What went well

About half of the participants had pre-existing websites. Daniel and I made practice sites for them, so that the new WMs could learn how to manage their existing website. Most of them, however, decided to keep their practice website, and let the old one die. That was a good decision, as the old websites were not that well designed, and any good content was easily transferred to the "practice" site.

A couple participants were using Canva or other AI imaging tools to make some nice-looking graphics. They shared their knowledge with others, so that people were learning a good tool that is very current. We had to tell people not to completely rely on AI tools and Wikipedia, however, so that they did not populate the whole site with essentially meaningless content. This was especially challenging for the people who didn't bring their content - they wanted to fill their website, and used AI-generated images, free stock images and Wikipedia-like text to populate the pages. We explained that they need to replace most of that content with information and images that come from them and their community - that's what makes their website unique and worthy of visiting. They all made some progress, but we will need to do follow-up to make sure they are replacing the "junk content" now that they are home.

This reminds me of our daily devotions. We had not initially planned this in, but Ananga requested it, and it gave us the opportunity to remind people what these sites are for, and why we build and maintain them. We shared that making an attractive, easy-to-navigate website is to draw and keep people's interest, so that they will discover God's Word and grow in their relationship to Him. We talked about "discipling" someone in website management, so that the website will continue to be updated and fresh even if the participants move on. We talked about perseverance, we sang songs of praise to God. All of it helped us keep the real goal in mind. I think it would be good to build a short devotion time into workshops.

We also told the participants to keep their eyes and ears open to stories of impact from their websites.  I think we should also build a small module into the training for this. Every stakeholder is encouraged by stories of impact - participants themselves, we Kalaam-folk, and those who pray for and fund our work. 

Before the workshop started, we were a bit concerned that our workshop had too many people and websites. As it turned out, I think we would have been fine, even if we'd retained every participant and every website. I don't know how other workshops go, but it seems to me like dropouts would not be unusual, either before or during the workshop. People get sick, there are family emergencies, etc. "Overbooking" a bit seems to be ok. It worked fine for this workshop.