TED Talk: 6th Sense
I ran across this today. Wow is all I can say. Take the 7-8 minutes and watch it. Then let me know what you think.
September 10, 2009Archive for Technology
Twitter vs Blogging
I have seen quite a few posts with the same title as this one in recent months.
I used to blog very regularly. Since Christmas…not so much! There are many reasons. One of them being my increased use of twitter. I have 200+ followers on twitter with more interaction. I’ve never had a lot of commenters on the blog here, but on twitter I get a lot of @ replies. I love that interaction.
It also allows me to unpack short random thoughts as opposed to writing an entire post. Speaking of writing, I have also been writing a book during the last several months so most of my long writing times have gone to finish that project. Once the book is finished I think I will blog more, but no promises.
I love the ability with Twitterific on my iPhone to twitter while walking to my next meeting or waiting in the car. While I do have WordPress on my iPhone it’s a little more difficult.
Just some random thoughts. If you are a blogger and a twitterer…what has your experience been?
March 25, 2009Ponderings Part 2
If technology is such a huge part of culture, especially student culture, how can we leverage it for the Gospel more effectively?
I’m going to list some things that we are currently doing or are about to start. This is in no way intended to make it look like we’ve got it all together. Some of these things work well for us, and some are experiments. We are sincerely searching for better ways to leverage technology to reach a very tech-savvy generation of students. Our goal is not that technology would become the message, but that technology would help us get the Word from “Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth” a little faster.
- we have a group on Facebook. We chose Facebook because it is the preferred social network among our students. We are trying to keep a pulse on this though as new social networks pop up.
- we have a website (blog style) that includes a calendar of events, a flikr stream of pictures, coming events, and announcements, a video stream of our services and a loop of archived videos
- we podcast. I’m not sure how relevant this is to students, but it’s a low work thing for us, and makes our talks available.
- we stream our Wednesday night services live. We use mogulus to stream the service and provide the chat features. This past week we had 27 unique viewers of our stream.
- we are rebroadcasting our service on Saturday nights at 11pm. We have live chatters (students and leaders) in the room to create a sense of community for anyone that shows up. We felt this was a time students are home sitting in front of their computers anyway. So we are inviting them to this time by…(see below)
- we advertise on Facebook using Pay-per-click ads. We advertise our stream with an ad called “go to church in your PJ’s” When they click through it takes them to the stream page. During non-live service times they see archived footage.
- we use TxTSignal. We have just started this, and are interested to see how this works. We have been gathering numbers for several weeks, and will begin using it as one of our primary communication methods in a few more weeks.
- we are about to start a blog just for our leaders. I got this idea from Chad and loved it. I wouldn’t be the only one to post on the site, but it will give me a great opportunity to put info in front of them. We have been doing a weekly email to our leaders.
edit Billy reminded me of this one after I posted. We also use WorshipWebsite.net to communicate with our band and creative team each week. He creates orders of worship with embedded youtube clips of the songs to be played so they can hear them before practice. He also attaches chord charts, we can see video elements, etc.
As I stated, this is an ongoing conversation for us.
What are we missing? What do you do, or what are you considering that we could explore?
February 5, 2009Videocoaching.org
I write occasionally over at ForwardLeadership with my dad, brother, and a few leaders that we’ve invited to help “challenge the process” of leadership. Most of our topics are ministry related, and a good number of them, though not all, deal with issues specific to the denomination we minister in.
We are in the process of unveiling what has been called, by some, a “revolutionary” idea. Videocoaching.org will unite leaders and learners through web-based video. It will help ease the burden of learning for the budget restrained leader who can’t make some of the conferences, and allow some forward thinking leaders the opportunity to share. We already have an incredible lineup of coaches preparing videos on a number of practical leadership topics for the local church, and the list is literally growing daily.
We are anticipating an early March ’09 launch, but you can visit the site now to sign up for email updates as the development process moves forward. This will include some prelaunch videos, beta testing, coach unveilings, information gathering (who do want to hear from, what do you want to discuss, etc), and more.
Since the majority of my readers are involved in Student Ministry on some level, what are some topics that you would like to see included through VideoCoaching.org?
December 22, 2008Mobile Porn
As youth leaders we have to value or role as shepherds. One of the most vital roles of the shepherd is to help the sheep steer clear of danger on their journey.
As I read this article on the use of cell phones and other mobile devices to access and share porn, I was confronted by the reality of this old danger in new clothes.
Look at these stats from the article:
20% of teenagers say they’ve sent (or posted) naked or semi-naked photos or videos of themselves, mostly to be “fun or flirtatious,” (33% of 20-26 year olds have done the same)
33% of teenage boys say they’ve seen nude or semi-nude images sent to someone else (about 25% of teenage girls have done the same)
39% of teenagers say they’ve sent suggestive text messages (59% of those ages 20-26 admit to it as well)
48% of teens have received sexually suggestive text messages (64% of young adults also have)
There are some possible actions for us to take, but what else can we/should we do?
December 19, 2008Everything’s Amazing and People are Unhappy
Does this sound like our churches? Wouldn’t you just love for someone to say things like this on Sunday? I would…does that make me a terrible person?
This video is hilarious by the way, and so true.
November 20, 2008