Two videos this month to profile. The first is our monthly videocast, titled Mobile Experiences:
The second comes from the folks at the Kolo Group talking about the app and the mobile evangelism opportunity with it:
Check them out and if there are other videos we should be profiling, get in touch with us, or share via social networks so that we can promote those along with you.
As you might have noticed in that post about the sidebar additions, we’ve featured a few mobile apps which are outliers in the mobile ministry space. Not so much because they are popular, but because they do things which are uniquely mobile, uniquely faith-first, and generally, meeting a niche need square on. iPrayer kneels squarely on those points.
This really isn’t a review of iPrayer as much as its an appreciation of what it does well. Much like the 1st version of Instagram, its a mobile-first social network. Once its installed, you don’t need an account to get into it, but it does help if you plan on posting prayers and interacting with the iPrayer community.
Much like MMM, there’s only one person behind the scenes at iPrayer, and that shows in the Daily Word feature. I like that idea, though in speaking with the developer, he mentioned that its possible that iPrayer could configured differently to allow for others’s to be profiled in the Daily Word.
I’ll say though that the thing which really opened my eyes to iPrayer was the UI (user interface). When I looked at the landing screen, my first thought was multi-lingual support. There were so few words and the icon design was so clear that I instantly thought about this being a mobile community app able to serve several languages at the same time. In that convo with the developer, there were no plans to go towards other languages. But, there are other language communities present. Seriously, neat.
My iPad now gets notifications from iPrayer when new devotionals are published. Like another app we’ve reviewed – Bible Bloom – its not about an intense study, but intentional contemplation about those things God desires from us. iPrayer was designed for those folks who have a need for prayer, but might not be as connected locally as some would wish. Its a neat app/service, and one we are proud to push forward as iPrayer is developed further.
Some weeks back, there was an Evernote conference and the CEO Phil Libin said something that’s really stuck out in the discussion of being paperless.
“The goal is to get rid of stupid uses of paper”
Now, he said this in respect to a new partnership that Evernote announced with 3M (see WSJ article). But, I think its a very profound way of looking at how we are treating digitally native experiences versus those behaviors which might have had a better context in print. Evernote’s association with 3M is looking at the use of Post-It Notes and making those small notes digital. I’m thinking similar, and sparked by a conversation with LJ of Urban Scholar, I think we might have some other “stupid uses of paper” to consider.
LJ was telling me about a men’s group that he engages in and they are reading the book Why Church Matters: Discovering Your Place in the Family of God and I asked him if he’s making notes in Amazon’s Kindle service or reading in print. His response is that he’s reading the print version for not just that book, but also for other books that the group is reading. I wondered, in the case of a group of men sharing insights and progress if that’s really a smart use of paper. In contexts like this, we usually share items and it would seem that digital is the appropriate place for this part of the interaction.
I guess that I have to make the appropriate statements concerning digital texts: cost of devices and services, access versus ownership, and those folks who would rather have that page turning, ambient lit action. Eh… you know those already if you are reading here.
What matters isn’t so much our comfort, but what we enable as a result of the activities we pursue. If when we are getting together, we spend more time passing out materials and reviewing the instructions on them, than we spend in making sense of what those materials mean.
Concerning #mobmin apps/services: does it cause you to spend less time with admin, and more time in Him?
— Antoine RJ Wright (@ARJWright) October 16, 2013
I don’t mean that there’s not a place for paper. I mean that when we have digital text available, we should probably take advantage of what digital offers instead of constraining it to what we only know from a paper context. If that means displacing the time when text is contemplated from the group meeting, then we make the meeting time profitable for things that digital can’t do as well – like cohesive, corporate prayer. And when we do those things that digital does do well, our experiences through the faith grows past stupid uses into something that more authentic, and viable to living by Christ.
If your exposure to MMM comes via social media, email, or RSS, you do miss those occasional changes which happen on the site. With the big outage in August, we lost a lot of features, and so its been a while in getting things back. One of those features brought back is the Recommended Apps/Services in the sidebar. Hopefully, its something which can help you better understand some of the relationships we’ve forged (recently) and areas of opportunity in #mobmin for your org.
Its a listing of both Partners and Recommendations. Here are those groups currently:
Partners:
Recommendations:
There are a few more that we’ll add to this over time as we continue to rebuild and refresh. If you see an opportunity to partner with us, or believe that your app or service should be given a thumbs-up recommendation, get in touch.
