Hermeneutical challenge

Will Social Media revolutionise the Church in the 21st Century?

2010-07-16T17:26:00.065+01:00

united hands, originally uploaded by ssgdev.

What do Clay Shirky, Johannes Gutenberg, and Martin Luther have in common? They are all human beings, yes, but they are all revolutionaries. I've been reading Clay Shirky's latest book Cognitive Surplus which is about how the Internet, and more specifically social media, is fuelling a revolution in our time of a similar scale to the one started in the 15th century by Johannes Gutenberg who invented moveable type and started a new era of cheap printed books. This it is argued created the conditions for Martin Luther and others to start the Reformation which radically changed the religious landscape of Europe and the world.

So here is the question. If social media tools such as Twitter and Facebook are connecting ordinary people together in new ways, breaking down communication barriers, giving lots of people the opportunity to publish their ideas cheaply and quickly and enabling new forms of community, how will this impact the Church?

Will there be a revolution in the Church that is of similar magnitude to the Reformation?

This is too big a question to answer so perhaps we could start by addressing a smaller question.

How could the Church use social media to develop new expressions of Christian community? I wonder. The answers to this question could take quite a while.

Gever Tulley on 5 dangerous things for kids

2010-06-22T22:02:00.000+01:00

Do you ever wonder what impact the 'Safety' culture is having on our children? Well Gever Tulley, who runs 'The Tinkering School' in the US has a novel approach to education. Help kids live dangerously, within reason of course.

I had a pen knife when I was a boy and I played with fire, but I didn't drive a car till I was about 10 (on private land). All good stuff!

Save the environment and stop creating documents with PowerPoint!

2010-06-19T19:19:00.015+01:00

In my new quest to remove PowerPoint from the world of work, I found this article published a couple of years ago. The CEO of Toyota
says no to PowerPoint for creating documents as it is wasteful of paper.

Why not write a document using a word processing package so you are able to use full sentences and havae more than 80 words in the whole document?

PowerPoint is BAD for schools

2010-06-19T15:06:00.003+01:00

KCD Lower School Computer Lab, originally uploaded by Kentucky Country Day.

Two independent events came together in my life recently that now result in this blog post recommending that schools stop using Power Point.

The first thing that happened was that I was helping my son with his homework to do a 'presentation' on Celtic Gods. Apart from trying to stop him from plagiarism by copying large chunks of a web page into his Power Point, I struggled to get him to think about the topic more deeply in his desire to find fun clip art to add. In the end I was deeply unsatisfied with the whole experience but I let it pass.

The second thing that happened was that a colleague at work blogged about a short book called 'The cognitive style of Power Point' which encouraged me to blog about my own dislike of using it and more importantly why it is usually a handicap for the presenter.

Another colleague lent me the book which I have been reading with interest and enjoyment. In summary, the book analyses the evidence and presents compelling arguments for why Power Point reduces the analytical quality of serious presentations.

On page 7 there is a really pertinent section on why Power Point is bad for schools which I quote in full: 'Especially disturbing is the introduction of PowerPoint into schools. Instead of writing a report using sentences, children learn how to decorate client pitches and infomercials, which os better than encouraging children to smoke. Student PP exercises (as seen in teacher's guides, and in student work posted on the internet) typically show 5 to 20 words and a piece of clip art on each slide in a presentation consisting of 3 to 6 slides - a total of perhaps 80 words (20 seconds of silent reading) for a week of work. Rather than being trained as mini-bureaucrats in the pitch culture, students would be better off if schools closed down on PP days and everyone went to The Exploratorium.'

Well I wonder what we can do to get this message across to our teachers in our schools. I'm definitely not going to use PowerPoint ...

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General Election 2.0? Will twitter be used for exit polls in the next general election?

2009-11-20T00:18:00.004Z

State Opening of Parliament: Black Rod, originally uploaded by UK Parliament.

Is the next general election in Britain going to be different as a result of social media?

Lots of commentators are talking about 'Gov 2.0' which seems to be where ordinary citizens get to vote little and often rather than only every 4 years through the medium of social media. I guess its also about ordinary people organising themselves socially and politically whether thats locally or nationally. Its also about political parties using the power of web 2.0 to stir grass roots activism, although that seems to work better in the US where ordinary people seem to be less cynical about politics than in the UK.

Politicians are definitely waking up to people power on the Internet with the likes of Gordon Brown and David Cameron trying to court online communities such as Mums Net.

I think its too early to say what will happen exactly in the General Election with things like Facebook and Twitter. I don't think its quite yet the end of parliamentary democracy but these online communities are certainly going to have an impact.

Check out this BBC article on Government 2.0 for an introduction.

I wonder if the BBC will be using twitter to do exit polls in the general election?

Reid

How do you get a cloud underground?

2009-11-14T20:46:00.000Z

How do you get a cloud underground?

... by building a secret data bunker in Wiltshire.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2009/nov/11/data-server-farms

Not only is it safe inside nuclear hardened walls underground, its better for the environment as the computer cooling uses the ambient temperature underground as a sort of ground source heat pump in reverse. I suppose that would make it a ground source cooler?

