Hit the Back Button to Move Fwd by Gavin Richardson

telling stories on missions : sharing experiences with congregations

how to use social media to share your ministry story with home congregation & ministry partners from Gavin Richardson

one of the things that social media has allowed myself & you the lay web designer to do is easily share missions, event, and other ministry experiences with our congregations and ministry partners. i know folks are starting to do this more & more, so here's some of the set up & tips that i've used in the past.

• site: have a website that you can do quick updates to. this might be a special wordpress site or typepad/blogger are all formats that give you ease in telling little stories or updates without having to know code or ftp information. you can even use twitter if you need. i also like to use flickr for posting pics & videos. so much easier to upload a batch than to put into a blog posting.
• connections: ask ahead if you can get wifi in the area or cell service, and which kinds of services. if you can get wifi (which is surprisingly much more common than not) its wonderful. next best is cell service & you can probably spring for one of the broadband connecting cards depending on your provider. next, if you can only find cell service you might tether a connection, or just plan to use a smart phone application. my iphone has applications for all kinds of blogging updates, or i can just surf the web browser.
• ahead of time: depending on my anticipated needs i'll set up a posting ahead of time. example: our experience up into appalachia last summer i knew there was no wifi options, so i set up a blog post with a twitter widget that i could send updates to. i gave a shortened url link to the one of the ministry secretaries that she could put into the prayer chain emails.
• hardware: if you have a wifi connection bring your laptop. if you do this right you can stay up a few minutes after lights out, do what you need to do and then close shop and move into the next day. one of my key hardware pieces is a universal card reader. the best 30 bucks i ever spent in ministry. if you don't take the pictures, no worries, borrow someones camera card download theirs and use them to upload. same thing with video. if you have one or more video cameras (we used a sony webbie flip camera and a harddrive camcorder for our bahamas trip this year) bring what cables you need for charging & downloading. if they use flash/sd cards then you just need your universal reader..
• mobile upload: most social media sites have mobile upload options. you need to have them in your back pocket. twitter has an email to post option, as well as twitpic (which will post to your twitter). so if you can send pics or video through your cell service you are good to go. flickr also has an email that will post to your account. have your mobile apps tested out and ready to go before hand.
• choose your portal: life on a missions or other ministry experience is generally filled with little downtime. if you are like me you don't want to spend your every minute telling others and not living into the moment you are in. so, choose what your portal is for sharing. do you want to write out stories? or, like we have done, take the photos and put them out there to tell our story. this year we went more immediate video doing some little one or two minute update videos. since we are photo/video heavy this year, we just used flickr. set up a trip set and gave out the shortend url then populated it as the week went on. boy have we ever populated that... most likely too much. if you want to just have the youth or adult participants write stuff for blogs, give them a heads up. sometimes though its hard for people to sit down and write, so you either need to tell them what to talk about or give them the whole week to work on writing to get into a flow. some folks though, write very easily, well & quickly, look for those folks, but not at the detriment of the experience.
• clean it up: once you get home, clean up some of the url updates, spelling errors, add captions, edit finished versions, add more content, etc. people don't need everything, they love to get a taste or idea of what it looks like & what is happening.

disclaimer/distribution: i've been asked before if i've gotten permission for posting photos and such. yes & no. i've put in our release forms that this is part of our group & i tell parents that this is what we do, so if they have issue we can remedy the situation. most of the times our parents are exstatic to see what's going on. how often do they get frustrated with their kid going to camp, only to return & asked "what happened?" responding "nothin.." with this, they know something did happen. now, we do take some precautions of not putting in names, certainly not full names. we generically name photos most of the time. i don't do uber tagging so it falls into the greater searches, but is usable for my own search. with flickr you can protect download of pics to just your contacts/friends/family which is helpful if you can get people to get a free account and 'friend' you.

methodist amendment mashup : its what you get for going on youtube maxie

a lot has been said over the latest rage in methodism, taking your political viewpoints to youtube. one thing maxie dunham, who seems to have started this should have done his homework on is the concept of mashup's. cause buddy, you've now been mashedup. i think the fact that someone did this is brilliant, rather slanted, but brilliance as i am sure the egos that decided this vehicle was the way to go didn't see something like this happening.

instruction manual of life : so many ways

saw this via don heatley's facebook page. i find this compelling and certainly worth my 8 minutes of time to ponder. it is obviously directed at christianity, the church, and the bible