Coming up in about a week, MMM’s Founder and Primary Voice – Antoine RJ Wright – will be speaking at an event called The Geek Fest, hosted by Central Piedmont Community College. Here’s a bit more about that event:
THE Geek Festival (TGF) is an exciting and eclectic annual celebration of the “geek” in all of us; an event designed to educate, energize, and inspire the minds of our students and the community through highlighting the constant creative innovations in technology, media, and industry. It not only recognizes the imaginative efforts made by individuals and companies in their respective fields but also provides a venue through which we can explore the technologies that have become so integral in our everyday lives as well as those that are new and foreign. Geek is chic; not only that, it is everywhere.
And about what Antoine’s presenting, here’s the title and abstract:
What Mobile Experiences Are Left?
A lot of what we think about mobile has been shaped by the entertainment industry’s imaginations, manufacturer’s designs and marketing, and the wonderment of friends and family. In light of that, it almost seems like there’s nothing else left for mobile to unveil. I think mobile has a bit left to unveil. This talk will explore what’s happened and what’s to come, and why its not so far away from your fingertips.
If it sounds like fun, that’s because it will be. The Geek Fest has a lot of exhibitors from the Charlotte area, as well as several national and international orgs. If you are a ministry and looking to sponsor – presentation slots are likely filled up – you’ll want to get in touch with them via their website. As for attending, its free, so just come on out and check out an intersection of education and technology.
For these and other events, check out the #mobmin Event Calendar.
Another part of the package that makes mobile ministry an interesting topic is that of who is heard evangelizing what makes sense and what works well. In some respects, its easy to say that anyone who is doing anything with mobile can be an evangelist of its uses, but that’s not the case. The voices in leading mobile best come from those who are using it most directly (via Elezea).
…Now, a second question: when was the last time you heard that teachers in Africa are not trained properly, are demotivated and that the formal education systems in which they work are weak? My hunch is that you’ve heard much more about this than you’ve heard teachers praising mobile technology.
My concern is that some people use the problems with education systems to justify excluding teachers from the design and development of mobile learning interventions. Teachers’ voices are marginalised. And mobile operators association GSMA (to take just one example) characterises the teaching profession in a way that divorces it from progress and innovation.
The difficulties teachers face are used as a starting point for criticism, rather than as a motivation to address systemic issues…
That’s a hard win-lose. To see the prospects of mobile and then run to it feels like a success point, but then who is calling it a success? The person evangelizing it, or those putting it into practice?
How many of your mobile ministry efforts are founded in the context of the direct users? How many of those persons contribute directly to your project, and then to the local assimilation of mobile for that activity? Or, is this where your project hangs? Like we said in previous posts, do you understand the context of where you are asking for mobile to go?
As I’ve been working on this magazine/project – answering of a question – a good chunk of what comes out isn’t so much about the technology or behavior of mobile and its ministry intersection, but about the pieces which goes into answering what makes the most sense about the context around those streams. Ethnography is very much a core discipline within this endeavor.
…Taylor claims that the secret behind Starbucks’ appeal is the incredible amount of control it exercises over its image. All decisions start and end with the company’s ringleader, Howard Schultz. Everything at Starbucks is planned. It is not just a Starbucks’ coffee that you get when you walk through the café doors; it is a Starbucks’ experience.
It was after careful psychological research that the company first decided to have white cups with green writing, “tall” lattes, natural materials, and round tables. Starbucks interviewed hundreds of coffee drinkers, seeking what it was that they wanted from a coffee shop. The overwhelming consensus actually had nothing to do with coffee; what consumers sought was a place of relaxation, a place of belonging. They sought an atmosphere…
Starbucks is a familiar experience to many pastors I know – some of you might even be at Starbucks or a similar coffee shop while reading this. The environment is just as key to understanding mobile as is the technology or your content. What Starbucks has done has been often talked about, but in reference to mobile ministry, rarely practiced.
Some of the most immersive experiences in mobile ministry come from ethnographic-based approaches. And in an opposite view, the reason why we see so many of the same approaches to the same problems is because while there are plenty of builders of tunnels, there aren’t as many students of roads.
It’s still so frustrating to see how many companies embark on their redesigns or MVPs without doing contextual research first. You might get the usability of your product right, but without utility, it will still be useless.
Its probably safe to say that many folks miss doing that part of the project that asks for research and analysis. Asking questions is an important first step here. Then we can build or lead into fuller experiences of Christ by mobile or any context.