I expect this sort of thing is the shape to come when it comes to cloud computing.

Reid

Social Media Revolution

2009-11-05T18:07:00.000Z

For those that still don't understand what's happening because of a little thing called 'social media' then this video clip might help:

Reid

Innovation requires inspiring leadership - meet 'The Podfather' Bob Noyce

2009-11-02T23:14:00.006Z

Robert Norton Noyce, originally uploaded by electronicandyou.

What if anything can an organization learn about innovation and collaboration from Robert Noyce?

Late last night I finally got round to watching 'the Podfather' documentary which I had recorded on BBC 4 the Other week. Wasn't quite sure what to expect, but I soon sat up when l discovered that Dr Robert Noyce had invented the Integrated Circuit, founded Intel and almost single-handedly founded Silicon Valley and a culture of innovation, collaboration and hi-tech startup companies that has changed the world as we know it.

For Bob Noyce, growing up in a mid west town in Iowa, community mattered. This experience shaped his values and impacted his leadership style throughout his career. Bob was a physicist by training and through a combination Of luck and brilliance he got involved in the semiconductor industry right from the start in 1956 when he moved to California. He quit his first job with Shockley (One of the 3 guys who invented the transistor) and setup Fairchild semiconductors which was a division of the East coast Fairchild company because he wanted to do things differently.

Noyce forged a collaborative culture based on trust at Fairchild Semiconductors. He instigated a very flat management structure in the division and this created a vibrant workplace where the workers could experiment and innovate without fear of criticism.

Noyce's out of the box thinking was not always appreciated though. After he had invented integrated circuits (another story!) they were still expensive and customers were not buying them so he reduced the price of ICs at Fairchild to 1 dollar a piece and the production manager had a fit as each IC cost 5 dollars to make! This decision was a stroke of brilliance as it created a huge demand for ICs and the manufacturing costs plummeted and the rest is history so they say.

Things became too stifling for Noyce when the Fairchild parent company started to exert top down bureaucratic control and so Noyce left Fairchild with Gordon Moore (remember Moore's law?) and started Intel which invented the microprocessor and is now the largest microprocessor manufacturer in the world. Noyce wanted freedom to innovate and to create a company with its own rules. This was anathema to normal East coast management thinking at the time. Remember that Silicon Valley was still mainly farmland. There were no start up companies and no venture capitalists but Noyce's decision to leave and start a new company would set the pattern for the next few decades for others and became a common model for Silicon Valley.

I don't know if Intel is like this now, but when Noyce created it there were no executive car parking spaces, no special executive restaurant and no management offices. Noyce had his own cubicle alongside other workers and was very non-hierarchical in his management approach.

Noyce became an evangelist for microprocessors when one of his team (Ted Hoff) invented it in 1974. Noyce also had an interest in young entrepreneurs and in 1977 a starry eyed 22 year old started to hang around with Noyce at his home. His name was Steve Jobs, the guy who founded AppJe computing, the iPOd etc so maybe Noyce really is the Podfather after all?

A similar pattern happened in the next generation when Google founders were in their early 20s. They started hanging around Steve Jobs and Steve provided a similar mentoring function to them as Noyce had done so Noyce has in an indirect way influenced Google.

I could go on with the story but l think you get the idea. Robert Noyce, a relatively unknown physicist, innovator, creator and leader in Silicon Valley has had a huge impact on the world as we know it. His values of community, innovation and collaboration were fundamental to this success. He eschewed hierarchy and privilege and focused on ideas.

What if anything can an organization learn about innovation and collaboration from Robert
Noyce?

Maybe banks could be nice afterall?

2009-10-31T15:01:00.004Z

Piggy Bank 1 - S5isPiggyBank_1, originally uploaded by Daniel Y. Go.

This has got to be one of the craziest ideas in the world. Surely my finances are private to me. Why would I want to share anything of my personal finances with anyone else, especially someone I have never met on the Internet? Well this is where things are changing.
Zopa is a nice bank that connects people together. Its been going a while and people seem to like it. Makes a change from all the negative stuff about banking. Maybe banking could be nice?

I first heard about Zopa when I watched the film Us Now (what a film - you've got to watch it at some point in the next few months if you want to understand what social media is doing to our society).

I haven't done anything about Zopa yet but I want to. I would like to put some savings into Zopa and start experimenting. Right then, better start saving. Ah yes, how about a personal budget ...

Reid

My heart says Ubuntu but my head is starting to say Windows 7

2009-10-29T22:17:00.003Z

Please could someone put me out of my misery. I'm a true believer in the open source way of life. I get the benefits. I understand the philosophy. I don't like being controlled by a large corporation and told what is good for me, and that its Microsoft. I am in the middle of an Ubuntu experiment at home which I have been running for a few months now. I dual booted using Ubuntu as well as Windows XP on our family PC but we use Ubuntu for everything now. My wife would really like to go back to Microsoft because its familiar, its compatible with most other people's computers and in the little file operations its better than Ubuntu.

