Tim Bednar is a good friend of Faithable and a leader in the pursuit towards using the Web to glorify God and impact the Church and the World. Here is an email interview with him about his current project called Plaid.

What is your web application/service about?

Plaid is shared communications and ministry tracking software. I optimized it for people doing ministry; it is not designed to manage churches. There are plenty of vendors providing enterprise level church management software. Plaid is designed to be used by ministry teams.

As a communication tool, it is easy to manage contacts, organize lists then email, print or map that list. As a tracking tool, Plaid gives you the ability to create reminders and build weekly agendas to meet the felt needs of your members. We also make it easy to track visitors and help you identify the people influenced most by your service.

It supports how people actually prepare for weekly ministry: ad hoc, just-in-time and most often without support from the church office. Plaid gets things done then it gets out of the way. We do not add administrative overhead to the daunting task of weekly ministry. It is for people who do ministry between events, often from work or home.

Plaid is for teams like youth or children’s ministries. But the free version would be great for individuals teaching a small Confirmation class or leading a MOPS table.

Why did you start this project?

Plaid evolved out of my experience as a pastor for eight years. I never found any software that actually helped me be more productive. In fact, church management software often just got in the way. It just was not designed for me.

Plaid is simple but powerful. It is designed for ministry teams. I created it to help people feel good about their service to the church. We want to make the burden of ministry a bit lighter.

What is the size and makeup of the project team?

We are a small team bootstrapping the project. I handle the web design, product management and marketing. Rob Evans started the development help us build a solid architecture using Ruby on Rails. Now the project is in the hands of Kenny Parnell for the final execution.

What technologies do you use in this project?

We are developing using Ruby on Rails; I have all kinds of wacky ideas for the future, but right now trying to keep it simple.

What are the most requested features from your users?

This project has been in development since May 2006 (the seeds of the project go back a decade). I benefit from my combined experience as a pastor and a web designer. For the beta, I am designing my dream product. I spent lots of time listening the love and hate relationship people have with existing church management software.

I have found that there is an endless list of requested features from our target audience. In my gut though, I know that many of those features actually make the product less usable. My job is to ship a useful tool that is easy to use. We are going after the “consumer” market that need something simple that works. There are plenty of enterprise solutions for this problem.

I see that the most needed features are making managing, sharing and tracking contacts easy.

Where do you see the project heading in the next 6 months? How about the next 2 years?

In the next six months, I am going to demo Plaid as much as possible. My job is to build relationships with ministry networks. Although blogosphere buzz is great for my ego, it will not contribute to the success of the project. I have been talking about Plaid to influencers inside various ministry networks. My job is to blow them away with a Plaid demo and let them spread the word.

In 2 years, Plaid has the potential to be a disruptive force in the church software market. My goal is to build a large company, but also radically change the church software sector.

What is the one thing holding you back from reaching your vision?

The one thing holding me back is having to bootstrap the project. I love my developers and they do great work. I want to pay them instead of negotiating deals based on future revenue or liquidation.

Right now, we are inches away from a product demonstration and beta release. I believe Plaid will blow people away, so once we get some attention, I will be looking for angel investment.

Do you have a business model?

Plaid’s business model is the popular freemium model popularized by 37 Signals and other Web 2.0 startups. Basically, we have several plans including a free version. Our revenue is by up-selling services to ministries that need to track more contacts and more team members.

What is new about our business model is that we are pitching Plaid directly to the ministry rather than going through the church. Our subscriptions are billed monthly because we want to bypass traditional budget restraints. I feel like if Plaid is good enough, people will pay for using it even if their church does not. But this is untested.

Understanding this risk, Plaid has other revenue models. We envision the possibility of a micro-payment model around sending rich communications (HTML email or Flash greeting cards) to your contact list. Since our customers are also buyers of curriculum and other ministry resources, we also might be able to use a sponsor or ad model.

But for now, I’m betting on the freemium business model.

How much traffic or usage do you see on an average day?

Plaid gets few hits, but that is by design. I see about 3-4 registrations for an invitation to the beta a week. I do not see the need to generate huge amounts of traffic yet, but after January 2008, I will say something different.

What is the one thing you are most proud of about the project?

I am most proud of the fact that I have stuck with this. We still have a long way to go; I have missed many opportunities by not rushing a product out the door. By the time we will have product worthy of customers, I’ll have been at this 2 years.

What would you say to somebody who thinks time and money have no place being spent on web ministry?

Great, get out of the way.

Well, that’s a bit harsh, but at this point I have little time to sell the web to leaders who do not get it. With Plaid or as a freelance designer, I try to work with people as passionate about the web as I am.

Other than your own, what are some sites that you visit everyday?

I read about 250 RSS feeds daily. But the sites I enjoy are: Google, Gmail, Basecamp, From Where I Sit, Buzz out Loud, TWiT, LifeHack, Smashing Magazine, and Found | Read.