Where’s Waldo?

If Waldo were a real person in today’s world, we would probably know exactly where he was at all times, thanks to gowalla, foursquare, brightkite and other geolocation sites.  Even Twitter let’s you update your location via their API, and soon you will be able to update your location directly at Twitter, which is the most used twitter app.  Also, geolocation is coming to Facebook soon, as well.

I have played in the geolocation arena slightly but have since pulled back to be a little more anonymous.  I don’t think you need to know exactly where I am, even at the risk of not becoming the mayor of my local Starbucks, which I think I am easily a front runner to win that race.

I have many friends who are mayor of various local attractions or king of their neighborhood or whatever and that is fine. It’s fun to watch and observe, but I choose to not participate and I would encourage you to consider (or reconsider) your involvement.

Why do I care?  Let me paint a picture. It is the height of summer and I am loading my family up to take a vacation to somewhere, anywhere. In my usual manner, I am tweeting my family’s location across the country and even using a site like foursquare.com.  One of the first things I have done is identified my exact address on the site then I use the site to journal my entire trip. Now, you, being less wholesome than I, have paid attention and know that my house is empty, so you can drop by and know you won’t be bothered.  I probably even tweeted that I dropped the dogs off to be boarded, so you seriously have no worries.  Furthermore, I might have even tweeted that the alarm system on my home is not working and I failed to get it fixed before leaving town.

Another example played out in my life recently. My family traveled 2 states away while I stayed at home and I’m sure somehow between my wife and I, we tweeted about their trip and the fact that I was staying home alone for the weekend.  Not a big deal at all.  Well, something came up and I ended up leaving home late at night, to drive all night and essentially rescue my family.  I was cautious to broadcast my travels because for the person very aware, it would have been a slam dunk to know that no one was home for 3 days.

Seems that there is danger both in announcing a trip or even Saturday afternoon errand running.  Some of us might live a good 30 minutes from any type of shopping so if I announce on Twitter, via foursquare, that I am at the mall, you, still being the less than wholesome one, know that you have at least 30-45 minutes to complete the task of robbing all of my worldly possessions.

Can it get any easier than this?

Yes it can. If you haven’t heard yet, let me introduce you to PleaseRobMe.com.  As they clearly state, their site is simply a dressed up Twitter search page giving you info that anyone can get. Their intention is not to help ensure that you are robbed but to actually raise our awareness. They state their purpose fairly well.

The danger is publicly telling people where you are. This is because it leaves one place you’re definitely not… home. So here we are; on one end we’re leaving lights on when we’re going on a holiday, and on the other we’re telling everybody on the internet we’re not home. It gets even worse if you have “friends” who want to colonize your house. That means they have to enter your address, to tell everyone where they are. Your address.. on the internet.. Now you know what to do when people reach for their phone as soon as they enter your home. That’s right, slap them across the face.

It’s perfectly fine if you want to share your location both when at home and away from home but just be aware of the dangers and what you might be inviting.

Am I paranoid? What are your thoughts on this?

For some ideas on how to use geo-location for good and not danger, go here and continue reading.

Is it safe to say we are hyper-connected in today’s society? I think so. There literally isn’t a moment in time when I’m not connected somehow. If I’m not sitting in front of my computer (or 2 or 3), with various social media tools open such as GoogleTalk, GoogleVoice, Twitter and Facebook, I always have my Treo Pro on me with GoogleTalk, GoogleVoice, Twitter and Facebook running.

So, if you need to reach me, you can. There are so many options. At this point in my life, I have a pretty good handle on the various social media platforms I am active with and it actually boggles my mind to consider adding anything new.  There are various other social media tools and platforms that I have my finger in but I am probably still trying to find the value in those.  There is always a learning curve with something new and once I push through that, I am looking for the added value.

I honestly don’t have time for anything new and different. I think the only thing that would capture my attention would have to be radically different and at this point, I’m not seeing anything on the horizon.  For the moment, I am content with the social media world I find myself in.

What about you?

Leave a comment or join the discussion at the CTM forum here.

If you are active on Facebook, you are even more involved in social media.

If you are active on Twitter or any number of other similar sites, you are even deeper in this social media world.

But there is a problem.

Social media is not sticky.

Let me explain what I mean. If you are my personal friend and I tell you that I have a fan page on Facebook, you are fairly likely to be my fan on Facebook. This might be due to our friendship and possibly because you are interested in being a part of my world online.

