Mobile Ministry Magazine

Apologies for the post out of sync with the usual posting schedule, but after reading the Washington Posts' views on the Pope's message, I figured that a response from MMM would be most appropriate.

To those who have been following Mobile Ministry Magazine, you know that we've always advocated the use of technology (mobile and web computing) when it intersects with the daily interactions that we have with life around us. Whether that daily interaction is person-to-person, person(s)-to-community, or personal devotions, there's a response to the intersection of faith and technology that's demanded as part of the context of the times that we live in. There doesn't need to be an official statement from anyone on it - this is the DNA of walking in this Christian faith.

That being said, the challenge is to walk not in the ways of others when it comes to the use of this technology. We are defined by our intense love for God and one another - therefore we model our use of this technology after that, not in light of what others are doing.

Personally, I think that its great that others in the Body are coming around to understanding mobile and web technology. However, to just understand it now, and then dive in without understanding of its implications is foolhardy. There's nothing worse than when the Body of Christ puts on something and it looks like a bad copy of what someone else has already done. And then cannot account for the consequences of that display or presentation. We've got to model not just contextual use, but continual maturity.

I'd like to believe that pastors/layleaders have the shared spiritual and technical understanding to use this tech - but history present and past dictates that not being the case. Those are who enabled in the Body to teach spiritual truths need to come up beside those who are technically able to use the tools of this age and together build on our faith. Sorry, we can't wait for a generation of pastors to come forth who have this shared knowledge - it will be too late.

The voice of Christ will remain constant and truthful in every generation that earnestly seeks Him and His Kingdom. On this site, we've espoused this in our asking of you to take a look at your lives at the intersections of faith and mobile technology. We've already responded to the call and demonstrated the ability He's endowed us with. The next steps are to enable others to preach, teach, and live this Gospel. Anything short of that is just a bad attempt at secular marketing.

Note:
This post is based on the message recently shared by Pope Benedict XVI at the 44th World Communications Day event and the resulting article at the Washington Post (via Smart Mobs).

Labels: devotion, discipliship, faith, innovation, mobility, tech, Web

This is pretty neat for those of you looking to put your programming knowledge to some good use: Nokia's Calling All Innovators 2010 application development competition is underway.

This year's categories – Life Improvement, Eco/Being Green, Productivity and Entertainment - are bolstered by a teamup with the Sesame Workshop "to help support education related apps in the Life Improvement category with a view to encouraging developers to craft creative and exciting apps (possibly using Sesame Street characters) to teach early literacy on Nokia handsets to people anywhere in the world."

We've talked about before how the Body can put some of its gifts to good use, and this is about as good as it gets. And even if you don't enter the competition, folks like Mobile Active could use enterprising individuals who are willing to devote their technical knowledge to community and education-building causes.

Visit the Calling All Innovators 2010 competition website to learn more and to submit your applications to this worthy cause.

Via Nokia Conversations

Labels: contests, developer, development, education, innovation

If you are in or near mobile, then chances are you are around a lot of voices. All of these voices vie for your attention - whether its a call, text message, music and multimedia, and even the vibration of something happening towards the former three items. Its because of this personal and very immediate stimuli that mobile has been a disruptive technology for so many people. Its introduction to life has literally changed every culture that it had touched.

Though mobile changes a lot of facets of life; there will be some areas where the technology enables the change that was already simmering, and others where people will find innovative uses of tech that more or less works along with the technology.

What I like though is the understanding that tech isn't the answer. It requires a response, and that response will change our lives. If you will, the tech points the very need that individual and communities would have. I like how this article puts it:

...The mistake both the utopians and neo-Luddites make is by giving too much credence to the idea that technology can fundamentally change human nature. For every article about how Twitter will save the world, a cyber-fatalist will argue that smartphones have turned us all into zombies. Both are wrong. It is not technology per se that has the power to change the world (for good or bad), but rather the innovation and creativity of the people enabling and using it.

Of course, technology isn't the answer - its just a tool, and one that ends up being more or less another manner of bringing the reality of our human-ness (or brokenness) closer to one another. We have to be adept with these tools, but really understand that for that it is, its just another part in that story of how technology has threaded our lives.

Hence why I like mobile (as a tool, media, and movement). It causes us to think about the personal application of technology, and how life ensues afterward.

Hence, why I really like what could happen in the Body. It doesn't take much to see that mobile has and will continue to not just foster new communication activities. It will also add a bit of spice towards how the Body adapts to and molds culture around it. I see mobile merely pointing a way to innovation - so that the voice of the Christ remains not just something people are going to hear, but be able to hear to the point of wanting to do life on different - God's - terms. How the Body uses mobile to tell and share its story will show this voice of innovation, and life around the Body will then be threaded in His effectual graces.

Labels: innovation, mobility, tech

Via IntoMobile

Here are my five (as posted on Twitter a few days ago). Items are posted with a link to the associated tweet so that you could either respond here or there.

1. Mobile will be the primary avenue for telling the church's story over the next 10yrs (tweet)
2. Mobile increases the church's need to have cross-functional knowledge of culture and context (tweet)
3. Censorship and copyright will drive mobile sharing of religious texts to innovative solutions (tweet)
4. Mobile will be vilified by a significant generation of traditionally-minded church and lay leaders (tweet)
5. Education + genuine faith + mobile = education and community redefined (L. Amer India, & Africa)(tweet)

Ok folks, given the several trends spoken, as well as the MMM-5, do you have any thoughts on these - especially in terms of what you are seeing in the places you are in. Remember, one of the characteristics of mobile is that its personal and hyper-local. Where is this media going, and how do we steer it within the context of it intersection with faith? Because what we experience as tech in the Body, will not be the same experience of those considered youth now.

*The hashtag in the title is deliberate as I'd like to see this link automatically when this posts to Twitter.

Labels: innovation, mobility, statistics, tech

I know that MMM harps a lot about ebooks, electronic Bibles and such, but there's really a good reason for doing so - there's no innovation there. At the intersection of faith and mobile tech, at the very least, a Bible reader should be enabling the story and history of Christianity to be better engaged. But, we just haven't seen too many folks push enough. So, here's a little bump called Mag+:

Mag+ from Bonnier on Vimeo.

