Kony 2012 Tells Us What We Care About

By now, most of you know about Kony 2012, the 30 minute video gone viral. So many people have seen it, and the commentaries are multiplying.

But what does this massive sharing of links tell us about Americans?

Over at the Patheos blog Black, White, and Gray, I wrote a brief post -- Here’s my conclusion:

The campaign to “Stop Kony” is less about removing a brutal military overlord and more about what Americans showcase as their sacred values.

Read more here.

Smartphone Religion at the Duke Divinity Call & Response Blog

Christmas season is in full gear at the Marti house -- finishing up my classes, the kids homework projects before the end of the year, community activities here in Davidson.

In the midst of it all, I've been able to take Jason Byasee's invitation to again contribute last week to the Faith & Leadership Blog at Duke Divinity.

My latest post on The Wi-Fi Church of the Future (and the Present) is tagged under Innovation | Liturgy | Technology ):

Image via Wikipedia

"The past two years have seen a rapid acceleration in the adoption of portable computing by the average person. This will inevitably prompt changes by church leaders."

It's prompted a good online exchange.

I'll encourage you to read the whole post on your own. But more than the post itself are the responses that follow it.

The Executive Director of Leadership Education at Duke Divinity first describes his "knee jerk" reaction against churches leaning on such technology. Another believes "the app" already exists. And yet another comment brings concern for the poor and their access to wi-fi technology and information.

I appreciate the dialogue. I'm learning all the time, and the comments are helpful.

Overall what this exchange suggests to me is that we've arrived at an interesting moment in the relationship between technology and church.

Image via Wikipedia

The American culture has swallowed the use of smartphones almost whole -- after all, analysts can readily predict how many iPhones will be found under the Christmas tree this year.

But church leaders remain nervous about learning new techniques to harness the use of these advanced devices to their ministries.

Smartphones are not the future; they are already here.

So the failure lies not in ministry budgets (people have their own phones), it lies in the imagination of leaders to use these devices to advance their ministry.

My Experience Twittering Religion

Quick Post: In the past month, I've noticed a lot on the use of media in congregations. It also happens to be a very blog-friendly topic -- visual media items can be seen, reviewed, and downloaded by readers with the links provided.

Now that I've experienced a conference where I fully immersed myself in living the "twittering stream of religion," I want to again bring up the use of Twitter in religious gatherings.

What started my thinking for today is coming across another "Twitter and Church" discussion. The website Church Marketing Sucks posted a set of links to their recent entries on the use of Twitter (the micro-blogging service) you can explore:

Image via CrunchBase

• Twittering the Sermon
  
• Church Marketing Lab on Twitter
  
• It's Twitter Time For Your Church
  
• Twitter Passion Play
  
• Top Tweeting Church Leaders
  
• Twitter at Church
  
• What Would Jesus Twitter?
  
• Share the Gospel in 140 Characters or Less
  
• wethechurch.org and Your Church
  
• Twitter for Churches

But the extent of Twitter is far more than church services.

More broadly, posts like this lead me to conclude that churches, denominations, seminaries, and para-church organizations have moved American religion decisively toward mainstreaming social media.

My experience with this at the Moltmann Conversation organized by Emergent Village is the first time I decided to dive into this Twitter stream full-force.

Conferences like the Moltmann Conversation I joined at Chicago and the earlier Earl Lectures conference at Berkeley encourage attenders to "tweet" through the sessions. Wi-Fi is available in the auditorium, and extra electrical "plugs"are spread throughout the room. This allows laptops and other portable devices like smartphones to sustain power. I used the "twubs" service found at "http://twubs.com/moltmann" and the "#" hashtag "#moltmann" available through my twitter feed.

The collective "tweets" are available to participants and displayed on a large, public screen at the front of the auditorium. Between my laptop, my phone and the screen up front, I was able to access tweets continuously. This added another dimension to capturing the mood and messages of the conference by letting participants reverberate quotes, observations, questions, insights, and online resources through a continuous live stream.

