Yesterday was our IT Department 2nd annual off-site meeting. I decided not to call it a “retreat” because that term implies down time for spiritual nourishment. I do hope this meeting is spiritually nourishing, but that isn’t its primary purpose. We leave one help desk person behind to man the fort. The rest of us go away to spend a day together reflecting on the prior year and looking forward to the coming year.

I invite each person to bring something to share. It could be anything from a strategic technology to a prayer list, from a scripture to a cool web site. Bringing something is purely optional.

I go into the day with some ideas of things I would like to discuss, but I very intentionally do not have an agenda. In that sense it’s more like a roundtable than a structured business meeting.

Yesterday we began with a discussion of our vision for serving users, following the words and example of Jesus. It was an early alpha release of my talk coming up at MinistryTECH. I asked everyone in the team to share “if I were in charge for a day, I would …” We then had a time of individual prayer to reflect on the discussion and listen for a word from God. After a break we had a chance to share what we prayed about and what we heard. I then responded to the ideas offered.

Next we did a very informal survey to evaluate ourselves and our department. Each of us rated from 1-10 how we think we are doing in the areas of efficiency, work quality, reputation, infrastructure availability, servanthood, internal teamwork, external teamwork, annual goal achievement, and leadership. This was a nice exercise. It wasn’t anonymous. We openly discussed the ratings we each gave and why. This turned out to be really cool so I plan to repeat the same self evaluation at next year’s meeting and compare it to this year.

We finished by having technical discussions about three important projects for 2008: Sharepoint implementation, Arena implementation, and Internet Campus.

I highly recommend all church IT teams of more than a couple of people to do this at least annually. Good stuff.

JP has the deets.  I hope to see you in Oklahoma City on Saturday, April 5!  Come early and check out Terrell Sanders’ MinistryTECH.

Did you see the interview of Rick Warren by Robert Scoble at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland?  Now that’s some church IT! 

I am a huge Rick Warren fan.  This video shows how amazingly tech-savvy he is.  Definitely worth 9 minutes to watch it.

Tim Berners-Lee (the REAL inventor of the Web) recently posted on his blog about the idea of a "Giant Global Graph" – a name intentionally chosen to suggest parallels with the "World Wide Web." 

People have recently begun using the term "social graph" in reference to one’s network of family, friends, and acquaintances along with the data about those individuals and relationships.  The word "graph" here is used in the mathematical sense of a set of points together with lines representing relationships among the points.  For this purpose "graph" and "network" are essentially equivalent terms.  The Internet is a graph (a set of computers and the communications circuits that interconnect them).  So is the Web (a set of documents and the links that interconnect them).

Tim points out that the Internet is an abstraction that hides all of the complexity of the physical communications links.  It’s computer-centric in that any computer can talk to any other computer on the Internet without having to know the details of the communications links connecting them.

Similarly, the Web is an abstraction that hides all of the complexity of computers, folders (directories), and the documents in those folders.  It’s document-centric in the sense that any document can link to any other document and users can navigate from document to document without having to know the details of the computers and folder structures that hold them.  The Web sits on top of the Internet and simplifies the process of accessing information in documents.  While the Internet links computers, the Web links documents.

Now, Tim says, along comes another layer in the abstraction hierarchy.  The Semantic Web asserts that it isn’t necessarily the documents that are important but the subject matter they cover, the information they convey.  The Semantic Web is object-orientation for the WWW.  It presents information in such a way that software can reuse it, combine it, and mash it up in ways perhaps never envisioned by the original publisher of the information.  It’s a programmable web that hides the complexity of which information is in which document.  It’s information-centric in that users can navigate related information without concern for which document holds it.

Tim suggests that when it comes to one’s social graph, what we really need is a way to create, store, publish, and reuse information about ourselves and our social network such that it no longer matters which document (or service or platform) holds which information.  Such a structure would constitute a Giant Global Graph – an abstraction that sits on top of the WWW and aggregates all of the interesting data about ourselves and our relationships into a database usable by computers.

This powerful idea shows the flaw in Chuck Russell’s (my fellow Appian Way blogger) analysis of Facebook.  (Yes, we’re having the argument here in the blogosphere for everyone to read!  As a political science graduate, Chuck LOVES to argue in public.  Who am I to deprive him of such joy?) The walled garden may persist for a time, but eventually it gets replaced by a system with radical interoperability.  "Small pieces, loosely joined" (as Dave Winer would say) results in a richly diverse ecosystem that over time benefits everyone involved. 

For example, AOL used to be an online service – a 1980s era computer bulletin board updated with a graphical interface.  Once the Internet and Web became popular, AOL connected to them under the hood but still presented users with a proprietary user interface and search system (remember AOL keywords?).  So the question for Chuck is, do you want to bet on Facebook (a walled garden like the AOL of old) or the entire rest of the Internet?  Short term, no question Facebook is popular as was AOL in its day.  Long term, I’m betting on the Giant Global Graph. 

