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12 Dec 2024

More than a Random Name Generator

By |2024-12-12T09:41:55-08:00December 12th, 2024|Hybrid Ministry, Sidekick, Sidekick Hero Blog, Videos, Youth Ministry Ideas|0 Comments

In the latest episode of the Hybrid Ministry Show, I am diving into my all-time favorite feature of Sidekick: the random name generator, showcasing its powerful versatility for youth groups, retreats, and even teaching moments.

Watch as I share five ways to use this tool—complete with live demos.

I will also offer insights to make your youth ministry programming more interactive and personalized. Don’t miss out on bonus tips, exclusive content, and exciting ideas to elevate your ministry game—check it out now!

And if you’re interested in finding out more about what I’ve got going on on my podcast, you should definitely check out my podcast: Hybrid Ministry.

Here’s all the places you can find me!

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5 Dec 2024

Youth Ministry Christmas Party Idea!

By |2024-12-05T13:04:58-08:00December 5th, 2024|Hybrid Ministry, Sidekick, Sidekick Hero Blog, Videos, Youth Ministry Ideas|3 Comments

🎄 It’s the most wonderful time of the year!

Ready to throw the BEST Youth Ministry Christmas Party ever?

🎉 In this episode, I’m spilling the peppermint-flavored tea on how to make your event unforgettable!

🏆 Whether it’s the Ultimate Christmas Movie Showdown, hilarious games, or social media outreach, this video has it ALL!

And if you’re interested in finding out more about what I’ve got going on on my podcast, you should definitely check out my podcast: Hybrid Ministry.

Here’s all the places you can find me!

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28 Nov 2024

Unlock the Customize-able Wheel for your Programming

By |2024-12-05T13:02:04-08:00November 28th, 2024|Hybrid Ministry, Sidekick, Sidekick Hero Blog, Videos, Youth Ministry Ideas|0 Comments

What if your presentation software could seamlessly integrate a customizable spinning wheel—no clunky browser windows required?

In this episode of The Hybrid Ministry Show, I will demonstrate the new Sidekick feature, showcasing creative ways to engage your audience, from prize giveaways to interactive lessons.

Watch now and transform your programming!

And if you’re interested in finding out more about what I’ve got going on on my podcast, you should definitely check out my podcast: Hybrid Ministry.

Here’s all the places you can find me!

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21 Nov 2024

Truly Interactive Sermons | How I use Sidekick

By |2024-12-05T13:00:37-08:00November 21st, 2024|Hybrid Ministry, Sidekick, Sidekick Hero Blog, Videos, Youth Ministry Ideas|2 Comments

It’s one thing to attempt to be engaging as you deliver sermons.

It’s another thing to ACTUALLY do it.

Some of us are better at it than others, but the good news? Whether you’re fantastic at engaging your audience, or below average, this element as a part of your presentation software, when running through sidekick, can engage even the toughest crowd!

I detail that feature inside sidekick and 5 of my favorite ways to utilize it!

Can’t wait to have you check it out!

And if you’re interested in finding out more about what I’ve got going on on my podcast, you should definitely check out my podcast: Hybrid Ministry.

Here’s all the places you can find me!

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14 Nov 2024

LIVE Sidekick Demo and Review! Youth Ministry Turned Interactive

By |2024-11-07T08:48:48-08:00November 14th, 2024|Hybrid Ministry, Sidekick, Sidekick Hero Blog, Videos, Youth Ministry Ideas|3 Comments

Talking head lectures are boring.

Adding slides to your talk, better, but still <yawn>

How can you have TRUE interaction and engagement?

You have GOT to be using sidekick for that! And in this week’s podcast episode I do a LIVE on screen demo and show you 8 of my all-time favorite sidekick features, some of which are not as well known!

You won’t believe my 7th one!!

And if you’re interested in finding out more about what I’ve got going on on my podcast, you should definitely check out my podcast: Hybrid Ministry.

Here’s all the places you can find me!

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15 Aug 2024

Introducing Hybrid Ministry w/ Nick Clason

By |2024-08-15T09:00:30-07:00August 15th, 2024|Sidekick, Sidekick Hero Blog, Videos, Youth Ministry Ideas|10 Comments

A few months ago, Doug introduced you to one of our favorite Sidekick Heroes: Nick Clason (you can read that post here), and when he said that Nick is a national treasure (no seriously, that’s how Doug described him), he wasn’t joking.

I recently had the privilege of sitting down with Nick to talk about all things Sidekick, how to stop seeing cell phones as the enemy, and what it looks like for youth ministry to become a more engaging experience for students. Check it out below:

And if you’re interested in finding out more about what Nick is doing (and you should be), you should definitely check out his podcast: Hybrid Ministry. Here’s where you can find him:

And, who knows? You just might start seeing a bit more of Nick around the blog. So, definitely keep checking back.

