via: The Daily Show

Remember: Impossible is just a word that people use to justify giving up.

I seriously feel like climbing a mountain right now…

Thumbs up, everybody! Rock and roll!

The shepherd looked at the man, obviously a yuppie, then looked at his peacefully grazing flock and calmly answered, “Sure.”

The yuppie parked his car, whipped out his notebook and connected it to a cell phone, then he surfed to a NASA page on the Internet where he called up a GPS satellite navigation system, scanned the area, and then opened up a database and an Excel spreadsheet with complex formulas. He sent an email on his Blackberry and, after a few minutes, received a response.

Finally, he prints out a 150 page report on his hi-tech, miniaturized printer then turns to the shepherd and says, “You have exactly 1586 sheep.”

“That is correct; take one of the sheep,” said the shepherd.

He watches the young man select one of the animals and bundle it into his car.

Then the shepherd says: “If I can tell you exactly what your business is, will you give me back my sheep?”

“OK, why not,” answered the young man.

“Clearly, you are a consultant,” said the shepherd.

“That’s correct,” says the yuppie, “but how did you guess that?”

“No guessing required,” answers the shepherd. “You turned up here although nobody called you. You want to get paid for an answer I already knew, to a question I never asked, and you don’t know crap about my business.”

“Now give me back my dog.”

————

Found here: http://consultants.pen.io/

This year’s graduates are members of the most supervised generation in American history. Through their childhoods and teenage years, they have been monitored, tutored, coached and honed to an unprecedented degree.

Yet upon graduation they will enter a world that is unprecedentedly wide open and unstructured. Most of them will not quickly get married, buy a home and have kids, as previous generations did. Instead, they will confront amazingly diverse job markets, social landscapes and lifestyle niches. Most will spend a decade wandering from job to job and clique to clique, searching for a role.

No one would design a system of extreme supervision to prepare people for a decade of extreme openness. But this is exactly what has emerged in modern America. College students are raised in an environment that demands one set of navigational skills, and they are then cast out into a different environment requiring a different set of skills, which they have to figure out on their own.

Brooks goes on to describe how this is made worse by the messaging that bombards this generation, starting with their commencement speeches and reinforced (it seems to me) by nearly every business leader and/or marketer. I have struggled lately with what is espoused by the leaders in the lime light of Twitter and blogs – namely that the only path that is of any worth in today’s business world is that which is forged by the entrepreneur… the intrepid, business rebel that thrusts off the chains of the industrial complex and takes charge of their own destiny.

This is what Brooks calls a “baby-boomer theology” and graduates are being told to “Follow your passion, chart your own course, march to the beat of your own drummer, follow your dreams and find yourself.”

This is the predominant message of our culture: it’s all about you.

And yet, it’s not.

Success in life is not achieved by building a world for ourselves based on what we perceive to be our passions or what we believe will make us happy. It is created day-by-day by facing what each day brings, creating harmony with the other people in our lives. It seems irresponsible to encourage people to see it differently.

Read the full article here: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/31/opinion/31brooks.html
HT to Branson Parler.

1. May’s Most Popular Posts

… I probably should blog more.

I plan to, soon; but I’m working through a lot of things right now so for now you’ll just have to keep on waiting.

The Social Media Effectiveness study builds on the 2010 Excellence in Online Ministry study of social media presence management best practices from over 100 leading ministries.

In our continued desire to go beyond the hype to discover real world results and best practices, this study will answer the critical question:

How do ministries effectively use social media to:

1. Connect with new people and create awareness for the ministry?
2. Deepen relationships with their existing community and increase engagement with the ministry?

This research will benefit any church or ministry that strives to to create awareness and develop community through social media.

Be Part of the Research

If you are church/ministry leader involved or knowledgeable about your organization’s social media efforts, I invite you to participate in the research. All participants will have free access to any findings and results from the study.

In addition, I will be offering a 30% discount on social media strategy development services for organization that participate!

To participate in the Social Media Effectiveness research, click here:

http://bit.ly/sm_effectiveness

(Watch on YouTube.)

I think the one on the right accused the other guy of stealing his sock.

As adorable as this is, I imagine that their parents might be less amused once they start using real words.

The article was published on December 24, 2010. I guess I’ve been pretty focused on what my family is going because I didn’t know it had been published and only just thought to look for it. You can see the article online here.

I really like the story Spring uses to introduce the article – how because of Facebook, a local church community was alerted that a teenage member was contemplating suicide and they were able to able to come to his aid and surround him with love… probably saving his life.

