by Lon on November 20, 2008
We live in an age of networks.
Most of us know that we can’t do anything truly visionary on our own. And if we can, our visions are likely too small. The internet (which is only about 4000 days old) has accelerated our capacity to network with one another.
The internet allows grassroots tribes to come out from nowhere, upending established institutions. You’ve seen this with the Obama comapaign, and you can see it in the rise of new church networks and associations as denominations decline.
Maybe it’s just me, but I’ve been sensing a rapid land grab for the church network of the future. “Church networks” brings up over 3 million hits on google. Rick Warren says he wants to create the ‘network of networks’, as with many other visionary leaders.
In techie terms it’s the platform. Microsoft Windows is a computing platform, google is an online platform, you could say facebook is a social networking platform. The biggest and broadest rules them all.
There are many advantages to a common platform or network. The economies of scale, standardized best practices, and phenomenal impact. Imagine if David Yonggi Cho of the 830,000 person Yoido full gospel church in Soul Korea asked every person to pick up one piece of trash each that day?
What’s astounding is that at the very foundation of these massive Christian networks, is just one man.
Sometimes I find it hard to tell if our networks are simply reflecting Christ’s heart for unity… or if they’re pyramid schemes of influence?
May the biggest network win…? What do you think?
by Lon on September 12, 2008
You’ve got to love google’s ‘contextual’ ads.
Besides ads for various ’solar’ panels, the two ads that google’s been serving up on my site recently are
“Christian Leadership B.S.”
and
“Meet Christian Girls Free”
Some insights from this.
Picking out key words, is not the same as context.
Google can brilliantly identify over 63 billion web pages, but still can identify the pulse of who I am, what I value, and what I write about.
If red flags don’t go up when you advertise your Christian Leadership organization as B.S., do you really have a chance at helping others lead and engage culture in our context?
Maybe Christian Leadership is B.S.
How much are Christian girls supposed to cost?
And if you’re offering them for free, do we really want them?
Besides God, no one will ever fully know the extent of who you are. And every day you and I make decisions based on snippets of reality.
What does it mean to engage others as fully human In a world of soundbites and snapshots, where context is a moving target?
Thanks to those of you who’ve continued to follow along. It’s been a slow blogging month as my head’s been elsewhere. I’ve been horrendously sick the past five days. Google tells me my brain is hemorraging.
There’s so much to be excited about in my life right now, but I’m a bit too nauseous to enjoy it all right now.
May you all feel a whole lot better than I do today. peace.
Firefox version 3.0 was just released moments ago. (They’re trying to set a world record for downloads today and looks like the servers are down, you can get direct download links here).
I’ve always been a productivity/tech junkie, besides firefox, here’s some random stuff I use to get stuff done.
- My Dual Core T60 thinkpad (200772U) – I bought this right before I left my job at IBM. Not quite cutting edge anymore, but still like a rock. The docking station makes it real convenient as well.
- at home and when my wife is not using it, I use a Dell Dimension e521 with vista
- Microsoft’s free sync-toy keeps my working files in sync on the two computers
- Documents, pictures, and videos are primarily backed up to a 500GB WD mybook
- gmail – emailing, documents archiving, contact info
- All notes are taken with Microsoft OneNote’s tabbed folder system
- Web clippings go to google notebook, and bookmarks are tagged with del.icio.us
- When offline and for free-form notes I use a 5×8 ruled moleskine notebook
- I’ve been using a crappy nokia 6015i with a dusty screen on virgin mobile for 8 bucks a month the past few years holding out for an overdue google phone
- For calendaring and to-do’s I use google calendar. Microsoft Outlook is used as needed when offline.
- google deskop for quick file and document searches
- A Canon S80 point and shoot camera. For photo management and touch-ups I use picasa. with facebook and flickr plugins so I can upload directly as well. I use irfanview for simple resizing and image editing.
- wordpress.org for blogging
- google reader for quick blog reading
- windows live messenger and googletalk primarily for IM
- twhirl for occasional twitter updates
- an esso speedpass – so I can pay for overpriced gas, even faster
I’ll list off some resources I feed off of later as well.
Friends ask me all the time about making money blogging.
