Category Archives: Tech and religion

Email [curse | blessing], part two

The second installment in an occasional series where I think out loud about using email effectively.

First off, reader and comics fan Craig pointed out this wonderful comic strip on the perils of email: Link. Thanks, Craig!

Next, here are some of my own current ruminations about email….

Spinning out of control (and how to stop)

Sometimes you have to use email to conduct business. The problem is that email discussions have this habit of spinning out of control. Sometimes people write things they later regret. Sometimes people stop reading carefully, and talk at one another instead of with one another.

Recently, I was participating in an ongoing email discussion. Another woman and I separately sent out perfectly innocent email messages that unwittingly stirred up strong emotions in someone else. That person sent out a very restrained reply, but suddenly it occurred to me that something was wrong.

Suddenly, it felt like things might spin out of control very quickly.

Fortunately two other people sent out nearly simultaneous email messages:– one person wrote, Let’s wait for our face-to-face meeting next week and discuss this there;– the other person wrote, This can wait until we have our next meeting. And our email conversation stopped immediately, while we wait for our next face-to-face meeting.

I’ve decided that when you’re communicating via email, you always have to be ready to stop and say, I’ll call you and we’ll talk on the phone — or, Let’s meet face-to-face and discuss this. In addition, I’ve decided that when you’re communicating via email, you always have to be ready to listen when someone says, Hey I’ll call you on the phone — or, Hey let’s meet face-to-face and discuss this. You always have to be willing to stop the email discussion at someone else’s request, and move to a more interactive mode of communication like the telephone or a face-to-face meeting.

The thing about email is that you often don’t know the emotional state of the person with whom you’re exchanging email. When someone else asks for a phone call or a face-to-face meeting, you have to trust that they really mean it. I’m thinking that when someone else asks for a phone call, the only appropriate email response is:– What are some times I can call you, and what’s the best phone number to reach you at? (or: What phone number are you at right now?) If someone asks for a face-to-face meeting, you can say:– When and where? That should keep things from spinning out of control.

Two other possibilities:– I believe that the better you know someone, the less likely it will be that an email discussion will spin out of control (which means that team-building for committees using email heavily is probably a good idea). I believe that having regularly scheduled face-to-face meetings helps a little to keep things from spinning out of control (because you know that you’re going to have to come face-to-face with those people).

But everything I’ve said here is up for debate. What are your experiences with email spinning out of control? What goes on when email discussions spin out of control? Once they start spinning, how to stop?

Next installment: Email [curse | blessing], part three

Email [curse | blessing] pick one

Yesterday’s issue of The New York Times Book Review reviews a new book called Send: The Essential Guide to Email for Office and Home, by David Shipley and Will Schwalbe. The review was written by Dave Barry, and it sounds pretty much like everything Dave Barry has ever written, except that he doesn’t make any potty jokes.

Fortunately, the online version of the review has a link to the first chapter of the book. Here’s an excerpt that pretty much sums up the book’s purpose:

So what is it about email? Why do we send so many electronic messages that we never should have written? Why do things spin out of control so quickly? Why don’t people remember that email leaves an indelible electronic record? Why do we forget to compose our messages carefully so that people will know what we want without having to guess? We wrote this book to figure out why email has such a tendency to go awry — and to learn for ourselves how to email not just adequately but also well. Our Holy Grail: email that is so effective that it cuts down on email.

Those are good questions, and I think maybe I need this book. Some weeks, I spend two hours or more a day reading and writing email. Some days (today!) I find myself spending forty minutes carefully writing and rewriting an email message, when a five-minute phone call would have been more effective. Email is frustrating. Email is extremely useful. Somehow, I need to learn to make better use of email.

So I’m going to start a short series of posts on using email more effectively in churches and other small non-profits. Not that I know how to use email more effectively than you do — but if I put down some preliminary ideas, and you respond with better ideas in the comments, we might actually make some progress towards that Holy Grail — email so effective it cuts down on email.

First installment: Meetings via email

For those of us who sit on boards and committees, it is very tempting to save time by using email to conduct business outside of regular meeting times. In my experience, conducting board or committee business via email is ineffective when either (a) it takes longer to conduct the business via email, (b) the business is too complex to conduct via email, or (c) the business item is not presented well initially. Let’s look at these problems one at a time:

(a) It takes longer to conduct the business via email. Emotionally-loaded business items never translate well to email — email discussions have this uncanny ability to go from civil discussion to outright war in less than five seconds — meaning it’s much more efficient to conduct emotionally-loaded business face-to-face. Business items where not all members of the board or committee have the same depth of knowledge never work well via email — the knowledgeable people are constantly re-explaining to the others what’s going on — so here again, face-to-face is better.

(b) The business is too complex to conduct via email. Complex business items do not seem to translate well to email — people ask the same questions over and over again, or the original details get forgotten as the email discussion drags on and on — so it seems more efficient to conduct complex business face-to-face.

(c) The business item is not presented well initially. If you present a business item badly in a face-to-face meeting, you know instantly from the blank looks on people’s faces. Since you don’t get that kind of feedback with email responses, you can find yourself deeply involved in an email discussion only to realize that people have very different understandings of what’s being discussed — in which case, you’re probably better off cutting your losses and postponing the business item until your next face-to-face meeting.

