CSL: NEW MEDIA 101

Thinking about Social Media and how to use it.

2009-12-10T12:36:00.003-06:00

Are you using social media? Do you follow anyone? Are you creating content for social media? Used correctly, it has huge potential for communicating your message.

The purpose of this post is to get you thinking about social media ... to increase your awareness of it ... and to think about how it might work for you.

This slide show is a sales tool for Forzenfrogs, a digital media. But it's also a good introduction to the possibility in social media ... the mind-boggling possibility of reach millions of people ... and it's not that different from what you may already be doing now.

(click on the little "full" gagit in the frame at the bottom to get the full screen view)

Facebook Engagement Rate

View more documents from frozenfrogs.

New Media is About Self-expression

2009-12-03T16:28:00.009-06:00

In a world that works for everyone, I think everyone needs a venue in which to express themselves. New Media gives us that venue.

“..we are now in an era where spectatorial culture is giving way to participatory culture”. Henry Jenkins director, Comparative Media Studies Program at MIT.

There is power for good in the Internet and we can use it!

2009-03-23T14:48:00.004-05:00

I'm making all of this up as I go along so feel free to chime in at any time.

Bottom line, my purpose on the planet is to serve in the best way that I can. Serve who? Everyone.

And that's what I think our various spiritual organizations are doing also. We are all serving in our various ways. We are all discovering how we can best be of service. For me, at least, it's been a struggle. It's the reason this blog is here; to help me figure it out and, I hope, to actually be of some service.

Without going into all the functions our organizations fill, I think we can all agree that education is one of them. Agreed! So we want to tell people about our principals and practices because we've found that they work. They make our lives better.

As I see it, there are two groups we are addressing; the people who are already affiliated with us and the people who don't know about us but would be interested if they were approached in an effective way.

I think the first group, the affiliates, need to be connected to the larger community to which they are affiliated. After moving to Texas, the larger community faded from my experience. When we started going to the annual Gathering the reconnection was tangible. It was then that I realized how disconnected I felt.

Effective communication may be the answer much of this.

I want to be involved in what's going on. I want to hear about and participate in discussions of all sorts. Planning. Distance learning. I want to hear from my leadership what they thing. I want them to solicit my input and ask me to work on projects. We can all collaborate together at a distance and in person. We can each participate at the level we choose.

Then there are the millions upon millions of people who have never heard of us or our teachings. How can we tell them about what we offer?

The traditional way is called proselytizing, but in business it's called marketing. At it's best marketing is just a way to inform people of a product or service they may want. We all know what marketing can be at it's worst so I'm not going to talk about that. All I'm suggesting here is that we gather the best practices used by business for marketing and apply them for the highest good of all.

Here's what I'm excited about.

The Internet is fomenting a revolution in communication. The barriers to entry are low. As a result, all media is converging to it. It's now called New Media mostly because it gives everyone choice. You can consume and produce whatever media you care to whenever and wherever you want to.

There is power for good in the Internet and we can use it!

In the past this blog has focused on new media technology and how to use it. But I think it's more important to tell you about what it's being used for and what it can be used for. About best practices and effective results applying the technology. About the changes, the surprises and the possibilities.

That's what I think. What do you think?

Peace,

Rob:-]

Pushing Into New Territory

2009-03-20T11:00:00.004-05:00

Well, I jumped into the newest of new media this week. I already have this blog on blogger, a web site, Shaver Associates, a FaceBook page, LinkedIn account and a video hosting account on Blip.tv.

What's the newest of the new, you ask? Twitter. I have to admit I was resisting it for quite awhile. I just wasn't sure I had anything much to say ... at least as often as Twitter people say it. But then it dawned on me who has lots to say. Ministers.

That's right. One of the things ministers are doing is getting the message out to as many people who want to listen. Let's put it another way, if you could receive messages throughout the day from your favorite minister, wouldn't you want to read them? I love listening to Rev. Dr. Kathy Hearn.

I think every minister that has something to say should be on Twitter. Maybe they'll just have one or two posts each day. A thought for the day. A bit of news. Something inspirational perhaps.

