Tech Forum

This weekend our ward had a booth at a community fair type event. The booth was focused on missionary efforts and was staffed by our full time and ward missionaries. When I first stopped by, I noticed that some good things were going on surrounding family history and even some pamphlets, but nothing about the Book of Mormon. I stood back for awhile then returned to point out to one of the ward missionaries that the church has developed a missionary Book of Mormon app which makes it incredibly easy to give a copy of the Book of Mormon to a booth visitor. The ward missionary was excited and asked that I share the info with the full time missionaries. I explained how easy it was but had not seen any advertising beyond what can be dug up on lds.org with some effort. I mentioned that I thought the church was working on a pass-along card with the QR code but that I had not heard anything yet. At that point the missionary pulled one out of his pocket and said he already knew all about it.

I was wondering if this app was created just for missionaries to use when they felt it appropriate or if it is indeed for members to take advantage of? I think I posted in another thread that I thought this warranted an article in the ensign. I also think a huge opportunity was missed when it was not referenced in General Conference. From a technical standpoint I feel that, as opposed to only being found by scrolling on the lds.org/mobile apps, the app deserved its own launch page that was linked from the front page on lds.org.

I found out about the app from the lds.org main page.

wrigjef wrote:I mentioned that I thought the church was working on a pass-along card with the QR code but that I had not heard anything yet. At that point the missionary pulled one out of his pocket and said he already knew all about it.

A recent Ensign magazine included 10 pass along cards with QR codes on them. Several were for the Book of Mormon.

The application is not ONLY meant for Missionary use. We intend it to be used by all. As far as the pass along cards I haven't actually seen anything first hand and what they are using for getting the user to the right application for the device type (Google Nexus, Kindle Fire, iOS, etc.) As a mobile development team we have had brainstorming sessions on how best to support some of this, but unfortunately it is not a current priority for us to develop the best solution. Hopefully it will be soon.
However, that doesn't stop other groups within The Church to advertise more heavily to make sure that members are aware of this great tool.