In my experience, Twitter primarily echoes significant statements made on the platform. I found the 250+ audience in Chicago to be aggressive listeners. When they hear a good statement, they capture it and reel it in with the zeal of a fly fisherman. Fellow "tweeters" will snatch that sentence -- keeping it to 140 characters -- and "tweet" it to the rest of the group. The more times the statement is posted, and the more it is RT'ed (return posted by others), the more collectively important the sentence appears to be. As the conference goes on, I read and follow others thoughts as we revisit significant statements, drawing them out of the steady flow of talk happening out front.

This forces the conference to take on an aphoristic quality. Sharp, witty statements are accentuated; paragraphs of thoughts are assumed. It's less a summary, and more an attempt to help hearers remember what happened.

In addition, people post short remarks and questions. Some will add a link that sends others to online ideas and sources. This gives a privileged view of the "mind" of other participants. What are they asking? What are they critiquing? What do they highlight? What do they ignore?

Also, some at the conference took a few pictures. Using the service "Twitpic", you can capture the view of the conference as taken by one of the participants. Here's a picture twittered from the Moltmann Conversation. Using all tweets together, we have the potential of creating a type of textual and visual archive for the event.

Because the Twitter feed is accessible to anyone with an internet connection, people unable to physically attend are able to vicariously experience some aspect of the conference by also catching the tweet-flow. While it is not a summary of the conference, those not there still derive at least some small benefit and an unusual privilege of overhearing some of the best "lines" from a very long conversation.

Finally, it's hard to ignore that "tweeting" conferences is a fascinating form of participatory marketing. Conference organizers know that while actively twittering adds value to participants and observers, it is also a benefit to the organizers to "spread the word" and broadcast the happenings of the conference in multiple directions through social networks. Thus, the power of social media to promote this and future events is realized in a distinctive way.

My experience at the conference helped me appreciate the extent to which organizers are deliberately adding "tweeting" to their events. So Twitter is interesting and important not only for worship and liturgy but also for the expansive experience of religion and collective experience.

I left considering this question: could the use of Twitter become as "normal" to Christianity as the use of hymnals?

iPhone Church - Religious Media Jumps on the Digital Bandwagon (Again)

As part of their expanding digital offerings, Pastor Wayne Cordeiro explains a new service provided through the IT department of New Hope Church in Hawaii. The "iPhone devotions" borrows the iconic Apple style to communicate relevance to the digital literati.

New Hope on iPhone from Peter Thourson on Vimeo.

Even more, entire church services at New Hope can be streamed live.

It appears that New Hope Christian Fellowship, a large Foursquare Church in Hawaii, is the first to launch iPhone services on July 4th of this year. A press release indicates that "live streaming to the iPhone was one of the most requested features from church attendees" and that the live streaming capabilities of the 3.0 software allowed this to happen.

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

"Typically, churches are years behind other organizations when it comes to technology and innovation. We have tried to reverse that trend and pioneer new ways to spread the Gospel using the most current tools available," explains New Hope's Technology and Innovations Director, Michael Sharpe. "We don't mind the long hours and stress that comes with innovating because we know that if we can come up with something useful, it can be used by other churches around the world."

You can check out their dedicated e-church site here.

Young, Amateur Sikhs Lead New "Emergent" Congregations

NY Times reporter Samuel G. Freedman shows young professional Sikhs participating in amateur-led services as part of the "emerging movement."

Today, I caught another intriguing article by the Samuel Freedman on young Sikhs in Manhattan.

Seems they are creating new forms of worship, "youth gurdwara" or youth temple, created by and for young professionals. News of their meetings are spread by word of mouth, email, and social networking sites like Facebook.

By Getty Images via Daylife

Mandeep Singh remembers his first diwan located in a rented multipurpose room in a luxury condominium:

What most caught Mr. Singh’s eye, though, were the other members of the congregation, or sangat. They were, like him, young professionals, the BlackBerry crowd, and as the worship service, or diwan, proceeded over the next several hours, these amateur clerics took turns leading the chanting of sacred poetry and the singing of devotional hymns.

According to Freedman, this is "the Sikh version of what religion scholars call the emergent movement, a growing trend toward small, nimble, bottom-up, laity-led congregations that especially attract young adults."

Kanga, Kara and Kirpan - three of the five articles of faith endowed to the Sikhs via Wikipedia

This is "not your chacha’s (in Punjabi, your uncle’s) gurdwara."

On reading about all this, my friend John Schmalzbauer called these "Sikher sensitive services." Yow!