Such a great example of why churches need a social media strategy.

Though it makes what I had to say sound pretty dry in comparison.

For some Myrtle Beach area churches, social media saves

Churches join Facebook, Twitter
By Jake Spring

In the right hands, Facebook can save lives.

One Friday night in the spring, an underage student and member of a Grand Strand church posted on the social network that he was contemplating suicide. By Saturday morning, ministers and members of the First Presbyterian Church of Myrtle Beach were calling and messaging the student to make sure he was all right, said Chris Denny, an associate pastor at the church located at 1300 N. Kings Highway in Myrtle Beach.

“Some of the adults that were in his life were able to follow up via Facebook and also via phone to say, ‘Hey, what’s going on? Are there ways we can help?’” Denny said.

Businesses were quick to start using social media like Facebook and Twitter, but many churches are just beginning to tap into social media to interact with their members and communities, said Kevin Ring, a consultant who researches how churches use social networking

Ring’s company, Michigan-based Unconventional Method, surveyed about 250 church ministers and members across the U.S. and found that churches face different challenges than businesses in using social media, he said.

“Really they are limited in terms of their resources, and particularly time and money, figuring out what they can spend using these tools,” he said. “Secondly, what they are trying to accomplish is not as clear cut as a businesses goals might be.”

Most churches have established a foothold in social media since 2009 by starting a page or a profile, but did not have a clear goal in mind of what they were trying accomplish, Ring said. That process is just beginning.

Denny has his own Facebook profile and the church also has pages for its youth and children’s ministries that are testing the waters, he said. They plan to launch a young adult page soon, he said.

“We’re looking at how can we expand that communication tool,” Denny said. “Long term, I even imagine it may overtake the use of a printed newsletter but I don’t think we’re quite there yet.”

First United Methodist Church of Myrtle Beach, 901 N. Kings Highway, has about 900 active members who attend services and about 275 people are fans of their page on Facebook, associate pastor Jonathan Tompkins said. Staff update the page daily with quotes from the Bible, suggested readings, event announcements and photos. Group members can “like” something the church has put up on the page.

Tompkins had used Facebook before he became a minister and decided he would stay on once he took up a position at a church, he said. He accepts all friend requests from members of his congregation, he said.

Being in such a public position means he has to be careful when using Facebook, Tompkins said. He usually will stay out of it if people post rants on politics or other controversial subjects, he said.

“When I went into the ministry I told myself I would have a presence on Facebook, and I would be open about things,” he said. “But also I can’t just express every single little thought that pops in my head.”

First Presbyterian’s youth ministry page has about 450 fans and is a much faster way of communicating than more conventional means, said Todd Harms, director of youth and mission and First Presbyterian.

“We do various odd jobs for our church membership, and I can spend my whole afternoon texting or I could just get on Facebook and send out a message,” Harms said.

He has a Twitter account as well that’s linked to Facebook so the same information goes to both pages, he said.

Harms and Ring said that while most people think youth are the first to adopt social media, there may be more opportunities to interact with adults online. The largest demographic of consistent Facebook users is middle-age women, Ring said.

Many users don’t think to post about their churches, so ministers and church staff should tell them what they’re trying to accomplish and encourage them to start conversations on the church’s pages, he said.

As use of social media continues to grow, expect to see more churches integrating social media into their websites or even establishing their own private social networks for their members, Ring said.

“Some of the sensitive issues that churches deal with can be aired online,” Ring said. “Churches have both an opportunity and the obligation to not just approach the web and the social media in the same way that they see businesses and popular websites doing.”

That seems kind of appropriate; but I’m not really sure why.

He lived 22,992 days, of which I was alive for 11,999 of them.

That also seems kind of appropriate.

My dad died at the age of 62 after a nearly 4 year fight with lung cancer.

He never smoked a day in his life…

as Vonnegut would say – So it goes.

My dad was a good man. A man of solid values and integrity of character.

I know this because I saw my dad’s character tested when my mom was diagnosed with breast cancer in 1984, through the 11 years that he provided for his family while caring for his wife, and in the last months and weeks in 1997 as stuck with her and took care of her as her body finally gave up it’s fight.

I’m fortunate that I got to witness his love for my mom and his fidelity to her through the end.

I hope that I would be able to do the same if I were in that situation.

I hope I never have to.