None of this is to say that we shouldn’t work with Facebook for right now since it’s popular.  Nor am I saying that Facebook won’t eventually open up and become part of a highly interoperable GGG.  I’m just saying that their current model is flawed and our investment in Facebook-specific strategies should be modulated accordingly.

By the way, Tim Bray agrees with me.

 

This year Terrell Sanders of MinistryCOM fame is starting a new conference for ministry A/V and IT called MinistryTECH.  The inaugural event will be in Oklahoma City, April 3-4.  The next day, April 5, we will have the Spring Church IT RoundTable (CITRT) at Crossings Community Church, also in Oklahoma City.  See details on Tony’s blog.

I am planning to take a couple of people from my team to MinistryTECH and the RoundTable.  I will be presenting a breakout session at MinistryTECH about how church IT teams can provide excellent customer service.  Here’s my breakout description:

Users or Customers?

Do you struggle with getting users to follow your policies and procedures?  Do your users make unreasonable demands?  Do you find it difficult to know how and when to say “no?”  Frustrations with the users we serve are nearly universal across church IT teams of every size and situation.  Learn how you can think of users as customers, earn high marks from your customers, and reduce tensions between IT and customers through a default answer of “yes.”  Hear how Church of the Resurrection has built a customer-focused IT organization without creating a monster of unmanageable expectations.  This session will challenge some of your most basic assumptions about how you manage your IT infrastructure and serve your customers.

I hope to see you there!

Tony posted a comment, asking how far south I was at Cape Point. He question was prompted by my wise crack that there was “nothing to spoil the view but Antarctica.”

My head getting sunburned at Cape Point

The southernmost tip of the Cape of Good Hope is called Cape Point, which is the southwestern corner of the continent of Africa. (The southernmost point in Africa is actually Cape Agulhas, 90 miles SE of Cape Point.). As you can see, the sign says it’s at 34° 21′ 24″ South latitude. Amazingly, that’s only a little further south of the equator than Atlanta is north of the equator. (Atlanta is at 33° 46′ North latitude.) It’s mind boggling to imagine Atlanta as the northernmost point of North America.

According to the sign at the Cape Point lighthouse, it is 6248 km (approx. 3900 miles) to the South Pole. A bit of web research tells me it’s approx. 2600 miles from Cape Point to the nearest coast of Antarctica. So no, you can’t really see it from there. It’s just cool when you’re standing there looking south and realizing the only land mass in that direction is Antarctica. Glad to clear that up. 😉

Belatedly, but as promised, here are some pictures showing the beauty of the Cape Town landscape.

Above the University of Cape Town, looking NE

Cape Town waterfront

High School in District 6 with cloud-covered Table Mountain in background

Hout Bay, looking W – the most beautiful ocean drive I’ve ever seen

Cape Point, looking N into False Bay

Cape Point, looking S (nothing to spoil the view but Antarctica)

What lingers the most with me is the contrasts, perhaps even contradictions of Cape Town.  The city is beautiful with mountains and ocean views in every direction.  The weather was perfect (except for the wind).  The people were hopeful about their young democracy (less than 14 years old).  The economy seems dynamic and entrepreneurial.  Yet, unemployment is very high – we were told as high as 40% in some areas.  HIV infection rates are in the 30% range.  People are living in near 3rd-world conditions just blocks away from areas you could easily mistake for a beautiful ocean-side city in the US such as San Diego.  It’s a complex story, difficult to articulate or put into easily-digestible sound bites.  Maybe I’ll have more to say later upon further reflection.

I will also remember the people, particularly:

• Peter, the retired New Testament scholar from Minnesota who owns the B&B.  His eyes sparkle as he talks about South Africa, his adopted home.
• Raymond, the native Capetonian who taught us about Cape Town and South Africa with grace, charm, humility, and humor as he took us where we needed to go.
• Dan, the elderly black man who was forcibly removed from his home in District 6 during apartheid and then was among the first to return there years later.  He has a picture in his living room of Nelson Mandela handing him the keys to the new place.  Today he glows when he talks about his life.
• Charlotte, the vibrant resident of Masiphumelele who was our tour guide there.  She arranged for the marimba band that entertained us royally followed by afternoon tea at Zukie’s bed and breakfast.  It was among the most memorable experiences of the trip, yet very difficult to describe in words.
• Tembo, the founder of SHADE who speaks with such passion about her life and work that you leave inspired to come along side and do anything it takes to help SHADE’s vision become reality.  She is a powerful woman.  Look out world.
• Otto, the Lutheran pastor from Germany who serves the people of Philippi with grace, love, an entrepreneurial spirit, and impressive attention to detail.