In the next few posts I'll talk about how to do some of these things. For example, the two posts below this one were submitted using the Twitter infrastructure. In fact they went to almost all of the pages I listed in the first paragraph.

In the mean time, if you're curious, you can look at the little things I'm saying at my Twitter home. You can watch the video about Twitter below and you might even be inspired to sign up for a twitter account.

Peace, Love, Laughter,

Rob:-]

UPDATE: I added the Twitter widget on the lower left side of this page.

Expecting Synchronicity

2009-03-20T10:46:00.001-05:00

I'm looking forward to meeting Sky Nelson this Sunday at his workshop, "Expecting Synchronicity" in Austin. 1 - 3PM, http://bit.ly/ApTCW

SxSW

2009-03-20T10:28:00.002-05:00

Even though I'm here in Austin, I'm missing SxSW. Have to work, you know. #work

What is RSS?

2009-03-19T01:41:00.007-05:00

All the alphabet soup of letters is confusing I know. RSS is another one. Here's a video that will help you understand just what it is and why you should care. You can subscribe to this blog using your RSS reader, called a news aggregator. Don't ask ... it's ancient history now.

On the other hand, I used a little bit of code to place the most current five sermon recordings from the Austin Center For Spiritual Living in the upper left hand corner of this blog. I did this by copying and pasting the RSS link information into a field and everything updates automatically. When we add a new recording, it will magically appear here. Saves a lot of work if you want them to appear in several places.

Here's that video as promised.
VIDEO PLAYER (May not show up in your news feed.)

RSS In Plain English

Video courtesy of

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Twitter Novice Experiments

2009-03-19T01:30:00.002-05:00

Ping.fm sends my micro-blog postings everywhere. Now I've loaded MePing, a desktop Air app that sends to Ping.fm (http://ping.fm/HO9zh)

Twitter Novice Experiments

2009-03-19T00:54:00.002-05:00

Who needs an iPhone when you can Peek? Portable email applience for $50 + $20/mo http://www.getpeek.com/

Twitter Novice Experiments

2009-03-18T18:41:00.002-05:00

This posting is to test my connections to Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, FriendFeed and Blogger from ping.fm

The Promise of Future Revenue

2008-04-09T00:57:00.003-05:00

This is meant as a joke but the best jokes have that kernel of truth.

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What is Microblogging

2008-04-03T10:11:00.002-05:00

Microblogging is a term used for sharing very short pieces of text. It's like "texting" from your cell phone. The length is commonly limited to 160 characters so you've got to get to the point quickly.

Twitter is the most well known microblogging platform. Here's a short video from our friends at CommonCraft.

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Twitter In Plain English

Video courtesy of

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How Creativity is Being Strangled by the Law

2007-11-21T13:42:00.001-06:00

It is important to understand what the possibilities are when we decide how to present ourselves on the Internet. This blog is intended to inform you not only about the technical issues of New Media, but also to introduce the complex social and legal issues as well. No one is more of an expert on these matters than Larry Lessig. In this video, How creativity is being strangled by the law, he presents the context into which much of New Media fits. He addresses both the social and legal aspects and hints at a possible solution, Creative Commons, which he invented.

While this video is twenty minutes I think it is well worth watching for those who wish to keep abreast of what is happening and understand the amazing possibilities we have now.

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Make Your Sermons Available To The World

2007-11-12T10:04:00.000-06:00

Every Sunday in a few hundred UCSL affiliated churches a new message is delivered. Each one unique. Each one perfectly worded to inspire some listeners to put the principals into practice; to take the next step; to walk the walk.

Out of six and a half billion on the planet, how many listeners are there? Some churches have thousands but most have less than a hundred.

Why not make your messages available to the whole world? We can reach far more; millions more if we try.

This time I'm going to talk about how to get your sermon audio up on the Internet. There are two steps to get ready and five steps for each sermon.

Things You Need To Do One Time
1. Establish an account with an on-line hosting service. There are many free ones. We are using blip.tv. When you create your account it results in your own domain. You can look at ours at AustinCSL.blip.tv . They host both audio and video. We at AustinCSL have a mix with mostly MP3 audio with the occasional video to spice things up.

