Your Digital Trail

Among the challenges of dealing with getting organizations and ministries up to speed with mobile, there’s also a upgrade in terms of understanding ethics, law, and other articles related to digital living. NPR has recently set for a series titled Your Digital Trail in which this topic is explored, and gives good information in terms of what’s out there, what’s tracked, and what individuals can do about it.

Start with the video above, and then dig into the rest of the series to learn more.

This all reminds me that we’ve not published the insights gained from an interview with a security company. Lots of things to pay attention to in this space.

Mobile Advance Reviews Portable Speakers

Portable Speakers Front

We’ve stated many times that mobile has three parts: devices, services, and experiences. And its easy to see that the mobile itself is a device, and pushes some services. But, part of that also includes the accessories that you use alongside those devices to extend the experience of what you do on/with your mobile. Our good friends over at Mobile Advance have recently taken a look at several portable speakers. Here’s a snippet of that review:

When it comes to actually showing mobile media, the weak link is your mobile device’s speaker. Unfortunately, most phone speakers are very weak and far too many tablets have underpowered speakers that, even worse, are positioned facing away from the viewer. When you are showing someone a ministry video with one of these devices and you add in city traffic, crying babies other common distractions the person viewing it oftentimes will have to choose between listening to the audio with the mobile device next to their ear or watching the video without being able to fully hear and understand what is going on.

Read the rest over at Mobile Advance.

Don’t Forget the Bigger Picture

Read an excellent post this past weekend in which a professor of Computer Science talked about the graphic that he uses to new Ph.D. students to help them see their work in light of the rest of the world. This is one of those images:

What Exactly Is a Doctorate?

Click through to Gizmodo for the rest of this.

Remember, we have our callings, our motivations, and even our stakeholders, but you have to keep the bigger picture in mind. It makes the fruits of your labors all the more sweeter.

Rapid Mobile Phone-Based (RAMP) Survey Tools

Some folks have been asking for sometime about best methods to collecting data via mobile, or at least some best practices in doing so. For better or worse, those folks asking usually weren’t trained in the area of quantitative or qualitative research methods and so there’s a bit more of a learning curve when it comes to answering that. Nevertheless, there are some methods and practices out there and the Red Cross has pointing to a neat method/toolset called the Rapid Mobile Phone-Based (RAMP) Survey. Here’s a bit more about it:

RAMP provides a survey methodology and operations protocol that will enable national Red Cross Red Crescent societies, governments and other partners to conduct surveys rapidly, at reduced costs, with limited or no external assistance.

In 2011 and early 2012, RAMP was piloted by Red Cross societies, the IFRC and partners in Kenya, Namibia and Nigeria. In these countries malaria is a major public health problem. Programme managers were interested in finding out the extent to which malaria programme objectives were being reached. The surveys provided statistically significant data in a number of areas including: ownership and use of long-lasting insecticide-treated nets (LLINs), and the percentage of children under five years old that were accessing health services within 24 hours of the onset of fever. A RAMP survey bulletin was available within 12 hours of completion of the final survey questionnaire with a full draft survey report available within 72 hours.

Read the rest at the International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies

RAMP-slideshow

We’ll be getting this added to our listing of resources pretty soon, while the case studies section will link to the reports already posted. For some of you, this kind of info will speak directly to your efforts. For others, it might make for a means for you to move forward with mobile/mobile ministry, with some additional insight towards areas of opportunities.

Extending Your Mobile Reach with A Server

Imagine the situation: you have been given a suite of mobile-friendly content by your organization. They expect you to learn the content, and then share it with others. You have an Android device, but not one with access to the Google Play Store. You get decent battery life, but not as good when you visit the church, bookstore, or the university. It’s not that you are at those places often, but when you get there and there’s not a workstation, you do use WiFi for a while. You are almost to the end of that content, and now need to start looking at how to share it. What are your options?

  • Would you use a flash drive connected to a wireless hotspot?
  • Would you install a mobile web server to your mobile device?
  • Would you install it to a memory card, then share it to others via Bluetooth?
  • Do you use a web service from which you and others connect to it via an application or API?
  • Another method?

How would you use the analogy of a server and terminal to extend the reach of what you can do with ministry content? And once you have a point where you/content can be reached, what do you enable?

