| About ServiceProducer.com Hello, my name is Chris Monson, I'm the creator of Service Producer. I came up with the idea of creating a service planning system in 2006 because of a need I saw while working as the Production Director at my local church. |
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As we were expanding the creativity and professionalism of
our services we were running into a lot of inefficiencies in the
way that we were doing things. We were spending
unneccessary amounts of time on certain aspects of the planning process, as well as having a fairly poor
communication system. Changes would be made to the service
and half the team wouldn't know about them until the last
minute or wouldn't find out at all until it was too late.
Because of this I designed the first version of Service
Producer.
The Early Days
The initial version of Service Producer went into use in mid 2007. It was a server-client system that used special software on all the team members computers that connected to a server located on site that held all service information. This system worked out well for us and accomplished the goals I had originally set out to achieve. It streamlined our service design process as well as improving communication amongst our teams. There were however several things I was unhappy with while using this system. Firstly it was a little clunky to use. It wasn't extremely user friendly, and over time I realized it was missing some functionality we really needed, and also that some of the features that I had added in were really not getting used how I had originally envisioned.
Service Producer 2.0
In early 2009 I sat down and evaluated where Service Producer was at, what I liked about it, what I didn't, and how to go about fixing it. In the end I wound up completely scrapping the old system and moved to a web based system that allowed vastly more flexibility in design and expansion. I kept the interface simple, and tried to make everything as intuitive as possible. After several months I felt I was in a good place with the new system and we moved all of our service planning to this system. I see v2.0 as a huge leap forward in the life of Service Producer, and have been very happy with the current system.
Where We Are Now
At the beginning of 2010 I started the process of making Service Producer available for public use. This was a huge undertaking with nearly as much time devoted to it as was needed for the rebuild for v2.0. This makeover has seen a great many new features added to the system. I'm particularly excited about the Share-Alike system that allows churches to share creative elements with other churches. I think Service Producer as a whole is a great way to promote excellence in church services, and cooperation between churches. I'm very excited to see what the future holds for Service Producer.