Here and Now

So I've been offline for a while. Too busy...sorry... I literally spent two days (about 8 hours one day and about 10 the next) trying to rip video from a DVD to insert it into a powerpoint program for our cluster worship service. Now, understand, I have all kinds of tools to do this - but I couldn't get the quality that I wanted. It would be blocky or the lines refreshing would be obvious. It was unbelievably frustrating. So I kept downloading new tools, trying out new demos. One program promised to give me full DVD quality video - but it was slow. In fact, after an hour it was still at .4% complete (yep, 4/10ths of ONE percent). So, well, you do the math as to how many days it would take to rip that file (it wasn't even the whole DVD - a 3:48 short film....ARGH). So, we pressed on with what I felt was one subpar video clip in the presentation (the other one was just fine) and I came in late last night to polish it up for our District Superintendent and captured the video d...

So, I'm surfing a page full of quotations for no reason other than that's how the web works - I linked from a link from a link...um... But I came across this quote from Frank Zappa: One of my favorite philosophical tenets is that people will agree with you only if they already agree with you. You do not change people's minds. Here's the thing: he's pretty much right. We rarely argue people into changing their minds. EVEN if we point out that what they've hung their hat on is complete fiction - How many times have you been told that Aspartame causes cancer ? It doesn't seem to matter if you SEND PEOPLE TO THE FDA or the American Council on Science and Health. Nevermind that the AMA (yeah, search the document - you'll find it) seems to suggest that all the studies thus far linking artificial sweeteners to higher cancer rates are pretty much bunk... And why are there warnings posted at gas stations to not use cell phones while pumping gas? Yet - most peop...

So - I'm processing stuff from Innovate 2007 - and one way I do that is to review, of course, so here's my run down of Guy Kawasaki's Innovation Top Ten: (oh, by the way, Guy was an executive - actually a software evangelist for Apple and is now a venture capitalist - so his approach is basically from a business standpoint, though he is a Christian) Make Meaning - the root of all innovation is the desire to make meaning - not to make money, members, etc. Make Mantra - express why you exist in 2 or 3 words - NOT a mission statement, which is too long - Mantra is short and memorable. Examples: NIKE - Authentic Athletic Performance; eBay - Democratize Commerce Jump to the Next Curve - innovation strives not to be 10% or 20% better, but 10 TIMES better. Example: 130 years ago in the Northeast, ice was harvested by sawing blocks out of frozen ponds and lakes and then stored in warehouses and used in shipping. Eventually, ice factories were built in cities - they could freeze...

Here 's a link to a website that tries to match you up with candidates based on a handful of major issues. What I learned from the exercise is that I don't know enough about ANY of the candidates...good, bad or ugly...

Spent a big chunk of last week at the Innovate 2007 conference at Granger Community Church in Granger Indiana. First off, I was pleased to discover that GCC is a United Methodist church. I was not surprised to find that they don't make the denomination a part of their name. We're in an age where Community is much more likely to engage someone and "United Methodist" is much more likely to disengage someone within their target demographic . Understand, they don't want (or need, for that matter) me to come to their church (though I want to, I really do). Their target on Sunday mornings is, you guessed it, the Seeker (tm) ** (see note below) either has never gone to church or who has become disenfranchised by organized religion. Okay, fair enough. I came to a realization that every church has a target demographic. We have a very formal and traditional service at 11:00 here at First. We should not be surprised that we tend to attract folks who like formal and traditio...