I’m fortunate that I got to witness my dad’s love for my children and his joy being a grandfather. I’m heartbroken that my kids won’t grow up knowing my dad but I wouldn’t trade the time he did have with them for anything.

I don’t know am trying to say. Or really what there is to say. I mean, there’s a lot to say but for right now I’m not sure what it is… which is probably better since my dad didn’t really like effusive expressions of emotions. And he definitely didn’t like to be made much of.

No, he wasn’t one for words. Which was fine because he had other ways of letting you know that you are loved.

Thank you dad for blessing my life.

Thank you for being my role model and showing me what it means to be a husband and a father.

Thank you for loving me, my wife and my children.

Thank you dad for saying with your face what words could never fully capture. I love you, dad.

According to CNN:

“Over the weekend, we got some useful feedback that we could make people more clearly aware of when they are granting access to this data,” Facebook wrote on its developer blog. “We agree, and we are making changes to help ensure you only share this information when you intend to do so.”

Those changes will roll out “in the next few weeks,” Facebook said. In the meantime, it has suspended the phone number and address gathering option.

In its blog post last week describing the new feature, Facebook said members would need to explicitly grant permission for apps to tap into their contact information. And they would only be able to grant that permission for their own data — users can’t choose to allow access to their friends’ contact information.

The Facebook Tango

We’ve seen this pattern by Facebook before -

• Facebook quietly introduces a new feature (typically it’s something that makes users’ information publicly available);
• there is significant public backlash;
• Facebook issues a mea culpa, deflecting the focus momentarily and giving the public a false sense of security that they have some control over how Facebook uses their information;
• after the hubballoo dies down, Facebook quietly reintroduces the feature.

I like to call it the Facebook Tango – two steps backward, one step forward, then spin spin spin.

Openness as a Fundamentalist Religion

Regardless of what is said as Facebook tries to spin the situation (while denying any wrong-doing), the fact remains that Facebook will continue to drive forward its agenda for sharing your personal information widely in order to profit off of it.

Mark Zuckerberg has been quite open about his views on privacy saying,

“When we started Facebook, we built it around a few simple ideas. People want to share and stay connected with their friends and the people around them. When you have control over what you share, you want to share more. When you share more, the world becomes more open and connected.”

The idealism wrapped up in this statement hides a major problem inherent to Facebook’s philosophy on sharing – the belief that people who are opposed to this type of openness are wrong. And by framing it as a moral issue, the way that Facebook does, gives a certain nobility to standing in opposition to those who disagree.

The instinct for people who become caught up in this type of belief system is to do what they think is right anyway, with a full awareness that they are going against the wishes of others. They will push forward emboldened by the delusion that the benefits of their actions will cause their “opponent” to “see the light”.

Though I doubt he would admit it, I’ll bet that Zuckerberg believes, somewhere deep down, that one day people will thank him for what he is doing.

In many ways, our culture has already done so – naming him Time’s 2010 Man of the Year as an example.

If Zuckerberg Really Wanted To Change My Mind…

A better way (in terms of both effectiveness and humility) to win over those who want to maintain control over their information online would be to present them with a more attractive alternative to what they believe (in this case, demonstrating the “benefit” of a completely open digital world).

But that’s not what Facebook is doing. And as far as I know, their arguments for openness and the proclaimed “benefits” are unsubstantiated.

And the Facebook Tango continues to erode the trustworthiness of Facebook’s intentions and its sincerity in respecting my wishes. So has become prudent to ask yourself, “what aspects of my digital identity am I comfortable with Facebook making decisions about on my behalf?”

How To Limit Facebook’s Control Over Your Digital Identity

So long as Facebook has access to your digital identify (the information you include on Facebook – both in your profile but also in your interactions), you will not be completely in control of your information.

If there are things we are not comfortable with Facebook deciding to share with others, our only recourse is to take back control from Facebook. And the only way to do that is by revoking Facebook’s access that information* (either by deleting it from your profile or by not entering it in the first place).

In light of all of this, I still think you should remove your contact information from your Facebook profile right now.

What do you think? What aspects of your digital identities would you not want Facebook to have control over? Let us know in the comments.

• no online security measures will ever be 100% secure;
• online information is duplicated and archived more than we’re aware of;
• every time you go online you create a significant digital footprint;
• tremendous analytical processing power is available to those who want to dig up your identifying information;
• creating digital profile of an individual is simply a matter of piecing together all the different bits of identifying information that are available online.

That being said, it is important to make sure we are being wise and do whatever we can to limit our exposure online.