Was browsing around and came across a web showroom and store called Grand St. As I went through their listings of various products, I wondered about some of the #mobmin products I’ve come across as being a part of that library.
What kinds of #mobmin products could you see there? I’ve got a few ideas:
Ok, so those are a bit out there. But, these stores are a nice pocket of activities. And many ministries already do scores of events where swag-types of gifts are sold. Could you see an opportunity for being in a marketplace designing and selling #mobmin products like this?
With the Halloween season right around the corner, there are enough tales of humor and horror to keep you busy for another 364 days. Yet, this year the most disturbing image given – the acknowledgement of some of the most influential governments in the world have been monitoring digital communications in various clandestine ways – has seemed to illicit more of a yawn and more of the same.
…But what is, in a way, more alarming is how relaxed many of my professional peers seem to be about it. Many of them are people who do understand how the stuff works. To them, Snowden’s revelations probably just confirm what they had kind of suspected all along. And yet the discovery that in less than three decades our societies have achieved Orwellian levels of surveillance provokes, at most, a wry smile or a resigned shrug. And it is this level of passive acceptance that I find really scary.
What’s even more alarming is that the one group of professionals who really ought to be alert to the danger are journalists. After all, these are the people who define news as “something that someone powerful does not want published”, who pride themselves on “holding government to account” or sometimes, when they’ve had a few drinks, on “speaking truth to power”. And yet, in their reactions to the rolling scoops published by the Guardian, the Washington Post, the New York Times and Der Spiegel, many of them seem to have succumbed either to a weird kind of spiteful envy, or to a desire to act as the unpaid stenographers to the security services and their political masters…
The Guardian is right. Publicly, we’ve just not done this part right – and its scary.
I’m guilty too. I’ve not moved as far or as fast as others have towards making more secure communication practices or crafting online spaces which are better secured from prying eyes. I’ve done a few things, but not nearly enough… most of us in #mobmin haven’t. I don’t know that we can continue to be passive about it. Either we play the role that many in the public space have – ignore it while talking about it only in private – or we take ownership of it and do things differently (whatever that looks like).
I’m in a bit of a weird space. I could do something like what’s had to happen with my personal blog and steps I’ve taken with social networking, or there might be something more drastic of a step to take – like really going back to hosting MMM from a mobile phone (really good method here), and only letting verified connections take place to it – then doing secure RSS feeds from there or something else which is mobile, secure, and open – like OpenRepos.
I don’t know… there are methods of ministry on mobile that we should continue to talk about. But, the other side of that tech and truth is that mobile is also a very monitored and monetized communications media whose aim isn’t connecting (first), its making money and keeping vigilance. Can we accept that and be passive about those issues going forward? Or, does #mobmin adapt to that reality too… teaching better methods, understanding even more the incredible opportunity going forward?
Was pointed to this via Google+ the other day. But to be frank, its the same discussion, just revisited – with another proposal from someone well associated with digital publishing technologically and organizationally.
In August 2010 we posted an article entitled Tired of Buying the Same Books Over and Over Again. In that post, Kevin Purcell proposed an idea that would allow for bible software customers to buy a digital resource once and then make it available via other Bible software at no additional cost. From a ministry perspective the plan was a good idea. Here we are three years later and the situation remains the same. We still must buy multiple copies of books to use in various programs.
Read the rest of The Next Step at Kevin Purcell’s website
Kevin then writes his response in STEP Backwards: A Counterpoint to The Next Step
Here’s where I get frustrated. Since the digital copies made, after copy one, cost nothing. I have a problem with the second Bible software company selling customers a commentary that they already bought for $9,000 from Awesome Bible Software for the same price. If the customer can prove that they own the book, the publisher should wave the royalty fee and the Christians at the second company should sell the book in their software format at a reduced rate to cover costs of the sale and a little extra. It’s in their best interests to do this because the customer will become a return customer if they can use their favorite books in the second software maker’s program. If they can’t they won’t buy more in the future.
Now personally, I think that to solve this issue of using biblical resources across several devices and applications that there needs to be a significant change of thought and practice. Contrary to the marketing messages, bible software is built for pastors, not laypersons; content licenses are built for publishers, not readers. To design and sell software differently is a challenge that some groups can embrace. It won’t be easy, yet it could be very fruitful.
Jump into the discussion at Kevin’s website, here, or via social media.