The article describes how worshipers enter with bare feet and covered head, bow before the holy book, and so fulfill centuries-old obligations. "The service follows the time-honored sequence of readings, hymns, a discourse called katha, the distribution of the sweet sacramental food karah parshad and finally the sharing of a communal meal known as langar.

"But the words of the liturgy are projected from a laptop, both translated into English and transliterated phonetically for the many members who cannot read Gurmukhi, the script of the Sikh religious texts. One set of projections carries the logo 'Sikh to the Max.'”

While a diwan in a conventional gurdwara goes four or five hours, this one finished in two.

Freedman mentions other emergent congregations, evangelical Christian and Jewish ones, but the focus of the article is how 28 year old Singh has become a more religiously active person through this peer-led temple. Being with other young adults seems to motivate attenders.

Freedman notes, "For while news media coverage of Sikhs in the United States has tended to focus on controversy — bias crimes against Sikh men, who are mistaken for Muslims because of their turbans, or civil rights suits by Sikhs to allow men to wear turbans and keep beards in various workplaces — the more prevalent, day-in-day-out experience is of finessing the balance between accomplishment and assimilation."

"Balance between accomplishment and assimilation..." Nicely said.

By eyesplash Mikul via Flickr

Another attender Amit S. Guleria said, “When you’re living the life of someone in your 20s, it gives you a different energy.” He added, “When you go to a traditional gurdwara, you feel more like an observer than a participant. Here, the onus is on us. And that’s a responsibility we want to have.”

Who are these 20 somethings? "Well-educated and upwardly mobile... the diwan includes doctors, lawyers, bankers, engineers, computer consultants, graduate students and at least one chef. Perhaps half are the American-born children of immigrants, half are immigrants themselves...

Either way they have a foot apiece in tradition and dynamism."

Twitter and Church - Accessible and Problematic

An interesting article in The New York Times shows how the accessibility of Twitter can make it problematic for religious use.

Turns out it's hard to keep the devotional content free of the riff-raff.

From Lead Us to Tweet, and Forgive the Trespassers,

While hundreds of worshipers watched the traditional dramatization of the Crucifixion from pews in the church, one of New York’s oldest, thousands more around the world followed along on smartphones and computers as a staff member tweeted short bursts of dialogue and setting (“Darkness and earthquake,” “Crucify him!”).

The trouble began in the second hour.

Twitter’s interactivity — its essence — made it easy for an anonymous text-messager to insert an unscripted character into the Passion play:

a Roman guard who breezily claimed, “I’ve got dibs on his robe.”

When another texter introduced a rogue Mary Magdalene, the intrusion only confirmed the obvious: Twitter’s trademark limit of 140 characters per message is no bar against crudity.

The rest of the article is online.

Smartphone Spirituality - Terrible? or The New Normal?

A Twin Cities newspaper reports on the use of social networking and new technology by congregations -- not just Christian ones -- who appear to advocate a "shallow consumerism" for religion.


An article by Jeff Strickler from the Star Tribune features a now-familiar article about the incorporation of technology and the targeting of younger attenders among congregations. It seems that some of the fastest-growing congregations in Minnesota -- suburban, mostly evangelical Christian megachurches -- embraced marketing from the start. Their success has caused more-traditional congregations with dwindling memberships to take notice.

The article begins with one congregation --

This church, called Substance (they tend to have radical names,) is one of the most-successful in the Twin Cities, drawing several hundred worshippers each Sunday. They reach out to young people by cutting back on the ritual of traditional churches. There's also a rock band and multi-media.

Nice commentary on the church's name -- I guess "Substance" could be considered a radical name if you take the substance being referred to in a more ambiguous way...

Anyhow, the key to the article is how it's not just Christian churches getting into the act. The article quotes Rabbi Hayim Herring who stressed in a seminar to "fellow clergy that they should spend an hour a day on Facebook, MySpace and Twitter" and that "blogging should be considered mandatory." Rabbi Herring also recommends using video clips from YouTube in the service.

Image by David A G Wilson via Flickr

"They used to look at me as if I'd just said a four-letter word," said Herring, the former senior rabbi at Beth El Synagogue in St. Louis Park and now the executive director of STAR (Synagogues: Transformation and Renewal). But in its seven years, the organization has seen more converts to what many call one of the dirtiest words in religion: marketing.