• the problem with challenging one's cupboard is that peoples identity surrounded by the things they organize themselves with. to express that someones meaning to life is wrong is threatening to their very sense of self. Christ isn't an arguement to win, but there is a better way, how does one help illumine that?
• i don't feel the bible is to be a book on the shelf (tho, admittedly it sits on my shelf more than it probably deserves. how much of an idol do we make of the bible?

social media love song : it aint no joke.. well, maybe it is

how can i resist a country music song extrapolating the ills of a man trying to meet a woman via social media. many thanks to john for unearthing this one

why i'm pulling for greg paulus : bunking an epidemic

if you are not a sports person then you may not know of the big story (before the nfl draft week) of greg paulus. greg was a star player for the duke university basketball team the last few years. before coming to duke though greg was a super star high school football quarterback. he is now, with his one year of eligability left as student athelete wanting to take his game back to football and the university of michigan looks like they will give him a shot.

as i've been listening to the 'experts' they are all skeptical and pretty much predicting that he won't make it as the starter or even show any sign of success. i suppose that's understandable, but i am really pulling for greg to prove all them wrong, but probably not for the reason you might guess.

as a youth pastor i have two entities that compete with me for our teenagers time and energy the first is school, the second is sports. when its school sports its compounded. (notice i didn't say that family competes with me.. that's another blog posting)

some 6-8 months ago i put together our calendar for the summer with missions and camp experiences. one of my girls, who is invested in what we are doing and loves the mission experience for junior highers was super stoked to go. its tearing her up now, that a few weeks ago the high school coach has scheduled soccer tryouts for the same week, the very first week of june (yes, soccer tryouts are june1-5th). my guess is that she will not be going on the missions experience, which i understand, but it continually bothers me when stuff like this comes up.

when i was a teenager i played soccer, skied (the snow kind), and played golf as sports go. i moved to new jersey from alabama during those soccer years and because my brother & i were unknowns by the local coaches we ended up not getting invited to the travel teams and spent three or four years of PAL league soccer. when high school came i remember starting training 2-3 weeks before the season and we ended up making the teams & eventually onto varsity playing with many state ranked players & a state championship. soccer stopped & skiing started then golf.. well, golf was pretty much year round cause that was my favorite, but i didn't start playing till i entered high school, rather late for today's kid. i then spent time at church doing bell choir, singing choir, youth group, even young life. we had family vacations not associated with any of that. never once did i feel pressure to have to compete or make decisions (at least hard ones) on doing one or the other.

those days were great, you got the importance of teamwork, competition, physical fitness, school pride, and personal self-esteem. somewhere along the years the thing that brought on good things has gone to such an extreme it has flipped on itself.

apparently now you need to compete in your sport or choose your instrument at an early age and give yourself over to the coaches & teachers or you will never be able to make the team/band whatever. i get that scholarships are a big deal, but scholarship is supposed to get you into school so that you can be well rounded & educated. in our environment today that doesn't seem such the priority. why are things so uber competitive? is it that important that we start our girls soccer the first of june. even worse, football before school has even let out in the last two months of spring.

i root for you greg paulus cause you might show some of the culture that you change your sport focus and still be 'okay' the world will not end...

some things are still just fun : revisiting one of the things

as i am catching up on the blogosphere & other feeds i was reading up on josh browns continued dismay with social media. i get his sentiment.. it had me thinking then of some of the stuff that made the early onset of social media really great. wandered around the net a bit and stumbled back upon this viral video gem. it is still great to me & for many others i am sure.

it has me thinking, what gives some web sensation staying power?

rear view mirror on violence & identity : because you need more marshall mcluhan

almost 30 minutes of great thinking & conversation debate

marshall mcluhan on getting it wrong : shades of a new politic

i don't know care about your politic with this posting. but one needs to take notice of how the obama campaign took a long shot candidate and made him into a anomyly. david bulluck goes through how the campaign used social media in barack 2.0.

went back to these thoughts as i listened to mcluhan bash how presidential campaigns used television. are politician handlers figuring it out finally?

spirituality & social media : perfect together

when i grew up in new jersey i remember these ad's saying something like 'new jersey & you, perfect together'.. well, matt cheuvront at 'life without pants' has posted the first in my guest series on spirituality and social media. today i throw out the case that this who social media / web 2.0 explosion can be good for the faith.. is twitter the new town square, introduction to spirituality and social media.

