Interactive Worship Leaders Unite Online

The Worship Community.Com (TWC) is a grass-roots community of worship leaders, artists, singers, musicians, and technicians from all over the world. 

TWC was launched in the Spring of 2007 by Fred McKinnon, a worship pastor and small business owner. Fred has been involved in bring worship “online” for years, with the original HighestPraise.Com site that was offering free downloads of original worship music more than decade ago. He continues to blog about worship, ministry, and leadership each week at his site.

TWC launched with public forums for discussions about worship, technology, songs, and planning.  A newer version of TWC launched in July 2008 with the new “e-zine” format including articles, how-to, reviews, featured videos, and interactive discussions. 

One of the things that sets The Worship Community.Com apart is the grass-roots nature of the content.  The articles are written by contributors from all over the world who are “in the trenches” …. leading worship in small, medium, and large churches.  TWC combines exclusive content with re-published articles from what we discover as “the best of” from worship and ministry-related blogs, discussion forums, and resources.

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There's a company called Kronomy that will enable you to create a timeline of your life complete with descriptions, pictures and video.  Thus, you can share your story by making your life into a flowing visual slideshow via 3D browsing.  Kronomy also features social networking functionality including commenting, sharing, and friends.  Currently in beta, you will need a Kronomy invite to get the full effect.

Also, Guy Kawasaki (source of my beta invite) proposes other creative options for using Kronomy to document, for example, a product's lifecycle.  From initial sketches to prototypes to beta versions, almost any product could benefit from it's own archival history.  Guy proposes someone create a history of the Mac using Kronomy.  Good idea.  And I think there are lots of other possibilities.

As a fan you could document your history of relationship with a favorite band; as a CEO you could document the evolution of your company; as an adoptive parent you could write your adoption journey in pictures as an archive for your child's future.  As a runner, document your marathons.  As a couple, document your anniversaries.  As a pastor, you could create a rich visual history for your church. 

In fact, for Christians, nothing is more powerful than documenting how God has been present in our lives and how He has used us to touch the lives of others.  We often call this 'our testimony'.   Now, our stories can be told with words supported by visual media.

How would you use Kronomy's chronological memory abilities for the Kingdom?

Check out Guy's Kawasaki's life path in action.

The Silicon Alley Insider is reporting that GodTube is getting funding to the tune of $30 million dollars.

Christian video sharing site GodTube has landed $30 million from hedge fund GLG Partners at a $150 million valuation, according to PaidContent.org.

Launched last summer, GodTube reviews all video uploads, keeping them clean and pro-God.

It also claims to have a business model beyond advertising: PC says "a few hundred churches" use GodTube's "Godcaster" service, which generates subscription revenue.

The LA Times noted last fall GodTube had over a million unique users in August, and was the fastest growing video site in the Web, per comScore.  But, as you can see from the chart above, it looks like GodTube hasn't done much growing since then. 

Nevertheless, it's potential qualifies it for cash and GLG Partners are laying it down.

Yes, I've finally paid someone to translate The Digital Sanctuary into Spanish. 

Oh, no wait, Google does that for me.  Free, of course. 

Check your own blog out in your favorite translation.   One of 10 New Media values I covered at the Dynamic Church Conference '08 - free services.

Looks like our tech-savvy friends at YouVersion.com have hit a home run with the release of YouVersion for the iPhone.  Having an interactive online Bible in your hand seems almost hard to believe - only the LifeChurch.tv digerati team, headed up by Terry Storch, have made YouVersion.com a reality.  And just in time for the Apple 3G iPhone release.

At the time of this writing it was number 35 in popularity, beating out hundreds of other free apps in the new app store!  In the brief minutes it's taken me to post this, I've already downloaded it. You can too, free.

Now you can have the scriptures with you anywhere plus your journal notes, photos and other uploads to your Bible cache.  And - no more turning our phones off in church.

ECHO Live VJ clips from barton Damer on Vimeo.

Background and Training Yes, I know you've been waiting for it, in his own words…..

I began truly seeking the Lord around 16 years old…  but a very large movement in my life from the Lord was when I was 18.  I was taking Public Relations as a major and blew out my knee skateboarding. 

For over 2 months, I limped around on crutches while I waited to receive surgery over Christmas break back home.  While laid up, I was taking an entry level art class that was required as part of the major I was studying.  So, I poured all my free time into my art projects, having no idea I could draw anything other than skulls & bones off of skateboarding graphics from the 80s!  That injury really allowed me to pause and reflect on what God wanted for me rather than what I wanted for myself.  The rest… is History.  I changed my major to Commercial Art.

Even though I went to school, i would consider myself "self taught" when it comes to the computer. I had good training with traditional techniques but back then photoshop was on like version 2 or something like that and our teachers didn't even know much about it.

Today, I use illustrator, photoshop, after effects, cinema 4d, and final cut pro. I used to build websites using flash and dreamweaver about 6 years ago, but realized I hated it pretty quickly. I like developing the graphics for web, but making it function properly is not my gig.

I had done frame by frame animation for the speaker intros so I basically copied and pasted all the frames (8 frames/second) and put them onto a shirt. the video is here:

http://gallery.mac.com/bartondamer#100074/Tim-20stevens-20WEB&bgcolor=black

or here: The Whiteboard Session Speakers

Part One: Motion Reel, Digital Art & Motion Graphics and Motion Graphics Reel

Part Two: The Creative Media of Barton Damer / Bio & Current Status

Part Three: BartonDamer,  In His Own Words

Part Four: The Future of Christian Visual Media

Recently, COLLIDE Magazine published an article I wrote (Technology and the Virtual Church) and used some cool graphics with it that caught my attention.  Somehow, they felt familiar, like I'd seen the style before.  In fact, I was certain of it.

