The companies that made Business Week's top 25 Best Small Companies to Work for in America got high marks for having low turnover rates, providing employee development training, and being flexible with time off. The 50 best have an average turnover rate of 11% and offer employees an average of 41 hours of training each year. They also give employees an average of 28 paid days off after one year of employment. How is the church world stacking up based on those numbers? http://www.businessweek.com/

This year at Catalyst we are introducing some new faces. Kevin Carroll is one of those faces for the church world. His session will be one that changes the way you think about what you do. He is the author of the Rules of the Red Rubber Ball and currently heads up the Katalyst Consultancy. We highly recommend tuning into his blog and checking out some of the things he is currently involved in. Be sure to check out his field reports.

Ok, we realize our website is different on many levels, but we love it. This year we wanted to provide an experiential website and just make people think. Catalyst loves to try new and different ideas and introduce new technological concepts to our audience. As with any website there are always mixed reviews. We would love for you to check out the site - play sudoku, look through our photo albums, check out speaker fun facts, immerse yourself in all of the fun quirks we built in. Let us know what you think about the site-

Craig Groeschel, author of soon to be released Confessions of a Pastor and speaker at Catalyst Labs on October 4th, was featured on the Today show last week. Groeschel is Lead Pastor of the third fastest growing church in America, LifeChurch.tv. Groeschel's latest sermon series is entitled "My Secrets." The church set up a website, http://www.mysecret.tv/, and the site has been getting over 1000 hits per minute since a New York Times article appeared on September 1st. The site allows visitors to post anonymously about the secrets they keep the most hidden, with links to helpful resources as well as a link titled, "pray for me." How do you feel about this idea?

There is quite a buzz about this new read by author Chris Anderson. Some would say it is the most important business book since The Tipping Point. Anderson discusses how the future of commerce and culture isn't in hits (the high-volume head of a traditional demand curve), but in what used to be regarded as misses--the endlessly long tail of options. He uses Amazon and Itunes to make his case. The discussion gets interesting when applying his principles to certain niche markets such as churches or event based businesses. Is it really thought provoking ? Check out this article in Fast Company for more information on the book. If you have read it, let us know if you think the church can learn from it.