cheryl has revamped her web site and it looks great. it's an example of how you can create really dynamic looking web sites through blog software by using categories to sort information...
blogs
blog of the year is...
jenny baker!!!!! yes congrats jenny on winning the church blog site of the year for sophianetwork . this was the surefish blog awards. some of us have been blogging for years but then jen lands on the scene and whizzes by ;-) seriously though it's thoroughly deserved. i'm also secretly chuffed not just because i'm proud of jenny but because i designed the site at the beginning of the year - jen came up with the layout and then i made it happen in typepad. in particular the animated gif of the woman walking took much longer than planned!
things are going really well here in poland at slot festival. more about that another time as i have borrowed a laptop to blog this...
go and congratulate sophia!
pipedown
a new music blog pipedown is launched today by joel and 3 friends - jack , simon and matt. there are 4 mixes of ten tunes - one mix from each of them, a soundcloud drop box where you can place a tune you'd like them to hear and the promise of a buzz about music and culture so i assume tunes, reviews, club nights and so on.
the design (as you might expect) is very neat. they've taken up the notion of web presences through icons which i picked up on my blog in my redesign - but stripped it back. i particularly like the icon stream next to each name. in my view the header's too big - on a lot of computers it will fill half the screen... but it looks likely to be a good space for music. i doubt it will be just be on a dance tip either though that will be the main flow - jack brings a different edge with a love of alternative bands and song writing. the challenge will be whether a group blog works for them - not many i know out there keep the momentum. but if you launch on april 1 i guess it's a sign of not taking yourselves too seriously! (which reminds me that was the date i started my current job ;-) )
so follow along in whatever online presence you are accustomed to hanging out in...
surprising what you can do with a cheap book on html and a bit of blog experience
i don't think i mentioned that i have taken over running the web site of the ealing photography group. so i gave it a redesign. i did most of the work round christmas time. you may not remember what it was like before but i used it as a chance to teach myself a bit about stylesheets and am simply writing the code for it rather than using any software package. i have hopefully gone for something clean and simple using some of the structure of the previous designer that also looks like it is part of london independent photography
part of my theory round it is that i want to try and shift some of the work over to members of the group - so rather than me creating galleries i have suggested people create sets in flickr or create a slideshow using 280slides - see my idiot's guide . then i can simply paste the code for their gallery into their members page. it seems to work pretty well though pages can take a while to load up the slidesets. for flickr sets i am using pictobrowser - see my member's page for an example. and for 280slides it gives you the code - see brig's page for an example
the only irritating thing is that when i created a group in flickr for the recent garcin challenge it turns out that only photos from people with a pro account show up in the slideshow so i have had to create a slideshow after all.
i have also set up a blog for anyone in the group to use with tumblr - tumblr seems a very straightforward interface. and i have then found a widget to pull the feeds into the blog page. widgets are ugly but my coding skills are such that i wasn't sure how else to do that and i have tried to make the widget as clean as i could. if anyone knows another way let me know...
web design and coding is not my area of expertise but it's surprising what you can do with a cheap book on html and a bit of blog experience. now is the challenge of encouraging participation in the group many of whom probably preferred it when someone else did everything!
here comes everybody 2: i participate therefore i am
[ no 2 in a series of posts reflecting on here comes everybody - for no 1 see here comes everybody 1: sharing, co-operation and collective action ]
i participate therefore i am
this isn't actually a quote from clay shirky's book here comes everybody. it comes from john taylor's discerning of the worldview in african primal religion in his amazing book the primal vision. but it has stuck with me and i finally get to bring it out...
participation is one of the big themes of the new cultural environment that we are in and i find it an exciting and hopeful one. in the world that is passing identity has been constructed around taste and consumption, what we are into. we often connect with people of similar taste and make snap judgements on the basis of the stuff people are into - i consume therefore i am. we may hate it but it happens all the time. i'm not suggesting this is entirely going away but in the world of new media passive consumption is not what it is about. if it was youtube wouldn't exist or it would just have a few slick hollywood promos and independent short films. all youtube did was to create a space for self publishing and creative production, sharing and interaction. most of the movies on there are pretty poor quality but it turns out people love to be able to produce and share and interact with friends. they just didn't have the tools so cheaply and freely available (all you need now to publish a movie is a phone). the interaction is often only with a small group of friends (see my next post on this - small worlds) but that interaction with a small group is in itself a participative environment. one of the examples i can think of how we used youtube was to publish a movie of joel's friends wishing him happy birthday for his eighteenth. the point of that movie was that it was fun and a surprise but it is about particpating in creating, sharing and interacting in a small community of friends and family. it's been viewed 150 times or something...
i've heard and quoted the adage about web 2.0 that 'content is king' - i.e. because there is so much stuff being put out there actually good stuff rises to the surface so if you have good content that is key. but shirky quotes cory doctorow who says
conversation is king, content is just something to talk about
both are true but this one shifts the emphasis to much more relational as opposed to the new media being an environment to simply publish good content (though i still think good content does rise to the surface).