Forget what is or isn't possible, watch it and think about how you read - and interact - with the Bible on a contextual basis. Does your Bible reader offer this level of engagement? And if not, shouldn't we help them get to this level of simplicity?

Labels: Context, eBible, eBook, innovation, reading

Ever since doing the MMM Mobile Experiment Report (PDF), I've had this uneasy feeling about continuing a website here. Don't get me wrong, in terms of a place for people to see MMM in its most unfiltered manner, a website is probably one of the best tools for this. As a person though, I'm mobile - very mobile - therefore the idea of a website being tied to a person, and therfore becoming more than a website has been something that has just kind of sat on the edge of those things I experiment with, its something that I'm just personally trying to pull off. I do wonder often because of this experience though if I really need a website.

Now, for most ministries, the question isn't so much do they need a website, but rather what's the best use for their website? If you will, how does the website accurately and easily point the way to connecting and understanding the purpose of your organization. And I think that's where the question about MMM's website really comes from.

Sure, there's editorial-like content here; and, this is good for a website to have. But what about those other, connecting. aspects of that interesection of mobile and minsitry. A website doesn't serve as solid a purpose as IM, SMS, picture galleries, and voice. How a ministry/organization is able to use all of these social connecting components to be whom they are - along with the website - is that key point of strategy that I think is missing, or not well executed.

Many of the changes that have happened here lately have been in the idea that MMM might not be a website as much as part of one's social graph to which the website is one of many spokes that can be connected to. And then in this social graph, MMM becomes whatever is needed to those persons and groups that would benefit from the knowledge and connections here.

In light of where we are, and where we want to go, this is one of those questions that sit pretty high. Because MMM is not necessarly trying to go where the trends are, but where they will be in mobile/web/context/etc. Does your ministry/org have the same views towards their website and other outreaches, and if not, maybe that's something of a question to carry throughout the new year.

Labels: innovation, social networking, social objects

This past Saturday, I kept up with the Bible Software Shootout as many who were in attendance were tweeting about the happenings. One thing I can say about whatever that was happening there, it looks like a lot of the major software developers really got the point that the user interface of a Bible application means nothing if people cannot simply get in the Book.

This attetion to user interface design is totally a by produt of the impact that the iPhone has made on the entire computing industry. That's not to say that many software products and services don't suffer through feature-itis. Many do and will continue to. But, it is to say that there are some areas where people are getting it, and one of them just happens to be within the realm of mobile bible software.

So let me ask you this simple question: when you are ready to read a verse/passage in your Bible, how many steps does it take between you thinking about it and you getting there? How many steps after you've gotten to that verse/passage does it take for you to do the next thing (meditate, journal/bookmark, send it to a friend, etc.)? Its these kinds of questions that software developers think about often when they are developing the software that you like. And you know something, there are a lot of answers that they come up with. The simplest one though is always the hardest to pull off - keeping your eyes in the text.

This is something that paper books have a lock on. Its easy, you read, highlight, pull another book from the side to make a note, but the text is still there. No matter where you go, you must face the book in order to engage the text. The user interface is that simple.

And so here's my challenge and exortation to those who were at that challenge, and those who are developing other software Bible solutions: What can you do with your product to keep a person's eyes in the text of Scripture while still offering the featurs that enable you to differentitate from your competitors? Because if you can do that, then it won't matter what version(s) you offer, or even the cost of your product. People will be drawn to the text - and therefore to engaging with God. Drawing people to Him, will bring in the sales and solutions you seek.

Labels: Bible, innovation, reading, resources, software, UI

One of the pitfalls that I run into when thinking/doing mobile happens to be one of the more notable items illustrated here: there are approx 4 billion registered mobile devices (3.5-3.75 billion mobile users) but only 1-1.2 billion of them access the web on their mobile (how big is mobile). See what I see? 25-33% of mobile users are online, how does one develop a ministry with mobile when its more than just the web that's needed?

Now, its been noted (by Google's Eric Schmitt) that mobile can be a magic wand - of sorts. If you will, its not necessarly the fact that the mobile is connected, but because of its various sensors and the analytics kept with them, a mobile device could unlock interactions where there was none before. This is what I wish to get to get you - the mobile thinking minister or org - to ponder, plan, and do.

Imagine a church with this stance. The doorpost into the church was a digital bulletin board where people posted dates of their salvation, healings, disciples, etc. Bibles in the pew were just as often read as they were photographed and then messaged to those who couldn't be at the sanctuary (mobile camera with OCR, send as SMS, MMS, or email). Sermons and studies were recorded, transcribed on the spot (speech to text on the mobile), and then posted (online) and messaged (SMS, email, IM) for other communities to interact. And instead of tracks/pamphlets/leaflets, people received cards with pictures or barcodes on them to which they could not just read The Gospel, but are encouraged to share the card with someone else so that they could interact with the Gospel - read, SMS for prayer, map to local church(es), etc. - and be called to the action of sharing that card with someone else.

Its these kinds of interactions that mobile allows us as a Body to work with. The key is to not get stuck on the web. Yes, there's a signifiant portion of mobile that means "web." But, we can't get stuck there if we are going to be applicable to those persons who's concept of web is the spider they greet every morning.

Take a good look at this video of a CSI spot where they talked about using a QR Code to crack a case. Note how many interactions, both web-based and not, that were facilitated - with the mobile as simply a wand. Then, try something similar in your ministry/org and let us know how it fares :)

Labels: innovation, Internet, mobility, Web

I ranted this topic/subject on my personal blog, but really it can be summed up in saying that innovation within mobile has nothing to do with applications or devices, it has everything to do with empowerment, education, and enablement.

When the Body is ready to step into mobile - shoot, technology period - in that fashion, then we change things.

Labels: innovation, mobility, tech

Setting up and executing an effective mobile strategy is something that comes up a lot when at conferences or during engagements with various (and prospective) clients. The easy thing to say about that is that you have to have a mobile strategy (speaking solely in terms of faith-based endeavors). Its not an issue of if you will need it, but that you do and need to go about it with much clearer planning an your internet strategy.