I've been following the Windows 7 launch and also the reaction from the Linux community. I especially liked the Guardian article comparing Ubuntu 9.10 vs Windows 7.

I need to get a new laptop and at the moment I'm seriously considering Windows 7 but I'd really like a magic open source fairy to install Ubuntu and fix the little things to make it solidly consumer compatible and more particularly wife compatible so that we can continue with free software for the foreseeable.

Then again, maybe I should be more optimistic, after all we are in a credit crunch. Perhaps the lack of money is the thing that will encourage consumers to adopt Linux. I live in hope ...

Dear IT Department - please treat us like adults

2009-10-29T21:19:00.006Z

the littlest geek, originally uploaded by Ben McLeod.

At work do you ever feel like you are being treated like a small child, not trusted to be responsible, protected from doing anything too interesting or dangerous? This is certainly true for lots of people and in particular when it comes to IT in the workplace but the times they are a changin' ...

In the home we are now masters of the universe or at least masters of the Internet. We expect quick results and a transparency of delivery when buying stuff from Amazon. We expect a cool user interface to the websites we use otherwise we exercise our power to click somewhere else. We also expect to interact with other people and have a rich experience online. However its a different story when we get to work.

Well home users are no longer willing to tolerate poor service and clunky IT at work because they have become so used to a great experience at home. Welcome to the world of the 'consumerisation of IT'.

As 'Simply Better IT' state, 'instead of working on trying to take the enterprise computing experience home,' we 'should be working on trying to bring the home computing experience to the enterprise'. This is radical stuff but I expect more of this sort of thing in the months and years to come.

Checkout 'Simply Better IT' website for more details.

The end of the office desk

2009-10-29T20:54:00.002Z

The Office, originally uploaded by mkrigsman.

Have you ever had to do desksharing or hot desking at work or do you have an office cubicle in a battery? Well the time is coming when you maybe able to break free from your tether altogether as your company gets rid of the standard desktop and gives everyone laptops. OK some of you hipsters are already there because you work in enlightened organisations but for those of us in large bureaucracies we can't wait to be free.

The Guardian's Technology section has an interesting article about mobile computing which covers the impact of the workplace. Its not just about the office or the home, its about the PC manufacturers as well. Forget about HP. Forget about Dell. Welcome Acer ...

How laptops took over the world

2 days in London with children ...

2009-10-24T15:14:00.002+01:00

Thanks to all for ideas for our trip to London. Here is a summary of what we did in 2 days. Walked around St. Paul’s cathedral, walked on Millennium Bridge, coffee in the Salvation Army centre, number 11 bus down the Strand, walked around Trafalgar Square, walked down Whitehall, walked to Horseguards’ parade and saw soldiers + Vera Lynn singing to the Royal British Legion, went to Methodist Central Hall for lunch, went up London Eye, walked along South bank to see performance artists, had ice cream, had boat trip down to Tower Bridge, walked through St. James’ Park, walked past Buck House, walked through Green Park, past The Ritz, into Fortnum and Masons, through Piccadilly Circus, through Soho to Wagamamas for tea (yum), along Oxford Street to Oxford Circus Underground then back to St. Albans via St. Pancras and a quick look at EuroStar. Day 2 – from St. Pancras popped into the British Library to see Lindisfarne Gospels, Magna Carta, Codex Sinaiticus, Beatles memorabilia etc, on the tube to South Kensington, popped into the V&A to see fashion exhibitions, Islamic carpets, wrought iron and musical instruments, popped next door to the Natural History Museum, had our lunch, saw the dinosaurs and the human biology exhibition, popped next door to the Science Museum and went into the Wallace & Gromit exhibition for an hour, then into the iMax cinema to see 3D dinosaurs, then got the tube to Leicester Square and walked around and ended up at Covent Garden in Pizza Express for tea, then more Covent Garden, walked down emergency stairs to the tube, back to St. Pancras and then St. Albans. Phew!

Here Comes Booz Allen Hamilton

2009-07-17T23:27:00.000+01:00

Its encouraging to see other organizations really get into social media in a big way. Booz Allen Hamilton, the use Strategy and Technology consultancy have recently won an Open Enterprise 2009 award for their hello.bah.com portal.

This is a real shot in the arm for the organizational use of social media.

Reid

From Command and Control to Collaboration

2009-07-17T23:08:00.000+01:00

On the Internet there are loads of people blogging about how to get social media into organizations. Colin McKay has even introduced a secret guide to social media in large organization s! Well I can honestly say that I've done most of the checklist and I'm keen to take the next steps beyond the tools and consider some of the more radical ideas that Clay Shirky talks about in his book 'Here Comes Everybody'.

In particular I'm really keen to explore how we get some of the organizational benefits from social media so I was encouraged to watch John Chambers, CEO of CISCO Systems explain how he has been changing the organization from command and control to collaboration.

Looking forward to exploring this further ...

Reid