According to the article, it's younger people's "reliance" on electronic social networks that leaves religious leaders "no choice." As Rabbi Herring states, "If you're not out there, there's no chance of your message being heard."

Even Hindus are becoming technologically astute. Rajan Zed, president of the Universal Society of Hinduism, urged his religious organizations to use "smart-phones with BlackBerry, iPhone and Symbian." While they were at it, he suggested, they should check out Flickr, Habbo, hi5, Skyrock, Tagged, Bebo, Netlog, MyHeritage, Odnoklassniki, Sonico and VKontakte.

Overall, the article stirs up controversy by echoing reactions from alarmists concerend about "salesmanship tools" and "commercialism." It's the marketplace of religion (so they say), and quotes Greg Smith, a research fellow for the Pew Research Center's Forum on Religion & Public Life, who says, "Whether they like it or not, religions are being forced to compete for members."

Image by timjeby via Flickr

The article then goes for the jugular - it's a religions "market" because congregations need to sustain streams of financial contributions to their ministry.

Bottom line: follow the money --

More than just bragging rights are at stake. Maintaining membership is critical for church finances, especially at a time of economic distress when contributions are dropping and endowment funds have taken a beating in the stock market. If belt-tightening members drop less money in the collection plate, the congregation needs to pack more people into the pews to make up the difference.

In my view, pointing to money as a core dynamic is just too crass. Religious leaders are sincerely wrestling with attempts to meet and minister to people about the things they really care about - bringing them into a closer relationship to the divine. And yet there is a struggle to define the role for new technology.

Rev. John Mayer who is executive director of City Vision, a Minneapolis organization that tracks religious demographics, said it well, saying,

"People see it as too worldly or gimmicky for the church to be marketing itself," he said. "But most of the same people who say it is sacrilegious also expect their church to have a website, a listing in the phone book or an ad in the phone book. To me, this is marketing."

In fact, he said, one of religion's classic icons could be considered a marketing tool: the church steeple.

"Yes, it's there for artistic reasons and to symbolize pointing to God," he said. "But it's also like a big sign to people saying: 'We are here. Come and check us out.'"

Steeples as marketing tool. Nice point.

The Rev. Scott Anderson at Eagle Brook Church, also tempers the discussion by saying that tailoring the delivery of the message to its intended audience is nothing new.

"We have to reach people through the culture we find ourselves in," he said. "If we want people to hear our message, we have to get them through the doors first."

What's even more interesting are the range of comments on the story. One comment from SMBowner3 writes,

"A church is a business and a religion is a brand, so they are smart to use technology to market themselves and their brand. You can learn about God in a bible - churches and religions are 'value add' services."

Image via Wikipedia

Another from kevinstirtz writes,

"The leaders who are moving (dragging?) their churches (and synagogues) into the 21st century by using social media tools and other technology are just plain smart. It's called meeting your customers where they are and it works. I applaud these pastors, ministers and rabbis who are simply trying harder to meet the needs of their people."

The whole article is interesting to me.

Looks like it will be awhile before the image of "traditional church" gets shifted far enough for these developments to not be considered so outlandish.

Twittering Religion in America - Part 2

Quick post: This is my second of two posts on the use of Twitter by congregational leaders. I'll focus on the use of Twitter by individuals rather than organizations...

Image via CrunchBase

Although congregations using Twitter during worship services has gotten some media attention, the use of religion through Twitter is more than just worship "tweets."

I'll pass on talking about other organizations that use Twitter like Islamic Relief (a non-profit organization) or Islamic Crunch (focusing on activities of all sorts in the Muslim community) or Talk Islam (blogging all things Islam) -- religious organizations of all sorts are finding Twitter provides a low-cost way to raise awareness and communicate updates.

Instead, I've started following a few church leaders on my own Twitter account and notice a few, distinct uses of the service.

(Caveat: Not all leaders do this ALL the time, but I'll suggest what I see as an informal pattern.)

