, there’s still a little bit of okay how does this work and we’ve got a couple of videos on the site, if you go to flockNote.com that you can watch that explains a little better. And the best way to learn is just to try it out and then you sort of get it. But we’re having a lot of success with people and one of them, the biggest things that they say about the site is, “Wow that was really easy, that was so simple.” And that’s one of the, definitely one of the sensitive issues that we’re looking for feedback on. And I think we’ve done a pretty good job and we are continuing to improve that.
And one of the challenges for leaders you know is trying to get their members to do this stuff. A leader is a lot of times is more than willing to you know try out the new things you know for their groups and try to communicate better, but it’s the challenge getting their members to actually use them. And that’s one of the great things about flockNote is that it allows the members to continue using you know whatever mode of communication they like to use. You know a lot of problems with using these other sites is you’ve got actually to get your members to change their habit of you know logging into a site and checking a Website regularly, if its going to be an effective mode of communication for you and a lot of people are just not going to do that.
One of the good things is that with flockNote you know if somebody only wants to use e-mail and that’s something that even the older generation you know most of them have e-mail addresses now and at least check them somewhat regularly. If they all they want to do is sign up on the site one time, we can get ‘em to do that and they subscribe to the feeds that they need to subscribe to, they don’t ever have to login to flocknote.com again and they are going to get the e-mails sent to their inbox that they care about. And so, as a leader, you know you can still post in that one place and know that its getting to those people that you know were – weren’t likely to go check some Website for your information, but they are getting it in the inbox all the information that they need. So, that’s been one of the real powerful things. And why flockNote I think is starting to take off as it is, because it allows that flexibility and it has that simplicity for a huge demographic of users, no matter what their experience is with using this kind of stuff.
Chris Cash: Now, let’s just say you know here I am Chris parishioner and I see FlockNote and I say wow, this is a great tool and I want to get my parish involved in using it. What kind of resources do you have for someone like me to go and say talk to my pastor or talk to the leaders of groups in my church and try to convince them that hey we should be using this?
Matt Warner: Sure. That’s an excellent question as well. And that’s one of the main reasons we created these videos on the site, because it’s a – you know a lot of these new things and new ways of communicating that they can seem sort of abstract at first if you haven’t communicated them before or explained how they worked before, and especially when you are explaining to somebody that isn’t familiar with them, its hard for them to necessarily you know get it at first. So, that’s why we created a couple of videos that we do. There’s actually a – there’s a quick 30 second – you know flockNote in 30 seconds video on the main page of flocknote.com that you can watch, its sort of gives you a real quick idea of how the site works. Then there’s an additional video, there’s a big link at the bottom of the site that says join the flock, check out our new video. And if I join the flockNote vision video and its about four and a half minutes long, and that explains a bigger vision of what flockNote can do and how it could help the – you know your parish, our dioceses, our church. And the bigger picture if we can get everybody on board with this and that was the point of that video. So, I would encourage anyone that wants to you know get their parish on board with this, if you, you know take that video, forward the link on to their pastors, give them to watch the video, forward it on to everyone of the leaders within your parish, you know get them to watch the video. And I think it’s an easy way to explain, hey, this is how this thing works without you having to figure out how to get across to this person.
In addition to that, we’ve got some other tools on the site. If you look at in the footer of the site to promote your feeds or to promote other things, you know there is – we have images you can use, there is little blurbs that you can steal and put ‘em in your *** [16:42] in and search in your parish or put it you know in a flyer or whatever else you want to use. You can use all that stuff, however you want to do it. If you’ve got a Website, we’ve got a little tool that’ll create a link for you to post on your Website, so people can get straight to your feeds that way. There’s a couple of ways that it’s sort of starting to take off. Most often it starts off within a group, so go to – if you are involved with your youth group or you’re involved with your – maybe you lecture your parish and you want to be able to communicate you know whose lecturing at what time this Sunday or whatever. You go to your group leader or whatever it is that you are doing and you say hey, you know lets try this out and you get your group involved and then, another group starts using it within your parish and then another group starts. And so, people start to get it and they start to piece it all together and see how it works across multiple groups.
And then your parish, I mean your pastor looks at it and goes, wow, all my parishioners are already on here you know, all I have to do is sign up and now I can send a note to the entire parish. And we have specific tools for pastors and bishops as well, there is you know something called an official parish feed, an official diocese feed. And those are essentially feeds that when you sign up for flockNote you are automatically subscribed to. So, and you can still choose how you receive notes from that feed. But you are automatically subscribed to it, so it’s a way for your Parish pastor or for your bishop to automatically – just he signs up, claims the feed and any of his parishioners that are on flockNote who will automatically be signed up for his feed, and he’ll be able to send out information that way. So, that’s more of the bottom up kind of approach to how its spread in parishes. There’s been a couple of parishes where pastors have grasped onto it first and they are the ones trying to implement from the top down. I’m not sure which way its going to work better, but it probably just depends on the parish as well and depends on your pastor and some of the leaders there as well. Some people are more open to something like this and they see the advantage of it right away and other people, you know it takes a little more convincing to show them. Hey, this is a really powerful tool, if we can get everybody to use this.
