ReconRab​bi​.net

March 29, 2010

ReconRabbiReconRab­bi is a social net­work for rab­bis asso­ci­at­ed with the Recon­struc­tion­ist Rab­bini­cal Col­lege. It is designed to pro­vide ongo­ing edu­ca­tion and net­work­ing for far-flung alumni.
It’s a high­ly cus­tomized, member-only site built on the Ning plat­form. The typ­i­cal Ning fea­tures are here: video, pod­casts and mem­ber pro­files. Expand­ed areas include exten­sive train­ing mate­r­i­al for mem­bers. We record­ed and I edit­ed a series of eight screen­casts of approx­i­mate­ly five min­utes each for their Help sec­tion using Screen­flow for Mac; top­ics include sign­ing up, adding dis­cus­sions, using the cus­tomized train­ing material.
Member-only Site: http://​www​.reconrab​bi​.net/.

The Limits of the Real Time Web

October 19, 2009

Beth Kan­tor’s non­prof­it blog has an good arti­cle ask­ing about the pos­si­bil­i­ties for real-time web inter­ac­tion and asks whether it’s pos­si­ble for the web to let some­one be in two places at the same time:

What inter­ests me is if this is the next evo­lu­tion of the social web -
what is the cul­ture shift that needs to hap­pen with­in a non­prof­it to
embrace it?  Of course, I want to also know what the val­ue or benefit
is to nonprofits?

For
me, the eye-opening moment of real-time col­lab­o­ra­tion came last win­ter when I was plan­ning a con­fer­ence with two friends. The three of us knew each oth­er pret­ty well and we had all
met each oth­er one-on-one but we had nev­er been in the same room togeth­er (this would­n’t hap­pen until the first evening of the con­fer­ence we were co-leading!). A month to go we sched­uled a con­fer­ence call to hash out details.

I got on Skype from my New Jer­sey home and called Robin on her Bay Area land­line and Wess on his cell­phone in Los Ange­les. The mixed tele­pho­ny was fun enough, but the
amaz­ing part came when we brought our com­put­ers into the con­ver­sa­tion. With­in min­utes we had opened up a shared Google Doc file and started
cut­ting and past­ing agen­da items. Some­one made a
ref­er­ence to a video, found it on Youtube and sent it to the oth­er two
by Twit­ter. Wess had a sec­ondary wiki going, we were book­mark­ing resources on Deli­cious and send­ing links by instant messenger.

This is qual­i­ta­tive­ly dif­fer­ent from the two-places-at-once scenario
that Beth Kan­tor was imag­in­ing because we were using real-time web tools to be more present with one
anoth­er. Our atten­tion was more focused on the work at hand.

I’m more skep­ti­cal about non­prof­its engag­ing in the live tweet­ing phe­nom­e­non – fast-pace, real-time updates on Twit­ter and oth­er “micro-blogging” ser­vices. These tend to be so
much use­less noise. How use­ful can we be if our atten­tion is so divided?

Last week a non­prof­it I fol­low used Twit­ter to cov­er a press
con­fer­ence. I’m sor­ry to say that the flood of tweets amount­ed to a lot of use­less triv­ia. So what that the
politi­cian you invit­ed actu­al­ly showed up in the room? That he actually
walked to the podi­um? That he actu­al­ly start­ed talk­ing? That he ticked
through your talk­ing points? These are all things we knew would happen
when the press con­fer­ence was announced. There was no NEWs in this and no take-away that could get me more involved.

What would have been useful
were links to back­ground issues, a five-things-you-do list, and a five
minute wrap-up video released with­in an hour of the even­t’s end. They
could have been coor­di­nat­ed in such a way to ramp up the real time buzz: if they had post­ed an Twit­ter update every half
hour or so w/one select­ed high­light and a link to a live Ustream​.tv link I
prob­a­bly would have checked it out. The dif­fer­ence is that I would have
cho­sen to have my work­day inter­rupt­ed by all of this extra activ­i­ty. In the online
econ­o­my, atten­tion is the cur­ren­cy and any unusu­al activ­i­ty is
a kind of mugging.

When I talk to clients, I invari­ably tell that “social media” is inher­ent­ly social, which is to say that it’s about peo­ple com­mu­ni­cat­ing. The excite­ment we bring to our every­day com­mu­ni­ca­tion and the judg­ment we show in shap­ing the mes­sage is much more impor­tant than the Web 2.0 tool de jour.

Convergent Friends: Content not designed for our market?