1. Purposeful - Some leaders consistently stay "on message" through Twitter.

Image by Josh Russell via Flickr

Leonard Sweet
Erwin McManus

Here's what I mean - some leaders remain vision-focused leaders through Twitter, keeping their followers encouraged, uplifted, and focused on the values and purposes of their life. This includes leaders who post aphorisms, proverbs, quotes, and key phrases with every tweet. Look at Len Sweet's quotes and expansion of Biblical key words. See Erwin McManus's references to being "wide awake."

2. Provocative - Leaders put out questions and "what if" statements to provoke responses.

Naeem Fazal
Alex McManus

There are other leaders who want to initiate dialogue and get reactions. Using a spare 14o characters, they attempt to provoke thinking and prompt follow-up posts from other people. Naeem Fazal tweets, "Question: Do you have an irrational confidence in the faithfullness of God?" and "Is failure resolved by success or by faithfulness ?" and "Was there a time that you trusted God more than you do now ... What happened?" Alex McManus tweets, "Does talent emerge due to external factors (Gladwell, Outliers), proper practice (Coyle, Talent Code), or nature (Gallup, Strengthsfinder)?" and "What would happen if we planted gardens and designed natural sanctuaries instead of planting and building churches?"

3. Promotional - Leaders use Twitter to keep people up to date with their books, speaking engagements, blog posts, and other resources and events surrounding their ministry.

Image by barron via Flickr

Eric Bryant
Ed Stetzer

Church leaders using Twitter are often busy people who travel, speak, write, and consult to groups nearly every day. Their life is a near-constant whirl of activity, and they use Twitter to let people (both friends and "fans") know what's new with them. Eric Bryant links his blog posts to his Twitter account and regularly gives away free copies of his book. And Ed Stetzer continually developes new material which he often makes available on the internet.

4. Personal - Still other leaders talk mostly about their leisure and family activities.

Alan Hirsch
Sam Radford

Church leaders can be very open about the movies they watch, the restaurants they try, and the various happenings with their spouse and children. Reading their posts, you get a feel for the rhythm of their lives away from "the office." Alan Hirsch and Sam Radford are two who keep us informed of their sleep habits, places they visit, conversations with friends, and any "plans-of-the-moment."

5. Mixed-Use

Image via Wikipedia

Jay Bakker
Dan Kimball

While some leaders have one primary "Twitter Profile," most have mixed uses. Through a series of tweets, they broadcast vision, provoke thoughts, indicate their speaking and writing activities, and talk about their day-to-day lives -- all in a single day! Jay Bakker and Dan Kimball are faithful in providing their Twitter followers a steady stream of thoughts and activities.

These are the 5 uses of Twitter I see among church leaders today.

Any others I've missed?

Twittering Religion in America - Part 1

After posting about churches in North Carolina encouraging attenders to tweet during Easter services, now Time has picked up the story on how churches across the country are jumping on the Twitter bandwagon. Here's Part 1 of "Twittering Religion in America."

Image via CrunchBase

John Voelz and David McDonald, senior pastors at Westwinds Community Church, a tech-savvy congregation in Jackson, Michigan, spent two weeks educating their congregation about Twitter. Congregants brought in their laptops, iPhones and Blackberrys.

They also pumped up the bandwidth in the auditorium. During services, the church publicly broadcasts tweets that look like this:

"Nice shirt JVo"

"So glad they are doing Lenny Kravitz"

"I have a hard time recognizing God in the middle of everything"

"The more I press in to Him, the more He presses me out to be useful"

"sometimes healing is painful"

It may seem odd to some, but more churches integrate text-messaging into worship, asking people to bring the act of texting into their relationship with God."

Other churches in the "quirky minority" using Twitter include Seattle's Mars Hill, New York City's Trinity Church, and Next Level Church outside Charlotte.

Image by Shira Golding via Flickr

Will it catch on? I don't know. The issue of the use of twitter should probably be seen as part of the general discussion on church and technology.  I'll try to write more about this later....

But as to the use of Twitter, Pastor Voelz reports getting at least 5 emails a week from people asking about how to launch twitter in thier church. They ask, "How did you rig the screen resolution so people could read the tweets?" "What was members' reaction?" And, not surprisingly: "Got any tips to persuade church leadership this is way cool?"

Not everyone is convinced Twitter is a spiritually "good" thing.

One worry about bringing Twitter into church services is how it might alter the experience of worship. 

