Ward Bulletin Builder

So you have the BIG idea that the Church or community needs to develop. Discuss that idea here. Maybe you just want to make a suggestion on a new forum topic. Let us know.
emckirdy
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#11

Post by emckirdy »

Okay, now we've hit on one of my biggest pet peeves. :)

Premise: We invite non-members to church. We have other people visiting the ward. There are lots of occasions where the first printed material someone sees is the sacrament meeting program. Too often - as in my ward - they look terrible, whether it's print quality, design quality, spelling/grammar, or some combination thereof.

So personally, I love the idea of an automated tool where someone (or a few someones) enter relevant information for a sacrament meeting: music personnel, presiding/conducting, hymns, speakers, and a format designer where you select the type of event (talk, musical number, whatever) and it appears in the right place in the program. Just enough customization to be useful.

Then, have an Announcement tool where anyone in the ward can go to submit an announcement for the bulletin and specify how many Sundays it is to run. After submission, the bulletin person approves/rejects/modifies the submission.

Then, with the church's vast repository of images, find a couple hundred good ones to convert to greyscale, sample to 250 dpi and scale to 5 x 8 to fit on half of an 11 x 8.5" sheet with .25" bleed that will work on any church copier. Tag each image with keywords so when the meeting topic is entered (word/phrase/sentence), a matching image is automatically dropped onto the cover. A brief directory of key ward leadership people could be included on the back cover.

The program could be generated as a PDF and emailed to the bulletin person, and from there a hard copy could be printed as an original from which to make copies off the glass, or emailed to wherever the programs get printed if print-from-file is an option.

That's my dream... not that I've given it any thought, or anything. :rolleyes:
JamesAnderson
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#12

Post by JamesAnderson »

Just created the 'talk' page (wikispeak for the page behind the article page) with a few comments. This could be a very useful tool if it were green-lighted and moved forward. We all have heard stories of those called to put together bulletins and having nothing to go on or use other than a word processor and knowledge of how to use it, and this could really fill a vacuum and also make it much easier for many to create and generate (as needed) hard copies of the bulletin for those without smartphones as well, or create a web version so people can reference it under 'newsletter' afterwards with all links that need to be visible.
KenRichins
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#13

Post by KenRichins »

But, what about those of us that use tri-fold double sided paper to print the program?
emckirdy
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#14

Post by emckirdy »

This is the church of standards and conformity. :-)
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marianomarini
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#15

Post by marianomarini »

So personally, I love the idea of an automated tool where someone (or a few someones) enter relevant informat ..(..
You can do this with OpenOffice.org (or new LibreOffice).
You can format the page according with your needs. Inserting input fields where you want informations gos. Then export in PDF.
This will provide you with an unchangeble layout with some input box to fill with changeable informations!
There must be another forum on this topic, I don't remember where but some moderator, I suppose.
La vita è una lezione interminabile di umiltà (Anonimo).
Life is a endless lesson of humility (Anonimous).
davebailey
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Good news

#16

Post by davebailey »

The solution has been communicated to the responsible team in the Church and is being considered for adoption within the next one to two years.

FYI- I've edited the solution to include the ideas as expressed in the forums.
davebailey
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#17

Post by davebailey »

>> But, what about those of us that use tri-fold double sided paper to print the program?

I've included this in the description.
davebailey
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#18

Post by davebailey »

marianomarini wrote:You can do this with OpenOffice.org (or new LibreOffice).
You can format the page according with your needs. Inserting input fields where you want informations gos. Then export in PDF.
This will provide you with an unchangeble layout with some input box to fill with changeable informations!
There must be another forum on this topic, I don't remember where but some moderator, I suppose.

Yes, but you can't automate and integrate the other Church web and mobile resources with OpenOffice.
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marianomarini
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#19

Post by marianomarini »

davebailey wrote:Yes, but you can't automate and integrate the other Church web and mobile resources with OpenOffice.
Maybe I misunderstood the topic. And I'm little bit confused about "integrate ... Church web and mobile resources".
La vita è una lezione interminabile di umiltà (Anonimo).
Life is a endless lesson of humility (Anonimous).
davebailey
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#20

Post by davebailey »

marianomarini wrote:Maybe I misunderstood the topic. And I'm little bit confused about "integrate ... Church web and mobile resources".

From the first post in the thread-
It would be nice if there was a program/bulletin builder on the website. This could be ward specific according to log on. The church could take a few of the (approved) most popular formats for ward bulletins and make them available in a builder. Much like blogger does with creating blogs. There could be a, ward specific, data entry area for a ward program person to fill in speakers, songs, and other info that could be stored until time to print it out.
If you do it all in OpenOffice, you can't integrate with the existing apps online for ward calendars, newsletters, member directories, etc. If you build it as a web/mobile app, you can do all of these.
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