Now, without giving away too much of what allows Inner-Linked to survive ;) I will let you in on a few things that you should be mindful of when thinking about "going mobile" on an organizational level.

• First, understand that mobile is just a window into interaction, not the only door, and should definitely not be the last door. Its a handshake, treat it as such.
• SMS is more effective than a website; so don't get caught up in mobile web and applications, yet
• Do take advantage of mobile learning via apps and websites already created for mobile use (for example, YouVersion Live)
• Finally, just try something; mobile is still too new to say that everything won't work. So try something, learn from it, and move to the next door/handshake.

Much like the Mayo Clinic is finding out, you need to have and think hard about a strategy before moving forward. But you have to move, its part of the commission (Matthew 28:18-20) and its the present and future.

Labels: Inner-Linked, innovation, mobile, mobility

Earlier this week, I submitted a panel topic to a few folks that are working on setting up a panel for next year's SXSW Conference. However, the topic was a bit late in getting to them, and therefore had to be shelved for a while.

Nevertheless, I'm pretty confident in saying that the topic is one that could offer considerable insight into technology leadership within the Body, and even more, be something that promotes the Body to seek to be not just "the same" as what people expect in terms of tech development, use, and adoption, but that we take an active part in being the innovators.

To that end, I'd like to share the topic as I presented it to the SXSW panel group for discussion here. Hopefully, there can be enough of a discussion about this that we could get consideration for a side panel or present this at another venue before 2011.

Topic Title: How Do Faith-Based Organizations Respond to Increasingly Mobile-Connected Members and Communities

Short Summary: The effect of mobile on faith-based communities has further reaching effects than spirituality.

Longer Summary: Each mass media technology has faced an uphill fight towards being adopted and used effectively by faith-based organizations. Mobile presents a special kind of challenge because of its seeemingly personal nature which contradicts with the communal approaches many faith based organizations take towards conducting their business. This panel asks whether faith-based organizations are up to the task of addressing not only the web-connected contigent, but also the mobile-enabled one. And then what are the implications of giving this mobile arena attention, when education towards the effectiveness of the 6 mass media (internet) has not yet been perfected?

I know its not the most simple of things to talk about; but we should. So, let's chat :)

Labels: community, innovation, mobility

As much as yesterday's post was about what could be the future of engaging with one another, there's also the present reality that not everything is so clear cut and easy to deal with. Most definitely there are pirates, spammers, bots, trojans, and numerous other entities on this world wide web that has made it just as dangerous as it is adventurous. Check out this snippet from the piece titled Loki's Net:

Social media like Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, GovLoop, and many others are very attractive venues for CNE by our adversaries because they are easily accessible, target-rich environments that can be exploited with little to no risk under cover of anonymity.

...According to a recent study conducted for one of the U.S. Armed Services, 60% of the service members involved in the study have posted enough information on MySpace to make themselves vulnerable to adversary targeting. And these weren’t only young recruits making bad Operations Security (OPSEC) decisions. The 60% group included officers and enlisted troops from Intelligence and Security postings as well as other sensitive positions posting such things as units they have deployed with, new duty stations, personal medical data, job duties, information about training, and pictures of themselves at deployed locations...

Read the rest of Loki's Net at O'Reilly Radar.

Nevertheless, knowing and being aware of how and how much you connect with one another online helps you be aware of potential issues, and from there, you can make contingency plans for if you do encounter anything of dire consequence.

Labels: government, innovation, privacy, social networking, tech

My bro Jamie is at it again with another post talking about how he's gone about integrating technology in his recent church plant, and that process has gone.

This time he posts about presentation software, including some Mac vs PC aspects. Here's a snippet:

...Two years later I have consistently used multimedia to enhance our services. Using PowerPoint's to accompany my train of thought and provide visuals for our congregations. Controlling the music through iTunes acting as the dj. I have deployed a number of methods of media. Some have sailed and some have sunk. That has not deterred me. I am always looking to improve our technologies seaminglessness, quality and purpose to enhance rather than take away from our weekly gatherings...

Read the rest at the Inspire blog, and follow Jamie and his church (In the Light Ministries Philly) via Twitter (@pastorjc).

What kinds of issues have you had with using various presentation-based technology? I tend to be a "display from my mobile device" kind of person myself ;)

Labels: computer, information technology, innovation, presentations

This post follows the meme of many of the other thoughts posted this week, and at the same time, it plays on its own. The meme is that innovation requires space, freedom (in Christ), and a good bit of tinkering.

Tinkering? Yes. The ability to play with something for the desired effect of creating something new, but protracted over an extended period of time. If you will, using that inventor's juice and crafting a world around you that is (hopefully) better than it was the day before.

Now, I like to tinker. And if you've been around MMM since its inception (or for just the past two weeks), you might notice that I tinker all over the place. Sometimes its web design, sometimes it content, sometimes it something else entirely that points back and through here. All in all, its that "innovator's juice" that keeps me tweaking and looking for something that sparks others (to Him).

I think that is where this comment came into play best for me:

...These are problems that cannot be entrusted to technocrats or elites: complex problems have to be solved collectively. In such a world, the only way to make a better future is to have people learn to create their own futures: to develop the capacity to solve problems, to see the consequences of their actions, and to be able to act now in ways that help them reach a better future. In other words, people have to learn how to tinker with the future. Not only that, but tinkering's lack of respect for intellectual boundaries, its willingness to experiment, its emphasis on solutions and goals, and its social openness, make it a match for wicked problems...

This is from a post titled Tinkering to the Future. This author makes the statement that we have to continue to allow people to tweak and tinker with whatever we are doing now in cyberspace to create something next.

I want to take that a bit further. We should create spaces to tinker. Whether that is something as simple as learning workshops where all you do is play, or something less structured like meetups and tech-play-dates where coders, developers, parents, leaders, all galvanize around a common aim - play and see what happens.