Notes:

1. Consequences of load shedding as reported in an e-mail yesterday morning from our B&B host, Peter Kjeseth:

Today, the day after your departure the headline story in the Cape Times:  BLACKOUT STRANDS CABEL CAR.  Load shedding hit while the Table Mountain cable car was half way up leaving 37 people dangling in the car in a heavy wind.  When the electricity went back on, the cable car malfunctioned so it could not land properly.  Rescue teams got the 37 off to safety.  The 500, yes 500, stranded on top of Table Mountain were not so lucky.  They spent a chilly night up there.  Their rescue began only in the early morning hours. 

Several people from our group took that cable car up to the top of Table Mountain on Saturday, our free day.

2. Diarrhea isn’t fun, especially on a day when you’re on four flight segments over a 33 hour period.  Imodium helped, but didn’t fix it.  We were assured that it’s safe for Americans to drink the tap water in Cape Town.  I’m not saying I have any evidence tap water was the cause of my distress, but …  (Was that too much information?)

3. You can’t bring biltong into the US, even if it is sealed in the original package.  See US Customs FAQ here.  That’s 30 rand we’ll never get back.

4. I’m still picking grains of sand out of my hair, blown there by the constant wind.

4. Did anything happen here in the US while we were away?

This is my first chance to report on our last day in Cape Town, having been in transit for the last 33 hours.

Day 6 for us was Sunday, now a continent away.  We went to worship at JL Zwane church in Guguletu township.  Guguletu is also in Cape Flats, right next to Philippi where iThemba Labantu is located.  (Guguletu and Philippi are essentially adjacent suburbs, if it’s proper to call them that). 

The entire service except for a couple of songs was in Xhosa, a cool African language that uses click consonants.  The music was all a cappella with a little bit of hand percussion.  It was classic African style: simple, repetitive chord structures with luscious but straightforward melodies and harmonies.  I’ll post a bit of recorded audio when I have the opportunity. Occasionally an English word would pop out such as a number or Bible book.  Otherwise, we have no idea what the sermon was about or any of the song lyrics.

JL Zwane is a thriving place where worshippers come in their finest clothing each Sunday and enjoy passionate preaching, singable and danceable music, and rich community life.  It is an open and accepting community that deals head-on with AIDS, unlike many African churches where the subject is taboo. 

South Africa is so westernized that it’s almost possible to forget you’re in Africa until you worship at JL Zwane.  Cool stuff.

Notes:

1. We finally saw and photographed the penguins at Boulder’s Beach.  Penguins are quirky and compelling creatures.  It was a special opportunity to see them outside captivity.  The wind was blowing so hard when we were there, it almost knocked us down.

2. We went to Cape Point (the extreme southern tip of the Cape of Good Hope which forms the western side of False Bay).  There is an argument over whether Cape Point is properly designated as the place where the Indian Ocean meets the Atlantic Ocean.  While there, we ate at the Two Oceans Restaurant, so at the very least it’s clear where the restaurant management comes down on that question.  😉

3. We saw a number of baboons in the wild at Cape Point and along the road leading to it.  Through a bit of cunning and aggression, one of them was able to abscond with an ice cream cone that the human who purchased it did not wish to surrender.  Very impressive.

4. Did I mention that the almost 19-hour plane ride from Joburg to DC is a butt buster?  We left Joburg at 6:15 pm local time.  This gave us late evening sun and twilight for the first 90 minutes, or so.  After that, since we were going west, we stayed in darkness for the entire remainder of the flight, arriving in DC before sunrise.  Our night lasted 17+ hours.  Very disorienting.

5. As the official trip photographer, I took more than 1,100 still pictures.  Laura took another 150 or so.  On the butt buster flight we reviewed all the pictures and deleted those with technical problems – motion blur, subject out of focus, bad exposure, etc.  We also picked the best shot where there was redundancy.  That left 800ish usable images.  After that, I went back through and picked 131 favorites that tell the story.  Completing the multimedia projects about the trip are going to take more time than the trip itself.   Eeek!

6. Weather at CPT when we left: 79 F and sunny.  Weather at MCI upon arrival: 10 F (also sunny, if that matters!).

7. Besides a mild sunburn on my balding scalp, what did I come back with that I didn’t have when I left?  Stay tuned for a future post on that.

8. We’re home.  Dilemma: take a nap now or try to wait until this evening and then try to sleep through the night?  Everyone has their own theory on that.

I’m writing from the floor of Dulles airport at 8:23 am Eastern, having left Cape Town at 7:00 am Eastern yesterday.  Let me say, for the record, that 19 hours on a single aircraft (Johannesburg to DC) is inhumane.

They just now called our flight.  I’m KC-bound.  Will post more later.