The Time article writes, "The trick is to not let the chatter overshadow the need for quiet reflection that spirituality requires." Of course, this relates to an assumption that "quiet reflection" is a bottom-line necessity for "spirituality." The 140 character "chatter" of Twitter does not qualify for deep spritual activity for most people.

Image via Wikipedia

Shallow spirituality is not a concern for Robbie McLaughlin who is an attender at Next Level Church.   His experience is interesting to note. 

Although Twitter is not a formal part of the services,

"The graphic designer twittered the Sunday after Easter Sunday and he intends to do it again and again, caught up in the way it has transformed the way he worships.

He likes the way it helps him see what God is doing in other people's lives during the service.

(And there's another benefit too: no more misplaced musings jotted down on that day's program. "With Twitter," he points out, "your notes are there forever.")

So, we might exercise caution in suggesting twittering is not compatible with a deeper spirituality.

I'll post Part 2 of "Twittering Religion in America" this week.

Related articles

• New York church brings Good Friday to Twitter (news.cnet.com)
• Church Tweets the Passion of Christ (abcnews.go.com)
• What Jesus Christ Tells Us About Social Networking (ariwriter.com)
• Bishops Urge High-Tech Lenten Fast (cbsnews.com)
• Mark Trapp: Twittering at the Vatican (via Google Reader) (deacbench.blogspot.com)
• Barna: The Techno Generational Gap in the Church (bloggingministry.com)
• Catholics Urged to Give Up Tech for Lent (abcnews.go.com)

Church is All A-Twitter

Easter Services provide atttenders opportunity to pray, worship, and "tweet" during services.

At Next Level Church in Matthews, North Carolina, Pastor Todd Hahn encouraged guests and member to bring laptops and pull out their iPhones and Blackberrys to Twitter through the service.

The picture on the right shows Scarlett Hollingsworth using her Blackberry to Tweet as her daughter Jillian Hollingsworth, 10, texts on her own cell phone during Sunday's Easter service.

An article from the Charlotte Observor titled "The church that tweets together...", tells about a photographer Kristen Hinson -- who is 24 years old -- who "felt liberated by the Easter message – and her ability to pass it along via cell phone. 'I love Next Level Church,' she Twittered. 'The resurrection is like a sales receipt from God, a guarantee of what's to come!!!'”

Other Twitter messages from Next Level Church on Easter:

melissajackson3: Awesome foo fighters song to start the service at nextlevel.

imkay: Nothing u do 4 the lord is in vain.

desimae: I remember the day when Easter meant dressing up against my will and being bored for three hours at church …thanks, nextlevel for change!

psalm46: Resurrection is real; … He is still raising us day by day from this level on to the nextlevel, higher up and further in.

renwicks_lady: Getting ready for Nextlevel church, getting my texting thumbs stretched and ready to go!!!!

charburns: nextlevel had awesome music today and yes i am twittering in church.

Next Level Church is described as "a rock 'n' roll-style church" with a Creative Team of twentysomethings who wanted to do something "special" for Easter.

Image via CrunchBase

The article says, "Charlotte native Hahn acknowledged that the church's accent on Twitter is partly a marketing tool. But he said it can also enhance members' religious experience and build community."

"With so many old and new churches competing for young people, some like Next Level are trying to stand out by embracing the latest technology: Web sites, blogs, and now Twitter."

A 44 year old member added, "If you don't jump on the new technology, you're going to lose opportunities.... We use it for work and for life. Why not church?”

What's a Blue Kiwi? Innovation through Social Network Software

Quick post: My interest in innovation and online social networking led me to discovering new software designed to stimulate organizational innovation.

In Europe, blueKiwi 2009 was launched last November with a bold presentation on the interaction between the web and human interaction. Working with sociological principles, the software re-thinks the interconnection of networks and the play of organizational management dynamics.

Too many of us take software design for granted. But the ingenuity of software design aligned with the understanding of human social interaction is coming into its own -- especially as social computing becomes more portable and more readily available.

Now we've all got to be schooled in how to use more than "Microsoft Word" and email. Social networking is becoming just as important as the telephone. And as organizations harness the use of these technological innovations, we will find new ways to communicate, brainstorm, share content, and "group think" in dynamic, yet-not-entirely-forseen ways.

