I mentioned earlier that we’re investigating moving from Windows Media Video to Flash Video for our streaming sermons. Brian Bailey of Fellowship Church gives a lot more details today on how they did this. Thanks Brian!

How many of us who serve in ministry as a vocation can relate to this article from Business Week?

Here’s a quote: “More than 31 percent of college-educated male workers are regularly logging 50 or more hours a week at work, up from 22 percent in 1980. Forty percent of American adults get less than seven hours of sleep on weekdays, reports the National Sleep Foundation, up from 31 percent in 2001. About 60 percent of us are sometimes or often rushed at mealtime, and one-third wolf down lunch at our desks, according to a survey by the American Dietetic Assn. To avoid wasting time, we’re talking on our cell phones while rushing to work, answering e-mails during conference calls, waking up at 4 a.m. to call Europe, and generally multitasking our brains out.”

Sound familiar? I’m a bit ashamed to admit it, but that’s me.

Office 12 will generate PDF files natively. Nice.

I see that Microsoft’s Scoble is switching his domain name to http://www.robertscoble.com/. Obviously, that’s a better domain name, but isn’t it dangerous to change your address when you’re one of the most popular blogs in the known universe? He’s aware of this risk, of course, and wonders aloud what will happen to his search ranks, RSS subscriptions, etc.

I’m really curious about how this will turn out. Is Scoble at the level where he can do stuff like this? Are people are so interested in reading his thoughts that they’ll find him wherever he is and update their RSS subscriptions? (I know I will.) Is it possible to get to such a point of popularity that you can break a major marketing rule and still be successful?

Here’s why (apparently). For a while, I couldn’t get to Google, MSN, or Yahoo. But I could still get to Resurrection and many other less-trafficed sites.

Scoble points us to Macintosh fan Giles Turnbull talking about how far ahead Microsoft is in opening up to customers via employee blogs.

What would it mean for local churches to open up via blogs in the same way Microsoft has? Would the people we’re seeking to reach and serve appreciate us opening up in the same way? I expect so. Post-moderns, in particular, put a high premium on authenticity. When we make mistakes, I’d like to see us learn how to be honest about it in our blogs. Microsoft has shown us how.

We’ve had it on our list for months to look into Flash Video (FLV) as a better cross-platform alternative to Windows Media Video (WMV). Ginghamsburg is doing it with success. Now I see that Fellowship Church is going that way too. I’m eager to find some time soon to see if we can develop a new weekly process that would allow us to make this change.

Adam Hamilton, Resurrection’s Senior Pastor, was awesome again Saturday morning in his plenary session at Leadership Institute 2005. Then I had a chance to present on “Proven Principles of Church Technology Management”. I hope some of you at the workshop will become regular readers of this blog. Welcome!

Workshop recaps, photos, downloads, and more have been posted to the IT section of our Resurrection website. We’re still uploading stuff so if you don’t see what you’re looking for, come back.

Jon and Brian provided awesome support for the conference, and also for me, their leader. Thanks guys!

Oh yeah, and Friday’s blogger did post again and again. He (mostly) liked it! Thanks, Brent.

We’ve had an exciting couple of days here at Church of the Resurrection.

Yesterday, I had the chance to present on Web Empowered Church with Mark Stephenson of Ginghamsburg Church and The Appian Way’s own Chuck Russell. We had a great time with the people who attended this 4-hour intensive workshop. I know many of them felt like their heads (and other body parts) exploded part way through because of the workshop’s length and intensity, but everyone stayed to the end, for which I was greatful.

In the morning plenary session today, we heard from Rev. Adam Hamilton, our senior pastor. The band was great. The worship technology/media people hit a grand slam. And Adam was as awesome as ever. This afternoon, Chuck and Mark reprised their presentations from yesterday, with many positive responses. All of it reminded me of why it’s so great to be part of Resurrection.

Tonight, Adam had me in tears when he talked about having a Magnificent Obsession with Jesus and then related it to the love he has for his daughter who just last month went off to Kansas State as a freshman. The time is coming for me next year – my daughter is a senior in high school now, so it was very close to home.

And when I got back to the computer, Technorati led me to this blogger’s account of his time at Leadership Institute yesterday. Will he post again?

Here are a couple of recent posts by Sam of “remixable” that help us understand and articulate the importance of church websites in reaching people today and having credibility.

First, he asks whether a church is invisible if it doesn’t have a website. He then goes on to talk about local search, which is a subject that’s very much on my mind.

Second, he speculates about how the web could be used to enhance Sunday morning sermons. We’re thinking about that a lot and are in the early stages of building a TYPO3 extension that would make the sermon simply be a milestone in the middle of a longer theological conversation that starts the week before and continues indefinitely afterward.