As mentioned in the rash of events post last week, tonite we’ll be at at Hackerspace Charlotte (@hackerspaceclt) giving a presentation titled Minutes to Money: How Africa Hacked the Cellphone and Changed the Credit Card Industry.

This talk (15-20min) will discuss the trend of mobile money (transfer and technologies) and how culture, economics, and mobile disruptions make for a fertile ground for such innovations.

Hackerspace Charlotte is located at 430 E 36th St Charlotte, NC. Feel free to come through. Its a free event,. Though, if you can’t attend, you can view the slide deck.

To those looking for the connection to mobile ministry (#mobmin), its all about understanding the context of behaviors that leads to identifying opportunities in whatever space faith can be a participant in the discussion. For some of you, mobile money has meant simply how you can get your projects or ministries funded. You’ll need to think beyond that frame of thought and activity if you are going to take the activities identified in the mobile money space and make those a case of relevant faith transfers as well. Do add your questions or insights to the comments to this post if you have any.

Notes About Slides
If this is your first time (or its been a long time since) taking a look at slides done here at MMM, we use the S5 SlideShow system in order to create and share presentations. This HTML/CSS/JS format is versatile enough for any device and all that’s needed is a browser in order to view it. Unfortunately, this keeps us from sharing in avenues such as SlideShare, but other networks and methods are easily available since this is simply web and nothing else.

The QR codes are linked to URLs in this deck; and the resources such as Tomi Ahonen’s Pearls Vol. 3 and the Netsize Guide are very good and profitable resources for this type of talk.

One of the ways that MMM has been able to help organizations is in respect to breaking down and rebuilding points that influence mobile and other parts of communication events. We do this in part by working every communication issues thru a methodology born out of how we look at the layers of mobile: devices, services, and experiences.

Devices

Devices are agents and windows. What is most important to them is that ability for anyone to use devices for their most efficient and effective communicative purpose. That means that handheld mobiles (PDAs, phones, media players, etc.) speak towards a context of communication events that other mobiles (tablets, laptops, etc.) might not. Knowing the built in abilities and the perceived biases people have towards these gives one layer towards efficien communication. In a very real sense, if you don’t know the device’s abilities, then not much else matters for mobile ministry initiatives.

Services

Services are enablers. Look at services as a channel towards that expected end. They can exist in and of themselves, but the devices and experience design constrains their relevance and effectiveness. What’s usually the challenge here is knowing the bounds of the service inside of your communications needs, and then if it scales with the organic nature of communication behaviors. If it scales, or constrains, favorably, then the chance of a service becominng an integral part of your effort grows. However, service relevance is important here; what’s relevant to the IT administrator is not relevant to the stakeholder (except for cost and time to implementation). Don’t get trapped into making the more important than the other layers, don’t miss that it needs to be working for the Experience layer to be met positively.

Experiences

The Experience layer can be summarized by simply stating, “what are your goals?” Why is this technology, behavior, initiative, or function important to the overall mission of the organization? Is it an experience that is going to govern how others perceive your mission, Christ, etc.? What is the goal of the media transferred to the device? Can that media meet that goal, or is this a matter of planting and watering so that something later can manifest? Are you reaching too far trying to drive the experience? Or, are you not reaching far enough? Once that experience happens, are the persons or their devices evangelists for you, Christ, or something else?

Answering these three layers allows you to chart a path to a solution that’s more efficient than it is amazing. Sure, mobile ministry endeavors want to always “reach the world for Christ.” But, the reality is that the reach of any effort has constraints that you have to identify and then play within. If you will, the path is more narrow than wide, and your efforts have to respect those constraints to see the nets filled.

We keep pushing the fact that to best understand technology’s usefulness, you have to understand the context that it has been introduced into. And beyond that, adapting our perspectives as contexts change and adapt allows that technology to not just be a tool/agent, but a conduit for furthering our application of faith in a consistent and historically respective manner.

I therefore get a bit of a buzz when reading about what happens in the world around us. For example, in a recent email newsletter from The Bible Society of Egypt, hearing how they adapted the message of Scripture to broker peace in a volatile media environment encourages my heart and adds the right kind of perspective towards how we address themedia/medium of mobile:

…The Bible Society was just starting another campaign in the newspapers at this time, focusing on Biblical values. We immediately replaced the ads with a different message: “And seek the peace of the city… and pray to the LORD for it; for in its peace you will have peace” (Jer. 29:7). Along with our contact information, the short message says, “Let us share together in prayer for peace and unity in Egypt.”

This is the first time we have been allowed to quote a Bible verse in any of our public advertising, and many people, from all backgrounds, have called the Bible Society to thank us for the timely message and positive role. One prominent political figure, the editor of a major newspaper, called to say that he is grateful for all that we are doing to promote peace and unity in these difficult days. We have 16 front-page ads in these coming weeks, in eight major newspapers…

Read the rest of this newsletter and the Rebuild Egypt website to see some of the successes and challenges being found in Egypt.