April 24, 2009

Hen­ry Jenk­ins (right) mix­es up the names but has good com­men­tary on the Susan Boyle phe­nom­e­non in How Sarah [Susan] Spread and What it Means. I’ve been quot­ing lines over on my Tum­blr blog but this is a good one for Quak­er read­ers because I think it says some­thing about the Con­ver­gent Friends culture:

When we talk about pop cos­mopoli­tanism, we are most often talking
about Amer­i­can teens doing cos­play or lis­ten­ing to K‑Pop albums, not
church ladies gath­er­ing to pray for the suc­cess of a British reality
tele­vi­sion con­tes­tant, but it is all part of the same process. We are
reach­ing across bor­ders in search of con­tent, zones which were used to
orga­nize the dis­tri­b­u­tion of con­tent in the Broad­cast era, but which
are much more flu­id in an age of par­tic­i­pa­to­ry cul­ture and social
networks.

We live in a world where con­tent can be accessed quick­ly from any
part of the world assum­ing it some­how reach­es our radar and where the
col­lec­tive intel­li­gence of the par­tic­i­pa­to­ry cul­ture can identify
con­tent and spread the word rapid­ly when need­ed. Susan Boyle in that
sense is a sign of big­ger things to come — con­tent which wasn’t
designed for our mar­ket, con­tent which was­n’t timed for such rapid
glob­al cir­cu­la­tion, gain­ing much greater vis­i­bil­i­ty than ever before
and net­works and pro­duc­tion com­pa­nies hav­ing trou­ble keep­ing up with
the rapid­ly esca­lat­ing demand.

Susan Boyle’s video was pro­duced for a U.K.-only show but social media has allowed us to share it across that bor­der. In the Con­ver­gent Friends move­ment, we’re dis­cov­er­ing “con­tent which was­n’t designed for our mar­ket” – Friends of all dif­fer­ent stripes hav­ing direct access to the work and thoughts of oth­er types of Friends, which we are able to sort through and spread almost imme­di­ate­ly. In this con­text, the “net­works and pro­duc­tions com­pa­nies” would be our year­ly meet­ings and larg­er Friends bodies.

Extending customer relationships through social media

April 8, 2009

Over on my O’Reil­ly Media blog, I’ve writ­ten “Will Face­book (all but) replace cor­po­rate web­sites?,” a look at where I think the third-party social media web­sites are going. Here’s a taste:

The goal of most web­sites is to extend­ed the inter­ac­tion with the vis­i­tor beyond this one vis­it: we seek to sell them a prod­uct, join our mail­ing list, buy tick­ets to our event or sub­scribe to us in a news read­er. Face­book is quick­ly becom­ing the most impor­tant email list and news read­er. If it con­tin­ues to inno­vate (and bor­row ideas from inno­v­a­tive com­peti­tors) it could quick­ly become a major com­mer­cial por­tal as well. As its adop­tion rate climbs with­in the ranks of our tar­get audi­ences, it becomes an effec­tive way to extend vis­i­tor rela­tion­ship and build more inti­mate brand identities.

This will change com­pa­ny’s inter­ac­tions with cus­tomers, who will start to expect and then demand real-time inter­ac­tion. This can take many forms – sta­tus updates, cal­en­dars, videos – but the empha­sis will be on imme­di­a­cy. The style will shift from slickly-produced mass mar­ket­ing to a one-on-one respon­sive back and forth. Smart mar­keters will think less in terms of sell­ing and more in terms of rela­tion­ship build­ing. Ana­lyt­ics and constantly-rolling A/B tests will give us a near real-time gauge with which to mea­sure the suc­cess of these rela­tion­ships. The reces­sion is bring­ing a new urgency for mea­sur­able results and might actu­al­ly help shift cor­po­rate and non-profit bud­gets away from high-price opin­ions and toward this new style of social-network-mediated marketing.

It will be inter­est­ing to see how orga­ni­za­tions adapt to social medi­a’s evolv­ing role.

Friends Council Social Network

November 25, 2008

FriendsCouncil.netThis is a Ning-based social net­work for Friends Coun­cil on Edu­ca­tion, a Quak­er orga­ni­za­tion ded­i­cat­ed to sup­port­ing Friends Schools across a very wide geo­graph­ic area. I set the site up and did ini­tial train­ing. The members-only site now boasts over 700 mem­bers and dozens of member-uploaded videos and photos.

Save St Mary’s Malaga

May 6, 2008

Save St Mary's MalagaOn a Fri­day my wife Julie and old­er son attend­ed a ral­ly to save a favorite church in Mala­ga, Glouces­ter Coun­ty, New Jer­sey threat­ened with clo­sure by the Dio­cese of Cam­den. By Sun­day we launched Savest​marys​.net. It was a week­end where I was already swamped with dead­lines, so it’s stan­dard Mov­able Type but with all the tricks of mashed-up Web 2.0 sites to let Julie pour con­tent in: Flickr, Youtube and Google Cal­en­dars.

For two years we also had a com­pan­ion Ning-based social net­work for church­es through the Diocese.