The next example might be where you have gotten familiar with me online but we have never met IRL. (In Real Life) If I invite you to become a fan on my Facebook fan page, you may or may not and if you do, it very likely is a one time visit to my page.  If you think you might know who I am online or have never heard of me, you are not very likely to become my fan.

Why is that? Well, what’s in it for you? If we are friends, that’s fun and can be informative and a way for us to communicate online but if you don’t really know me, then why should you bother.  That might sound critical but it’s just reality.

I used Facebook fan pages as an example because that’s one of the latest rages and I used an example on a personal level. Let’s take this up a notch.

Suppose I have a fan page for my church or ministry or business and I want you to join.  The same rules apply. You should ask the question, “What’s in it for me?”  Are you interested in my church? Does the business sell a product you believe in?  It’s my responsibility to create my fan page or blog or website in a way that adds value.

I’m good at asking questions, clearly, but what’s the answer?

What draws you to a site?

What are you looking for when you follow someone on Twitter?

What’s going to keep you coming back?

Tell me your thoughts. Leave a comment here or write on my Facebook wall or tweet at me.

Most of my readers know this but for the few that don’t, I started Church Tech Matters on a dare. Well, not really, but I didn’t start it thinking it would become anything worthwhile to myself or anyone else and it really became an extension of who I am. And it lasted. And it allowed me to network with so many tremendously talented people in the church IT world and learn so much. (CITRT)

However, I walked away from it. I was done. I don’t know why, but I was just done. My wife and some of my closest friends told me it was a mistake, but that didn’t matter to me. As a result of stepping away, God brought together a team of talented church tech volunteers and leaders who are passionate about sharing about their experiences in their own churches and they are now contributing their thoughts at CTM.

It’s not easy to begin a coordinated effort like this, where the writers span 3 continents, but we are slowly gaining momentum. I handed the site over to these guys and said I would stay involved behind the scenes, but I was not going to write there anymore. I should know better than to say never!

Lately, I have felt drawn back to writing in so many ways and 2 weeks ago, I wrote a post for CTM.  It took me until today to get around to editing it and finishing it and publishing it.  As I was getting ready to publish the post, I was chatting with a couple of fellow writers at CTM and I mentioned how posting back there kind of freaked me out and I guess that sounds surprising.

But it seriously did freak me out, I sat there for several minutes with my pointer on the Publish button and my finger on the mouse button contemplating it and debating about whether it was good enough and whether I should really do it.  The truth is I have to do it.

CTM is still a part of me and I need to be part of this next phase of growth and reach. I guess it really is hard to get back on the horse again, but I’m back!

The post is called Leading Volunteers – No Easy Button and I would love it if you would check it out. Don’t just read it but click on over to the CTM forum and join the discussion.

From the one post I published tonight, 3 other post ideas grew out of that, so you better believe that there’s more to come!

I’m loving the new CTM and I hope you will join in the discussion with us.

Then we can pull that thing out of our box when we need it and show it off and prove to those around us that we meet their standards or we are as good as they are or whatever. Then we put our thing away, back in it’s box and move on to the next box. I do it, you do it too.  What is it that makes us think we can live like this?

We are all so radically different, sometimes in subtle ways, yet we tend to think we have to fit a preconceived mold defined by the world around us and the circles we run in.

• Who are we?
• Who are you?
• Who am I?

Consider this, when 2 men meet and find themselves in a situation where they have to interact, one of the first questions is one of the following:

• What do you do?
• Where do you work?

The question is never:

• What’s important to you?
• What are you passionate about?
• What defines you?

However, it seems like that is the question that we are answering when we talk about our work.  We are essentially experts when it comes to our job, but is that where our passions lie? Is that what’s important to you?  Is that what defines who you are?  Maybe it does. Maybe it doesn’t.

I do know that if I’m able to really talk to people and dig just under the surface, whether it’s at work or otherwise, so many of them will indicate that this isn’t where they want to be.  They have big dreams and one of these days, they’re going to figure out how to make it happen.  I’ve started asking what’s holding them back and there are legitimate reasons:

• family
• money
• time
• fill in the blank …….

I’ve asked myself that same question, probably more than I care to admit.

• What’s holding me back?

My job does not define me but it is where I need to be for right now.   I think I have been in the process of redefining who I am and where my passions lie, so I really can’t answer the question of what defines me.  What about you:

What defines you?