marshall mcluhan on church safety : life without pants guest post

for the next few weeks i will be guest posting over at matt cheuvrot's blog 'life without pants' covering thoughts on spirituality & social media. some thoughts (listen for the return to tribal culture mention) i ponder in my first posting are reflected in this snippet of marshall mcluhan. as with most things i hear, i relate them to church life. can you guess what i was thinking?

biblical story & economy : south park commentary

i have mentioned before that i am a fan of south park. i find their social commentary (which is generally hidden around the shock stuff they throw at you) to be spot on. this weeks episode took on the economy with some brilliant biblical narrative. from preaching in the temple, king herod, roman authority, & Jesus forgiving debts. its rather brilliant.

they are still dying : save darfur

genocide is still happening & its even gotten worse. save darfur

twouble with twitter : hilarious look at twitter

i get asked about twitter & why enough times that i am fine with saying, if your skeptical don't do it. i like len sweet's framing of twitter as passing on the town green. i've established some relationships, made a bunch of jokes, shared a ton of information, & wasted some time that was probably better off done somewhere else. adam cleaveland shared this hilarious video about twitter, on twitter, by the folks at current tv. as with most good satire, you need to know a bit of twitter to get the full fun, but even without that knowledge you'll be able to laugh at it. for a more serious look at twitter you can check out the 'twitter in plain english'

update: the folks at neatorama are having a bit of a slam on twitter after sharing this video

someone who gets social media : interview with charlene li @ sxsw

as i've mentioned. our church gets social media & networks wrong all over the place. here's a gem of an interview with charlene li of groundswell. its not over the top point making, but she is so on target for where church/corporate entities need to examine themselves within the social media spectrum.

monday music : the new dj

if you haven't seen or heard kutiman through the blogosphere or cyber world in general. this is a song put together by mashing up a bunch of youtube videos of people playing instruments. the whole story can be found here. this is just fascinating, as well as the mother of all funk chords.

getting over our control issues : linked data for everyone

i'm a huge fan of ted. if i had the money i would so geek out at their conference. so it is with no real surprise that there is something shared that might in fact aid one of my passions, the church & specifically the umc.

in a lunch conversation i had with larry hollon on tuesday (thanks larry for the time) he had asked my thoughts on some of the things i might address in rethink church & the agencies approach to using social media. one of the things that i suggested was the release of control of materials. creative commons is the new framework we move in, not exclusive copyright. so i found interesting some similar themes & possibly an answer in tim berners-lee ted talk on how he developed the internet (no, it wasn't al gore) and his newest 'play project' of linked data.

things that jumped out at me quickly were when he mentioned "you've payed for this" in regards to the data that the government has. because we have payed for them with tax payer money. within the united methodist church, we have apportionment's that pay for the agencies to do a large amount of their work. in essence, we are owners of that information. we should have access to it.

but there is a control mentality that if you give it away you loose 1. your ability to make money (which isn't the role of umcom or the other agencies) 2. that people will re-purpose your stuff (ala. a mashup or sound clip it for their own thing)... both of which, are navigatable (i don't think i just made up that word). many of our biggest companies give their braintrust away for free and they've parlayed it into a living and the most loyal of customers. why assume that someone re-purposing your stuff is innately bad? i go with the assumption there are more creative people out there than i. as a youth pastor i keep trying to groom them that way as well. they do things i would never have imagined re-purposing my ideas for the betterment of the ministry.

so what do i suggest with this?

• get over your control issues. that might start with just naming them. (as a personal shot, why are we asking people to take down meaningful & helpful videos on youtube)
• put people in charge of sharing your braintrust. put together the linked data setup with your information and let others come in and put in their part.
• allow them full access so that they can know their people better & serve more fully
• open up resources for them to re-purpose graphics, videos, logos, etc to reach a demographic that you are trying to reach, but painfully not.

more explaination of technology & virtual community : shane hipps day

zach lind did this little video interview for his podcast expanding a little more on what shane was getting at with technology & the virtual community.


Shane Hipps and Zach Lind Discuss Virtual Community. from Zach Lind on Vimeo.

virtual community is not possible : shane hipps day

this is the video by shane hipps in a little snippet interview by the out or ur folks at the national pastors convention. scot mcknight took some of this to task as well & kept going with it as shane chipped back in. tony jones also threw in his thoughts on virtual community into the conversation.

know how your technology is shaping you : shane hipps day

this is a good little video interview between rob bell & shane hipps (tip terrace) where shane flips on you what might be your preconceived notions on how technology is shaping you & culture.