Vis­it: Savest​marys​.net

We the Church, the People and the Fellowship

November 13, 2007

Lib­er­al Friends today fre­quent­ly ques­tion the mean­ing of mem­ber­ship. Its neces­si­ty and oblig­a­tions are debat­ed. Does it fos­ter sep­a­ra­tion? Is it an exclu­sive club? What cul­tur­al norms get in the way of wider fel­low­ship? Why do so many of our meet­ings have the same lim­it­ed demo­graph­ic and why do they look so unlike the larg­er com­mu­ni­ty. The way we answer these ques­tions affect the way we think of out­reach and min­istry and what we mean when we think of who “we” are. (Inter­est­ing recent dis­cus­sions from a seek­er here and amongst Con­ser­v­a­tive Friends here.)

Mem­ber­ship is a pow­er­ful means of facil­i­ta­tion fel­low­ship, some­thing that most of us need to grow very deep into the Spir­it. But the fel­low­ship of our month­ly meet­ings (and of “Quak­erism” in gen­er­al) can eas­i­ly become a dis­trac­tion, a means to its own end, a false idol. We need to keep our eyes on the prize and real­ize that mem­ber­ship in meet­ing is sec­ondary to mem­ber­ship in the body of Christ and into that Spir­it which seeks to build the King­dom of God in the world.

Here I’ll look at three over­lap­ping ways of defin­ing “we”: the Church, the Fel­low­ship and the Peo­ple. They’re not mutu­al­ly exclu­sive but they’re also not iden­ti­cal and its pos­si­ble to have one with­out the oth­ers. “We” are out of bal­ance and unable to grow into our full mea­sure as indi­vid­u­als and as a faith com­mu­ni­ty when we don’t keep our eyes on all three together.

The Church

This is the col­lec­tive body of all those who have expe­ri­enced the pow­er of the Inward Christ and turned toward Him. Lib­er­al Friend that I am I’m not going to insist on what name peo­ple give to the oth­er side of this encounter (espe­cial­ly at first). The expe­ri­ence of vis­i­ta­tion comes in var­i­ous man­i­fes­ta­tions and we will be alter­nate­ly judged, com­fort­ed, etc. God loves us and does­n’t hide Him­self from us and reach­es us wher­ev­er we are. This is not to say that all reli­gious tra­di­tions are equal­ly use­ful guides to that path, just that God is merciful. 

The vis­i­ta­tion is not a one-time affair but ongo­ing. As we respond we will change and we will find our­selves vol­un­tar­i­ly re-aligning our lives in ways that let us hear the Spir­it more clear­ly. It is quite pos­si­ble to be a respectable mem­ber of a reli­gious body and stop lis­ten­ing (the root of Friends ner­vous­ness about pro­fes­sion­al min­istry). As we mature spir­i­tu­al­ly and fine-tune the instru­ment of our dis­cern­ment, we will be pre­sent­ed with ever more sub­tle and inge­nious temp­ta­tions and snares to fur­ther progress. It becomes almost impos­si­ble to progress with­out the active fel­low­ship of oth­ers com­mit­ted to this jour­ney, who will con­firm and chal­lenge us as need­ed and ampli­fy our praise.

The Fel­low­ship

We orga­nize our­selves into frail human insti­tu­tions to pro­vide that fel­low­ship. This is fine and nec­es­sary at times but comes with its own snares. It is all too easy to raise up our­selves and begin to exalt our­selves. It is easy to think that our pur­pose is to serve our­selves. We must nev­er for­get that the Body of Christ is our first mem­ber­ship and that its bound­aries will nev­er match up with our print­ed direc­to­ries or mem­ber­ship roles. The pri­ma­ry role of the month­ly meet­ing and lower-case “c” church­es is to spread the good news of the spir­i­tu­al res­ur­rec­tion of Christ and the life and pow­er that exists when we serve God. “The Mem­ber­ship” is always a tem­porar­i­ly illu­sion, a pale imi­ta­tion of The Church and a tem­po­rary stop-gap as the King­dom of God aligns itself on the world. 

The Peo­ple

“Christ has come to teach The Peo­ple Him­self,” one of George Fox’s most impor­tant insights. We’re all in this togeth­er, spir­i­tu­al sal­va­tion is for us all. Those of us who have felt the work­ings of the Inward Spir­it in our hearts must sing that out to every­one we meet. We must hum the song of God and so let oth­ers hear it in their hearts. 

In the Bible “the peo­ple” are the Jews, a spe­cif­ic social group whose spir­i­tu­al devo­tion fades in and out through the cen­turies. The Old Tes­ta­ment is sto­ry after sto­ry of the Jew­ish peo­ple falling down and get­ting back up, usu­al­ly with the help of a prophet whose role was to remind them of God and show them how far they had fall­en out of align­ment with His will. 