Twikini

I have been using Twikini on my Windows Mobile 6.1 phone for the past few weeks and it is really a slick tool.  Twikini is a Twitter client for Windows Mobile and the most recent version that I have been using handles your main timeline, replies and now direct messages.

Another app I have tried is called Scrub and it helps you to identify missing info in your contacts list, such as phone numbers or email addresses.

Finally, one app that I have not tried yet but hope to soon is called Power SMS. I do a lot of texting, some twitter related and some not.  Looks like PowerSMS adds some nice features, I might write more about that, once I try it for awhile.

There is more apps there too, so check out Trinket software.

If you have a Windows Mobile smartphone, check this out. I can say first hand that I recommend this app. Plus they have several other WM6 apps at their site.

Do these things add value to a site?  That was my question at the beginning of this year and that is still my question today. I can say that FriendConnect has really beefed up the widgets in the last 6 months, so it will be fun to see if it helps build community.

Have you joined joined my site via FriendConnect? You currently have 3 opportunities via the Social bar, the sidebar widget and the comment widget.

Are you following me on FriendFeed? Give it a shot, I dare you! I need to understand FriendFeed because there are many people following me.  So fill me in if you use it and know more about it than I do.

Scoble says this:

Google is more like an ant hill. One powered by 20% time which is how the ants find out where the food is. Heck, enough of Google’s ants have left to join Facebook, Twitter, and friendfeed, that it should be clear by now there’s some new tasty food bits that they aren’t yet munching on. Heck, friendfeed should be a major embarrassment to Google since that 14-person team has at least five Google superstars on it (the guy who came up with the idea for Google not to be evil started the company. That’s Paul Buchheit and he also ran the Gmail team. Also on the friendfeed team is the guy who ran the Google Talk team, the guy who ran Google Maps team, the designer for a whole bunch of Googley products, and the guy who ran the backend team on Gmail). Over at Facebook and Twitter I keep running into people who used to work at Google too.

There’s a lot going on out in the social world and it’s time that I got caught back up!

Join me!
the social bar at the bottom

Talk to me!

leave a FriendConnect comment

Be my friend!

via the social bar at the bottom or in the sidebar

I love Twitter and I love when someone has enough insight to pick up on something I say on Twitter. Colin Bell (@crb11) noticed 2 tweets that I posted about 4 minutes apart and I didn’t intend them to play off of each other but, in retrospect, there is much irony in what I shared.  However, there is so much more than what meets the eye, I think, so I wanted to write a post and share some insight into where I’m at in life.  From Colin’s post:

Just found the following two tweets from JimWalton, four minutes apart.

Today, for the first time in a long time, totally forgot my phone, church was twitter free. An odd experience for sure.

Church this morning was by far the best experience we have had in several years. A new church, kind of. Felt like home, we will be back.

Everything I said was true:

• I forgot my phone
• Church was Twitter-free
• Church was the best it has been in over 4 years.
• It was a new church, kind of
• Felt like we were home
• We will be back to that church

While it was unusual to not have my phone at church and it did remove the temptation to Tweet during church, it also meant that I didn’t have my Bible, which is YouVersion.  That was a greater inconvenience, by far.

Church was the best it had been for us in years. That is not an exaggeration and I realize I am treading a thin line here, mainly because I am going to come clean on some things and there might be some people/friends that read this blog and wonder how I can say what I’m about to say.

We left our church home, one of the larger churches in the area, near the end of 2005, in the early stages of a power struggle and that church is still feeling the repercussions of those events today. That was a difficult time for my entire family and without going into too much detail, it was just best for us to distance ourselves from the situation.

Since that time, we have attended 2 different churches, one for about a year and we liked it for the amazing teaching, verse by verse and very deep. (Church A)  The music was great too, the pastor was in a heavy metal band before being saved and he can still jam on the guitar.  That was a great church to heal in and after awhile, we looked around and realized we knew virtually no one, so we quietly left.

We had some friends that went to a church nearly around the corner from our house so we decided to give that a try.  It was good and we quickly settled in. (Church B)  Before too long, we became involved and began serving.  We worked hard to make that our church home and a place where we could connect but honestly, in a way, it never felt completely right. We spent about 2 years at this church and I was heavily involved in leading the tech ministry.  I have no regrets about my involvement there but there was something missing, it didn’t feel like home.

This is where the fine line comes in. I have some close friends in that church and I value them.  These are friends that love their church, but I could never fully embrace it with them.

