"Sticky Church" Webinar Is your church "sticky"? According to Larry Osborne, a "sticky church" is one that no one wants to leave. Join Leadership Network for a special online event featuring Larry, author of the book Sticky Church.  In this webinar on Sept. 3, 2008, Larry will talk about how to be more effective in building authentic relationships with your visitors and attendees. He'll explain how making these connections is critical in helping people 'stick' to your church. He'll also share more from his upcoming book, and you'll have a chance to ask him questions!  When: Wednesday, September 3rd 12:00 pm Pacific, 1:00 pm Mountain, 2:00 pm Central, 3:00 pm Eastern Where: On your desktop--reserve your Webinar seat now Missio Intensive: The Tangible Kingdom 2008 This two-day, practitioner-led dialogue will be geared to unpacking and then repacking what incarnational church actually does and can look like in our U.S. context. Rick McKinley, Hugh Halter and Matt Smay will frame the practical limitations and opportunities of pure incarnational movements in the West. This event is not geared towards theory, but is led by practitioners, for practitioners. Register by September 1, 2008 to receive a 20% discount. Enter discount code SEPT at the time of purchase. Online "Informavores" Read Differently Online readers are primarily foragers and skimmers--human "informavores," according to an article by Slate. The writer explores a theory by Jakob Nielsen, a usability expert who writes an influential biweekly column on such topics as eye-tracking research, Web design errors, and banner blindness. (Links, the article notes, give a text more authority, making you more likely to stick around). According to Nielsen, Internet readers hunt for facts. In earlier days, when switching between sites was time-consuming, those readers tended to stay in one place and dig. Now they assess a site quickly, looking for an "information scent," and move on if there doesn't seem to be any food around. People rarely read Web pages word by word; instead, they scan the page, picking out individual words and sentences. In research on how people read websites he found that 79 percent of test users always scanned any new page they came across; only 16 percent read word-by-word. (Update: a newer study found that users read email newsletters even more abruptly than they read websites.) As a result, Web pages have to employ scannable text, using   Highlighted keywords (hypertext links serve as one form of highlighting; typeface variations and color are others)   Meaningful sub-headings (not "clever" ones)   Bulleted lists   One idea per paragraph (users will skip over any additional ideas if they are not caught by the first few words in the paragraph)   The inverted pyramid style, starting with the conclusion   Half the word count (or less) than conventional writing