There's a young teen that I mentor. The past few weeks has seen him playing with my phones and asking me questions about how/why I got into writing about mobile. The conversations almost seem to go nowhere, and at the same time, its a time for him to play within himself to something that might or might not be what's next for him. To me, fostering that kind of environment for him is just as important as keeping him on task about his grades. I wonder. Can the Body become a place where tinkering is not just allowed, but fostered into something new?

Labels: community, innovation

Something that many of us who are leaders and innovators grapple with is this constant pull of being ahead of the call, and at the same time behind in profitable use. Over at Brighthand, my latest editorial titled Ahead and Behind at the Same Time speaks to this. Here's a snippet:

...There's the grapple with those of us at the utter edge of technology that is just perpetual and never-ceasing: we are ahead of the curve. We learn and apply, do and administrate, faster than analysts can analyze. And at the same time we are laughed at and called fools because we see technology now as it will eventually be seen by others -- years later...

Read the entire piece at Brighthand.

Speaking with a pastor friend recently, this is something that's just hard to come to grips with. We want to be ahead. Its literally a spiritual, mental, and physical leaning that we want to try new things and be ahead. And at the same time, this press to be ahead puts us behind the skillful use that many people simply need.

Something that I always found amazing about Jesus' approach towards "innovating" in his time was that he'd use parables - clearly expounding on things that were far and beyond the grasp of normal understanding, and at the same time packed so simply that it remained relevant to people whether they received him or not. Oh how to be ahead and behind in the same way with this tech, even moreso towards using it as a means to displaying God's eternal truths by solving simple, everyday issues.

Labels: communication, community, innovation, mobility, tech

In some emails passed with Judy Breck (judybreck.com, Golden Swamp) concerning my upcoming hosting of the Carnival of the Mobilists, she made this really astute observation concerning the application of problem solving with the greatest commandment (Deut. 6:4-6, Luke 10:27). This is what she said:

...I have always been helped by the "all your mind" part of this. Inventiveness and thinking through problems are affirmed :) If we can build an effective global network of communication, the Lord will use it in ways of His design...

Think about that for a bit. When we apply all of our intellectual capital towards solving issues that cause the Light of Christ to be displayed, we are literally living out an aspect of this (sometimes difficult to comprehend) commandment.

Imagine now if we take our hearts and souls to also capitalize on this aspect of meeting the needs of the world around us. Imagine then the kind of effect that the technology in your hands/lap/life can have.

Labels: community, innovation

An article at ReadWrite/Web spoke on the issue of the increasing technology gap between Boomers, Gen-Xers, and Gen-Yers in the workplace. Is such a gap also the case in the Body? Does it even matter that there's a gap at all?

Labels: community, computer, innovation, tech

Again with the BibleTech reflections... ok, so you are probably getting near tired of these, but really, there was a lot of good information that came through the presentations and networking. One of the conversations that I had was with a few of the folks at BibleTech (with the ears of other software and publishing houses nearby) in speaking about what users really want from electronic Bible readers.

There's one little problem, there are different buckets of users, and they want a different starting point. So I asked a question: since mobile is just one section of users, the paradigm of mobile use isn't the same as desktop or even book use, how about we start designing a Bible app from that different paradigm.

A few definitions so that we are all seeing this in the same (or as close to the same) light:

• Mobile: just speaking of devices that have a screen size smaller than 5in
• Mobile use paradigm: the goal is a task that can be completed quickly, and leads to other interactions that may or may not lead to a different technology or use (30 seconds versus 30 minutes)

So that be leveled, let’s start with what the process looks like:

Person sitting in a fellowship gets the call to open their Bible to John 3:16. There's some reading of the verse, then commentary. All the while, the only interface to the text is John 3:16.

Current Bible software says:

• Head the call to open bible
• Navigate to application
• Open book chooser, chapter/verse chooser
• Open another application (or feature to reader application) for notes
• Bookmark verse for later reference (notes usually not attached)

This sounds pretty simple. And in most cases, this is the process that we use when "thinking" about how to interact with content. Now, what if the user interface (UI) had us go into this differently:

• Navigate to application (or widget)
• Type in the reference(s) - yes, we can deal with multiple references at once here
• Select option to tag text (given preset tags of book, chapter-verse, date, and geolocation; can add custom)
• Small text field to write notes which are saved to an external file that can be read by other Bible, browser, or text applications

If you will, instead of starting at the point of "show me the text then go to where I want to go" (something how babes in Christ learn how to read the Word); we give folks a simpler interface (search box - think Google - and a list of recently used tags).

In speaking with those folks at BibleTech, the draw is that we want to expose people to that greater functionality such as commentaries, other languages, maps, etc., however the current user interface leaves a lot to be learned by users, which makes the user experience falter.

So my suggestion is that we simplify things. Starting from a search box (and this works for every mobile platform), from there, opening only the functionality that needs to be seen.

Now, this works for mobile devices better than it does for desktops (and to some degree laptops). When you are at those larger devices, you are sitting still for some period and working out something a bit more than casual reading. When the device gets smaller, the perception of functional time is different. You get on a mobile to get things done quickly, not just to read and browse. That being said, there are some elements of thinking like this which can be pretty powerful if given the attention to structuring data and simplfying.

I'll have to do some screens of how this would work out, but here and here are similar thoughts to what I've done on this meme previously. Who wants to take the first crack at doing something different?

And if you've read this far and think that this kind of approach might not be so good, take a look at what the Mozilla Firefox folks are proposing (Ubiquity/TaskFox). There's a lot that can happen when all we do is strip the conventional UI from the app, and start letting people use natural language to request functionality.

Labels: BibleTech, innovation, mobility, software, UI

Logos posted this Tuesday that the audio files from the various BibleTech presentations have been posted at the BibleTech conference website. Some speakers have also made available their slides that they used for their presentations.

For MMM's presentation, Mobile Technology and Connecting Communities, here's the audio and outline. Enjoy.

Labels: BibleTech, innovation, mobility, speech

Taking yesterday's post just a bit further, I saw a note about a project sponsored by Nokia called The Ideas Project.

It looks to be one part projections, and another part think-tank towards where technology is going and how more people can have a say in the development and execution of these ideas?