Rob Bell Interviews Shane Hipps About Technology.

earth hour to earth day : tending to mother

my buddy sam davidson @ cool people care has layed down the challenge of taking on green habit from earth hour to the end of earth day. you can sign up for a special email to keep you going for the 21 days.

spirituality & social media : my podcamp nashville video

john w ellis, who has become one of our buddies in the nashville tech circle video taped my talk from podcamp nashville on saturday.

PodCamp Nashville: Spirituality & Social Media by Gavin Richardson from John Ellis on Vimeo

some links to referenced sites

• real live preacher
• emerging church wikipedia page : emergent village
• father roderick
• south park episode on the loss of the internet
• asbo jesus
• blasphemy challenge : youtube video
• tweet jeebus
• filioque
• second life
• old jews telling jokes

podcamp nashville : the internet is our parish

hey nashville friends, podcamp is just around the corner (ie. saturday). i'm doing my first ever speaking gig at this podcamp. erin & i have been faithful attenders and participants of the barcamps & geekbreakfasts here in nashville. love the tech community here.

my session is on spirituality in the social media spectrum. what will bascially be bringing up is some significant pieces of how faith is acted out with some reflections as to why i feel they are remarkable.

i'll be putting in some church suggestions in there as well, but that stuff isn't as much fun as telling stories.

i showed erin my presentation and walked her through my unwritten script. she really liked it. since she's my barometer i'm feeling pretty good.

not in nashville & want to get plugged in? if i can get some reasonable way to put together a ustream, you can find me at my ustream channel (which i rarely use). you can follow along all the podcamp nashville fun on twitter by following #pcn09.

where is our hope : dealing with the downturn

this comes from a pastor friend ryan bennett, who posted this on his facebook. thought it was worthwhile sharing today.

Well, the news is out today. The economy is bad - real bad. Recession is giving way to talk of Depression. The stock market is at its lowest point in over a decade, taking with it the retirement accounts of many of our elderly. Things are bad.

So, with things this bad, where are people turning? In Tennessee, the answer was obvious this morning with the news that February was the biggest month EVER for the Tennessee lottery. $208 MILLION dollars were spent on lottery tickets in the month of February alone.

This is a damning statement about the hopelessness and irrationality that is so pervasive in our culture now. It is also a damning statement about where people are not turning - the church. Why would people seeking hope not turn to the church? I guess the answer is that hope is not what we are offering.

The daily news is offering gloom and doom. Shouldn't the church be more bold in its offering of Good News? Not good news on the economy but true Good News from the Hope of the World, Jesus Christ!

I think that the world has largely written off the church. "They don't care about my needs. They are too concerned with fighting and bickering amongst themselves about polity and doctrine."

If we can't offer Good News then who can? I believe this is an opportunity for the church, but we must first relearn the unique message God has given us then we must engage the world in which we live in a real way. It will get messy, no doubt. But I don't think there is anything else we can do and be faithful.

Lord, let the church offer more hope to a hurting people than the lottery.

Ryan

i don't know what more commentary i can put on this, but say "yup." we should be doing better. where do we start?

monday music : its a landslide

a little tip to jen lemen for weekend reminder of this haunting gem that i just love. at one point i was close to being able to play this song on guitar..

credit crisis in nutshell : modern economics that i can understand

one of the simpler explanations to the economic crisis that knucklehead like myself can understand. tip lifehacker


The Crisis of Credit Visualized from Jonathan Jarvis on Vimeo.

enough review : the advice you probably already knew but forgot

a few weeks back i was sent a few copies of 'enough, discovering joy through simplicity and generosity' which is the latest book by adam hamilton. as with many of my reviews, its more about my emotions reading through the book than the content. sorry, i try to balance it out, but sometimes to no avail. if you want something a bit more lengthy & thorough then catch up with my friend shane raynor's review.

it is a little bit more than 100 pages and a small size paperback retailing for 8 dollars. which is pretty attractive to me in that the topic is not one i'd normally invest in, but i would consider this one. it was a pretty easy read. i started it, put it down after the intro and then finished the rest in one sitting. if you have ever heard adam preach you can really hear him preaching withing the pages (at least i was).