Case Study: Vumi Go Redesign

Vumi Go style tile

Part of the opportunity that mobile has allowed has enabled all kinds of people-groups to be empowered to either create or have access to tools that traditionally were not as available. Depending on the motives of the programs though, several services have come and go, leaving both the designer and the consumer at a disadvantage of maintaining a connection to that service offering. Case studies which look then at the redesign of an application or service tend of be quite helpful therefore. You aren’t just reading a technical trope of the issues and opportunities of design or function, but you are also seeing how the consumer’s preferences factor into the planning, design, and final result.

A recent case study read which follows along this line of thinking was posted at Elezea in reference to the product/service Vumi Go. Take a look at it, and consider the entire scope of the problem and opportunity described.

If you have a case study which should be added to our listings, do get in touch so that we can get that added to the listing.

Should Mobile Ministry Be An API Not A Practice

Upon some of that good Sunday reading, I found myself on a website I’d never been on and reading thru their archives. Of the gems found that made its way into my notebook, a piece was just a simple listing of API resources from some larger media companies. It got me thinking of whether mobile ministry (#mobmin) would be better served as an API rather than a set of resources and practices. If you will, #mobmin as the transaction means to an end, and its documentation as nothing more than how to plug it in.

It sounds technical, but think about it.

2013 Mobile Ministry Consultation

You might have seen this posted on the #MobMin Event Calendar (subscribe to it if you’ve not), and its since been updated. If you didn’t see it, then all of the below is new news for you. From the folks at the Mobile Ministry Forum:

null

Please consider joining us for the 2013 Mobile Ministry Consultation (December 9-11, Orlando, FL)! Learn with more than 100 other mobile ministry innovators how to reach the next generation for Christ via mobile device strategies. The consultation includes TED-style presentations, discussions, ministry field reports, workshops and networking time.

Cost: The registration fee is $230 (inludes meals). Early registration is available for $200 throughSeptember 25.

Housing: Limited on-site housing is available for $35/night on a first-come, first-served basis.

Ministry Booths: A limited number of promotional booths are available.

For more information and details towards upcoming talks, visit the Mobile Ministry Forum website.

Introduced to the Lightstream Gospel Sharing System

Did you catch what was posted on #mobmin Twitter yesterday

We’ve talked about various ways to share the Gospel via mobile devices, and highlighted some of the groups which are doing innovative things in this space. Here’s one example of this from the folks at Renew Outreach. Haven’t gotten a full play with it yet… that will happen soon. For now, just think about what it means to carry a hotspot and a number of connectors for various types of mobile devices, along with Bluetooth connectivity options. Pretty neat stuff.

And here I was doing it all these years from my mobile phone with a server to host the content. Goes to show that with companies behind a movement, innovative and neat things can happen.

Its Merely Practice

Dr. Richard Street

There’s something endearing about some of the conversations that we have in academic and consulting circles as it relates to mobile ministry (#mobmin). Sometimes, I get the expression – not just an impression, but a stated fact – that those who are leading in this space have all the answers. Or, at the very least have the body of work that makes it possible to just call solutions into the ether. And I get it, we are familiar with other industries where folks aren’t just working out whatever works, but they are putting for best practices – these actions that have predetermined results.

Mobile isn’t old enough, nor always refined enough to do things like that. And in a recent reading about Richard Street and a person’s reflections on his life and career, this was something I was skillfully reminded of:

Here I found the true meaning of “Practice”, with regard to medicine. Over the years, through countless struggles to preserve the health of those terminally ill, through tomes of medical literature the good doctor would pour until he had exhausted all known medical knowledge; he then would turn to the Almighty for prayer. Each painful loss only fueled his drive, his passion to prevent it from happening again. Each time, he would become better at what he did, continually striving to better himself, not only as a doctor, but also as a Christian. In essence, he practiced what he preached, and strove to become a better man while here on this earth for it.

To those businesses and ministry leaders who read this and immediately think that I’m taking the road of “well, he’s trying to hide his inexperience with a separate context,” I want to caution you. Having been in this space since 2004, an whole lot of what’s done is a matter of experiment and practice. There are items that do have definitive results – building a mobile website alongside your standard one if you are a church (or going the responsive website route); doing SMS alerts if your organization has devotional or event-led communications; and a few others. Not everything is going to get the mass of use you envision, and not everything is going to be successful towards reaching (read: broadcasting while receiving usable feedback) everyone. You have to have a measure of technical patience, and a larger one of spiritual patience.

When you do your posture either becomes one of contentment towards what is or isn’t working. Or, you derive better methods and outcomes from what you’ve learned. In any case, its mobile ministry as a practice more than it is as a finished performance. If you can get your head around that, then what you define as the “golden moment,” might carry a view that looks more like God’s than Wall Street’s.