Has the Body ever done something like this (I mean, besides a venue like BibleTech or ChurchIT Roundtable)? It would be interesting to hear and see these ideas challenge and take shape around the world wouldn't it?

Labels: innovation, Nokia

Something about BibleTech that was very evident was this idea that the current [computer] tech revolution is only a bridge to the next one. If you will, there's a bigger thing happening/yet-to-happen that as a Body we not only need to be prepared for, but also innovators in front of.

Now, I can say that I did my part in respect to talking about mobile (3-4billion folks vs the 175million on Facebook means something I think) and doing the QR-code for a business card (though many could not read it apparently). There's just more coming down the pike, and for us to recognize that is very important.

For example, there were the discussions on tagging the Bible - using semantic data to create machine readable text that can be shared, read, and understood in a fuller context; discussions on how to approporately use resources like Logos in a classroom where there are different types of hardware, but there needs to be a reliance on the same software and not just teaching how to find something, but to think about it.

I guess were I'm getting at is that BibleTech opened some of us to the fact that there's more than just the tech that is going on in our front yards that is important. There's the continual growing and maturing of a faith community with and without this tech, and bringing that to the 95% of folks that currently don't see what we see.

To me, that just makes it quite fun. Especially now that the conference is over, and there are articles like this and this and this that call us to more than just leaving a status update. We have to continue to get out and engage, introveted in demeanor or not.

Labels: BibleTech, innovation

"You have a choice: you can either create your own future, or you can become the victim of a future that someone else creates for you. By seizing the transformation opportunities, you are seizing the opportunity to create your own future."

Vice Admiral Arthur Cebrowski, found in the article "Government 2.0: The Midlife Crisis" at ReadWriteWeb.

Labels: commentary, innovation

Despite the anemic pace of posting, there have been a number of items of note that have passed via my RSS reader which are worthy to note. Here's the rundown:

• The ESV Online Study Bible was released this month alongside the hardcopy and is free throughout the month of March (via Biblical Studies and Technological Tools). Its available for a slew of mobile devices too (such as Olive Tree), so there's no excuse for not having a suitable read-reference with you.
• Carnival of the Mobilists #163 (via Golden Swamp).
• Don't forget to register for MinistryTECH and BibleTech.
• A Microsoft-proposed vision of of computing in 2019 (this is what kids will know as normal).
• The Third Lausanne Congress on World Evangelism in Cape Town South Africa is going on in 2010. You can submit your choice for those you'd want to attend (via Sacred Digital).
• A person who is using a Palm Centro smartphone for Greek and Hebrew learning (via Palm Addict).
• The responsibility of parents to not allow kids to follow trends of mobile technology without first establishing guidelines via the Word (via Baptist Press).

That's all for now. I'm busy as ever and trying other new things with a mobile while working on a few articles and reviews. Back to the sea of life around me, hoping to catch a few ;)

Labels: BibleTech, Carnival of the Mobilists, children, ESV, Greek, Hebrew, innovation, MinistryTECH, Palm, Palm Addict, parenting, RSS

One of the points that I picked up in reading Mobile as 7th of the Mass Media is that mobility can be defined in a number of ways. One really effective way to look at things is in respect to the time it takes to do tasks - or as it was stated there, 30 second and 30 minute tasks.

There are some things that we just do since its immediate: check weather, look at a calendar, sports scores, etc. There are other things that we do in longer durations: read and reply to email, watch videos, blog, etc. For some of these tasks, mobile devices can be pretty effective. When you need information right now, SMS search services and the mobile internet can be pretty effective. However, as many of those systems are built, if you want to do something like invite people to something, it takes sitting down and patching information from many places - turning that 30sec task into a 30min one.

Now, let's frame this in the context of some of the things we do in the Body. For example, we have various services and meetings. For many of us, we'd do well to have those meetings near us in some kind of calendar, and maybe even a reminder. How about then your church having a service where in addition to a church calendar that you can view from your normal browser, that you can elect to get SMS alerts for the most upcoming events?

Or let's make it even better. Suppose you are at that point in the service where the pastor will be preaching in a few minutes. A notification is made (voice or big screen) that you can dial a shortcode in order to get the outline sent to you via SMS before the pastor starts preaching. To those who are visiting a new church who aren't in that church's directory, they are made aware that they will get a second SMS asking if they want to opt-in to other announcements. Those who are on that list already would just continue with having the outline on one screen, notes and Bible on others (or not).

The idea is simply that with mobile devices in the hands of most of us, we can start looking at better enabling those types of content that can fit within 30sec stints, instead of forcing them into 30min ones.

Yes, there is always that case where you will want to do more. I'm not saying that you cannot. I am saying that skilfully using this technology means that we start looking at better ways to do simple tasks. Its in doing this that we start to see the potential for mobile-enabled devices and services to come alongside what we are already familiar with, and create that 4th screen (or 7th dimension) to a fuller expression of unity in Christ and beyond.

Small additional note: Tomi Ahonen expounded on this from the perspective of mobile on a post at Communities Dominate Brands today.

Labels: communication, community, innovation, mobility, SMS

Go figure, apparently making a widget could be even simpler than waiting for a contest to be completed ;)

Matt over at Nokia Experts has written an article called Create your own Web Runtime widgets with Aptana Studio. . Basically a development environment for creating widgets, Aptana Studio makes it about as simple as possible for anyone to create a widget and get it deployed to a mobile device pretty quickly.

Now seeing this, I just need to get on a PC long enough to actually build this (unless someone else out there wants to take a crack at it). But it should be pretty easy to get up and going.

For more information and to try for yourself, visit the Aptana Studio website.

Labels: innovation, mobile, software, widgets

I was just looking at an article at Nokia Conversations about 2009 being the year of widgets and had the idea of a new widget. With the N97 Widget Compeition going on, this was quite timely. Then, I realized something, searching for a Bible verse, or saved bookmark, should really be this simple. I'd submit one for the competition, but then also share about its idea here and maybe get a few consolidation votes ;)

First off, when you think about looking up a Bible verse (whether print or digital) its always think and go. One of the frailties of mobile computers is the fact that in addition to thinking and going, you have to also open an application, and then navigate to some kind of search or index (book menu, bookmarks, or find).

