Parlaying their learning of video production and mobile media, Mobile Advance has recently published a comprehensive guide to video production to and for mobile devices that should find its way onto your bookmarks if this is where your interests in mobile lie.
This is a researched and vetted pointer to existing resources, and so some of it might be deeper in some sections more than others. Nevertheless, if you are producing content for mobile, or looking trying to figure out why your media projects towards mobile and mobile ministry might have failed, this is probably one of the better resources you can grab.
A few days ago, I was poked towards an excellent long read in an article titled Of Flying Cars and the Declining Rate of Profit. Of note, besides being recommended because of it being an excellent piece of writing, there was also a tug at the heart wondering what, if any, are the prospects of digital ministry endeavors when the core of much of why we are digital has such a fleeting impact? If you will, can digital ministry reinvent models of theology and culture of thevery model of tech is nothing more than a trade of simulations?
Here’s a snippet:
…Where, in short, are the flying cars? Where are the force fields, tractor beams, teleportation pods, antigravity sleds, tricorders, immortality drugs, colonies on Mars, and all the other technological wonders any child growing up in the mid-to-late twentieth century assumed would exist by now? Even those inventions that seemed ready to emerge—like cloning or cryogenics—ended up betraying their lofty promises. What happened to them?
We are well informed of the wonders of computers, as if this is some sort of unanticipated compensation, but, in fact, we haven’t moved even computing to the point of progress that people in the fifties expected we’d have reached by now. We don’t have computers we can have an interesting conversation with, or robots that can walk our dogs or take our clothes to the Laundromat….
When pulled through a theological lens, we can ask things like “where is my icon that allows me a conversation with Peter or Paul?” Or, that interaction that gets Stephen (the martyr) and Martin Luther in the same room with Polycarp mediating the debate? There’s a lot about this faith that this tech should have been more than able to provoke past imaginations, past the norm of the institution. But, it has been somehow curtailed from its place, much in the same way the author of The Baffler’s piece says that many of us have been intellectually, spiritually, and culturally.
What future do you plan for if you do this digital ministry? Does it matter to you if you create the future, or if you are driven by another’s mishandling of it?
There was a point during the Biola Digital Ministry Conference where it was put out there and became a calling card of sorts that I was sketching my way through the sessions I attended. That made it all the more important to get this up and done. It is a very small slice of what I’m finding in back-channel talks was a very wide and deep connect for all of us who attended. This is definitely something you’d want to put on your radar for next year.
For some of you looking to learn more about mobile ministry so that you skillfully apply some of the approaches and perspectives put forth here, you might want to look into enrolling into the Mobile Ministry Training Course offered by Cybermissions. This 4-week course is designed to introduce you to the uses of mobile technology platforms for Christian ministry. Here’s what the four weeks of courses look like:
Week 1: Overview Theory: Overview of Mobile Ministry & Its Potential Practical: Student is introduced to the various main types of mobile phones, and mobile delivery platforms, and their potential for sharing the gospel in various nations.
Week 2: Evangelism Theory: Mobile Evangelism and Follow-Up Practice: SMS gateways, use of “text”, mobile messaging, bible apps, evangelistic uses, blended uses e.g using mobile to follow-up after a crusade evangelism event.
Week 3: Training & Discipleship (Low Bandwidth) Theory: Oral Learners, Storying and Mobile, Reaching The Last The Least and the Lost Practice: Audio & Video for Mobiles, parameters, file conversion, creating audio and video content, repositories, how to upload, how to distribute audio & video content and how to use these technologies in training situations.
Week 4: Training & Discipleship (High Bandwidth) Theory: Various kinds of apps and operating systems and application development frameworks, constraints for small .Mobi websites, learn about tablets, e-readers and format conversion software Practice: Create an Android app and a small .Mobi website to host it. Learn how to convert some content for e-readers.
One of the complaints that I have with church bulletins is that they are passive. There’s just text, maybe a few pieces of off-centered clip art, and more text. Its to the point that I can only get impressed when I see that a church has actually used a quality stock of paper and ink. And of course, those bulletins don’t last in my possession very long. I snap a picture of what’s important, and hope to be able to hand back to a member/usher/greeter the item so they can give it to someone who might keep it. That sounds horrible to some, but if Layar has anything to say about it, things just might change for the better for print bulletins and other static media efforts.
Some days ago, I read (at Engadget, Reuters) that Layar Creator is now available as an web-based augmented reality (AR) media enhancement platform. It works very simply, after creating an account, you upload a PDF, PNG, or JPG of a page or screen element (think: business card, letter, flyer, etc.), and then append to it a button, URL, or social media connector. Then save and that’s it. After that, when a person looks at that print media item with the Layar browser, they are able to see the digital content that you’ve “embedded” into that print page.
When seeing this, I immediately though of the QR-enabled business card that I’d been using until recently. To be able to do something additional such as add a AR snippet of the MMM Twitter feed, or an embedded YouTube video of one of our presentations would not just add to the information that a simple business card carries, but also endears people who interact with MMM to think in these mixed reality/mixed media intersections.
