Pete Bishop: ICC

I was going to write a post about the Innovative Church Conference, and then I discovered that Pete highlighted everything I was going to highlight.

I will post more in-depth thoughts later, but right now I’ve got to run out the door for day 2…

Link: Pete Bishop: ICC.

Innovative Church Conference

I’ll be at the Innovative Church Conference tomorrow and Friday!

The Next Level

I have a tendency to get satisfied in my skills as a programmer. I’ve been programming in various languages for about 15 years now so I know how to put a program together.

While I’ve been talking about Yin and Yang and the need to balance both static and dynamic forces and that rapid change can be a bad thing, I think that sometimes a paradigm shift is necessary. (see A Radical Change by Pete Bishop).

I recently started reading Higher Order Perl. The amazing thing about Perl (and probably Python) is that it can support nearly any programming paradigm. You can use object oriented techniques, functional programming, some aspects of logic programming, and plain ol’ imperative methods. Perl amazingly has most of the more esoteric features of LISP. Higher Order Perl is all about using functional techniques (ala LISP) in Perl. While most programmers were exposed to functional programming in school, often it is simply a cursory overview. This book is giving me a new interest in programming technique and showing me ways of doing things I hadn’t really thought of before.

I like this quote from Tom Christiansen:

A programmer who hasn’t been exposed to all four of the imperative, functional, objective, and logical programming styles has one or more conceptual blindspots. It’s like knowing how to boil but not fry.

IT Trends: Getting it Done

Here’s an article I wrote in the September issue of Sound & Video Contractor.

Link: IT Trends: Getting it Done.

Massachusetts dumps Microsoft Office

Link: Massachusetts dumps Microsoft Office.

…The state government has decided that all electronic documents saved
and created by state employees have to use open formats from the
beginning of 2007…

Yin and Yang pt. 3

See Part 2.

OK, this is the last of my philosophical posts for a while and I’ll try and get back to the technical stuff, but a recent blog comment sparked a thought.

Why does sanctification (i.e. the Christian growth process) take so long?

It has to do with static and dynamic forces. Could God instantly change us into perfect Christians the moment we accept him and are saved? Yes, I suppose he could, but then we wouldn’t be ourselves anymore.

For the same reason a tree isn’t a tree without the dead inner core, a person isn’t the same person without the old self. Sanctification is the dynamic yang force that transforms us over time. As it transforms us and we continue to grow, the old self remains but becomes less and less of our total makeup. Instant change at the time of justification would destroy who we are.

Now it is curious that the dynamic force in an individual’s life, is actually the consolidating force in the church as a body. That which causes an individual to grow, mature and change, is actually that which consolidates and gives foundation, root, and structure to the church body.

Yin and Yang pt. 2

See part 1.

Lately I’ve been listening to J.M. Roberts’ History of the World during my commute. In thinking on my previous post about Yin and Yang, I realized that history provides great examples of how the cycle of static and dynamic patterns works.

The prime example of rapid expansion and military conquest is Alexander the Great. He conquered an unprecedented amount of the world within his lifetime. He built the kingdom that Nebuchadnezzar’s dream referred to as the belly and thighs of brass. The kingdom encompassed more than any preceding kingdom had, including Persia, Babylon, Assyria, Egypt, Eastern Europe, and even parts of India.

The fact is that his kingdom did not last. History tells us that the kingdom split into four after Alexander died. Daniel’s dream described it as a four headed leopard.

What this boils down to is that there needs to be a balance between contraction and expansion, statics and dynamics, consolidation and growth, Yin and Yang. If the focus is lopsided toward dynamic, rapid growth, the result is likely to be collapse.

Being a Purpose Driven Church, Crossroads attempts to balance 5 purposes. One of those purposes is Evangelism. Evangelism is the primary dynamic force in the church. Each of the other 4 purposes tends toward consolidation, foundation building, and strengthening. Evangelism is the dynamic yang aspect of a church’s purpose, while the other 4 help to maintain a healthy yin foundation.

Rick Warren is very clear in his books that all 5 purposes need to be balanced. We pay this lip service, but all too often that’s all it gets.

