In the Coracle

Bookmark and Share This Page

Copy HTML:

If you like this then please subscribe to the RSS Feed.

Posted in Technology |
No Comments »

Updated blog design

PatMay 13, 2008

Thanks to Wordpress design whiz Todd Hiestand, I’ve made some big changes around here to make this blog easier to read. I’m now using Todd’s theme called Lean and Clean, which is a 3-column, widget-ready theme done with Todd’s usual knack for very clean, visually appealing design. Todd plans to sell this theme for the low, low price of $5, and my experience with it so far is very positive.

In addition to the theme update, I’ve done a few other updates:

Linked to last four photos from my Flickr stream
Linked to the last four photos I’ve faved from others
Updated my RSS feeds to Feedburner, which also gives me a subscribe-by-email option
Added a twitter widget
Added a way to more easily bookmark posts on your bookmark app
Updated a few links

More to come:

A page for social networks I’m hanging out on
Another links scrub
A hard scrub of categories and tags
etc

Enjoy, (especially those of you who read via a feed reader), and go give Todd some feedback or give him some money to get your very own lean and clean theme.

Bookmark and Share

Bookmark and Share This Page

Copy HTML:

If you like this then please subscribe to the RSS Feed.

Posted in Technology |
1 Comment »

Current Podcasts, 4/2008

PatApril 5, 2008

Colleen asked me to write about the podcasts I’m listening to these days. Turns out that it was almost exactly a year ago that I wrote my last podcast list. Some stuff has changed in the last year, some hasn’t.

A few things to note: I’ve listed the podcast title, and I’ve linked to wherever the podcast links to. I you can’t find the podcast at that link, go to iTunes and search for the title I’ve given.

I’ve noticed that the sermon podcasts that I listen to are basically just people I know, people I want to keep following. I don’t really listen to sermons for information, so the sermons you’ll find in here are all people I know or follow closely in some way.

There’s a lot of sports podcasts in this group! I think partly this is due to the fact that I love a good interview, and even though I perhaps only listen to 10% of the episodes, I also notice that I listen to sports when I’m going to sleep, as they help my brain settle down.

I’d love to know what you’re listening to also!

Christianity / Spirituality

Allelon.org: Roxburgh Journal - Interviews and discussion about missional leadership, and a discussion about missional orders
Emergent-UK resources - interviews, teachings, goodies from the UK missional church folks. See in particular the excellent recordings with Dallas Willard, Todd Hunter, N. T. Wright
Everett Vineyard sermons - Recordings from Wayne Purdom’s new church plan
Messages from New Life Church @ North Bend - Recordings from fellow North Bend church planter John Morauski’s AG church
Monastery Podcast - sung prayer of the Liturgy of the Hours with the Benedictine Sisters of Perpetual Adoration
NOOMA - Preview clips of Rob Bell’s outstanding short films on spirituality
Ohana Project - sermons from the church we are part of
Pray-As-You-Go - Daily prayer from the Irish Jesuits. Of all my prayer podcast forms, this one is the best recorded format. I can’t recommend it highly enough
Prayer from the Taize Community - samplings of the prayer and song of the taize community in France
Quest Sermon Podcast - Eugene Cho and Quest church in Seattle’s Interbay neighborhood
Simple Church for Simple People - talk from a simple church planter
Vineyard Church Sutton’s Marriage Course - recordings from the Sutton, UK church’s excellent marriage course
Vineyard Community Church podcast - Rich and Rose Swetman’s church in Shoreline, WA - sermons
Zondervan - The Bible Experience - The gospel of Matthew done in theatrical fashion with a wholly African-American cast

Sports

Baseball Prospectus - stat analysis of baseball
Elise and Ian on Demand - KJR sports talk radio interviews from the evening crew
ESPN: The B. S. Report with Bill Simmons - the columnist for espn.com and espn the magazine does a funny podcast
The Groz on Demand - KJR sports talk radio interviews from the afternoon snow crew
Groz with Gas-mails - KJR sports talk radio call-in voicemails
John Clayton On-Demand - KJR talk show with ESPN NFL guru
Mitch in the Morning On-Demand - KJR morning sports talk show. Mitch does fantastic interviews
The Pitch - baseball talk
Podcastaway - from a cruising catamaran circling the Pacific, talking about sailing and cruising

Culture

Ask a Ninja - funny stuff from Ninja in video podcast format
DeepRockDrive postcast - Video clips and behind the scenes interviews from live interactive shows
Delta Park Project - pop culture and good, gentle humor
Fly With Me - major airline pilot Joe D’Eon’s podcast about airlines, flight, travel, celebrity
The Lost Podcast with Jay and Jack - two guys talk Lost twice a week
LostCasts - “We read the forums so you don’t have to”. Especially good at literature references in the show
The Official Lost Podcast - the producers of Lost mess around with their fans
This American Life - the outstanding radio show from NPR. The power of story at its best.

