This is the final article in a short series covering various ways to get yourself organized and synced up across your various Android devices (don’t worry, iOS has most of these apps too!). This article will feature Springpad’s Android ecosystem and some helpful ways to use this platform and it’s creative organization techniques to sort out some of the mess in ministry.
If Evernote is organization for the left-brained, Springpad is for the far left. They want to help you get organanized in a customizable, creative way. Think of Springpad as a giant corkboard. On the board, you can secure your notes, todo’s, web articles, photos and events. You can even save movies, books, recipes, and food to your “virtual corkboard.” Last November when we planted Missio Dei Church, we used Springpad to get our Core Group of planters organized and on task. Planting a church is a huge undertaking, and we knew we needed to find a platform that allowed multiple people to communicate about to do lists, notes, and events. Because of that, Springpad has a special place in my organizational life, so let’s take a look to see how you can benefit from Sprinpad’s creative and solcial spin on organization.
Social Organization
When you register for your free Springpad account, you’ll notice that you can log in and connect most of your major social media accounts to find out which of your friends are fellow Springboarders. This immediately makes organization a social experience, something Springpad encourages greatly. You can follow people and “Notebooks” (collections of your various Springs) of interest by searching topics or people. Doing so is key to the Springpad experience.
By now, you know what these organizational platforms can do. You can make notes, to-dos, set reminders, etc. But Springpad wants you to do these things and more. Here are some ways you can use the unique social of aspect of Springpad to boost your ministry, in addition to keeping yourself organized:
- Create a Recommended Resource notebook and invite your church to connect with it to gain access a library of your recommended books, movies, and music.
- Invite your small group to a notebook that you use to share articles and prayer requests.
- Use Springpad to organize a church event or project using the to-do lists and event creators.
During the first few months of church planting, we relied on Springpad to do most of the communication surrounding the plant on a day to day basis. Your team can make comments on every different kind of Spring, and will send out push notifications when a new comment is posted. This is a great feature to have to keep lines of communication open.
Android Makes It Better
When we covered Evernote we talked about using Android’s share functionality to share web pages and photos directly into the service. The same is true of Springpad. Springpad also comes with 4 customizable and resizable widgets to bring your productive suite right onto your home screen. This will give you a quick access to your notebooks and shortcuts to adding pictures and other Springs right into the app. If you want to make yourself feel super trendy, open up Google Now (Google Search app) and use the keywords “Note to self,” followed by your note and you’ll have the option to save it right into Springpad. Take that Apple! (Sorry, I get a little excited from time to time). If you have a tablet, the Springpad app will let you organize springs across the screen like Post-it notes on you office wall, yet another creative way to organize yourself on Springpad.
Stellar Support
As with anything, we ran into a few hiccups during our time with Springpad last November. Delightfully, Springpad brought stellar support to us by Springpad’s “Happiness Specialist,” Devin Bramhall. She helped us get the most out of Springpad, and trust me, we put it through the ranks. Since then, Springpad has not only fixed last year’s bugs, but have added countless features and UI overhauls to all of their platforms, a major step in a great direction.
Springpad has developed themselves into something completely unique. Compared to Google, they don’t have the advantage of having their services baked into the OS or real time editing, but they offer more flexible services. Compared to Evernote, they take a more social approach to organization with no need to upgrade to a premium account. I highly recommend giving them a shot.
Have you tried Springpad? How do you think it compares to the other suites that we’ve covered?
Debbie D says
Would you use SP along with EN?
Also, and I’m being nit-picky…but I would have loved if in this sentence, “When we covered Evernote we talked about…”, the word Evernote was linked to that article. 🙂
Great posts! I follow you on G+