it is obviously a writing that reflects on our current economic crisis. much of the advice rendered through the pages, that is actual financial navigation void of spiritual framework, is stuff you would hear from a credit-less advocate (ala, dave ramsey who is actually mentioned once or twice). adam brings up some old school ideals of 'layaway' which i remember all to well. he breaks out the classic thought of "wants" vs "needs. in the beginning adam brings up our reshaping of "the american dream" from living well and improved from your parents conditions to this idea of having more stuff. my default to talking about consumption is 'the story of stuff' which has similar parallels. still, i was rather intrigued with naming how that ideal has changed.

hamilton moves from the need to manage money and then into giving with the tithe as an example. its in the ending chapters that adam really hits his stride, or it just took me two or three chapters to get into his rhythem. i was thinking at the end of the reading if this was the next consecration/pledge campaign for a church.. i sure hope not, but it is possibly. this doesn't feel good as a curriculum/training book. its a good conviction book, but it is still much of the same advice i've heard for years. people know these practices, complain about the various problems, get this kind of advice from various outlets, we just continue to forget about it. sage advice, but we will probably still learn the hard way.. or maybe we are already learning it.

practical wisdom : getting away from the external drivers

this is a great talk given at ted just a few weeks back. so much i can resonate with. it is worth every minute of your 20 minutes.

the future of church : a green life returns to what we knew

 

a few weeks back i was in a conversation where we were talking about the future of the church. i made some statement, not slamming the megachurch, but being less than kind to the megachurch as the future of church. which, i am prone to do.

one of the people just happened to be a part of the staff at one of the biggest megachurches, that i will leave unnamed (haha!). and he offered his view. he shared that he felt that the future church will look like megachurches and house churches.. hmmm..

now i pondered that. it most certainly could be the case. people seem to embrace the large corporation securities/offerings or they go against the grain in some anti-establishment stance, which could bring about that dynamic. but i don't know if corporation is the future (and lets be honest, the megachurch is a corporation) of the life of the person.

what i got to thinking about was the inclination people are having to live the 'green' lifestyle. it is just now becoming a norm and part of peoples daily practices. so as families develop with young adults that have grown up being 'green' what are some of their behaviors that might shape they way they participate in church life?

we are already seeing that people are not too worried about their church denomination loyalites. the economics are poor in large global corporate climate, which was otherwise safe & secure 5 years ago.

so these three things, 1. green living 2. falling denomination loyalty 3. an unsecure corporate economic will lead to resurgence of parish life.

people, conscious of their impact will doing old school transportation, walking to & from the markets/cafe/stores. because people cannot blindly count on corporations for their economic securities there will be a move back to small business (which i hope government taxes make easier, or less taxking, to do) bringing up local entrepreneurship, and finanicial control back to the individual, that we have not seen in 50+ years. people will move back into those houses of worship that were abandoned by a church denomination, or are a dieing congregation, in their neighborhoods and reshape them to what is core to their local needs.

when will this happen? maybe 20-30 years or so from now. there will be that generation shift where the older folks who have grown up with behaviors of driving all over God's green earth to get what they need are not the norm. they will be replaced by children of my family who have grown up living simply, using canvas bags for daily grocery pick up, walking to schools, riding a bike to the post office, knowing who all is in your neighborhood (instead of driving in and driving out).

will this replace what we currently know? not completely. just as the corporation will never leave us the megachurch will never leave either. but it will become less a significant voice in our day to day lives. there will be nothing to be enamored about as people lives will have become reoriented towards a parish life. house churches i don't see as being a norm, but being the new 'satalite' campuses of the parish church, which isn't such a new idea at all.

in the future, we will see parish life return.. will we, our denominations, be ready or will we have moved out our stakes?

chime in? agree/disagree? thoughts? am i crazy?

look back into the past : the things that were about this time years ago

in my on going toss out of lifting up some of the archives of this blog from similar time period over the years.

