From Doug: I asked Scott Tinman to share why he’s excited about Sidekick. Scott has been part of our Sidekick Testing-Team over the past month or so, and he has had so many different ideas and use cases. Scott is a friend to DYM, he’s a veteran youth pastor who is always willing to help other youth workers. He serves at Living Hope Church in Findlay, OH… and he’s our very first Sidekick HERO (a shirt is coming your way Scott!)

The NEW Sidekick is here!

As a veteran youth worker, I am excited about the potential of what is currently available and what DYM has planned for the new and improved Sidekick. For the past few weeks, I’ve been using Sidekick as part of the “Sidekick Beta Test Group,” and I AM ABSOLUTELY LOVING IT!

A little while ago, Doug asked me to write down some of the reasons I’ve been so impressed with the NEW Sidekick…here are my top 5:

1. It’s Web-Based!

Since this is a web-based program it means it’s available wherever you have an internet connection for both presenting and also for creating your presentation. Gone are the days of needing to be in the youth room to create your program slides or get a jump drive, or create a Dropbox or Google Drive to download and hope it works. You can create this anywhere you have an internet connection and when you open it up on the youth room computer it is ready to go! Just this last weekend I worked on my weekend program while hanging out at one of my favorite coffee shops. When I got to my church computer, it was all there. Love this!

2. Controls!

Remember trying to have someone in the tech booth and hoping they keep up with the slides in the presentation… well now you can have control with your phone, iPad/tablet or even your laptop. When you are in Live Presentation mode you can join from any device from the stage and control things yourself. Or, you can use your laptop as a confidence monitor for what slides are coming throughout your program and use your phone to advance your slides. I also like the feature of adding presenter/speaker notes that you can insert and use for when you are upfront.

3. LIVE Polls!

It’s time to stop fighting the cell phone/technology battle and use phones for some good interaction! Now with the LIVE Polls we can create simple ways of engagement with our students and our programming. Being able to see LIVE results on the screen has been fun for our group and bringing a different excitement to our weekly programming. These are easy to create and can be created for games and ice breakers as well as interaction during your teaching. It’s really versatile.

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4. Streaming YouTube Videos for Worship!

One of the elements you can utilize is streaming YouTube or Vimeo for worship. Right now, our student worship team is in a bit of a restructuring/development phase, and we need to utilize worship lyric videos in our weekly program. In Sidekick, you can get the video URL, put it in a slide, and stream the song straight from YouTube. Gone are the days of asking youth workers what YouTube downloader they are using to download a video to put in your presentation software. This will also be helpful in streaming clips for teaching or other fun videos you want to share in your program. If you do have your own worship team and need to import song lyrics, Sidekick now has the integration of Song Select and CCLI, so you can import the slides automatically instead of the old cut and paste from searching the lyrics on Google.

5. Synchronizing between Coleader & Sidekick!

I have always been an early adopter of what DYM has done for youth workers and the resources they provide. Now, with my Coleader subscription and the NEW Sidekick, I just click a button, and everything that is in the Coleader program automatically shows up in Sidekick (it’s almost TOO EASY!). Instead of creating everything from scratch, you now have a template to work from, which saves tons of time! Whether you customize it or use it exactly like it is, Coleader content in Sidekick is an absolute game-changer!

I truly believe the NEW Sidekick is a game-changer in youth ministry. Sidekick is a resource created for the youth room and with the youth worker in mind! And, this is just the beginning! I’ve seen the list of updates and improvements that will be coming out soon to help us youth workers win! My gut tells me that if you check it out, you’ll LOVE the NEW Sidekick just as much as I do!

Check Out This SIDEKICK HERO In Action:

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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: