So often I get such inspiration for taking the role of an instigator, provocateur, or motivator for the Church from conversations like this. I become re-energized to once again convince the Web-related decision power structure to see what so many of the Web community advocates evangelists in the secular arena are seeing and about which they are speaking out (and making their speech and conversation available via that same Social Web for which they are advocating). Like The Gillmor Gang this past Friday as they talked to Google’s Chris Messina and Brett Slatkin.
Steve Gillmor was trying to get some answers from the two Google guys about Buzz’s “grab bag from hell kind of activity stream†and how they see this playing out.
Chris Messina makes the following two points about their support of other groups/companies utilizing the social stream APIs:
"putting the spotlight on people who are actually getting prepared and doing a lot of the stuff on their own volition because they see it as being beneficial to them because they can interact with a whole bunch of people including buzz" 1:06:00
and
those little pockets of activity and groups that are already out there….activity streams mailing lists, buzz API mailing list….i think you’re going to have a lot more influence and ability to see what’s really going on from those smaller groups; those pieces loosely joined; than trying to get one monolithic view 1:07:00
The Church has (or should be able to convince capable people within it to care about it) a stake in being one of these “loosely joined†pieces, for it has much it can learn about doing online community from non-church entities that do and implement the Social Web VERY WELL, as well as much to offer up to the pool from which the outside world also draws about that same Social Web. All groups have their internal specialties and interests and particular ways of looking at them and collaborating, but also we have a big stake, it seems to me, in finding helpful and even revolutionary insights about tools and how to use them that come from that secular world.
Steve says something that describes well why I love the Gillmor Gang conversations:
One of the things Kevin Marks did so well , particularly when he was at Google, was to be able to define [for] and speak to people somewhere in between the complexity, geeky level that both of you get to sometimes (reference to the two Google guys in the conversation, Brett and Chris) and the more abstract but also interesting to the user kind of things…..I don’t know that …since Kevin’s not there anymore….I don’t know that you (Google) have somebody.
For instance, how many church org IT/Web people are watching and swooning over the conversations like these and various talks and conversations going on at South by Southwest? (which is where most of the Gillmor Gang participants on this show that started me on this rant were this past weekend) Chris Messina mentioned in closing that he is giving a talk (or GAVE a talk, as it was Saturday) on Activity Streams, and that Scoble tweeted that he had some conversation about that somewhere, so I am off to track down the links to those tasty morsels of content. Also, Kevin Marks referred to a meetup there for discussing high level social theory discussion (high level meaning not "down in the workings, but up on the surface where the users are, and what interfaces help enable or hinder better social interaction and finding the conversations in which we are most interested).
Hearing these conversations makes me want to scream at the church communication people "Where are you on this, and why can’t you think about this by forcing yourself to be conversant with both users and developers and understand the issues on both sides by understanding the worlds in which both live? (ie "Force yourself" by researching it and TRYING some of it)
The Gillmor Gang does this so well in representing a broad societal/online community focused audience, and it pains me to see the church lag so pitifully behind in thinking about how and what to develop for their audience. I see this wall between the theological community that is the church and the developer community that seems to be disconnected from the issues on the other side of the wall.
Steve says that this is "the opportunity from an economic and marketing perspective as well" 1:12:30 Alas, the church doesn’t seem to be able to focus much at all on the people on top of the wall that exists between developers and users. This is , of course, where I see myself fitting as an ambassador to the developer community culture from the church culture. But I don’t hear or see any or much significant talk amongst developers in church related IT/Web about what kinds of activity streams should be highlighted and curated for the church community, and the church communication staffs are virtually unaware of the things becoming available in APIs that are making it easier and easier to customize a community stream that pulls the most valuable data for any particular church sub-group that wants to make an interface available.
Third party communities Steve mentions can certainly include some research and development in the field of activity stream curation. How many church-related web developers even know what "activity stream curation" means or see or think about the possible implications for the church in such a focus?