jonnybaker

stories of empowerment

sophia network are currently running a good series of stories of empowerment

shannon hopkins making an impact

congrats to shannon on being in the 100 unseen powerful women who change the world list over at one world action's blog - i guess that makes her seen now?!

being a pioneer

andrea campanale who has started what i think is an excellent blog is a student on the cms pioneer mission leadership training. she is blogging a series on being a pioneer. so far two parts - seeing is believing and thinking creatively. don't comment here - go over and leave her a comment...

the very worst missionary

jamie the very worst missionary looks like a great blog - a friend pointed it out to me recently [ht martin]. it's delivered in a ranting kind of style but there's a stack of wisdom and good issues being addressed and a lot of conversation in the comments. see for example this guest piece on short term missions and why she prays people would have an absolute disaster.

blogging for beginners

i did two training sessions this week on blogging. there were quite a few people there interested in starting a blog who were not interested in getting too techy or anything. the first session was terrible in that i couldn't get online for the only time the whole week. but in the second we started a blog on blogging for beginners and it occured to me that if i tidied it up it might be useful for other people and might be something for the first group to make up for the rubbish session i led! it is and will remain only ten posts in total - i don't intend to expand upon it. and it's also just on setting up a posterous blog and nothing else. and it's aimed at people with not too much tech knowledge. anyway it's here

blogging4beginners

sacredspace

my friend andrea has started blogging at sacredspace. definitely one to follow...

in her latest post she throws down a challenge to new communities to express things in song, which she has found lacking.

she has also dreamed of lobbing grenades at night to blow up all the church buildings!

and wondered if we need a new kind of leader, along with a bundle of other stuff...

 

curation conversations

cheryl lawrie is setting up an online community to share learning about curating. the idea is this...

I think the group would do the following:
-

commit to a ‘program’ of regular reading and reflection on books, articles, videos etc

be involved with intentional conversations exploring how transformation happens in public spaces, focussed around questions like this:
 what kind of events create spaces where transformation might happen
? what kind of transformation can ‘art’ effect? 
how does transformation happen?

share practical ideas and wisdom, building up a database of knowledge

The intention of the group would be to have fun, to network people with the intention of collaborations, shared imagination, action / reflection, and to create a bank of wisdom and resources

clayfire curator is another new online space focused on curation and worship - this time a US based one coming out of the evangelical lutheran church. i actually know very little about this one but thought it worth giving it a shout out... mark pierson, the godfather of curating in relation to worship (who has a book out the art of curating worship which i haven't got round to getting yet) is going to be blogging on that space for 12 weeks.

curating worship - seems like an idea whose time has come!

asbojesus gets a new look...

remarkably jon birch is heading towards 1000 cartoons on asbojesus - the site has had a makeover...

the best of...

i had a read through my blog for 2010 yesterday - i find it helps me remember much like a diary some of the things i have done. it was actually a quite wonderful year! in the spirit of last year's looking back here's looking back over 2010.

new experience - jumping out of a plane

film - the illusionist

album - heligoland

book - urban interventions and cave refectory road

exhibition - brighton biennial

grace - do be and landskapes

television - luther

gig - massive attack at hammersmith

theatre - jesus hopped the a train

sport - chelsea regain premiership

travel - first visit to italy

inspiring new person - martin parr (i didn't meet him in person but heard him speak at the brighton biennial)

work moment - beginning the pioneer leadership training

harry moment - the big chill moment (and of course his amazing poetry achievements)

joel moment - launching own club night in london pipedown (and breaking a collar bone)

jen moment - drinking a belgian ale together in brussels in mort subite

change - no longer having any children at school

web tool - posterous groups

photo - the look

magazine - generate

change - joined the new cms community

surprise - was an international artist

writing - curating worship

photography commission - cambridge college prospectus

prompts

One Word. Encapsulate the year 2010 in one word. Explain why you’re choosing that word. Now, imagine it’s one year from today, what would you like the word to be that captures 2011 for you?

this is one of the prompts from reverb10 - a question each day through the month of december to reflect on looking back and looking forward [thanks jen for the link]

 

why i will never buy ugg or nike shoes in my life

because i am sick of spam in comments on my blog! it seems to all be trying to link people to nike and ugg shoes - i am never buying a pair of either in my life... spam is counter productive - i realise i am wasting my breath but hey...

i have had so much spam in the last few weeks that i have switched to approving comments - i am sorry about this as it feels one step removed from immediate conversation - like you are being filtered (which you are) but at the moment i don't have a lot of choice.

congratulations sophia network - blog of the year!

congratulations to the sophia network who won the blog of the year at the christian new media awards. jen is the person who makes it happen and writes a lot of the content and chases the rest. it's a brilliant site, has great content and has a perfect niche which often suits blogs well. i designed the site - i remember that animated walking woman taking me hours taking screen grabs from a movie i shot in new york! so it was also nice from that point of view. in fairly amusing fashion my blog was also in the final but was beaten into runner up by jen. how i was even in the final i have no idea as i have put less time into it this year than before because i've been busier than ever in the last 6 months!