Jesus was prophet extra­or­di­naire. When lawyers asked him to define neigh­bor – who is it that our reli­gious insti­tu­tions exist to serve – he gave the sto­ry of a despised Samar­i­tan who did the right thing by help­ing a fel­low human in need. A point of this sto­ry was to show that the Jew­ish God works among non-Jews and that faith­ful­ness does­n’t depend on one’s social sta­tion in life.

The Peo­ple are every­where. We all have access to the Spir­it. And if we are to be the build­ing blocks to God’s King­dom here on Earth we must serve one anoth­er across the super­fi­cial­i­ties that seek to divide us: lines of class, race, eth­nic­i­ty and yes even sex­u­al ori­en­ta­tion. These are snares. We must seek to rise up togeth­er, focus­ing less on per­ceived fail­ings of those around us than on our own inward call to a greater per­fec­tion (com­mu­nion) with God.

What does this all mean to Friends?

Most Quak­er meet­ings I’ve vis­it­ed are good at one or two of these mod­els of we-ness. But with­out bal­ance they become self-serving. 

The Church with­out Fel­low­ship becomes a “ranter­ism” where every­one is tempt­ed by the snares of self-delusion. Church with­out the Peo­ple becomes a elite spir­i­tu­al­ism that detach­es itself from the pain of the world and the need to wit­ness and serve our neighbors.

Fel­low­ship with­out the Peo­ple becomes a social club unin­ter­est­ed in shar­ing this good thing we’ve got going. Fel­low­ship with­out the Church becomes the shell of an emp­ty form wor­ship­ing itself.

The Peo­ple with­out the Church give us a con­sumer cul­ture which exists for the next fash­ion, for the next sale at the Mall. The Peo­ple with­out Fel­low­ship becomes a flock of sheep dis­persed, easy tar­gets for the wolves of temp­ta­tion whis­per­ing in our ears.

Human fel­low­ships like a Quak­er month­ly meet­ing exist sole­ly to bridge the Church and the Peo­ple. Some of that work involves learn­ing our min­istry and ser­vice, facil­i­tat­ed by month­ly meet­ings and helped along by the tools of our Friends tra­di­tion. But most of the work of the Church is its dai­ly wit­ness to the world of the trans­for­ma­tive pow­er of the Spir­it in our lives. If we’re doing our job right our meet­ings should con­stant­ly buck­le and break under the weight of new mem­bers and our wor­ship will spill out into our lives. We will care more about our neigh­bors than our fel­low­ship. “Out­reach,” “Inreach,” “Min­istry” and “Wit­ness” will all be the same work. 

The Gorillas and Chimps of the Social Networking Scene

September 18, 2006

Over on the New York Times, an arti­cle about a new Nickolodeon-created web­site for parents

now in the final stages of beta testing. 

In a non­pub­lic test of the site over the sum­mer by about
1,000 recruit­ed par­tic­i­pants, exec­u­tives learned that these users
want­ed to blog; now, every user with a pro­file can, Ms. Rep­pen said.
Through the beta test, which is now open to new mem­bers, Nick is
learn­ing that par­ents want spaces to sell their crafts, a separate
Chris­t­ian home-schooling dis­cus­sion and big­ger type on the Web site.
Local dis­cus­sion boards will also be added, as will user-generated
video.

They also quote a Nis­san mar­ket­ing exec­u­tive, who says that
“com­mu­ni­ty sites are one of the big phe­nom­e­non hap­pen­ing on line this
year.”

There is a big shift going on.

It’s star­tling to real­ize that my three year tod­dler is almost the same age as Myspace and old­er than Face­book.
In just a few short years they’ve come to dom­i­nate much of the online
world, espe­cial­ly with under-25 users. The kind of inde­pen­dent blogs
that dom­i­nate a sites like Live­jour­nal and Blogspot don’t have the web
of cross-connections – what I called the “folk­so­nom­ic den­si­ty” – of the new
social net­work­ing sites. It seems appro­pri­ate that Myspace was found­ed by spam­mers: who knows more about suck­ing peo­ple in?

The ques­tion: will the net have room for inde­pen­dent niche sites?
Myspace is chang­ing its archi­tec­ture to dis­able key link­ing fea­tures of
third-party embed­ded plug-ins like the from the pop­u­lar video site Youtube. The big search sites also want a piece of this mar­ket – new fea­tures on Yahoo local and the geo­t­agged maps
on Yahoo’s Flickr are impres­sive). It all reminds me some of the
debates about local food co-ops ver­sus enlight­ened super­mar­kets: is it
a good thing that organ­ic pro­duce and soymilk can be pur­chased at the
local Acme, even if that cuts into the inde­pen­dent co-op’s business?
Don’t we want every­one to have access to every­thing? In the end,
phi­los­o­phy won’t set­tle this argument.