Archive for category Web 2.0

CITRT Discovery . . . I’m Not Alone!

Posted by John in Leadership, Lessons Learned, Technology, Toys and Tools, Web 2.0 on November 5, 2008

As many of you who follow my tweets are aware, I have a fairly interesting position. I work part-time for Celebrate Church as their network administrator and part-time for the Dakota District of the Wesleyan Church building and upgrading websites for the churches in the district.

As an ordained minister in the Wesleyan Church – I realize that this is not the norm. Like the other ordained ministers, I believe that I’ve been ordained by God, confirmed by Man and called to preach the Gospel of Jesus Christ. The difference is that while the vast majority of ordained ministers preach via the pulpit on Sunday morning, I was called to preach the gospel via the Internet.

To that extent, I’ve spent several years studying the culture of the Internet, learning the language of the Internet, and understanding how to reach out to others on the Internet. It hasn’t been easy learning these things, but it has developed inside of me a confidence to that this is what I’m called to do – even when I am comfronted with the knowledge that I have so very much to learn.

One of those learning opportunities happened this week and to be candid it encouraged me so much that I just want to share this. This week I had the opportunity to talk with one of the sysadmins from lifechurch.tv. Lifechurch.tv is in my opinion leading the way in church technology, for a prime example of this – check out Youversion.com – a revolutionary online Bible reader – Lifechurch.tv built this – pretty cool, huh?

During our conversation, my new friend introduced me to the Church IT Roundtable. Basically this a group dedicated to IT professionals who work in churches throughout the world. I can’t tell you how exciting and encouraging that it is to know that there are others who are as passionate about technology and the Kingdom as I am! What a gift – thanks God!

Within minutes of being connected with the site, I found some crucial answers to questions that I’ve been running into in reference to backing up Macintosh computers. As I listened and read the various suggestions and comments, it struck me that I’m not alone and that I don’t have to always figure things out on my own. I totally feel blessed that this group is here and that I have the ability to talk and learn from them things that will help Celebrate and the other churches that I work with grow. Totally stoked and can’t wait to learn from these men and women connected to the CITRT.

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Passionates by Joshua Porter

Posted by John in Church 2.0, Church Websites, Churches, Web 2.0 on August 19, 2008

As a technology pastor, I am constantly working to make the mission of the church compatible with the technology that is used in the church. One of the blogs that I read regularly posted this article and I’m just buzzing about how to use these concepts in reaching the lost! Here’s the link to the article – I’d recommend reading it! I’ll probably work through this a bit later and try to make it relevant to to the work that I do.

A couple of quotes from the article that I want to remember for later!

The reality is that people are passionate about some things, and not at all about others. They love some activities and don’t care about others. The activity is what they’re passionate about (not the technology) and when they’re passionate enough they’ll learn the necessary technology as they find appropriate. Passion depends upon the activity in question.

It simply means that technology came along to help them practice their passion better, and so they adopted it because the value proposition made sense to them.

The activity is the thing to focus on, not the technology. Technology enables the activity, and people will get excited about the technology if they’re excited about the activity first and the benefits of the technology has been explained to them. But you don’t make passionate photographers by showing them lenses, you make passionate photographers by showing them pictures that rip your heart out.

A much larger population (although much more fractured) are those people who are already passionate about some activity or other, and can become passionate about new technology as it relates to that activity, but they just haven’t been introduced properly.

In other words, the task is not always to make people passionate about something, it’s to show them how technology (or your product, etc) can make them even better at what they’re passionate about.

Technology is merely the enabler of that activity.

So while yes, you should take advantage of early adopters, learning from them and focusing some of your effort on them, you can’t assume that just because people aren’t early adopters they’re not passionate. Passion is more about doing an activity well than it is about using the latest technology to do it.

I hope Joshua won’t mind me posting these quotes – they are just way too good to not share and I don’t want to miss them later!

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Web 2.0 Cool Apps

Posted by John in Web 2.0 on February 27, 2008

Here’s a couple of really cool web 2.0 apps that I’ve been playing with lately. How could we use these apps in the church?

Boxbe
www.boxbe.com
E-mail by guest list. You choose who gets to e-mail you, and the service filters out the rest.

Callwave
www.callwave.com
An Internet message machine, fax machine, and voice mail service in one.