this is a bit geeky but hang in there as i think it's very insightful. with the availability of the tools for contribution you might expect a huge increase in equality of particpation. but shirky says you'd be wrong. research into participation shows that almost across every type of participation there is a huge imbalance. if you were to plot this as a graph it would come out as a power law distribution. he gives an example of photography shared on flickr of an event - the coney island mermaid parade. rather than an even number of photos from contributors there are one or two very high contributors, a few a bit lower down but by far and away the largest contribution is one photograph. in fact this is the mode (the most frequent way of contributing). this graph is in the book.
this probably isn't a huge surprise. but there are a few things about it that are interesting. one is that we assume that equality would be much more ideal but actually the imbalance drives things well. if there were only a few high participators it would be much weaker. those contributions of one photo, or one change to a word on wikipedia make so much difference when added together. the second is that we shouldn't underestimate the feeling or importance of participation by the lower participants. they are part of the network/community of relationships without having to do loads.
i was looking at asbojesus the other day which is hugely popular and has a community that participate in and around it - there are 30 or more comments on most posts. but if you look at the comments over a period of time there are a few very high contributors - carole, dennis, rob, jon, becky for example. i think i have contributed once but i feel connected and there are plenty of others like me who enjoy and participate at a low level. but it clearly has this power law distribution going on.
in grace one of our values/ethos words is participation. we really want participation to be part of the air we breathe. but i recognise the same thing in practice. we don't have equality of participation and never will. i recognise i am one of the high end contributors but then there is a whole range and plenty who join a group to plan worship occasionally and some who just participate by showing up a few times a year. our challenge is always to encourage involvement - it helps belonging apart from anything else. but this power law distribution has helped me see that actually a spread of participation is fine, it works. and don't underestimate the importance of it for those who only participate at a low level.
so what? the challenge of the new environment isn't just about the new social media tools and making the most of them (though that is of course a good thing to explore). but the wider change is actually about how the new environment is remaking us or our instincts. and i think there is a wider cultural shift towards sharing and co-operation and interaction - participation. this is great news for churches and christian communities - it sounds like a description of church as an organic relational body. somehow many churches have got stuck in a provider/client relationship between leader/congregation, expert/dumb disciples, priest/laity preacher/passive listener. it's a very dependent world. this new environment affords the possibility of recovering something that has been lost. it is also a resurgent theological theme at the moment - participation in god - in whom i participate therefore i am!
Technorati Tags: here comes everybody, clay shirky
here comes everybody 1: sharing, co-operation and collective action
when we change the way we communicate we change society
so says clay shirky in here comes everybody:the power of organising without organisations. it's an absolute gem of a book (and the uk cover is so much better than the usa cover!!), the best of its kind i have read since the spider and the starfish. shirky looks at social media and the new technologies not for their own sake but for their effects. he is blogging about the themes in the book here. the quote above is really a rehearsal of marshall macluhan's theme that changing technologies creates a new environment. rather than do one large review i want to pick up some of his themes in a series of posts. we'll see how it goes depending on how busy my september continues to be. it may be a short series!
a phrase that i've used before and has been used in relation to the smart tools of web 2.0 is an architecture of particpation. the current technologies enable free and ready particpation of distributed groups of people with a whole variety of skills. in times gone by those people existed but getting them together to work on something was a feat in itself that required pretty high organisation and motivation. there were lots of institutuons and organisations who played that role. now it's so simple that everything has changed, and things can get done without the need for organisations (or at least organisations as they have been known). shirky kicks off with a disarmingly simple threefold process.
sharing - co-operation - collective action
sharing creates the fewest demands and you can see it happening via flickr (photos), digg (stories), blogs and the number of small niche communities with common interest or concern. co-operation requires a bit more co-ordination especially if there is to be some collaborative production involving decision making. something like wikipedia manages this sort of participation really well. then collective action is definitely a harder step. it needs a strong enough shared vision which binds a group together and people will put effort in for. shirky says this is much more rare.
perhaps an example will help. i was thinking about the truth isn't sexy campaign and have written something about it recently thinking about how networks work (it will be in the next CMS magazine Yes). this is a short version... it began with an idea (or a rage against injustice more like). a friend of mine si had a concern about sex trafficking following visits to bars where girls were visibly being picked up. the first phase of the process was sharing. chatting with a few friends he got connected with a few other people who were involved in care for sex workers or political campaigning. a few e-mails, google searches and coffees later, he begin to build up a picture of the scene and the various economic, immigration, political and cultural factors at play. crucially he also connected with some others - the second phase collaboration - who caught the vision for doing something and a small team was formed with aimie & shannon picking up the baton. the team quickly found themselves part of an informal network of brilliant people working on their own projects but also collaborating together. an idea began to form – no-one seemed to be working at the customer demand end of things, with men who pay for sex. via a few networked connections, a design agency got involved and a beer mat and poster campaign was born called The Truth Isn’t Sexy - the third phase collective action. 200,000 beermats have been distributed in city centre pubs and NUS bars along with other events and media and cross party MP’s have praised the truth isn’t sexy in the house of commons with the minister in charge of this area now publicly stating the importance of addressing demand - the main political objective. the group are going to self publish an activist's handbook for others wanting to take collective action on something...
