gavoweb

spiritual | cultural | technological life

Technology

business cards & youth ministry : the green business card

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i've been in youth ministry for going on 15+ years now. in those years i've possessed maybe two business cards, all bought for me by someone else. never in those 15+ years has a teenager asked me for a business card. so why have them? i never saw the need.

now, in this new day of my youth ministry career i find myself doing more networking within the larger church & most recently the nashville (soon to be hendersonville) tech community. i am feeling the need to get some business cards. here are my two options i'm going with.

1. i've put together the sms contxt card. all you need to do is txt 'gavoweb' to 50500 and you will receive some of my basic business card info. this is paperless, which is an excellent 'green' usage. wasn't technology & the computer supposed to get rid of the need for paper?.. right.. well, here is atleast a spot to try something new out that is paperless. not to mention, if you are a youth leader like me, your primary audience is one of people who txt like mad seems logical to use.

2. i am ordering "mini-cards" which are small, baseline essential versions of business cards. now, i don't know if they prove to be something more effective than a stack of traditional business cards, but i like the concept and the coolness factor of being smaller. i might not call this 'green' i don't know the ins and outs of paper product to say that just because this is smaller means it uses less paper. it probably does.. but really i think its cool, not to mention the cool mini card holder.

religious spiritual christ-follower emerging emergent missional : other defining typos

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i just love religious satire. its so telling & holds up a mirror showing us how we really are. i pulled this gem out for a twitter conversation, but it reminds me of some of the whole definition/tags that people are willing & not willing to give themselves. it also reminded me of one of the snippets of prophetic twitterspeak i shared at my spirituality & social media session at podcamp nashville.

Tweetjeebusdenomination

getting over our control issues : linked data for everyone

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i’m a huge fan of ted. if i had the money i would so geek out at their conference. so it is with no real surprise that there is something shared that might in fact aid one of my passions, the church & specifically the umc.

in a lunch conversation i had with larry hollon on tuesday (thanks larry for the time) he had asked my thoughts on some of the things i might address in rethink church & the agencies approach to using social media. one of the things that i suggested was the release of control of materials. creative commons is the new framework we move in, not exclusive copyright. so i found interesting some similar themes & possibly an answer in tim berners-lee ted talk on how he developed the internet (no, it wasn’t al gore) and his newest ‘play project’ of linked data.

things that jumped out at me quickly were when he mentioned “you’ve payed for this” in regards to the data that the government has. because we have payed for them with tax payer money. within the united methodist church, we have apportionment’s that pay for the agencies to do a large amount of their work. in essence, we are owners of that information. we should have access to it.

but there is a control mentality that if you give it away you loose 1. your ability to make money (which isn’t the role of umcom or the other agencies) 2. that people will re-purpose your stuff (ala. a mashup or sound clip it for their own thing)… both of which, are navigatable (i don’t think i just made up that word). many of our biggest companies give their braintrust away for free and they’ve parlayed it into a living and the most loyal of customers. why assume that someone re-purposing your stuff is innately bad? i go with the assumption there are more creative people out there than i. as a youth pastor i keep trying to groom them that way as well. they do things i would never have imagined re-purposing my ideas for the betterment of the ministry.

so what do i suggest with this?

  • get over your control issues. that might start with just naming them. (as a personal shot, why are we asking people to take down meaningful & helpful videos on youtube)
  • put people in charge of sharing your braintrust. put together the linked data setup with your information and let others come in and put in their part.
  • allow them full access so that they can know their people better & serve more fully
  • open up resources for them to re-purpose graphics, videos, logos, etc to reach a demographic that you are trying to reach, but painfully not.