We've talked about something Twitter-style for specialized purposes like prayer requests or a church-specific group. Anyone been using the TWiT Army app? Leo talked about it on the latest TWiT. http://army.twit.tv for a demonstration. http://laconi.ca/trac/ for the project site. I haven't used it, but I'm thinking what a great way to stay in touch with people from your church throughout the week. People can bounce around ideas, encourage each other, and pray for each other in a specialized environment that's relatively public, yet closed enough that generally only people interested in the church will get involved.
Aside from the normal potential pitfalls of public discussion, anyone have thoughts? You could also use it for a setting not specifically geared toward a single congregation, like a Bible Study community or Prayer Request feed. And it works with many Twitter apps like Twitterific, Twhirl, Jabber, iPhone's moconica, etc.
It can even be imported into Twitter for people who don't want to use both, although you'd likely need some other way to post if you only use 1 Twitter app on a mobile device. (Twhirl can handle multiple accounts.)
Comments
Oh--Drupal connection: How
Oh--Drupal connection: How would one set up a Drupal module for it?
Pastor Dale
http://crossfeednews.com/podcast
Pastor Dale
http://crossfeednews.com/podcast
Laconica module
A Laconica module which functions like the Twitter module http://drupal.org/project/twitter would be very useful.
Why not twitter or friendfeed?
My first question is why not use something like twitter or friendfeed to do the same thing. In twitter you can even you something like group tweet or in friendfeed you can use something like a room to provide a form of community.
I ask this because setting up and maintaining something like Laconica is extra work for most churches. If there is dedicated staff who have the time and knowledge or there is a rather large community (though I don't know a church with a community the size of the twit army) an argument can be started.
Am I missing something?
Matt Farina
www.innovatingtomorrow.net
www.geeksandgod.com
www.superaveragepodcast.com
www.mattfarina.com
Yeah, with Laconica, you can
Yeah, with Laconica, you can have better control over privacy, but more to the point, a lot of people who resist Twitter will more likely trust a church-hosted service. Twitter is flaky, and those who do use it may have trouble keeping up with it, depending how many people they follow. IOW, I'd personally prefer a separate feed for specific groups, and I'm not sure how else to do this.
Twitter Pros: Takes the conversation to the virtual street (outreach), more versatile, no setup
Twitter Cons: Easy for the group to lose focus, Flaky (though no idea how stable Laconica is)
In a sense, it's the same reason you set up a discussion area on your church site instead of just using some other public forum somewhere. It gives a sense of "Come to this community. Get involved. Join up." Plus you can set up the web interface like the TWiT Army page on your church site so people can see what's going on before joining in.
Pastor Dale
http://crossfeednews.com/podcast
Pastor Dale
http://crossfeednews.com/podcast
Church Community Sites Are Failing
One of the things I've noticed is that church community sites are failing. Can you point me to one that you would call a real success? Even hosted services like MyChurch aren't exploding. If you look at that site it's more about Christian social networking than being centered around your church. That's a big difference. I'd find that to be a huge con with setting up your own.
I'm sure there are exceptions to the rule when it comes to church communities that could use something like Laconica well. For your average church it just doesn't seem to make sense. If they have an issue with something like twitter or friendfeed with their information being out there are they the kind of person who would even use that functionality? If not, why push them into it?
The TWiT army has a vastly different makeup than most churches so it's really tough to compare. The TWiT Army is people who follow TWiT and are geeks, early adopters, and Internet addicts. These are the type of people who could/would use something like Laconica. Especially since there are hundreds of thousands of them.
A church is usually small, with the exception of a few of them, and is made up of people who aren't that geekie on the whole. Studies have even shown that the Internet geek crowd is less likely to be Christian than the general population.
You'll find that sometime later this year I'm going to start blogging and talking about this stuff. We need to be very careful how we apply tech used well in one area for a particular cultural group in another area that's vastly different.
You did miss one of the twitter Pros. There's no maintenance. That's usually the largest part about having something like this.
Matt Farina
www.innovatingtomorrow.net
www.geeksandgod.com
www.superaveragepodcast.com
www.mattfarina.com
Over the past few weeks,
Over the past few weeks, I've become more and more convinced that one of the earliest "Old School" internet technologies: listserves. They're great because they're so versatile and because email is ubiquitous. People can use it with their phones, iTouches, Blackberries, or web interfaces. So the next trick is how to set up a public listserve with a web form so visitors can read and post--I'm thinking visitors would be moderated along with spam filtering. Thoughts?
Pastor Dale
http://crossfeednews.com/podcast
Pastor Dale
http://crossfeednews.com/podcast
All About Use Case
We need to think beyond the how (like listservers) and think of the what. Look at what twitter does. It can work with email, text message, IM, the web, and more. It integrates with the technologies people use. It's far from a list server.
Think of new letters. Some people use RSS, some use email, and I'm waiting for the next thing to show up. They should all work together. One data source and multiple ways to interact with it. Old school listserves don't do that.
Matt Farina
www.innovatingtomorrow.net
www.geeksandgod.com
www.superaveragepodcast.com
www.mattfarina.com
I'm specifically looking for
I'm specifically looking for something that allows people from a church to communicate with each other throughout the day for encouragement, discussion, and community-building. It shouldn't be that tough to have a listserve create an RSS feed. Maybe a Drupal site is tied into the listserve and creates nodes from posts, then converts to an RSS feed. It should be easily possible with existing modules. And by running it through Drupal, it'll be ready for whatever the next thing is. All you'll need is another module.
You could even find a way for visitors to post if you wanted by allowing comments on the node that feeds back into the listserve as the Drupal site being signed up as a member of the listserve.
IOW, the listserve isn't the only component, but no point reinventing the wheel when the technology has been around for decades.
That said, depending what the next big thing is, a listserve may no longer be able to handle it, although chances are, it'll either be shared via link or attachment, both of which it could handle, more than likely.
Pastor Dale
http://crossfeednews.com/podcast
Pastor Dale
http://crossfeednews.com/podcast