Well, I started to think; what would be easier? Personally, a widget on my phone's front screen would be prefable. But that widget would have to make it really simple.

So I developed this with the idea that all you want to do is search, and it should not matter if you are looking for a verse from an application on your device or a Bible website that you prefer. That you might even have that verse saved as a bookmark somewhere like YouVersion, and all you want to do is retreive it.

Let's take a step back now. Widgets are simple programs. They do one thing only, and they are designed to minimuze the friction from thinkning about something to doing it. Many of us are familiar with widgets - Weatherbug, the clock on your desktop, etc. The idea being that when something happens, all we want to do is know about it. The more indepth things of making notes, bookmarking, etc. are left for full applications. Essentially, every Bible reader should start here, and then build the experience.

Now, about this widget. My ideal widget would allow for this to be configured to work with every Bible website and application that could be loaded on a device. That it would index all of the verses, bookmarks, and tags used, and only those would be searchable from this interface.

And if you think about 90% of the time you are sticking your hand out for a Bible, this would be it. You type the verse, it opens a popup to that verse with an additional button that says "Go to 'x' Application" or "Go to 'x' Website." That's it.

Now, for those who are students of the Word, and would like to do things like add the ability to mark a verse as favorite, add notes, highlight, etc. Nope. Not happening here. This is only meant to be short, simple, and to the point.

To developers, open your Bible application's APIs so that something like this could plug into it. You don't lose sales by allowing for something like this, and essentially, you open the door for more people to know about and learn about your application.

What are your thoughts? If not you, could you see someone really liking something simple like this?

By the way, the N97 Widget Competition is going on until February 27, 2009 (drawing on march 13th); winning prize is a new Nokia N97 mobile device. All you have to do is make an image of your widget idea and submit it.

Labels: innovation, Nokia, software, UI, usability, UX, widget

Following up on yesterday's post, we can take a look at a discussion that has been going on at the ebook website Mobile Read. There's a commentary speaking on some comments from a book publisher who explains that cheaper ebooks will destroy the paper publishing industry.

The article goes on to speak about things such as costs and distribution being major factors, and these are; but I do wonder if this is the sentiment of an industry that is not prepared for change.

Speaking as a person who reads print and electronic resources pretty easily, I see the issue (for print), but don't think that one market should hinder the other. If anything, it would be smarter for paper publishing companies to encourage ebooks for some materials.

To those of you who prefer one or ther other, what are some of the reasons for your preference, and do you think that paper publishers have a legitimate gripe about ebooks.

ADDITION/EDIT: I caught this article last night from ARs Technica which gives a good bit more towards the history of ebooks and offers some more perspective from the industry side of things. Its a recommended read.

Labels: eBook, innovation, reading

The hardest part about talking about this "intersection of faith and technology" is finding those perspectives that don't look like the models of use that aren't the same as what people are used to.

You see, its easy to say that 'x' will not work if one has the view that faith and technology has to follow some predetermined formula. I don't believe that. I see the intersection of faith and technology as the possibility to get back those connections that we lost in the race of life.

So what does mobile do? Talk, connect, learn, adapt, enable. Creates addictions, distractions, mismanagement, and exposes the depth of economic inadequacies. Is this it? Is mobile limited to these things when our faith runs up against it?

No. And to have the mentality that technology is not an opportunity to be taken advantage of is also limiting.

So we take something simple, a simple text message. We ask a question: who needs what we cannot give them (meeting the needs of the Body according to Matthew 5). Then the how... Mobile Verses (for example).

No, not everything will be easy. All of us aren't programmers with sufficient funding to make our ideas reality. But we are able, by this really neat stroke of genius called the gift of the Holy Spirit, to create roads for people to engage God in ways not thought of before.

As you sit and think about how you will approach 2009, think about doing something in mobile that hasn't been done before (or done in your local area). You might not make a career out of it, but you will give people a piece of Christ that would ordinarily be hidden from view (Matt. 5:14-16). Think about it...

Post inspired by this YouTube video (via FanBoy.com).

Labels: innovation, mobility

Was talking to a new coworker today and got a chance to play with the new BlackBerry Storm. A really neat device, it got us talking about mobile devices and specifically some features that I use with mine. Besides the 5 megapixel camera, which usually gets a lot of attention, my co-worker was a bit enthralled with the idea of instead of hitting a button to snooze an alarm or hit "ignore" for a call, that I could do those actions with just a simple motion of the mobile.

As I spoke with her, I realized that there are some aspects of mobile devices that really have to be seen to believe. Sure, one can do things such as have a touchscreen or a nice camera, but its another thing to reduce (amplify?) interactions to actual motions.

Think about what the Nintendo Wii and what it has done for casual gaming. The people who want and use the Wii are not people who are "into gaming" but who see the ability to wave the controller and become a part of the game. To these people it is not about specs and the shiny stuff, even though the PS3 and XBox 360 get that look, its about those simple things that one never thought of before when it came to gaming.

Now go back to that interaction with my coworker. I received a phone call as I was talking with her and simply flipped my phone over to ignore it. Simply speaking, she was excited. It was so much a simple activity - ignoring a phone call - but to her it meant a simple activity that was made even more natural by the use a simple behavior.

Besides FlipSilent, which does this simple snooze/ignore technique, I also have an application called RockNScroll which takes that idea of using motions a lot further. With RockNScroll, I am able to not only change the orientation of my phone from landscape to portrait by flipping it, but I can also do things such as scroll web pages and select items by "pushing" or "pulling" the mobile.

If you will, my mobile phone has become more than just an input device, but its an interactive one. And just like my co-worker who chose the BlackBerry Storm in part for the advanced touchscreen, I am using these simple motions as a means to just add a bit of interactivity to my mobile-enabled life.

When you think about it, this is more the future of computing than specs and shiny stuff. And when looked at like this, its going to be something very hard to ignore, and something a lot of folks will be willing to pick up and answer.

This post was previously posted on my personal website, but I'm following a solid request to have it posted here for further discussion and thought.