asbo is back in action...

after the burglary and trauma of a few weeks ago jon has been catching up with work he lost and asbojesus is back in action... [jon has also just animated the parable of the unforgiving servant for proost which is out next month and looks amazing!]

meaning in movies

meaning in movies

linking up

life seems so busy at the moment that the dear old blog is getting neglected. i have a ton of books i have read and haven't reviewed and a million other thoughts but where does all the time go??!!!

anyway mean time a few links...

one amazing book i finally read is margaret wheatley's leadership and the new science which is stunning - thanks cheryl for placing it into my hands literally. in the absence of a review go and see some of her writings here. if you find any gems let me know.

great article here by steve bevans if you like a bit of mission theology of the holy spirit

earthing faith looks like a good concept and venture. i wrote a piece for them on creation stations

simon walker who has developed a concept of undefended leadership has a new book he is posting on a blog a chapter at a time called the undefended life. i had good intentions to follow along but haven't - ho hum... but if you have timne let me know about it.

if this all sounds a bit worthy and you prefer something in the shallow end try unhappy hipsters which just takes lifestyle magazine shots and re-captions them

and my friend john martin has started blogging here

back in action...

well it's been a quiet week on the blog. i've been on a week's holiday with the family which has been wonderful. made my first ever visit to italy which i loved. we usually go away in the summer but getting dates between us all was proving difficult and we have reached that stage where we are unsure if the boys will keep holidaying with us but if the offer's good enough and we are paying they seem to keep showing up!!! i actually didn't open the laptop for a whole week - yes i know impressive eh?!. i didn't want to advertise that i was away on the blog, twitter, facebook and all that. kind of seems a bit naive or maybe i'm just getting paranoid...

anyway i am straight back into a crazy week. but will endeavour to catch up with my digital self.

i apologise that all that has been on the blog has been a video of jesus with a fan - it wasn't meant to be some kind of statement - it just amused me! i also apologise if you follow the comments (which i suspect most of you don't) that there have been so many spam comments. it's kind of irritating. i really don't like putting a filter on comments as i hate encountering it on other peoples blogs. let me know if you have any bright ideas of what to do about it any typepad users.

so an election has been announced, malcolm maclaren and the polish president have died, i was sad to miss two graces - easter vigil and low, chelsea are in pole position for the premiership and in the fa cup final, yet another debate rages about the emerging church, spring has hopefully sprung and no doubt a million and one other things besides. hope you all had a good easter!

starting a blog could not be easier - posterous

i took a training session on IT for cms last week. one of the questions that came up was about blogging and what the easiest free interface was. the answer is posterous.com . rather than repeat myself this is the post i wrote having set up a blog by simply sending an e-mail

Last week I took a training session for people in mission and one of the questions that came up was how to start a blog. I did the usual thing of mentioning various providers and in particular I showed www.tumblr.com as I think it has a very easy interface to get started with. However since then I have been doing a bit of scouting around and the solution that is the simplest and most remarkable seems to be posterous.com . With this you simply send an e-mail to [email protected] and a blog is created for you. The address is sent back to you and then you can send posts via e-mail, with audio, photos, movies, pdfs, even powerpoints attached that will be converted to a reasonable format and posted to your blog. What could be simpler especially for people not wanting to engage in the techy side of things or for people in parts of the world where internet access is limited? Wonderful...

There's more of course - add your profile pic, give it a different look and so on. But rather than bedazzle anyone with that I have just left it exactly as it gets set up, other than adding a profile photo and blurb in my profile which is what appears under the photo

yes you read that right - just e-mail and attach anything you like and it will be on your blog. you can also select to link it to facebook, twitter and all that at the click of a mouse so your posts scatter across your networks. and you can group blog. so for example, i am considering switching the ealing lip blog to posterous as it could not be simpler for people to post. you register them and they simply send to an e-mail you give. you can also link to an existing blog so whatever you e-mail to posterous will then appear on your existing blog. i'm not thinking of switching personally or anything and am used to the typepad interface and like it but this is more of a useful tool for any of you encouraging others to blog and trying to find a simple way to get them started... [ht: tim snyder for putting me onto it]

#gdc1joelbaker

joel is blogging stuff from the first year of his graphic design course here gdclevel1.

teach yourself php one day, have a blog the next. nice...

from the college point of view, get all students to collate their portfolios online and learn some web code at the same time. also nice...

note to self: why not get pioneer leaders to develop portfolios online?

cheryl lawrie new site

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...

catching up on a few things...

i have some photos in the festival annual

ben edson reflects on moving on from sanctus 1 (scroll down for 4 posts so far) - all the best to alistair who picks up the mantle

i cam across laughing jesus i think through steve bevans. i love seeing representations of christ in different cultures.

chris erdman is back blogging

mark waddington is collating vimeo worship loops