In short, the new wave of project management and committee work will move online.


According to a post by Jon Husband, "Starting from the vantage point of the Web 2.0-savvy user, they have designed and built blueKiwi to be user-centric whilst responding to the business issues that require the building, distributing and and deploying of business-focused knowledge … the essence of social business computing, in my opinion."

Husband describes blueKiwi as "centered on the building, nourishing and sustaining of business-focused relationships - building useful knowledge and getting things done."

[M]ost collaboration systems start from the point of view of technical capabilities and do not make it easy, or overlook, the building and growing of relationships. In the past, users of collaborative platforms had to go about building their business relationships, both internally and externally, outside of the collaboration system / platform. blueKiwi2009 is first and foremost a means of building valuable and value-added relationships in the course of doing one’s work … it can enable, contain and manage all the activity in a business ecosystem.

An online "ecosystem" is exactly the right term for describing the vision of these software designers.

Here is an interesting and, to me, persuasive attempt to foster a stimulating space of content and interaction. And once businesses really get behind the building of such systems, the leaders of science, education and religion will not be far behind.

Husband continues in describing the uniqueness of blueKiwi --

[A]ll collaboration platforms offer spaces where people can connect, gather, share and exchange information. Thus far, the mainstream approach has been to offer spaces where people can connect and gather, and then share content … information about issues, problems, and areas of interest, and as people exchange and collaborate, useful knowledge is built.

bK2009 turns this upside down, or around (you choose). It is designed on the principle that the collaborative space is there for content and its distribution, and the individual user then chooses which groups she or he wishes to engage with. Thus, any individual user can be a member of the groups they have chosen to interact with. And of course it has a Twitter clone as one of its features.

What eventuates is a network of interaction around pertinent content, and thus over time an ecosystem around issues in which engagement is de facto defined by the users’ interest and willingness to engage. This then leads to the ability to watch and quantify the volume of interactions and obtain a better, and visible , understanding of the value that is being created (responsiveness, innovation, deepening understanding and so on).

In what Husband calls “natural sociology of knowledge work,” the software allows people to enter and exit any "information ecosystem" they wish. The combining of features we know through Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and blogging -- as well as the archiving of documents and drafts -- allows a constructive yet constantly changing space of idea-generation and product-design. Husband says, "the result after several years of intense design, development and deployment is a collaborative platform that in my opinion more closely mirrors the natural sociology of knowledge work than any other platform about which I know."

Individuals can be known by the "reputation" they build for being involved in different ecosystems in addition to whatever "profile" they create to identify themselves.




The software is oriented around Metcalfe's Law of Networks "whereby the value of a network is proportional to the square of the number of connected members of the network" even though not everyone agrees on this "law." Nevertheless, the software is based on a belief that "organizations should realize that collaboration in connected networks is the way work will be done all the time in the near future, and so organizations should seek to enroll and engage the entire organization in the use of the collaborative platform."

Image via CrunchBase

I find this fascinating. Once all of us (including tech-infatuated people like me) get over what may initially seem "complicated," "unnecessary," and "too much time to learn," I think we will find such software to be remarkably helpful.

The software here is already available on iPhone -- which means that the accessibility to working with a "portable knowledge community" from the comfort of your local cafe will surely change the way we "think" in the world.

I'll speculate and say I think we're seeing the future of the "new normal." Another decade and this will be a natural way to share ideas.

Other Articles

• blueKiwi 2009 - The Sociology of Productivity is a Core Design Principle (fastforwardblog.com)
• Nomee Is An All-In-One Social Networking Aggregator And RSS Feed (techcrunch.com)
• Author Clara Shih on the Facebook Era, and what it means for businesses (venturebeat.com)
• Chi.mp: Not Just Another Data Aggregator | Black Web 2.0 (via delicious) (blackweb20.com)
• Relationship Symmetry in Social Networks: Why Facebook will go Fully Asymmetric (bokardo.com)
• Yahoo Mobile: Now With New Design, Customization, and Social Features (mashable.com)
• Social Networks or Networking Socially: Picking a social networking site! (ceoworld.biz)
• Facebook's valuation and the network effect (kottke.org)
• Added Twitter To My Toolbox (thecriticalpath.info)
• Conversations as Data: We need new UI (newcommbiz.com)