Jason Clark

Trying to make safe spaces for diverse and healthy conversations about church, culture, mission, theology and motorbikes

Anyone I can follow on Ping?

OK so I'm going to try out the iTunes Ping service.  At present I'm billy no mates, so someone come and keep me company :-)

Apple need to get an easier way for people to follow each than open and search iTunes. Anyhow, want to be my first Ping follow, and I'll remember you for ever ;-)

More details and last chance to book the Social Media Boot Camp, 4th September

Only a few days until our Social Media Boot Camp, Saturday 4th September, in London.  Registration is £10 and booking details are here.  Places are limited and filling up quickly.    

Designed as a practical 'how to' of understanding and using social media, for individuals and organisations, here is an agenda of what Dave Merwin of Pure Blue and Lee Goodger of Spook Media will be taking us through.

Morning with Dave Merwin

 * Personal Branding - Narrating your work: What is it?, How does it work?

* Examples From The Real World: Faith Autopsy, Hollywood Pastor, Jason Calacanis, Kevin Rose

* Case Study: Blogging, Twitter, Facebook in the real world

* Personas: Identifying Your Users, Writing a persona

* What the tools are: An exploration of social media tools, Google Analytics, and other Services

* Publishing content: Push To Services, Email publishing

* Budgets: If the tech exists... what do we do with our budgets? Building Apps

*  Managing expectations - baby steps (crawl, walk, run)

Afternoon with Lee Goodger

*  Listen to your audience (immediate and virtual)

*  Creating a digital ecosystem: Using Facebook, Twitter, Flickr & YouTube

*  Setting objectives and a social media policy:  Setting the tone, Maintaining your presence

*  Crowdsourcing – what is it and how to use it

*  Managing your reputation online

*  The future of Social Media on/offline

*  Simple checklist and guiding principles 

The event is in partnership between George Fox Seminary, EA UK, London School of Theology, and the London Institute of Christianity.

Bringing Facebook, Twitter and YouTube together to tell a bigger missional story with Taggregator #dmingml

Most learning environments use their own content management system (CMS).  A university might have something behind closed doors and a missional community might use Ning.

For the Global Missional Leadership Community (GML), we wanted to allow content creators to use their social media tools and not restrict people to a platform we choose.  Allowing a community to use their platforms of choice and with a tool that brings all those creative spaces together, is so innovative and exciting.

Dave Merwin has done just that with Taggregator and you can get a first look at it in action http://dmingml.com.

So this allows our students to use Facebook, Posterous, Twitter to write and create content, and the http://dmingml.com brings all the content together.  And this content is all open to everyone.  So anyone wanting to follow along with the GML community can do so and take part by tagging their content with the #dmingml tag.

It's in it's first beta release and has a long way to go, but will go a long way.  I suspect this is something others are going to want to pick up on to enable communities to connect together around multiple social media platforms.

For example I want this for my church community.  We could set up vineyardchurch.org/community and use the tag #vcs, and then any people in our church using Facebook, Posterous, Twitter etc could tag anything they create and it would pull through to our church Taggregator site.

If your interested do follow Dave Merwin as he develops Taggregator.

Can you help us discover and tell a bigger missional story? #dmingml

Our new Global Missional Leadership learning community that I am leading for George Fox Seminary, kicks off September 1st.

You can follow along online, or meet up with us in person, with all the reading, lectures/teaching and conversations from the programme being made available online.  You can help us discover and tell a big missional story.

*** If this new learning community grabs your attention and interest, please do help us spread the word through your Twitter, Facebook, and blog networks.  Do add the tag #dmingml to you posts/tweets so we can track them, thanks.

George Fox have invested heavily in some ground breaking social media technology, enabling content creators from all over the world to tell a bigger global missions story. I'll write more about this in a post later this week.

Some big headlines for this week:

1.  dmingml.com is the site to visit and book mark, that pulls through all the blogs, Facebook, and Tweets that relate to the Global Missional Leadership community.

2.  Face 2 Face:  If you want to join us in person we are at these locations and dates, 2010.

1st September: Rippon College, Oxford.  
An afternoon with Martyn Percy at Rippon College.  Martyn will be talking about congregations and missions. Jim Belcher author of 'Deep Church', and Dr Michael Moynagh author of Emergingchurch.intro is also joining us for the afternoon.
To register for this event please email jason@jasonclark.ws

Dr Cathy Ross who is moving from CMS to LST, will be with us talking about missiology from a woman's perspective.  Dr Caroline Ramsey, lecturer in business management at the Open University, will be talking with us about the nature of 'reflective practice' itself within leadership and mission.  And we have Antony Billington, head of faculty at the London Institute of Christianity, talking with us about cultural hermeneutics, and discipleship in a post-modern context.
To register for this event please email jason@jasonclark.ws

3rd September: Ridley hall, Cambridge
We'll be meeting with David Male, to explore Fresh Expressions and mission, and with Dr Maggi Dawn, who will sharing about her new book.
To register for this event please email jason@jasonclark.ws

4th September:  London, UK
Social Media Boot Camp, hosted at London Institute of Christianity, in partnership with EA UK and, LST. The Social Media boot camp will explore, safely, personally and simply: What is Social Media, why is it here and why is it important; The main popular tools of Social Media including blogging, Facebook and Twitter; How you might better use Social Media for your own communication and life and How your organisations, church, and ministry might engage strategically and meaningfully with Social Media.

More details and registration for this event is here.

6th to 7th September:  Nuremberg and Erlangen, Germany.  
Meeting with Dr Peter Aschoff,and exploring mission, culture and church history.

So you are all welcome to join us at any of these venues to take part in the events scheduled.  Also around the events we'll be exploring the locations we are in. Making plenty of space and time to talk, eat and explore, to which all are welcome.

How the internet is altering your mind

via guardian.co.uk

This Guardian article referenced the report released the other day about how Brits spend nearly 50% of their waking lives consuming media.

The article is based around the new book by Nicholas Carr, 'The Shallows: How the Internet is Changing the Way We Think, Read and Remember'.

Carr wrote the article 'Is google making us stupid?' that I discussed back in 2008, with links the a Mars Hill discussion about that work.

The Guardian highlights this qoute from Carr's new book:

"If, knowing what we know today about the brain's plasticity, you were to set out to invent a medium that would rewire our mental circuits as quickly and thoroughly as possible, you would probably end up designing something that looks and works a lot like the internet" and "We are welcoming the frenziedness into our souls"

To engage with social media without thought for what it does to us is to do so at our peril. This work highlights how we are literally 'shaped' at a neurological level by the patterns of our media consumption.

Good Reads: What I'm reading

Jamie Smith put me onto Great Reads.  I just opened an account and will endeavour to log what I am reading over there at www.goodreads.com/jasonclark.

Social Media Training events this Autumn in London

 

So this autumn there are some great social media training events that compliment each other greatly, all in London:
 
4th September – Social Media Boot Camp at LICC, that I have organised in partnership with EA UK, LICC and LST.  A days training from top coaches involved in social media.  A 'how to' for individual and organisations, to get up to speed with using social media and understanding it's possibilities for individuals and organisations.
 
16th October – Theological Refraction on the Internet – set up by CODEC as part of Premier Media’s Christian New Media Conference but aimed to bring together theologians and media theorists.  Other parts of the CNM Conference will speak to Christian Leaders and Tecchies.  This event is the reflective, 'what goes on within social media interns of identity and formation, and its relationship to theology.
 
30th November – The next Digi-Mission event by EA UK Slipstream.  I'm involved in the planning for this and will be taking part.  The theme is Social Media and Social Change.  How can churches engage in social media for change in their local communities.  Early days for info on this yet, but it will be at All Souls, Langham Place, London.

Social Media Boot Camp: London, Saturday 4th September 2010

Advance notice of this event that I've been planning.

 

Social Media Boot Camp

Date: Saturday 4th September 2010

Location: London Institute of Contemporary Christianity 

Timings:  9:30am - 3:30pm

Costs: £10 registration

 

Social Media has exploded into everyday life with people sharing a tidal wave of photos, videos, words and audio.  It’s no longer a question of whether to get involved in Social Media, but how to.

 

The Social Media boot camp on Saturday 4th September will explore, safely, personally and simply:

  1. What is Social Media, why is it here and why is it important?
  2. The main popular tools of social media including blogging, Facebook and Twitter
  3. How you might better use Social Media for your own communication and life
  4. How your organisations, church, and ministry might engage strategically and meaningfully with Social Media

We’ll be led on the day by two Christians who are experts in social media, Dave Merwin of Pure Blue, and Lee Goodger of Edelman.  

 

The organisations partnering in this event (Evangelical Alliance UK, London Institute of Contemporary Christianity, London School of Theology and George Fox Seminary), are passionate about resourcing Christians and the local church, as they themselves learn to work with Social Media.

 

So for an orientation for you and your organisation around Social Media, make sure you book your place early.  Registration links will be up and working from 1st July 2010. 

 

Any questions do email me at jason@jasonclark.ws


p.s Inspiration for title of this event came from friends here.