Campfire
www.campfirenow.com
File-sharing and group collaboration tool from 37Signals.

Emoze
www.emoze.com
Push e-mail service that gives BlackBerry-like functionality to any phone.

Jaxtr
www.jaxtr.com
A service that lets you share your number anonymously on social-networking sites and auction pages. Also doubles as a voice mail service.

Joopz
www.joopz.com
A group text-messaging service that lets you two-way chat with SMS users on your PC.

Jott
www.jott.com
Jott converts voice into text for e-mails, text messages, and comments on blogs and Web sites.

Mailroom
www.sproutit.com/mailroom
An e-mail management service for companies or groups with several @ addresses.

Meebo
www.meebo.com
A multiprotocol chat client that runs right in your browser, Meebo also lets you play games and chat in rooms with friends.

Mobivox
www.mobivox.com
Cheap international calling solution and workaround for calling your Skype buddies on your mobile phone.

Mundu IM
messenger.mundu.com
A multiprotocol, Web-based instant-messaging client that works on your desktop and on portable devices.

ooVoo
www.oovoo.com
An instant-messaging, VoIP, and video chat service that lets you talk with as many as 12 people at once.

Pidgin
www.pidgin.im
An open-source, multiprotocol chat client that supports more than 16 different instant-messaging networks.

Pinger
www.pinger.com
SMS messaging re-imagined as voice messages you can trade back and forth.

Plaxo
www.plaxo.com
A service to connect and grab data from various services you’re signed up for on the Internet.

RingCentral
www.ringcentral.com
A virtual phone center and control service for small businesses.

SeatGuru
www.seatguru.com
SeatGuru goes beyond the stock airplane seat finder provided by the airline company. Find out if your seat has power plugs, gets bad engine noise, or is within smelling distance of the reheated tuna casserole.

SimulScribe
www.simulscribe.com
SimulScribe takes your voice mail messages and turns them into text so you can read and sort through them without having to use up minutes.

Tangler
www.tangler.com
A simple forum creation tool that lets you put forums anywhere on your site.

Twitter
www.twitter.com
Twitter is a service for friends, family, and co–workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: What are you doing?

Xfire
www.xfire.com
Know when your buddies are playing the same games you are, then challenge them.

YouMail
www.youmail.com
An online voice mail organization service that lets you manage and listen to voice mails on your computer.

Zimbra
www.zimbra.com
A Yahoo-owned online collaboration suite for sharing documents, calendars, and messaging.

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Social Networking Sites

Posted by John in Web 2.0, Website Development on April 11, 2007

So, it seems that one of the biggest things on the Internet is social networking sites. Everyone seems to have one. Rather then tell you what I like and don’t like about them, I think I’ll provide you with some links to go visit them yourself.

Before we get started looking at social networking sites, let’s clearly define what a social networking site is. The term “social networking website” refers to a website that members can join where they will have a profile of interest, write and receive some type of commentary, and interact and relate with other profiles that are displayed in conjuction with that profile.

A social network is not a bulletin board, a forum, a mailing list, a BBS, a MUD/MOO, or a MMORPGS. Yes you can interact and meet new people and make friends, but they are NOT social networking sites. Hope this is clear.

Why do I think we need to look at social networking sites in conjunction with our church website? Well, for one thing, this is something that very cutting edge with technology and at the same time very popular among the teens-30′s group. But, just because it’s popular doesn’t mean we automatically do it. I think we consider this concept because fundamentally, the desire of the social networking sites is to build a community of like-minded individuals and connect them to each other. If we can further the Kingdom by creating an environment where people can interact with other people from our church, then not only are we building the church, but we are building the relationships that people have with each other in the church.

There are some negatives and some drawbacks to social networking sites, but what I want you to think about is what could we do with this idea and how could we incorporate this concept into our church website?

Okay, so let’s get to it!

Church Related

MyChurch – http://www.mychurch.org

Friends/Relationship Related sites

MySpace – http://www.myspace.com/

Facebook – http://www.facebook.com/

Friendster – http://www.friendster.com/

Cyworld – http://us.cyworld.com/main/index.php

Orkut – http://www.orkut.com

Xanga – http://www.xanga.com/

Meetup – http://www.meetup.com/

Business Related Sites