If you’re using Sidekick and you run into any issues, or if you just have a question, please feel free to reach out to our support team at: [email protected]. Or you can check out other helpful articles and walkthroughs at the Sidekick Help Desk by visiting https://help.sidekick.tv.

Finally, if you choose to use the new Sidekick… let us know how you do it and what types of polls you do because we want to highlight you. Our goal is to highlight a youth worker every week with different ways they’ve used Sidekick to help their students engage. If you’re interested in being recognized as a Sidekick Hero, just click the big red button below:

If you’re using Sidekick and you run into any issues, or if you just have a question, please feel free to reach out to our support team at: [email protected]. Or you can check out other helpful articles and walkthroughs at the Sidekick Help Desk by visiting https://help.sidekick.tv.

Finally, if you choose to use the new Sidekick… let us know how you do it and what types of polls you do because we want to highlight you. Our goal is to highlight a youth worker every week with different ways they’ve used Sidekick to help their students engage. If you’re interested in being recognized as a Sidekick Hero, just click the big red button below:

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30 May 2024

All the FREE Games in Sidekick!

By |2024-05-30T08:07:12-07:00May 30th, 2024|Sidekick Hero Blog, Sidekick: What's New|13 Comments

Obviously, we all know that Sidekick is the best thing to happen to youth ministry since that one guy wrote that one book… but did you know that Sidekick keeps getting better every single week? That’s right, each week, we release a new FREE resource that’s available exclusively to Sidekick users. And all you have to do is click the little button in the tool bar that looks like this:

And here’s what’s even better… as of May 30, 2024 (the date I’m writing this post), there are currently TWELVE premium games that are absolutely FREE in Sidekick. All you have to do is go get ’em!

And if you want to get an idea of what’s available, just scroll through the media gallery below:

And don’t forget that we’re adding new FREE content in Sidekick every single week, so be sure to check back often to see what’s new!

If you’re using Sidekick and you run into any issues, or if you just have a question, please feel free to reach out to our support team at: [email protected]. Or you can check out other helpful articles and walkthroughs at the Sidekick Help Desk by visiting https://help.sidekick.tv.

Finally, if you choose to use the new Sidekick… let us know how you do it and what types of polls you do because we want to highlight you. Our goal is to highlight a youth worker every week with different ways they’ve used Sidekick to help their students engage. If you’re interested in being recognized as a Sidekick Hero, just click the big red button below:

If you’re using Sidekick and you run into any issues, or if you just have a question, please feel free to reach out to our support team at: [email protected]. Or you can check out other helpful articles and walkthroughs at the Sidekick Help Desk by visiting https://help.sidekick.tv.

Finally, if you choose to use the new Sidekick… let us know how you do it and what types of polls you do because we want to highlight you. Our goal is to highlight a youth worker every week with different ways they’ve used Sidekick to help their students engage. If you’re interested in being recognized as a Sidekick Hero, just click the big red button below:

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15 Apr 2024

New Feature Alert: LOOPING SLIDES & VIDEO CONTROLS!!

By |2024-04-15T13:15:06-07:00April 15th, 2024|Sidekick, Sidekick Hero Blog|10 Comments

In October 1911, Roald Amundsen set out on the first-ever expedition to the South Pole. It took him and his team almost 2 months to make the journey, and when they got there, you know what they saw?

Snow… They saw lots and lots of snow.

Well, our developers have also been hard at work over the last 2 months, and quite frankly, we think they have a little more to show for it than tiny bits of frozen water. That’s right, today is the day that we proudly announce TWO MAJOR UPDATES to Sidekick!

The first new Sidekick feature is one that youth workers have been asking for since we first unveiled Sidekick back in December (we can’t believe Sidekick only launched a few months ago!). That’s right, we’re talking about…

LOOPING SLIDES!!

Now, Sidekick users can choose any section in their Sidekick presentation to auto-advance and repeat automatically! Here’s a step-by-step walkthrough of LOOPING SLIDES in action!

But that’s not all!

In addition to LOOPING SLIDES, our ever-vigilant team of developers decided to bring you another highly requested feature:

ENHANCED VIDEO CONTROLS!!

Now, Sidekick users can set the starting position for any video (yes, this new feature works for your own videos that you upload and videos that are streamed from YouTube and Vimeo) and once a video has started, you can jump to any specific timecode!

First, let’s look at how to adjust the starting position for any video:

And then, let’s look at how to jump to any point in a video once it’s already playing:

We’re super excited about both of these updates, because they’re a direct response to feedback we’ve gotten from Sidekick users just like you!

And I can’t wait to tell you about what’s coming next… No, seriously, it’s pretty exciting… But you’ll just have to wait… Because I can’t tell you about it… Yeah… Even though I really want to…

We’ll be posting more about other new features in the coming days, but in the meantime, feel free to keep exploring Sidekick! And if you have any ideas for features that you think we should work on next, you should head over to our Feature Suggestion Page by clicking the button below:

Request a New Sidekick Feature!