Music

Bono - the Rolling Stone interview - the recordings behind the fantastic printed interview in Rolling Stone magazine. Hearing the voice gives you so much more context than the printed versions
“Communitas Two” - Talks on Christian meditation from John Main, OSB.
Dolphinstreet Guitar Lessons and Gear Demos - quick videos and gear demos
Fender - Interviews and demos of Fender guitar products
IndieFeed - Alternative and Modern Music - indiefeed.com’s song-a-day in the alternative style. Great for discovering new music
IndieFeed - Blues Music - indiefeed.com’s song-a-day in the blues style. Great for discovering new music.
IndieFeed - Hip Hop Music - indiefeed.com’s song-a-day in the hip-hop style. Great for discovering new music.
Irish and Celtic Music Podcast - Marc Gunn’s collection of Celtic music from around the world
Irish Guitar Podcast - learn to play Irish music with these audio lessons, sampling for the books the authors have written
John Lennon - the Rolling Stone podcast - Audio from an interview with John Lennon just after Let it Be was released
Origin Records Jazz Podcast - Seattle area jazz recording label does a live music podcast
Pandora Podcast Series - Insights into music from the people who do the Music Genome Project, the best music recommendation system on the planet
WILCO Podcast - audio and video from the band Wilco

Technology/Work

David Allen Company Podcast - business productivity talks from the originator of Getting Things Done

Photography

Photoshop Killer Tips - short video podcasts with Photoshop tips
Photoshop User TV - from the National Association of Photoshop Professionals, a series of short how-to videos

Bookmark and Share

Bookmark and Share This Page

Copy HTML:

If you like this then please subscribe to the RSS Feed.

Posted in Uncategorized |
8 Comments »

Social Networks and Community

PatJanuary 3, 2008

I work as a software engineer at DeepRockDrive, a social community that is focused on transforming interactive live entertainment. If you haven’t checked it out yet, hey - it’s free!!!

It’s a great place to work, in that I get to be with friends, create social software, see how a small company grows, and it’s cool to be ‘in the music industry’ as well. Social software and music pair two of my favorite topics; the fact that there’s cool people working here is a huge bonus.

In thinking about social networking and social software that I often find myself running into ideas and concepts that I think are worth considering for the church - especially the emergent church. I don’t necessarily mean emergent in the sense of Emergent Village - though I like them - but more in the central meaning of Emergent as a social structure - like wikipedia puts it,

In philosophy, systems theory and the sciences, emergence refers to the way complex systems and patterns arise out of a multiplicity of relatively simple interactions. Emergence is central to the theory of complex systems.

So, complex systems and patterns that start out of simple interactions. Relationships that multiply in complexity.

That’s the topic of a fascinating little web page over at Orgnet.com, which looks at ways to graph social relationships in online communities and social networks. Consider this intro to the paper, and when you think about how it relates to MySpace and Facebook, think also about how it relates to the church as a social community:

The diagram above shows an actual on-line community [OLC]. Every node in the network represents a person. A link between two nodes reveals a relationship or connection between two people in the community — the social network. Most on-line communities consist of three social rings — a densely connected core in the center, loosely connected fragments in the second ring, and an outer ring of disconnected nodes, commonly known as lurkers. Communities have various levels of belonging. [Again, the source page]

Now, if you’ve read Joe Myers’ excellent book The Search to Belong, you’re nodding your head here. Same, if you’ve read The Celtic Way of Evangelism (both of which I recommend highly).

There are a couple of pages of excellent summary, and then this in the closing section:

Social network analysts do not focus solely on attributes of individuals. They look at relations and exchanges between people and how these connections influence choices. They examine the affect social networks have on the behavior of individuals — how people influence social structures, and in return, how those structures affect the individuals embedded in them.

Growing a community is not just adding new members. It requires adding both people and relationships — nodes AND links. A community thrives by its connections, not by its collections! It’s the relationships, and the prospect of future relationships, that keep members active and excited.

A few things that I’ve been thinking about this evening after reading this:

How can the church engage people in its mission by leveraging “the prospect of future relationships”?
What does this mean for a community that, if truly modeled on Jesus, aggressively welcomes the outsider as much as it challenges the insider to not feel particularly comfortable? (a community with both an inward and an outward impulse)
Can relational structures be created, or can we only create an atmosphere in which relationships can be created and thrive?
Can we learn from the online communities who see widely varying levels of engagement and participation?

I hope that if you’re interested in the church and its health and growth, you check out this little paper and join in a discussion here.

Bookmark and Share

Bookmark and Share This Page