Yet, this is a mobile tech website, what is the connection?

You are looking to use or introduce a theological/spiritual initiative and mobile is part of the media/medium/context/interface of those efforts. In what ways do you understand both the Scriptures as well as the tone of the culture you are introducing this into in order to have the most successful demonstration of the faith? What resources will you rely on to get this information. You can’t do this like drive-in or drive-by engagements have done in the past. You have to have a distinct knowledge of the pulse of what’s happening, how it’s happening, and then move forward with your engagement.

Here’s the sticky: How can you seek the peace of a city you don’t know anything about? Your use of media will dictate not just that you can be heard, but whether you are listening.

I hear enough times, from certain generations/economic classes/ethnicities, that the idea of “community” that has some grounding in “electronic connectivity” is somehow less genuine and less effective than other methods. Of course, these comments tend to come from people groups where there’s been at least a few generations where the social stream has been disconnected from the family/village narrative, so I can understand why that perception lies so.

In this age of information and connected-ness, can one afford to not connect via the methods of the age/class/culture? Sure, we can make choices about some streams (I know I do when it comes to FB, Google+, etc.) – but we’d be missing the conversation of the age if we didn’t connect with it right? Here’s something to that point said in a recent Harvard Business Review piece:

…As the kind of connectedness that social media and technologies like Skype facilitate crosses and blurs the boundaries between social and professional networks, the depth of the relationships that result is often profound. For me, the insight is more important than the size of the input: a light-hearted quip is often more helpful and insightful than a long post or link to a book, or more often now, an eBook. It is about sharing ideas, developing them together, and putting them jointly to good use — this depth increases with the degree of connectedness you have, and in turn sustains it over time.

The most interesting part of social media is how it enables more meaningful connections with friends, colleagues, and advisers. Connectedness in this sense is also about the seamless way in which our communication continues, irrespective of whether we are meeting over a cup of tea or meeting over Skype, sending each other direct messages on Twitter or writing on each others’ Facebook walls, or sharing links and holding conversations in LinkedIn or Google Plus…

Read the rest of What It Means to Be Connected at the Harvard Business Review blog.

While you are considering how you will broadcast your/our faith to todays generations and generations to come, are you also subscribing to the understanding and wisdom present in the behaviors of connections taking place?

Saw this visualization of a section of Open Bible’s dataset at O’Reilly Radar and instantly thought about this being a spatially-oriented application. Here’s my thinking:

The application would essentially be a single page, similar to Google’s landing page. The page would be connected to Open Bible’s dataset as that’s the only thing you’d be searching against.

You would then type in a phrase or term, and that would display not as a list, but as an zoomed-out (exploded) view of the entire data set. If you will, similar to the image attached to this post.

You would then get a command to press and hold the camera button (or volume button if you are on an iPhone, ha) in order to view into the data. Think like taking a Wii controller and moving around in a small space. That’s what you’d be doing here to navigate around the dataset.

Depending on the data’s output, it could be a circle (like pictured) or something more 3D (like GloBible) or even something 4D (going up/down/left/right/in/out to go through series within the data).

Yes, I’m aware that doing this would seem like it would be physically taxing, but the point here is an application that takes the aspect of searching and seeing associations between concepts and adds your motion as part of your means of tracking with the item. Given that many larger-screened mobile devices have some sense of direction (either through a compass and/or acceleromoeter), this could be something that really works to the advantage of internalizing concepts and placements of context in a similar manner that people describe knowing where something is in the Bible because they remember where it is on the page, not necessarily remembering the address or specifics of the context.

I’m pretty sure that something like what I describe can be done with PhoneGap. And, it could even be done almost completely in a browser, making it basically such that the coding to make this happen would be as open as the data hosted at Open Bible.

So what do you think? And think beyond your use of an app to search and see associations (many of you might be frequent users of Logos and not see the logic in doing a spatial interface like this). Picture how this could translate into taking these smartphones and allowing people who might be more sensitive to motion-interfaces to pick up and understand the Bible because its no longer presented or taught in a stricly linear manner.

Got a rash of items on the plate in the coming months which might pique your interest. These have been (and will be continue to be) talked about on Twitter (@mobileminmag), but here they are for a quick and overall look for you.