Labels: BlackBerry, innovation, mobility, N95, sensors, software

With most folks and websites taking the last bits of reflection towards 2008, I just want to encourage folks to continue on the paths of following the Lord and His heart for others as the year turns.

Here at MMM, I honestly have no clue of what 2009 will expect. Personally, I don't live on the calendar year-to-year kind of goals. My goals go from May of one year to May/June of the next (13months). This past May the goal has been to have a life that "walks off the pages." To that end, its been more than just observing and writing, but making sure that I walk out those things that are sound and profitable to the Body.

Where that leads with MMM in 2009 I don't know. We will be at BibleTech 2009, there will most probably a lot more mobile devices and services talked about, and there will (finally) be the addition of a consistent 2^nd writer. I really cannot say what else will happen. Nor do I want to. The future is God's to open as the present to us when we get there.

So I'll just point you to the bottom right side of all of the pages to the Archives for all that was posted last year. From the MMM Mobile Experiment, to the iPhone and BlackBerry posts, to just the intentional posting on spiritually-relevant ethical items such as stewardship, we will just keep rolling a life that walks off the pages when our use of mobile technology intersects with faith. What that looks like to you might be a different device or service, but as long as it begins and ends with Christ being on the throne, let's continue to innovate where others haven't.

Labels: commentary, community, devotion, innovation

Most people get on me because I am so focused on mobile. And they do have a point, I do and push things that in a lot of cases just don't seem feasible to most folks. But then again, it is. Check out a snippet from this story and think about it:

...The story goes something like this: Vic was out for dinner with family and friends. The adults were on one side of the table, the kids on the other. The adults were debating some issue, and Vic said, in response to a question from one of his friends, "I don't know."

His four-year old daughter Samantha, whom everyone knows as "Tiger," piped up from the other side of the table: "Daddy, where's your phone?"

"What do you mean, where's my phone?" She explained that she'd overheard the question. Why wasn't he just looking up the answer on his phone...

There's a lot that people are doing on a PC that would be a lot better served on a mobile, and by interacting with one another. As the Body of techies, how are we teaching and enabling this simple observation from a child, to change how we approach tech and ministry?

Labels: education, innovation, mobile, mobility, teaching

Sometimes, we need to do more than just think outside the box, we need to think beyond it:

...Last summer, Chipchase sat through a monsoon-season downpour inside the one-room home of a shoe salesman and his family, who live in the sprawling Dharavi slum of Mumbai. Using an interpreter who spoke Tamil, he quizzed them about the food they ate, the money they had, where they got their water and their power and whom they kept in touch with and why. He was particularly interested in the fact that the family owned a cellphone, purchased several months earlier so that the father, who made the equivalent of $88 a month, could run errands more efficiently for his boss at the shoe shop. The father also occasionally called his wife, ringing her at a pay phone that sat 15 yards from their house. Chipchase noted that not only did the father carry his phone inside a plastic bag to keep it safe in the pummeling seasonal rains but that they also had to hang their belongings on the wall in part because of a lack of floor space and to protect them from the monsoon water and raw sewage that sometimes got tracked inside. He took some 800 photographs of the salesman and his family over about eight hours and later, back at his hotel, dumped them all onto a hard drive for use back inside the corporate mother ship. Maybe the family’s next cellphone, he mused, should have some sort of hook as an accessory so it, like everything else in the home, could be suspended above the floor...

Read this entire article in its context at the NY Times.

Can we really say that we are using the Internet and its associated technologies to the benefit of others and to the glory of God in light of examples like this?

Labels: community, innovation, Internet, mobility, poverty, wealth

This weekend I had the opportunity to attend two of three concerts which are part of a show called MixxMaster's Studio Lounge. Both nights saw a ton of youth and mobile action, and the picture in this post is just one of the really neat scenes from the night.

This scene was probably the most awesome of the night as young and old, people from various races and areas of the US, all came together to just put Jesus in the front of all that was going on that night. Lecrae in particular leading this was an impressive act of humbliness and maturity. A Christian hiphop artist who has recently broken the secular Billboard Top 10 with his latest release, he pointed folks to Jesus. This moment captured in a picture, a moment of utter agreement by all in the room (400+ people), was just awesome.

At the same time, that venue also added to my fustrations with the Body and mobile technology. Let me preface in saying that I am very clear on issues of artists, images, video, and rights. What I want to point out is the missed opportunity to involve youth with a media company, and the ability to literally change how concerts are done - with just a simple mobile phone.

On the third night of Mixx Master's, it was asked of all those in the audience with cameras and camera phones to only take stills and not video of the night. Now understand, most of those with a mobile in the audience were youth. And that video was going to go right to their MySpace (or other) pages before they left the building. But due to legalities, the security in the audience constantly told people throughout the night that moving pics could not be taken.

For me, for this mobilists who started MMM with the idea that the Body should be innovators of mobile tech and its use, I was fustrated.

Its Sunday night when I am writing this, and I am still fustrated. This was an opportunity to do the best of mashups, and include mobile and youth in the telling of a story about an artist that many of them identified with. It didn't happen - again.

A ton of youth with a mobile phone, a free SMS/MMM shortcode to upload videos, utilzie the abiltiies of the audio/video team to mashup the content, publish the viewpoints of those in the audience beside the professional footage = end up with a story that cannot be repeated, but can be shared and told over and over. For all those hands that were raised, especially the one teen girl who gave her life to Christ, this was a story that was missed. An opportunity to do a concert and TV show in a way that had not been done before. It was missed.

For my part, I've got a problem in seeing these opportunities and then putting Jesus in front of them. Its really an issue of knowing that the Body has the best story to tell, but will not take advantage of it with what is available either because of ignorance or refusal. I really don't know what I'll do at this point except to point this post to a few there, and hope that people can start to use their means to see all points of our lives as vantage points where Christ's story can be told so that others come to see Him just as Lecrae presented - the man who wasn't afraid to be a rebel to show us how much the Father loved us. Because to me, people getting together to exhalt the Lord is fun, but when we keep our own slience, the fustration just weighs on me.