F1 Woes

I’m beginning to remember why I like Open Source software.

With Open Source software if something doesn’t work quite the way you want it to you simply go in a change it and you’re all set. I keep hearing comments from F1 people like "we’ve never done anything like that before," or "[we can't do that because] I’d have to write a stand-alone application to do that," or simply "no, we can’t do that." I’m not used to being told no. I’m used to making the change I need and having it work.

Now this is completely understandable considering that changes made for one church will impact other churches. It’s kinda like the butterfly effect. It comes down to the nature of commercial software vs. Open Source software. At my day job I’m used to being able to tweak anything I want to make it work the way I want. We just don’t use very much commercial software. Adaptability is one more reason why I think Open Source wins.

F1’s XML API (Fellowship One Data Exchange) is also inadequate. I ended up writing a Perl script using LWP::UserAgent to scrape the site and perform queries and uploads to add the functionality I need that isn’t offered. (can’t tell you what that is because of the NDA).

Basic conclusion: Go with the flow and all is happy. Do something slightly out of the ordinary and expect difficulties.

Is it worth the hassle? Probably. In the long run it is quite a bit less work than writing one’s own package would be.

Not to be completely negative, the data conversion has gone surprisingly well. I simply provided CSV files of my data and they were mostly merged into the previous conversion done from our People Driven Software database. Some of it needs to be cleaned of duplicates, but that is to be expected.

Global Warming Spreads

It seems that global warming is spreading to other planets. No doubt it is because we’ve failed to reduce emisions. If the US had just signed on to the Kyoto treaty the solar system wouldn’t be in this mess.

…for three Mars summers in a row, deposits of frozen carbon dioxide near
Mars’ south pole have shrunk from the previous year’s size, suggesting
a climate change in progress.

Read the full article about the Mars Global Surveyor.

Yin and Yang

A tree is a combination of static and dynamic elements. The outer ring and leaves are the growing, dynamic elements of the tree. The inner core is the static element. The dynamic elements build on the static elements and what is built there eventually becomes part of the static nature of the tree.

If either element is missing, the tree would not survive. If you take away the living leaves and outer ring, the tree is dead. If you take away the tree’s static inner core, the tree simply does not exist anymore. There is nothing for growth to build upon.

I’ve also observed that political conservatism and liberalism seem to fit into this dualism. Conservatives have a tendency to want to maintain older structures (e.g. family, church, military) while liberals tend to want to rip out everything and start over. If liberalism is missing, government stagnates and dies. If conservatism is missing, accelerated change produces instability and chaos.

The book ‘Lila’ (sequel to Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance)
talks a lot about static and dynamic patterns of value (which is where I got these terms). Being a student of
philosophy, I have observed that these static and dynamic qualities of
reality very closely match the far-eastern Yin and Yang.

Taoists teach that the world moves in cycles between Yin and Yang. This means that there are periods of rapid growth and expansion, and periods of stabilization and root building. (I happen to be a political conservative, which in my mind means that I believe we should be swinging toward the Yin right now).

The church also follows these cycles. Right now it seems to me that we are in the midst of a Yang cycle – there are lots of changes and growth going on.

My point? We need to remember that the tree does not exist without the static inner core. Each ring – each generation – has something of quality to add. Don’t throw out all that has come before. We stand on the shoulders of giants.

Shut Up

Sometimes I talk too much (or blog too much).

A few months ago (I’m not actually sure when) I made an unconscious decision to say less. Gradually, I’ve found myself consciously thinking more about what I’m about to say than I used to. On occasion (it’s certainly not 100% yet), the question will pop into my head, "should this really be said?" or "does this add any useful information that’s not already there?"

I recall a quote from "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind." (a movie I recently watched) It goes something like, "constantly talking doesn’t necessarily mean you’re communicating."

I’m starting to notice a small difference. It’s still going to take a lot of practice though…

Fellowship One Thoughts

Our Fellowship One data conversion and training is under way. So far the people I’ve worked with have been very nice and willing to work with us. Our People Driven Software database has been converted and the next database to be converted is mine. I will be providing CSV files of my tables and they will even attempt to import the blob images from my tables. Very Cool.  We’ll see how that goes.