Upcoming Presentations

Hackerspace Charlotte Presenation: ‘Minutes to Money – How Africa hacked the cellphone and evaded the CC Cartel’
Oct 25 8-9PM, Hackerspace Charlotte 430 E 36th St Charlotte, NC
Abstract: Discussing the effect of mobile money transfers in Kenya/Tanzania future trends in mobile money transfer

The Geek Fest Presentation: ‘From the Toilet to the Pulpit: The Embrace of Mobile Technology in Faith Circles’
Nov 10 3:45-4:45PM, CPCC Levine Campus, Matthews, NC
Abstract: It is well understood that nearly everyone has a mobile device. It’s also becoming commonplace to see mobile devices used everywhere – to the point that its no longer taboo for people to be found in restrooms using mobile devices. Another area of life that mobile has been quickly finding itself is in religious circles. Starting with Bible applications, mobile in faith circles has moved to educational and media industries to co-bolster those efforts. This talk will describe some of those efforts and how religion becomes the next private place where technology shifts major behaviors.

Call2All Conference ($$)
Nov 29 – Dec 4, Long Beach (LA), California
For more information and to register, visit http://call2all.org
Still hoping to be able to attend this; might not be able to nail doing a presentation though.

Mobile Ministry Forum Consultation 2011 ($$)
December 11-13, 2011, JAARS Offices, Waxhaw, NC
For more information and to register, visit http://mobileministryforum.org

ICCM-Europe ($$)
Feb 8-12, 2010, ‘de Betteld’, Netherlands
For more information and to register, visit http://www.iccm-europe.org/
Hoping to be able to get here as well; sponsorship opportunities available below paragraph at end of this article)

Other Attending Events
BarCamp Charlotte Oct 22nd http://barcampclt.org
Mobile Apps A-Z Oct 27th http://meetu.ps/4CF9l
Responsive Web Design Oct 26th http://meetu.ps/4lC8b

Again, announcements about these hit Twitter first, so stay tuned to use there (@mobileminmag) either via their website or using either of our mobile apps (Nokia/Symbian and Android). Many of the Charlotte (local) events can also be seen via Meetup; as life extends some grace we’ll make local fit into a few more areas.

And to be straightforward, if its possible for to get somewhere to present, and the costs work out (prep and followup are big time sinks), we’ll get there. If you would like for us to share our experience and knowledge and budget is an issue, contact us anyways – faith gets stretched a lot (sometimes more than other times). That’s just the reality of things at this point.

Sponsoring MMM for Conferences/Speaking
If you/your company would like to sponsor MMM for conferences/speaking engagements (this is different than contracting for training or consulting services), get in contact with us so that we can hash out those details and get coverage and insight towards that event that might not be heard/read elsewhere.

This has to be one of the more honest videos that I’ve seen recently. For those who might not have looked at it yet, its the video of a 1 year old child as they are playing with an iPad and then a magazine. The interesting – and probably distressing to some – aspect of this video is how the child seems to have better control over their hands when using the iPad than with the magazine.

Of course, we are talking about a 1 year old, and so comments about motor control and understanding have to be understood. However, there’s something to be said about how familiar the iPad is for the child than the magazine in respect to the kind of feedback that the kid expects and what they receive. The video (and this accompanying article at CNet) implies the claim that digital natives are going to forget the physical control and contextulization of print magazines if activities with devices like the iPad continue.

There’s a good chance that this could be the case with many of our cultures within a generation. There’s a truth towards the face of learning, financial transactions, entertainment, and more leaning much more on the Interent and connected devices than in generations past. But, we don’t want to go so far as to saying that everyone will have this experience. The digital gap very much mirrors the economic class gap in terms of accessible and usable services across these connected devices. And yet, we also see moments like in this video, where some methods of interacting are more “natural” and lend to changing the relevance of learning, relearning, and unlearning some of our assumed behaviors.

So then the question becomes, “what are you teaching towards with your mobile ministry efforts?” John Dyer notes in From the Garden to the City how many of the aspects of our faith behaviors that we think are needed or required really only became so because of (a) available technologies and (b) changes in expectations towards literate populations (location 327, Kindle edition). Even the mentality of reading the Word everyday is new – people had been oral learners, and so in order to keep the Scriptures afresh for continual education, they had to meditate on what was preached every day (Joshua 1:8).

We’ve aimed so far with mobile ministry practices as facilitating behaviors and expectations based on what we understand from former media channels (speech, performance, radio, TV, Internet). What do you teach towards when those former media channels don’t have any contextual bearing on your disciples? How do you adjust to a reality where faith practices that your disciples will do start from the latest things you’ve learned, not from the same place you’ve started?

My God daughter and I spent a number of days together this past Christmas. Due to me having an iPad, she also got a chance to play with it. She played so much in fact that the lessons she was getting on colors was accelerated. The lessons she was getting in motor skills was turned into a different direction (learning drawing, pinch-zooming, and multi-touch when you can’t hold a pencil too well is a heck of a swing). For her, the iPad is much like the Etch-A-Sketch was for me. And while I did learn how to manipulate the knobs to create cityscapes and other imagined moments, I also started from a place that was unlike that of my parents who didn’t have one while growing up. My God daughter starts from where I am now with the iPad and has the opportunity to do things that I couldn’t even imagine.