2. Embed the show player in your own web page. This is what makes it easy for visitors to your web site to listen to your sermons and to subscribe to them using RSS. (See my article RSS In Plain English and watch a short video that illustrates how RSS works.)

Things You Need To Do For Each Sermon
1. Record the sermon.

2. Digitize the sermon to transform it from analog into digital format. This may happen as part of step 1 if your making a digital recording. If you're not going to edit anything (step 3) then you could record directly into MP3 format in step 1. But for the best/most professional result, you need to do some editing.

3. (Optional) Edit the audio.

a. Edit the content. Examples such as removing over long pauses, digressions, etc.

b. Remove any copyrighted music (which is pretty much any music played during the service unless you have an ASCAP and BMI Internet license).

c. Remove/reduce any unwanted noises such as mic bumps, plosives, etc.

d. Normalize the audio.

e. Compress the audio to reduce the dynamic range. This lets the listener set the volume and still hear the very quiet parts. This is especially useful for listening in high noise environments such as in the car.

f. Add an introduction with royalty free music.

4. Upload file to Internet hosting service.

5. Test the audio to make sure it is working on your web site.

That's pretty much everything we do for the sermons at Austin Center For Spiritual Living.

Hosting Web Site: Blip.tv
Blip.tv has many features which can help you get your audio distributed around the Internet. The most important one is to make sure they are making your audio available on iTunes so people can find it and subscribe to it. That way ever time you upload a new file the subscribers' iTunes player will automatically download it to their computer and, if they set it up, right onto their iPod. But you have to take some steps to make this happen. I'll cover that in more detail in a later posting here.

That's all for now.

Peace, Love, Laughter,

Rob:-]

Social Bookmarking in Plain English

2007-11-02T14:04:00.001-05:00

This is another collaboration tool. You can use one of the social bookmarking sites just for yourself or let us know about your bookmarks. This is not something I've found that useful but you should know about it.

Social Bookmarking in Plain English

Video courtesy of

Social Networking in Plain English

2007-11-02T14:01:00.001-05:00

Social networking is all the rage among young people. Does your church have a MySpace, Facebook or LinkedIn page? We don't either but it's something to consider.

Social Networking in Plain English

Video courtesy of

Web 2.0 ... The Machine is Us/ing Us

2007-11-02T12:18:00.000-05:00

I love this little video. It pleases my nerdy side by the way it presents things. I see code snippets that seem like old friends. I feel nostalgia for my early days writing assembly language programs for embedded controllers (even though this video doesn't really touch on that).

Hopefully you'll find it entertaining. If not, forgive my indulgence and just skip it.

Web 2.0 ... The Machine is Us/ing Us

Collaboration Using Google Docs

2007-11-02T12:12:00.001-05:00

Google Docs is a great free collaboration tool. As this video demonstrates, it facilitates the sharing of documents among many people letting them read, comment and even change them using only their web browser. This kind of tool will help us work closer even though we are spread around the world.

Collaboration Using Google Docs

Video courtesy of

RSS In Plain English

2007-11-02T11:46:00.001-05:00

RSS is a powerful technology which helps bring you the newest information on the web but only from web sites you've selected. It is of interest to us not only as users of the Internet, but as a primary way we can let others subscribe to our messages.

One example is that you can subscribe to this blog. If you have the Google blog reader (as shown in the video below) then you can subscribe to this blog by clicking on the "Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)" link at the bottom of this page.

Also, we are putting recordings of our Sunday sermons on-line in such a way that people can subscribe to them. They appear in iTunes among other places. It is an easy way to reach the world even from a small church such as ours. http://austincsl.org

Watch this short video for a simple look at how it all works.

RSS In Plain English

Video courtesy of

INTRODUCTION: Purpose of this blog

2007-11-02T11:15:00.000-05:00

This blog is intended to help inform the people who set and implement the Internet communications policies for United Centers for Spiritual Living and their affiliates. Of course everyone else is welcome as well.

The subject of this blog is the new web technologies, how we might use them and why they are important to us.