the campaign cost virtually nothing apart from printing costs. It wasn’t spearheaded by an organisation. volunteers made it happen as networks of people shared the idea, co-operated and joined in collective action. this network of people is not a club you can join – it was much more organic and invisible. It wasn’t something that was led – at least not in any traditional sense – though the people involved had a high level of skill at getting people connected and participating. the technological tools that are available in the world of digital media, all free if you have a computer – e-mail, web sites, blogs, social networking sites and so on - were absolutely crucial to the process. this process is so simple that you can miss it! It’s particularly easy to miss if you are looking for success with an organisational or old paradigm pair of glasses - measurable outcomes in organisational strategy achieved by professionals supported by systems of hierarchy and control.
since reflecting on this i am seeing this process in all sorts of places. the new social tools enable 'ridiculously easy group forming', groups that can share, co-operate and do things. what are you waiting for?
the other side of this that interests me is what role organisations or institutions can or do play in this new world. this week i have spoken or taken worshops at two diocesan conferences (bath and wells and exeter - hi if you are reading from those) and am taking a weekend this weekend coming for winchester diocese ordinands. what does it mean for the church and for leadership? this is a question i have asked before. maybe the new environment affords a recovery of the notion of the body of christ and of leaders as those who can catalyse small group activity that transforms, create environments in which that happens and facilitate an architecture of participation and gift sharing? i probably sound like a stuck record on that theme - sorry if that's the case! nic posted a comment around church as assemblage on one of my recent posts - i have yet to read what that means but the story above is certainly assemblage of a kind. this is all a huge imaginative shift for what it might mean to lead. but the new environment might be closer to the values of the kingdom of god than we might have first imagined?...
Technorati Tags: here comes everybody, clay shirky
hello
presences
linkage
archives
navigation
thanks for visiting my blog. i realise it's a bit old school to expect you to actually come to my world, but subscribe to the feed or select the relevant presences from the middle column and hopefully i'll come to your world and tweet or whatever to save you the hassle of coming back :-)
there are five broad areas of content - click on the buttons below to delve deeper. or below is a list of all the categories i have posted under.
hope it all makes sense. do say hi either here or where our digital presences collide, send me an e-mail, leave a comment...
Categories
- advent
- africa
- allotment
- alternative worship
- animation
- art
- articles
- australia
- big chill
- blah
- blogs
- Books
- canada
- chelsea
- create
- creativity
- croatia
- culture
- ealing
- easter
- emerging church
- entrepreneurship
- environment
- europe
- faith
- family
- Film
- football
- france
- fresh expressions
- grace
- greenbelt
- holland
- humour
- india
- ireland
- justice
- labyrinth
- leadership
- lent
- life
- linkage
- liturgy
- london
- mac
- meditation
- middle east
- mission
- movies
- Music
- new zealand
- norway
- pentecost
- photos
- pioneer
- podcast
- politics
- prayer
- proost
- scotland
- shopping
- spirituality
- sport
- story
- theology
- USA
- video
- vj
- web
- Weblogs
- worship tricks
- youth ministry
- zeitgeist
coming up
- digimission - dec 1 london
i am speaking at an EA conference on mission and new technologies - resource mission and worship weekend - jan 8-10 london
i'll be hosting a weekend in london - if you're interested in emerging church, alternative worship and mission sign up. will include experiencing grace and moot. - cms core training - 11 - 22 january
i'll be joining most of cms core training. mission partners and others will be there. if you want an intro to cross cultural mission this could be for you. - australia in adelaide and melbourne - 3-15 march
teaching a few sessions and taking part in adelaide fringe festival as an artist (info to follow) - pioneering mission - 3-7 may windermere
i'll be leading 4 days on pioneering mission. a chance to try out some new material. if you are pioneering come along...
worship tricks
where i come across creative ideas, liturgies, movies, music tracks, service outlines or anything that strikes me, i add them as worship tricks. i started these in april 2002 when i first began blogging and they have built up over the years so that i am now on the third series. this has proved a pretty popular feature of the blog.
recycled
- changes [part 2] - the next 8 years
- changes [part 1] - the last 8 years
- ways into small missional communities
- is god vaguely bored by our worship?
- luminosity and a mystical quest
- tribes - do something remarkable
- cms acknowledged community of the church of england
- worship curation: the making of a world
- the social pulpit - barak obama gets it
- spotify
Recent Comments