Chris Cash: Now, how do you go about say as a pastor or a bishop claiming your feed?
Matt Warner: They just have to contact me or contact us. At flockNote here they – on the site you’ll see when you sign up you’ll automatically be a member of your official *** [10:09] official parish feed and official diocese feed as I said. And there’s a link on there that if you want to claim this click here you know, encourage your pastors and bishop to claim their feed. I just click there and there’s a little contact form to fill out and send an e-mail to us and we just verify with them via phone or some other way that where we know that okay this is – this actually is the pastor, well, actually is the bishop and its not somebody pretending to be, so we verify that and then we just transfer them over to admin that feed. So, all those feeds are already created, it’s just a matter of us contacting us and claiming it.
Chris Cash: It sounds like it might be somewhat of an administrative nightmare when you get a whole lot of different parishes and working with parish changes and so forth, but that’s your problem not mine I guess.
Matt Warner: Well, yes, it’s actually very simple. I mean, it’s just a matter of verifying that they are who they are and then we – I hit a little button and put ‘em in and they are done. So, its all automated, it takes care of that stuff.
Chris Cash: Now, here is another question. Say I’ve got a group, it’s a national organization such as the Nights of Columbus that has picked up some, and they are divided into staying regional and national branches of their organization. How easy would it be for someone within that organization to say okay, we got a club feed and then we’ve got everybody in this club feed belongs to this regional feed or this state feed or the national feed?
Matt Warner: Well, you can get it. When you get a number of levels that are pulled together by an organization and it could get potentially a little more difficult to coordinate that, but then once you get signed up for those its really not. It’s a matter of your local Nights of Columbus you know chapter saying, here’s our feed and here is the regional and here is our national feed and whatever, and people just subscribe right there. So, they are not leading through all of that. It’s presented by the leaders that here’s our feed, you subscribe to it and when you login you just see the national, you see you’re regional feed and on down and you see whatever the feed you’re subscribed too as well. So, in your home page view, you are only seeing the one’s that you subscribe too and it can definitely work on different levels like that. And you know they are not tied together in any other way other than that you know it’s the same organization, when you login you are getting information from those different levels of that organization.
Chris Cash: Well, I think that pretty much takes care of most of the things I had talked to you about. Were there any other things that you wanted to point out about flockNotes before you finish up?
Matt Warner: Sure. Yes, I just had – I guess one of the point we hadn’t hit on I don’t think was you know that this isn’t only for just – for parish group or national organizations, its for any catholic resource that we have out there potentially. A catholic Website, a catholic blog, catholic news source, speakers, *anthologist* [22:20], musicians, podcasters, all of these different catholic organizations and catholic individuals can create a feed for whatever they want, whatever they want to send the information out about. So, and we’ll make it easy for anyone with our assess feed as well, through your blog or a podcaster, a new source or anything, you create a flockNote feed and you can sink your flockNote to our assess feed. So, if you have say a blog, every time you post a new blog it will automatically send a note out on your flockNote feed and continue or send out to all of your subscribers on there.
So, its another way for as all these catholic parishioners are starting to sign up and create their groups and you know communicate within their groups and parishes, its another way for them to plug in to another catholic resources. So, finding speakers in your area, or finding your bloggers that they like or podcast they want to listen to or whatever else, it’s just another way to do that. I know on my personal blog, when you subscribe via e-mail through my blog, you actually subscribe through flockNote. And so, anytime I post a new note on my blog, it blasts out an e-mail to everybody that’s interested in receiving one. That hey, I just posted a new post, so its made to be easy for things like that and it really is trying to pull in our catholic resources so *** [23:48]. But then you know one of the things that frustrates me around our dioceses is you know like we’ll bring in a great speaker John *Marinoni* [23:56] or Christopher West or Matthew Kelly or someone comes in to our parish and we spend that. All these resources we give them here, for all this you listen too and then, you know we have a few hundred people there, you know when I know that there’s thousands of people within our diocese that would love to see that guy speak. But they didn’t know about you know.
And so you know, say for example creating a speakers feed for the diocese that’s for work on that, you know so that anytime there’s a new speaker in town, if you are interested in keeping up with whose speaking around at different parishes, you subscribe to that feed. And so, you can do that with any number of different issues or things going on, but just trying to pull make that – make us more aware of what’s going on around us in our catholic community.
Chris Cash: Well, thank you very much Matt. It’s been a pleasure having you on the show. And we will hope that all of you out there listening will go set up your account on flocknote.com and start spreading the word to the pastors out there and the parish organizations. This is an excellent tool for helping to keep track of what’s going on in the parish, in the dioceses, in your group and whatever it is you’re doing out there.
Matt Warner: I appreciate it, Chris. Thank you very much.
Chris Cash: All right, God bless.
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Transcript of Interview with Matt Warner about FlockNote.com. This interview and others like it can be found at http://www.catholicspotlight.com
Listen Now to the audio version of the show.