Web Evangelism Bulletin has just posted a new article about Blog Evangelism. The article includes a brief but good overview of the difference between a blog and a traditional website. This would be good for anyone in your church who is struggling to understand the point of blogging and how it can be used in evangelism.

Naked Conversations, the long awaited book about blogging by Scoble and Israel is out now. Here’s a review by Kathy Sierra. I’d be very interested in the thoughts of anyone in the church IT community about this book. Has anyone read it (or started to read it)?

A number of church tech bloggers have linked and commented on the reports regarding a recent study about teens and religion (for example: here and here). Teenage Research Unlimited did the study for B’nai B’rith Youth Organization (BBYO) an international group committed to reaching and teaching Jewish teens.

There are actually two stories here. The first story is the survey data (Word document) that BBYO released and many newspapers reported and bloggers have commented on.

The second story is that BBYO has built a new online community for Jewish teens called b-linked. The site is their strategy to address two findings: 68% of teens say religions is important to them and 92% say they want a better connection. I wish I had more time to investigate and comment further on this, but at first glance it seems that they’ve spent some money and built a really nice site. They report having 3,480 teens signed up so far. We need to pay attention to this. If they stick with this strategy and make it work, there will be a lot for us to learn.

Wired News reports that visitors to your website form an impression of the visual appeal of your site within 1/20th of a second. So how important are visual designers on your web team?

Here’s another use for blogging in the church. First United Methodist Church of La Vergne, TN recently started using a blog to publish their church newsletter to the web. I think this is a cool way for a small church to get started using web technology at no cost.

Mark Batterson: “Prayer is spiritual priming. When you live in prayer mode your spiritual radar is on. Your spiritual antenna is up. If you don’t pray there will be countless God-given opportunities that come and go without you even knowing it. Why? Because you aren’t primed and ready!”

USA Today just published an article on social networking sites. All the teens I know have Xanga, but it appears that MySpace is the place to be now. And of course Facebook is still exploding on college campuses.

Hat tip: Richard MacManus

The people on my team will attest to fact that one of my favorite things to say is: “Our job is to find a way to say ‘yes’.” “No” is easy. “Yes” requires you to exercise your creativity. My “say ‘yes'” philosophy is echoed in this post by Dave Ferguson.

Check out Business Week’s story about major changes at Intel brought about by Paul Otellini who took over as CEO in May 2005.

Today I had an IM exchange with a friend whose son is in college. We were talking about his major and his interests. When the conversation ended I said, “I should blog this!” So here it is …

Clif says:
Your son knows a lot about computers. After an ugly couple of years the IT labor market is coming back strong. So it would be a good option for him if he’s interested.

My friend says:
That is interesting… he has asked me what I thought of the market in IT and I have hedged. Do you think the improved conditions have any staying power?

Clif says:
In short: yes. Here’s my high-level view …

1. The market overheated with Dot Com and Y2K. There was a labor shortage. Compensation rose in response, attracting career-changers and causing a boom in the IT training industry and the IT consulting industry. (1998-2000)

2. The bubble burst. The NASDAQ collapsed. The macro economy went into recession. 9/11 happened. (2000-2001)

3. Business people were tired from the boom 90s. The IT innovation curve flattened. Businesses took the opportunity to consolidate and reap the productivity gains of the previous investment cycle. (2002-2004)

4. There were lots of initial experiments in off shore outsourcing. Some successful. Some not. (2002-2004)

5. The entire labor market adjusted to a new lower demand level combined with a new source of cheap supply overseas. The career-changer folks lost their jobs, many leaving the industry and not returning. The IT training industry collapsed. The IT consulting industry collapsed. Many people lost jobs and consulting assignments with inflated compensation and eventually found new jobs at more reasonable compensation. (2002-2004)

6. Now the economy is growing robustly (GDP growth in the range of 3% to 4.5%). The labor market has adjusted to the overseas supply. Business managers have determined what they can and can’t outsource off shore. IT training is back to a more normal level, with no new career-changers. IT consulting has returned, but at a much reduced level. (2003-2005)

7. We’re seeing a dramatic increase in the IT innovation curve that will continue for the next three years, at least. This innovation curve is driven by: RSS, AJAX, web services, multi-core processors, Windows Vista, Office 12, and wireless. (2005-?)

So … in summary, IT is a good field again. Not overheated, but not depressed. Healthy sources of innovation that will drive growth in demand, coupled with stabilized labor supply. [See also my previous post on the economy, IT innovation, and the IT labor market.]

My friend says:
I am less exposed than you are to much of this but I agree with what you are saying. The question in my mind is which jobs are the most secure. (most difficult to commoditize and outsource)

Clif says:
Well, that question (at least for now) has been answered.

The very high-tech stuff is still done here: chip design, compiler design, etc. But there are very few folks who do that work.

Work in large organizations that is highly repetitive and relatively low value is done off shore: call centers, big software development sweat shops, etc.

The biggest demand for people here is in the middle: project managers, people who understand technology and can apply it, system architects, etc. Also, nearly all small-to-medium businesses use local labor because it’s too difficult to establish off-shore relationships, find good people, and manage them. Only the largest companies can really do that. (And they’re finding that the cost advantages are more modest than they expected in the beginning.)

Bottom line: off-shore is now a permanent part of the labor market. But it doesn’t threaten anything that your son would really want to do with his life.