Once again, we leave another church.  Some have called us church hoppers and that’s not too far from the truth, I guess, but each step has been intentional and it’s really not as shallow as it seems, I think. I honestly believe God is growing us through this and is preparing us for where He is leading us.

We visited a church where we know many people, my whole family has friends there and honestly, our kids had been coming to this church on Wednesday nights for awhile anyway. (Church C) We all felt like this would be a good place and some friends even said we were invited to be part of their home group.

So, obviously(?), we didn’t stick around Church C and we ended up back at Church A again.  We still appreciated the teaching style and made an attempt to make it work for our family.  After about 6 months, we looked around and realized we have absolutely no connections (just like the first time around) in that church and we are so hungry to be connected to people in our church again.

Once again, we leave Church A, apparently our healing church, for the second time, with very little fanfare. I still am willing to take the blame for my waywardness. (Insert Kansas song here: Carry on my wayward son lyrics)

One night recently, I told my wife that I felt like we needed to give Church C another try, based on all the friends we have there and the chance we have to connect and some other reasons, but primarily connection.  She had been thinking the same thing, so God had clearly been working in both of us and preparing us to make this final move.

Yes, I did say final move.

We visited this past Sunday and it felt like we were home again. Even though the senior pastor is on a 6 week sabbatical and some friends we expected to see were not there, we still left there with a feeling we haven’t felt in several years, like we were freely worshipping God with our church family.

I understand that church should not be based on feelings alone and honestly, this has a lot more to do with knowing in my heart that this is right and Mary feels in her heart like it is right and my kids feel in their heart that it’s right.

I have learned a lot in this journey and it is far from over. I have no regrets, I feel that the Lord has opened some doors of opportunity for me just as He has closed some and He has used many people to teach me to be obedient to His calling.

I hope I don’t forget my phone next time because I really did miss having YouVersion at my fingertips.

Maybe I’ll even Twitter about it.

Maybe I won’t.

I wanted to get a thought out here and it’s not completely formed yet, so what you are getting is in it’s raw form.  

It seems like we all settle for complacency.  We go through the motions and don’t expect more than just enough to get by.  But I’m thinking lately that there has to be more than just settling for less than the best.  I’m guilty of it. You are too.  Most of us are probably holding ourselves back from the ultimate plan of what God has in store for us.  

You want to know the reason we live like this? 

Fear

Fear of letting go of our so called comfortable life

Fear of trusting God completely

Fear of losing control of our destiny

Fear of what people are going to think

Fear of people getting mad at us for doing exactly what God has called us to do

Fear of having to explain our decisions and justify our actions to people 

Proverbs 3:5 says 

Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding.

We all know that verse but do you know what it says after that?

 In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths.  Be not wise in your own eyes; fear the Lord, and turn away from evil.  It will be healing to your flesh and refreshment to your bones.

Think about that. Ponder that. Pray over that.  God can change your perspective based on those few verses alone.

All that stuff I listed above is fear of stuff that we supposedly control but repeatedly, the Bible says to fear the Lord.  We need to fear the Lord more than we fear anything else.  Fear is a word that fascinates me and I need to expand on that in the near future.  

That’s all for now though.

What do you fear more than the Lord?

Within a month of announcing my decision, God began doing some amazing things.  Over the next few weeks, He brought together a team of enthusiastic, talented tech volunteers from around the world who are eager to have a voice to other tech volunteers.

The short version of the story is Church Tech Matters is alive and kicking again and fully supported by this team.  My role is to provide the platform, with built in traffic and years of Google indexing and to simply get out of the way.  These guys are awesome! They share a vision that I had a few years ago but didn’t know how to pull it off on my own.  That vision is to reach the small churches  that likely don’t have the technical expertise in house or if they are some willing volunteers, they may not be sure of all they should or could be doing.

There is nothing wrong with the megachurches, that have the budgets, although usually still limited, and the staff, although usually still limited, and there are some strong voices out there in the blogosphere that represent this subset of churches.  But honestly, there are far more small to mid-size churches that struggle to do even the simplest of tech tasks.  That is where my heart has been and I think I needed to step away from CTM and let go of it in order for God to create what He has created here.

CTM has been my baby for over 4 years and I know it was God that made it what it was, not me.  But I’m not sure I would have been open to allowing another writer or 2, let alone 8 or 10 other writers to jump on board, without having walked away and letting go of it.

Go here to read my intro post to this new effort and I invite you back to Church Tech Matters, which is now

“A site for tech volunteers, written by tech volunteers and those that lead them.”