Then I realized I'd seen similar artwork at conferences, on t-shirts, in video and in magazines lately.  Surprisingly, I've traced all of it back to a single artist - Barton Damer.   I wanted to familiarize myself with his work so I interviewed him. 

Barton is a a thirty-something resident of Dallas, Texas, who, besides being a skateboarding enthusiast, is setting the world of Christian graphic arts on it's occasionally uncreative ear.  You can count on seeing a lot more visual media authored by him in the near future. 

In the meantime, I hope you enjoy this glimpse of his work, Barton's Motion Reel, Digital Art & Motion Graphics; it's your teaser in the first of a four part series.  And, it's well worth the visit.

Part One: Motion Reel, Digital Art & Motion Graphics and Motion Graphics Reel

Part Two: The Creative Media of Barton Damer / Bio & Current Status

Part Three: BartonDamer,  In His Own Words

Part Four: The Future of Christian Visual Media

Last December, The Pew Internet & American Life Project put out the results of a provocative survey entitled Digital Footprints: Online identity management and search in the age of transparency. 

Compiled by Mary Madden, Susannah Fox, Aaron Smith, et. al., you can view a PDF of the Digital Footprint report here.  The survey spotlighted the question "Are internet users are becoming more aware of their digital footprints."  Respondents revealed:

* 47% have searched for information about themselves online, up from just 22% five years ago.

However, few monitor their online presence with great regularity.

* Just 3% of self-searchers report that they make a regular habit of it.

* 74% have checked up on their digital footprints only once or twice.

* Fully 60% of internet users say they are not worried about how much information is available

   about them online.

* Similarly, the majority of online adults (61%) do not feel compelled to limit the amount of

   information that can be found about them online.

I found the survey provocative not because we have digital footprints but more importantly, not many people are thinking about it. 

Indeed, most internet users are not concerned about the amount of information available about them online, and most do not take steps to limit, govern or direct that information.

Active Digital footprints are one thing.  Your passive digital footprint, or digital shadow, however, is an even more obscure set of data and quite another thing altogether.  It may include things like:

* your high school or elementary school photo
* your prescription medicines - uploaded for storage by pharmacists
* your driver's license records
* zabasearch records
* your college transcripts
* your charitable organizations memberships
* races or competitions you have been registered in
* boats, trains and other forms of transportation you have used  
* tax records
* mortgage records
* voter records
* PTA and school newsletter mentions

and most importantly, for our discussion, your tweets and your @replies. 

Better search your exact Twitter user name right now and every twitpic that has your @name attached to it, like this one of me I found on page 1 of a google search.  Fortunately, it was put up by a friend and basically with permission but in the Age of Transparency there will be great loss of privacy.  I know of quite a handful of online photos that are up on Twitter and the person in the photo is unaware of their existence, much less their searchablity.

We should also likely check out our accounts at Dodgeball, Jaiku, Pownce, Plurk, Spoink and a list of others.

The Age of Transparency is upon us.  Accountablity vs. loss of privacy?  What are the pros and cons for you?  

You heard right.

Ingenious, Christian image-sharing site, CreativeMYK.com, is giving away a new iPhone to a winning artist.

To participate, CreativeMYK.com invites artists to submit their original works in the form of images that will be re-digitized and used and distributed through CreativeMYK.com as free or pay-for-use images.  How easy can it get?

Last year, I blogged Innovate '07 podcasts had been put up.  This year, I've been looking forward to Innovate 2008 podcasts.  Since conference goers have to be choosy, podcasts are a vital resource.  And they may become all the more desirable as conferences collide.

Some Christian leaders have a hard decision to make between these two upcoming events being held at the same time.   On Thursday & Friday, September 18 & 19, Oklahoma City will host Ministry COM, a National Church Communications Conference.

"If you're crazy enough to love working in a church, make plans to give yourself a mental break at MinistryCOM. This two-day experience brings together experts and leaders who are balancing the chaos while on the brink of innovation. Their level-headed guidance provides you with realistic solutions. Hands on workshops offer therapeutic interaction. Time away from the office mentally invigorates… and just might keep you from going over the edge."

Keynote Speakers include:

Mike Foster - Founder, XXX Church

Scott Hodge - Senior Pastor, The Orchard

Dawn Nicole Baldwin - Founder, Aspire!One

Jon Acuff - Blogger, Stuffchristianslike.net

Also on Thursday & Friday, September 18 & 19, 2008 in Granger, Indiana, Granger Community Church will host Innovate 2008:

"Nobody wants to be all talk and no action. Jesus certainly wasn’t. But sometimes it’s hard to know where to begin. We think that whether you have a church gathering of 100 or 10,000 you can begin making innovative, strategic moves that will impact your community. Start at Innovate 2008.  You’ll experience a multi-sensory showcase of proven, real-life examples from Granger Community Church and other churches doing innovative ministry around the country. Gain perspective and practical steps to take your capacity as a leader, a practitioner and a church to an unexpected level. Get started. Save the talking for later."

You'll also hear from a combination of innovators outside of Granger.

Here's the complete speaker list.

To prevent conferences from 2009 collisions in your schedule start keeping a list of Church Communication Conferences like this one. 

Or, if you're just interested in a media/tech conference list try this one.  In fact add to these two and I'll re-publish them with updates.  Obviously, 2009 dates will change, but if a conference is good enough, the targeted date usually falls close to the year before.