One of the fun parts about starting a publishing line within The Youth Cartel has been figuring out how the heck to make a book. Before joining Marko in this start-up I’d never owned InDesign, barely knew how to use Illustrator, and was still a novice at Photoshop. And I had a Kindle… but making a book and then converting into a book I could sell on Amazon Kindle? Pfft… yeah right.

Long story, short. These are skills I’ve been learning on the fly. I’m a big fan in learning new stuff and I’ve really enjoyed becoming a student of the process. And, if you don’t know much about how books are made, you need to know it’s a process. My hope is that we don’t just create stuff that people like… but we also reshape how the process of making a book is done.

An area of our publishing that’s completely fallen to me is to design book covers. And you know what? I’m having fun with it. Here’s a look at the covers I designed in 2014.

THINK Volumes 1-2

Woo

Teaching Teenagers in a Post-Christian World

A Woman in Youth Ministry

One Body

The Jesus Gap

The Audacious Seven

I did this one today!

A Youth Worker’s Field Guide to Parents

God Parties

All of these are available for sale at our online store.

Wheels down in San Diego at 3:00 PM Pacific time. Three minutes later, like a well oiled machine, Kristen pulled up in front of the airport at our designated meet-up spot, she slid to the passenger seat while I opened the back of our minivan, then got in the drivers seat.

Exhale busy season.

Inhale a season of rest, rejuvenation, retooling, evaluation, and planning.

But first? Let’s party a little.

Celebrating a Win

I was way more comfortable going into The Summit this year than in previous years. I’m sure some of that is just repetition. But a lot of it is that we were better prepared than in years past and we’ve got high confidence in our teams. So, for me, that was a win right there. I enjoyed the event more as a participant than in years past.

Another big win for me was the event felt like it gelled. We didn’t just fill the line-up with well known people who we were 100% sure would deliver. Instead, we built the line-up around a narrative of exploration… places of struggle & triumph, into the depths to discover new things about ourselves, and ample space for dreaming about future possibilities. In some ways that’s more risk than other events are willing to take. But I guess I don’t know why I’d attend an event without risk? 

Three years at The Summit has taught us that producing is way more about art than science. If you saw it from our vantage point as organizers you’d see that there were nearly limitless combinations of speakers and topics, all told we probably considered more than 100 individuals for the final 18 spots. That’s what I mean by more art than science. We collaborate (and sometimes conspire) to create a painting with limited colors despite nearly limitless combinations.

Co-Conspirators

Another entire aspect of the fun that is The Summit is the people we get to hang out with. From our partners and sponsors to our host to our little tribe of volunteers who add so much… The Summit is so unique not just because of our work, but because we’ve got a whole pile of co-conspirators helping to make it happen.

My Hats

One of the things I love about the Cartel life, in general, and The Summit specifically is that I get to wear a million hats. Obviously, there’s all the pre-event stuff like marketing, registration, customer service, printing stuff, and working with all the presenters. On site, this actually expands instead of contracting. I lead a pre-summit session, I ran the onsite store, I did troubleshooting on registration questions, I spoke in session 2, I managed the hotel for our presenters, I checked in with our partners, I shot photography during sessions… and a whole bunch of other little things.

It’s a Wrap

It’s hard not to think about Summit 15 already. There’s stuff we want to do better and we’ve already got a list of themes and possible presenters cooking.

But the next few weeks is all about wrapping up 2014 first. We’ll be sending out evaluations to folks who attended, we’ll be doing an internal evaluation, and of course I still have audio and video of all the talks to produce and release.

But, for now, it’s a wrap on Summit 14.

High fives all around.

Our not-so-little-anymore publishing line has added three brand new products.

It’s been fun to watch each of them develop, I’m always amazed to see something go from an idea, to a proposal, to a contract, to a draft, to a manuscript, to a finished project. It’s a crazy and fun process full of late nights, prayer, learning, and triumph. 

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One of the crazy things about starting The Youth Cartel line of products has been, for me, learning how to make a book a book.

Prior to starting our product line I’d never made anything for print. Sure, I’d designed stuff. But it was always for the web.

Designing for print is a different beast altogether. 

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Each week I produce a short, free resource called YouTube You Can Use.

It’s kind of self-explanatory what it is. It’s a short YouTube clip, a devotional thought, and some discussion questions. You can use it however you want… but here is a short list of how I’m hearing it’s used around the country:

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