The second thought that came to mind was that of Bibles. I’ve many times said that if a mobile could be turned into a magnifying glass, that a print Bible would find renewed interest. Using Layar, a person could create an AR layer of their own notes on top of a print bible they own. Or, a publisher could encode pages or passages of a print Bible with videos, maps, commentaries, or even links to conversations happening around a part of the text (a modern day Tallmud). In this light, its more than simply having a QR code on each page that points to the content, but you don’t have anything at all, just the marker of the Layar icon on the page, or on the cover of the book noting that each page has augmented features.
This is the kind of engagement that mobile devices can open. And as soon as I get in front of a browser that’s able to do Layar Creator, I plan on adding this layer to as many relevant moments as possible. I’d recommend that you and your ministry seek to do the same; especially since Layar Creator is free only until August 1 (then its the normal costs for publishing layers). This could be some reality-redefining stuff. Visit the Layar website learn more and start your AR campaigns with Layar Creator.
Scripture Earth is a web portal for text, video, and audio Bible resources in many languages, specifically having a unique listing of resources in non-trade languages which are many times harder to come by. Resources are sorted first by country, then by language. After clicking on the language, a page noting the available content for that language is displayed.
Most of the resources on Scripture Earth are best compatible with feature phones and older smartphones (PalmOS, Windows Mobile, older BlackBerry, etc.). Many of these files are in ZIP archives, so you either need a mobile which has a built-in unzipping application (for example, Nokia Symbian devices have this feature), or download an application to do this (for BlackBerry, Android, and PalmOS devices), or unzip on a laptop/desktop, then transfer the files by connecting a memory card or the mobile device via cable to the larger computer. It is best to follow the methodology of the mobile device when placing these files on the memory card/device (for example, music files into the Audio or Sounds folder; videos into the Video or DCIM folder, images into the Images or DCIM folder).
For more information, and to begin downloading these freely-provided resources to your mobile devices, visit Scripture Earth. View other resources, applications, and device downloads on our Bible and Religious Apps page.
Some time back, we pointed to the problem of finding non-English resources for mobile religious content. Its indeed a major issue, and later this week we’ll point to one portal page addressing it. But to give you an idea of what the scope of non-English actually looks like, check out this Top 10 video recently posted at MSN Video speaking of the top 10 languages spoken (primary and secondary) in the world.
In light of that video (or even the graphic on this post), what languages are your mobile apps, services, or ministry efforts prepared to speak?
The Biola Digital Ministry Conference
is designed to empower individuals with the vision, knowledge, and relationships necessary to be thoughtful designers, developers, and practitioners of digital technologies for the cause of Christ.
The theme for this year’s talks is “the disruptive nature of digital.” Also new to this year’s conference is a three-pronged attack on the topic areas: Theology, Strategy, and Technology. You can bet that there will be some amazing insights passed along not just from the speakers/presenters, but also for those attending to glean and share. Take a look at the sessions listing, there’s a lot of neat items being brought to the front of the digital ministry discussion.
Keep up with the conversation on Twitter using the hashtag #bioladigital. Depending on things, I might even get a chance to sketchnote things when not speaking/conversing.
Continuing from yesterday’s post of looking at mobile beyond your borders/contexts, here is a presentation from Chris White Ministries demonstrating how to share mobile-to-mobile materials created with PhonePublish. In this presentation he talks about sharing Swahili Bibles (NT) and the book Treasury of Scripture Knowledge.
This is the second video we’ve seen from Chris White Ministries. The first video got a great response as it pulled together much of what’s been talked about here and a few other places, but spoken thru the perspective of a missionary preparing to enable a community of pastors with content materials.
Its easy to pine for different and insightful observations and activities in tech, it’s another thing to identify the primary narratives and then go out and make something distinct. I felt that was why it was better to plant and do MMM from Charlotte, NC and the Bible belt rather than aim first for tech centers and then build in faith’s direction from there. More would have been possible, but perhaps as Dave Winer points out ever so nicely here, perhaps it wouldnt have sounded much different than the Cali/NY narratives that push much of media’s directions now:
…I’m still looking for a home that wants to begin at at different place. That we accept competition, embrace it, as a way to keep us on our toes, and to keep the flow of ideas strong. To keep Moore’s Law thriving not just in hardware, but in software, networking, humanity. Instead we’ve got a culture that divides us up into smaller and smaller tranches, and sells us to Wall Street, for our ability to read ads, not our ability to solve problems. My point of view is this — I make tools for people who are really smart and motivated. I make the tools then I get out of the way and I learn from them, learn how to make those tools better, and learn which new ones need to be made. I get paid a fraction of the money my customers make using my tools. This incentivizes me to make more. My customers are Nobel Laureates. They cure diseases. Solve crises. Lead our culture. They are anything but hamsters.
New York and California tech interfere with that process. Their model is still hopelessly rooted in the 20th century industrial model, of media and entertainment. Elite inventors, stars, personalities with millions of followers and passive consumers clicking on Like buttons. Very little crossover (though there is some, like Kickstarter)…