• i jumped in on some oovoo conversations with marketing & tech type people (pretty sure i was the only youth minister participating in the event). that was fun, but oovoo hasn't taken off. tokbox seems to be the next multi person video conference center.
• some ponderings from the desert fathers & mothers on parenting & youth ministry
• everyone can use some new 'faith filled' pick up lines
• an early morning reflection on the homeless in my city
• remember when the nfl was going to sue churches if you had a super bowl party.. seems they have learned from that pr nightmare
• i was again likened to a celebrity.. well, he wasn't so much celebrity then, he's more now
• church shopping & the devices of the entertaining church
• i took the strengths profile test that our church is big proponent of. can you guess what i came out as?
• my abbey journal kept while on retreat at gethsemani. good times, need to get back soon.
• in what is the only time you see capital letters use consistently, my pastor michael williams guest blogged on the theological conversation with miroslav volf
• this is what happens when you are friends with jonathon norman
• thoughts on how justice issues can become an idol unto themselves
• some ponderings on contemporary worship in my church context & how our greater church sold their soul to contemporary worship
• starbucks goes down!

superglue : its what holds a marriage together

i suppose i shouldn't be surprised. after all my ranting before about friendship first and the sex week challenge.

but again, i was really turned off by ed young's simplistic, and in my opinion, misdirected bond to marriage. now i get being on a talk show you get 5 minutes & colbert or stewart are the funny guys and you are to be the straight guy. within that 5 minutes they do allow you to get your point out there, but only briefly and it is your one liner. so to hear, "sex is the superglue to marriage." honestly, is that the best you have? even nt wright was better at explaining "life after life after death" in the resurrection than you were about a solid why for having sex 7 days in a row to save marriage.

 

The Colbert ReportMon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c

Ed Young

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war & christianity : the many voices

i found this little video looking for a psalters song. it has some interesting thoughts on war from people whom i listen too, contemporary and old school.

lost generation : coolest thing on

this might be one of the coolest, and most truth telling things i've seen on youtbue in a long time. its not long & you must watch the whole thing to get the impact. no, some lame scary person isn't going to jump up at the end (i didn't tell you to turn up your speakers did i?). tip comes from family friend meredith who sent to wifey erin (not sure what it takes to get on meredith's email list but)

trending : what will be the in thing in 2009

an interesting look at what might be the cultural trends for 2009. which are you going to participate in?

caption contest & freebie : winners & close to winners

i got a little distracted, sorry, i know you all were waiting on the edge of your seats for this announcement. but i am naming my inauguration day caption contest freebie give away winners.

i loved all the captions for various reasons. so i'm giving away some choice stuff to my top three.

reverend mommy: "And how long will those indulgences last?" now i'd say that prez bush shouldn't believe in indulgences since he is methodist, but let's be honest, he isn't much for listening to his church, so this works for me

kevin alton: "...so he says (heh heh), 'Does the Pope wear a funny hat?' (heh) Get it? (heh heh) Get it? A funny hat!"  (heh) Pause. "What?" Pause. "Lemme start over..." i had john stewart's bush imitation in my head with this one, so i laughed pretty good with that. a bit long for a caption, but hey, this is my completely subjective contest.

aaron alexander: Now that I'm done with this President thing, you down for some Xbox this weekend? Call of Duty is right my alley! just the idea of the president playing video games, and its complete possibility was a great image to me.. and its within plausibility that he'd say something like this too.

to you three fine captioners. look in your mail for some treats courtesy of me.

thoughts on a experiement : social media & the methodist

updated: blake huggins has some thoughts to add & i, as seems customary, have comment

kevin watson, proposed a little experiment to the metho-blogosphere after i made posting on how our general agencies just don't get how to use social media. he has posted his observed results and some opinions about the experiment.

I was surprised that more than 25 bloggers linked to the video in some way on their blog. And I do think it is significant that simply passing on a video was able to revive a video that was basically dead on YouTube. A change from 44 views in 6 months to 715 views in 2 weeks is a significant change. I think that this experiment does show that there exists a significant group of Methodists who are willing to work together in some capacity to raise awareness and get the word out. The big question is: Get the word out about what?

i had some thoughts on the results, not to mention my idea of how general agencies need to target their mild marketing efforts.

like i mentioned to you earlier kevin. the next step would be to spread it around through people’s email lists. email is going to tap more of the mainstream folks versus the early adopts of the blog world.

some numbers can be low because we share information amongst ourselves. i had already seen the video so i wasn’t going to watch 25 times because 25 of my friends posted it. i also am not sure if the embed watching shows up in the views on youtube or that is just a ‘hit’ to that page. that would also keep numbers rather low as most folks embedded the video. i know i did that.