Labels: community, innovation, mobility, music, teens. youth

Change is a weird thing. Its one part exciting and another part very uncomfortable. Jesus's life was marked by these challenges to general conventions and perceptions that were sometimes received with gladness (for example, forgiving the sins of the lame man then healing him) and other times mocked and scorned (the Pharasees, council, and Pilate questioning Jesus' divinity).

These challenges to change mark our very lives though. Whether we are the agent of change, or being subjected to it, at some point, we have to accept that the way we think, do, percieve, etc. must adapt, or we die.

I'd like to believe that Body has done an impressive job of eventually adapting to whatever the world has done around it. When there was a need for educators, the church stepped up. When there was a need for doctors in war-torn areas, people in the Body formed organizations to address those needs. It would see that the Body always has had the right, if not late, reaction to change.

However, I've not see us as proactive (instead of reactive) to change. If you will, pulling a card from Jesus' life and being an agent of change, even in respect to the fact that people won't get it until we're gone to glory. It seems to me that we've lost that edge a bit, and that edge is something that could have mitigated several items that we react and fight against even today.

I've just finished reading an article titled Of Cell Phones, Maps and Mental Models: Why Doing What Was Right Is Sometimes Wrong. This article is aimed at those who analyze the trends and their impacts; those in the technology field who get blinded by their light of what looks good and successful now, but they miss the little thing that signals the change that will overturn things sooner rather than later. Here's one of many quotes from that piece that stood out:

..Thus, the first and critical point about why we fail to see the need for change stems from the fact that we stand blinded by the light of successful past mental maps. The longer these maps have worked, the more it makes sense to hold on to them and the more difficult it is to see beyond them to recognize the need for changing them. This applies not only to companies and macro issues like strategies or technology, but also to individuals and issues as small as how to communicate or provide feedback to someone.

Placing this in the context of the Body, church, and technology, it would seem that we'd be wise not to rest on our laurels, or even fight against the change that is happening right under our noses. We'd be better learning how we can be apart of what's changing, and then be like Jesus and prepare those who will be taking the mantle to the ends of the earth with the tools and Gift needed to do so.

Labels: commentary, community, innovation, tech

This year, one of my biggest struggles with just about everything has been to remember that there's a good bit of relevance that must be undertaken with everything. And especially in the field of mobile technology where things just move faster than people want to even write about, its important to remember something I've been told often, technology is only relevant when it is personal. Some recent thinkings have put me in a position though where I realize that I have to do a lot more evangelism than just using this stuff in order to make this point clear.

I can start with the example of my use of Nokia's Mobile Web Server. Frankly speaking, this is probably one of the most far out things that I use and one of those things that people go "ooh" about, but just don't understand. Without repeating the entire post that I wrote up on my personal website, I will say it like this: using a web server on your mobile phone, or even just the idea of having a web server in your home gives YOU control of the information that you put on the net. Not Google, not Nokia, not anyone. You administer it, and you say how it gets anywhere, if it goes out at all.

The mobile device that's that and adds the ability to associate that personal information with the context of your environment. Its not just an IP address, its an IP address that's attached to a photo of a place or a contact person or a a mesh of all of those and more. That's not the web virtual, that's a literal web. And its already something in your hands. Imagine knitting the Body together with that kinda stuff.

Or about about mobile devices in general? Most would say that while they are enabling, that they offer no real benefit over other computing situations. That might be right, until you consider the cost of powering devices. The wastefulness that we display as a computing culture is crazy. Slimming down to the bare essentials should allow us the time to develop more accessible and renewable solutions, while making all of those previously stated connections all the more fruitful.

Connecting: I want to be the kind of parent who has the "key" for allowing his household to be online. If you will, I'd like my mobile device to be the gateway for my family. This way I can see and interact with what my kids are doing, and my wife has an accessible and open means to keep me accountable. Far reaching? Nope. Using something like this soon to come software and a solid smartphone this is not just possible, but probably advisable.

Look. I am not saying that we have to do this. I am saying that the technology is relevant if we look at it as being so. I still think that a partnership between churches and developing nations could do more for increasing technical competencies for both sides than just doing nothing. I still feel that solutions like Earthcomber should be used by more urban missionaries to share and live the Gospel. I still see the need for people to put these devices down and interact with one another being an important part of using these devices. I just have a problem with just letting it sit here. I'm made in God's image. I'd like to believe that somewhere in me beats the ability to be relevant with whatever is in my hands and life.

For me, it just happens to be mobile tech and its various applications, intersecting with my faith, in a way that just happens to push the green light out a bit longer.

Labels: accessiblity, Bible, children, church, community, computer, environment, innovation, Internet, Mobile Web Server, mobility, networking, OLPC, smartphone, software

I was reading about the next OLPC laptop, the XO-2, and its new form factor and it caused me to reflect a bit on the purpose of technology to empower and enable people to reach beyond the glass ceiling that social or economics presents before us.

As the Body enabled with mobile tech in its various forms, I think about a project like the OLPC Project and wonder where and if we are being as effective in terms of looking for innovative and needed (debatable term I know) solutions for empowering communities.

Another thing that the OLPC Project brings to mind is the fact that we can sometimes have an effect in a place where we originally didn't want to. The OLPC has spawned devices such as the MacBook Air and Asus Eee PC as capable laptop solutions that fit into lives instead of forcing you to fit into theirs (mostly).

I've been exposed to some very blessed people in the Body, and some wealthy ones. I wonder on both accounts if we are doing what we can to effect change for the greater good given our abilities with resource. Not to say that we all have to be a Bill and Melinda Gates, but how are we using what we have to bring Christ into a place that He hasn't been. And moreso to improve the quality of life of those around us so that preaching Christ is easier to be heard since basic needs are met.

It's just me thinking aloud. But I wanted to share this because its something that hits me pretty often. Is there really any innovation left in the Body, or are we just riding the coattails of whatever happens until Jesus returns?

Related Articles at MMM:

• The OLPC Give 1 Get 1 Challenge As A Mobile Opportunity
• Becoming More Tech Savvy Is A Necessity

Labels: Asus Eee, community, innovation, MacBook Air, mobile, OLPC, tech