But that won’t come to pass if I insist that her way of interacting with her world – even her faith – comes through the same behaviors, contexts, and viewpoints that mine is founded in. Yes, the Scripture doesn’t change, but practices and behaviors do. As leaders of disciples, can your methods change to enable mature faith lives of those who will be starting from this moment were you are amazed? Or, are you set at teaching people at the level of things now, leaving their tomorrow in the hands of older methods and concepts that might fail to engage anything but disappointment?

Some years ago, the year when I attended both the BibleTech and VSN Leadership Conferences, I did something that was weird to some, amazing to some, and confusing to others: I plugged my mobile into the projector, and using a Bluetooth keyboard or joystick, was able to control the presentation (see the VSN video). This has been quite normal for me in terms of presenting, and I honestly have gotten all kinds of bent out of shape when the projector or my connection to it isn’t able to be done (for example, this year at GCIA).

Nevertheless, it just makes sense with many of the mobile devices that we have in our hands these days – and yes, I’m speaking towards most of you with smartphones. You really can get away with doing simfielding rural, urban, or educational mission fields. Its honestly not that complex to do, and is more or less a matter of making sure that your method of presenting the content and having enough power for the projector is taken care of.

Now, there’s a preliminary case study over at Mobile Active talking about this activity in rural India for educational initiatives. And I’m pretty sure that I’ve poked at the Kiosk Evangelism Project enough to consider this as a primary method of displaying and enabling interactive content in some contexts. But, I’ll leave that for you to explore and figure out.

For now, I’m going to take the next step forward in how I do presentations from my mobile (right now using an HTML-driven slide-show system, with short-URLs and QR Codes to incite interactive moments for additional exploration during presentations). You might not be going that far, but if the device is in your hand, you’ve got a responsibility to figure this one out if that’s how your field missions function.

If you haven’t read Guy Kawasaki’s posting of his 12 lessons learned from Steve Jobs, it’s recommended. Then, once you have read that, consider the filter eDOT/Courtney has put these through:

…Real CEOs demo – I have worked for so many people who didn’t have an idea of what it is I do and what it is I work with.  They’ve been able to manage me and get me to do things but didn’t have a clue about the solutions I made to solve some problem within the organization.  Leaders in a non-profit need to understand the different areas of the ministry.  While they don’t have to be able to do everything, they should at least understand what is the function of each area and be able to explain each area to an outsider.

Real CEOs ship – We can daydream and spend time preparing things and give out ideas, but if we as a ministry don’t actually produce anything – then what are we about?  I think too many times our ministry are just about “raising awareness” but effective ministries do something and when they do, awareness is raised…

Read the rest of these reflections and the discussion to them at The Rose Garden.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ae4_e0bRsHQ

For a number of years, we’ve been talking about how Bible applications need to do a better job of addressing the non-pastorial perspective for their applications. We’ve talked about both content and the over all user experience, but rarely have we been able to do more than just instigate more chrome, rounded corners, or a faster search. Almost non of the Bible applications currently available take into consideration the fact that there are more people who own and use mobile devices than those that can read (by stat: the Orality Network speaks that about 60% of the world is or chooses to be illerate; there are nearly 55% of the world’s population that has a mobile phone* (hardware, not account) – overlap, not symmetry).

When looking at Siine Writer and its approach to creating a keyboard that’s based around iconography, I smiled because there seemed to be some develoeprs/UI designers who get it – on a mobile device, context-tuned entry is more powerful the less the user has to do to invent the context they are inputting.

So here’s your challenge. You have a library of resources, and don’t have the time to go about creating read-first interfaces that respect every language you are trying to reach. Can you create instead an icon (and color pallete) driven approach that is better able to lead towards that expected experince that person should have towards your application? Do you know the context of those whom you are building this solution for to do this? Or, does your mobile ministry approach need to start more with analysis of the people group, leaving you less time to make mistakes or do extra work?

If you are looking to build or deploy updates to your Bible/Bible-related applications for more than just the 120 or so trade languages, I’d encourage you to take a look at Siine Writer, accessibility best practices (for example, IBM’s listing), and even conversations that designers and others have about icongraphy and culture. Speaking from experience, its very hard to create interfaces that convey meaning when you are used to letters, words, and phrases to do so. However, the Bible, and specifically its application into how it is applied today, endears us to have to consider context just as much as we’d consider content.

For those of you already thinking and working down this path, here’s a recent tweet with some links to icons, icon galleries, and icon design practices that should add to your efforts:

Khoi Vinh (@khoi) – Helpful replies to my earlier tweet about icons: iconfinder.com, iconspedia.com and a post at Owltastic. Thanks everyone.

~ Siine Writer found via Ubergizmo & Techcrunch

*Update: got a question via email about the 55% number. That data is in the ITU datasets. However, it was also published by Tomi Ahonen in Feb 2011.