I wanted also to mention that while investigating F1 I did look at pricing from companies like SugarCRM and discovered that their ASP service is not all that different than F1’s. Considering that F1 includes a check-in system to boot, it’s actually quite reasonable.

OK. I promised to be transparent here and give the good along with the bad and the ugly. My main complaint so far is the whole secrecy thing. Sometimes I feel like I’ve suddenly become a member of the CIA and have top-secret clearance. Even the forum is locked down. I’ve never used a piece of software before (commercial or open-source) that has a forum that can only be accessed by an "authorized user" who is bound by the non-disclosure agreement. Of what benefit can all this secrecy be?

I’m not even sure if I’m an authorized user. I have an F1 login and password, but I haven’t signed any NDAs and am not a church employee. So basically I am not legally bound in any way as far as I know. Jeff, can you answer this?

FellowshipOne Experience

Link: Kyle Mitchell: Technology Rocks!.

Here’s our Pastor of Student’s comments on his first exposure to Fellowship One.

Simplicity

My company, the American Mathematical Society, recently released the latest version of our flagship product, MathSciNet. Along with this release we added a new product called the MR Citation Database (subscription only). I happen to have designed the user interface for the citation database.

This design took a different approach than previous MathSciNet interfaces (which you can see by following the link above). The goal was simplicity. I used a combination of Google's simplicity with some 37signals style thrown in.

Our executive editor wondered why the MathSciNet interface couldn't be more like the citation database interface.

Recently the Crossroads creative team started using a Wiki (Kwiki). The user interface is very simple and the wiki has been very successful.

Then you have sites like CBS News, MTV and Crossroads that have a lot of complexity.

There seems to be two trends. One toward simplicity, the other toward community driven, informational sites. Which method do you use where? Or is there a happy medium?

The simplicity trend seems to be particularly focused on web applications, i.e. web interfaces that you use to perform some task such as reading email or making a to-do list. People want software to be easy to use.

My guess is that you probably choose the method based on the particular application involved.

What do you think?

Wikis

The Crossroads Wiki has been wildly successful. Implementing it was an experiment I wanted to try and wasn’t sure how well it would be received. The creative team has taken to it like a duck to water and it is really helping to facilitate collaboration on our project for the next message series.

Last night Shari decided to try it out for Kid Crossing stuff. We’ll see how that group goes. They are probably not as technically minded as the creative team is. However, Kwiki has proven to be very simple and easy to use.

My main complaint with Kwiki is that inserting an image in the text is not very intuitive. Simply pasting the URL into the text displays the image, but you must first "attach" the image to the page and then copy the link into the text. I’ll have to see about writing a plug-in to fix that. Otherwise, wiki markup seems to be very easy to use. IMHO, a WYSIWYG editor would actually be more difficult to use – though there is an experimental one available for Kwiki.

I’ve removed the link to our wiki (hopefully not too late) under the realization that it may be best to keep the URL private. Hopefully it hasn’t made it too deeply into any search engines yet. If it becomes a problem we’ll simply change the URL.

Open Source Business Models – What Works and What Does Not?

This is a very interesting article on open source business models.

Link: Open Source Business Models – What Works and What Does Not?.

KC and The Flip

I thought I was done, but Shari and her team had a few more ideas. This is not quite done, but here's the gist.

 

Joomla!

Yesterday, the team formerly known as the Mambo development team, announced the new name of thier fork as Joomla! (The exclamation is part of the name). While we will continue to watch both forks of this software, my guess is that Crossroads will follow the development team and move to Joomla! from Mambo. Initially the software will be identical to what we are using other than branding. It will be interesting to see the different directions each group goes.

It is interesting to watch things like this happen. Sometimes an open source project will fork due to a desire to adapt the project to a different purpose. These types of forks are often "friendly" forks. That is, the people managing the new fork still have a good relationship with the people managing the old fork. The Joomla! fork seems to be more of an "un-friendly" fork. That is, there is a serious disagreement among the two communities.

What it comes down to for me is that it’s probably a safe bet to follow the developers since they are the ones who create and maintain the software.