That’s all for today, but if you’d like to see the other blog posts in the “How Do I…?” series, you can do so here: How Do I…?

If you’re using Sidekick and you run into any issues, or if you just have a question, please feel free to reach out to our support team at: [email protected]. Or you can check out other helpful articles and walkthroughs at the Sidekick Help Desk by visiting https://help.sidekick.tv.

Finally, if you choose to use the new Sidekick… let us know how you do it and what types of polls you do because we want to highlight you. Our goal is to highlight a youth worker every week with different ways they’ve used Sidekick to help their students engage. If you’re interested in being recognized as a Sidekick Hero, just click the big red button below:

If you’re using Sidekick and you run into any issues, or if you just have a question, please feel free to reach out to our support team at: [email protected]. Or you can check out other helpful articles and walkthroughs at the Sidekick Help Desk by visiting https://help.sidekick.tv.

Finally, if you choose to use the new Sidekick… let us know how you do it and what types of polls you do because we want to highlight you. Our goal is to highlight a youth worker every week with different ways they’ve used Sidekick to help their students engage. If you’re interested in being recognized as a Sidekick Hero, just click the big red button below:

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5 Apr 2024

How do I Sign Into the NEW Sidekick?

By |2024-04-18T14:59:22-07:00April 5th, 2024|Sidekick, Sidekick Hero Blog, Sidekick: What's New, Youth Ministry Hacks, Youth Ministry Ideas|6 Comments

DYM Gold Members Rejoice! Sidekick is included in your membership!

1000’s of your youth ministry friends are using it every week. If you haven’t poked around yet and tried out Crowd Voting, the FREE section, the one-click integration to DYM products you already own, the “presenting from your phone or iPad”… there’s so much. And, we’re making it better every day.

Here’s how to log-in:

Let us know what you think and what you’d want for us to include in the ever-growing FREE category next. Even 100’s of your recent DYM purchases are instantly available in Sidekick to insert in just 1-click!.

Let us know if you have any questions,

Doug & Josh
[email protected]

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4 Apr 2024

Coming Soon: Looping Slides!! (and more!)

By |2024-04-04T11:27:15-07:00April 4th, 2024|Sidekick, Sidekick Hero Blog|6 Comments

Without a doubt, this has been our MOST REQUESTED Sidekick feature, and I’m super-excited to say that it’s really close to being ready!

Yes. I’m talking about…

LOOPING SLIDES!!

It may still be another week or so before it’s ready for release, so I can’t show you a full walkthrough just yet, but I can show you some of the progress we’re making. Check it out:

That’s right! In the very near future, you’ll be able to add all of your announcement slides to a single section and then set the timer & walk away! And just like you’d expect, each slide will play for the specified length of time before automatically moving on to the next one. And when it gets to the end of the section, it’ll just automatically loop back to the beginning of the section.

But how about I just show you instead?

(click image to enlarge)

Again, it’s still a week or so away from being ready for prime time, but I just wanted to let you know that we’re listening and we are working tirelessly to make sure that Sidekick is the absolute best it can possibly be!

And the only way that happens is if you tell us what you need. Thankfully, we have a great way for our users to suggest new features and vote on features that have already been suggested! So feel free to head over to our Feature Suggestion Page by clicking the button below:

Request a New Sidekick Feature!

I’m so excited about Looping Slides that I almost forgot to mention another incredible feature that we’re working on…

Oh, wait. That’s right. Doug said that I am definitely not supposed to say anything about the upcoming video control feature that will let users set a starting point for videos as well as jump to specific timecodes while playing. Yeah, I’m definitely not supposed to say anything about that…

Oops… 😅

Until next time!

Blessings,

Josh Boldman

If you’re using Sidekick and you run into any issues, or if you just have a question, please feel free to reach out to our support team at: [email protected]. Or you can check out other helpful articles and walkthroughs at the Sidekick Help Desk by visiting https://help.sidekick.tv.

Finally, if you choose to use the new Sidekick… let us know how you do it and what types of polls you do because we want to highlight you. Our goal is to highlight a youth worker every week with different ways they’ve used Sidekick to help their students engage. If you’re interested in being recognized as a Sidekick Hero, just click the big red button below:

If you’re using Sidekick and you run into any issues, or if you just have a question, please feel free to reach out to our support team at: [email protected]. Or you can check out other helpful articles and walkthroughs at the Sidekick Help Desk by visiting https://help.sidekick.tv.

Finally, if you choose to use the new Sidekick… let us know how you do it and what types of polls you do because we want to highlight you. Our goal is to highlight a youth worker every week with different ways they’ve used Sidekick to help their students engage. If you’re interested in being recognized as a Sidekick Hero, just click the big red button below:

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