certainly the video didn’t go viral, but i don’t know if it has elements to that seem to be ingrained in a viral video. something that is familiar, humorous or heart tugging. the old gene cotton claymation clay ride history of methodism got a lot of traffic, until umcom told me to take it down, as people had some kindred tie to it. it was a good video, but for many it was more nostalgic to the soul. who knows how well that video would be doing now. i have some news story on the patriot guard, and westboro baptist, that seems to get a comment or two and a hundred or so views a day.

though the experiment didn’t go viral that isn’t the measure. the measure is that it is talked about and people are more aware of ‘reclaiming wesleyan tradition’ now. which, they might not have been before.

some thoughts

as for kevin's observation that views dropped after the 2nd week.. well, it wasn't the kind of video that so many people kept going back too to show off or laugh at again. months later i still go back and laugh at the nashville gas crisis (though it isn't as funny as it was that week).

what are your thoughts?

marketing shift : why old ways don't work

i was saying to erin last night, "i just get frustrated in how & why to i can't seem to communicate with these kids & parents." i was speaking of an information/logistic type communications. not a spiritual sense. with the all the different messages they get mine seem to get diluted. i know that our churches as a whole experience this problem & i'm pondering how i can find my way through and help communicate to my churches how they can do the same (a monumental task i believe). so with all that in mind, this little video, which i ran across in my reader (but i lost who actually posted it to 'tip' them), highlights the large shift of brand communication.



Scholz & Friends: "Dramatic shift in marketing reality from Michael Reissinger

remembering martin luther king jr. : not a tamed guy

one of the things i often wonder about martin luther king jr is how just about everyone has this warm feeling about him. his often highlighted 'i have a dream' speech is wonderful and captivating of ones imagination. but, that isn't his only speech and many are not so easy to stomach as being part of america. as a modern prophet he is dangerous to people, he speaks a truth that is hard to come to be honest with. he just isn't that tamed person that i often think people see of him. this is one such episode

caption contest & freebie : in recognition of inauguration day

inauguration day is always an great day. i know people have their reasons for this year being more special than others, but to know that we have a complete change of government leadership without violence or war is something to behold. so, in recognition of inauguration i've got this caption contest. cool thing, my completely subjectively chosen winner (and you can vote for who you think is best) will be sent a copy of my worship feast prayer stations cdrom project & maybe some more stuff, but i promise that one.

let the captioning begin!

monday music : for everyday

in honor of show tickets going on sale this week, i give you a little dave matthews band. he will be coming to town in april, but tickets will be on sale on thursday i believe. this particular song, 'everyday' comes off the album title titled after the song. what i find interesting is the video (not embeddable, fail!) which involves a guy randomly giving hugs looks a whole like the free hugs campaign.. hmm..

my interesting connection with dmb comes as i used to see them a lot. they came through tuscaloosa (the home of university of alabama) on the bar circuit all the time. they charged a huge cover, like 10 bucks (which is an investment for college student), but that is where the girls went so we all went. i remember sometime standing around in my fraternities television room waiting for dinner when all of a sudden a dmb video came on mtv... we all stared and then acknowledged that we'd never see them back at the local bars ever again.. and i'm not sure i've ever seen them live since.

gavoweb poll : closing out a college season

as with everyone i know, i have an opinion on the rankings of college football. the things i get burned up about is the 80s/90s loyalty the experts have for undefeated teams, but then will swing around and say someone else is the best, but not put it into the polls. if you think someone is the best, show it by where you would put your money on betting for them. now, i'm not saying gamble, well maybe.. but put your commitment (and being honest, money is most peoples primary symbol of commitment) on the team you think is best and stick with them. so here is my rankings & i welcome your critique.

1. Florida : i just can't bet against them. they beat my tide too
2. Southern California : they are good, always have been they just get lost in who they are and slip up, but i'll bet on them anytime in a big game, except against florida
3. Texas : they seem to be balanced & play tough, beat OU soundly and only hit a perfect storm of TT to stumble. i like Colt McCoy
4. Utah : i wouldn't have bet on them till after sugar both, but i will now. their coaching can win them a big game.
5. Alabama : bama it tough and has a power game & defense that i will still back up
6. Oklahoma : they proved there isn't much defense in the Big 12, but they are still a threat. if they can get a jump on you, you are done. which could put them past the tide, but i'm betting on the tide.
7. after that i am betting on a sec team.. maybe even vanderbilt after this year.

update: ap & coaches polls are now out. ap gives props to utah, coaches poll surprisingly, is almost identical to mine.