So what kind of committee or board business does work well via email? Well, setting an agenda for a face-to-face meeting works well via email — little emotion involved, no depth of knowledge required, it’s a simple task. In another example, here at First Unitarian in New Bedford the Board of Trustees has to approve all building rental requests, and mostly these routine votes are done via email (in rare instances where a building rental proves contentious, the vote is postponed to a face-to-face meeting). Related to this, routine votes and approvals can often be effectively handled via email. Finally, email is very useful to distribute staff reports or subcommittee reports prior to a face-to-face meeting.

There must be other examples where committee or board business is conducted effectively via email — what examples do you have from your own experience? Has your committee or board come up with any magic techniques for carying out effective business via email?

Next installment: Email [curse | blessing], part two

Happy geeky networking Easter

So while the rest of you were enjoying your family Easter dinners, Carol and I were observing the holiday in our usual fashion — each sitting in front of our laptops. I spent the evening reading up on the Semantic Web. I got particularly interested in a subset of Resource Description Framework, or RDF. RDF is a way of presenting information on the Web that is machine-readable, and therefore which will make it much easier to find exactly what you’re looking for when you search the Web.

What I got interested in is a subset of RDF called FOAF, which stands for “Friend of a Friend.” Here’s what FOAF-Project, the creators of FOAF, claim:

The Friend of a Friend (FOAF) project is creating a Web of machine-readable pages describing people, the links between them and the things they create and do.

For example, FOAF-Project is working on a FOAF browser, which would show you the links from one person’s Web site to their friends and family and co-workers. The current FOAF specifications also allow you to specify your workplace, interests, contact information, and even your Geek Code.

After spending some hours reading up on FOAF and related topics, I came to the conclusion that FOAF is a great idea — or at least it will be a great idea, if it is actually ever implemented in a user-friendly way.

As it turns out, there are other ways to accomplish similar kinds of things. There are the commercial social netowrking sites that allow their users to do this sort of thing. Anad as any blogger knows, your blogroll is actually a social networking tool:– it’s a list of other bloggers with whom you have some connection (however fleeting). However, a blogroll doesn’t give you much beyond a bare link.

But the blogging software I use actually implements a kind of social networking called XHTML Friends Network, or XFN. Embedded in my blogroll are markers that tell what kind of relationships I have with the bloggers I link to. If you go to RubHub, an XFN search engine, and enter the Web address of my blog, you’ll get a list of all the bloggers I link to, along with what I claim is their relationship to me. You can then in turn check out those bloggers, and see their relationships to still other bloggers. (Oops — although I’ve requested that they add my site, they haven’t added me yet….)

XFN is still pretty new, and still not widely used. But even so, it gives you a taste of what it could be like to embed machine-readable relationship information into your Web site. Someday, I’d like to see every Unitarian universalist blogger linked up through some such scheme — whether FOAF or XFN or what-have-you. It would make it far easier for readers and bloggers to explore the large Unitarian Universalist web on the Web.

And I got so involved in this fascinating topic that I forgot to call my dad, as I usually do on Sunday evenings. Sorry, Dad! I’ll call tomorrow.

Two more blogs…

OK, it’s turned into a night of serious blog surfing. Two more blogs worth reading — this time, they’re both Unitarian Universalist blogs…

Not Muslim Anymore is the religious journey of a former Muslim who has become a Unitarian Universalist. As someone who grew up as a Unitarian Universalist, I love hearing how people who came from other faiths become Unitarian Universalists. And I’ve been particularly interested in the Muslim-to-Unitarian-Universalist path ever since I met a former Muslim in another UU congregation congregation I served. Fascinating blog. Serious snark.

Faith and the Web marks the return of Anna Belle Lieberson, who formerly blogged at Talking UU Technology. Started on April 1, Anna Belle promises “excellent websites for churches and other faith-based organizations.” In just five days, she’s posted lots of great ideas. Anna Belle is particularly good at combining PHP and CSS, so there is lots to look forward to with this blog.

Hidden upgrade

Over the past week and a half, I’ve been cleaning up some technical problems on this Web site. One problem in particular has been bugging me:– I wanted to make it easy to print entries from this blog, because every once in a while I want to share something I write here with someone who doesn’t have computer access. In a sense, this represents a problem in accessibility.

The blogging software I use, WordPress, comes with a default setting that strips away all formatting when you try to print from a Web browser. So I wrote a new stylesheet specifically for printing. Which should have been an easy task.

But it wasn’t, and it took me a couple of hours to debug the new stylesheet. You see, most Web browsers do not comply with the CSS2 specification — which means that if you try to print a page from this blog from Internet Explorer, say, or Safari, things won’t work quite right. Most importantly, printing from Explorer or Safari will mean that when there’s a link in the text, all that will print is the text you see on the screen. But if you print from CSS2-compliant browser like Firefox, the address of the link will also print out. (I have made the rest of the site printer-friendly, too — with the same caveat.)

Two conclusions: (1) Everyone should use Firefox as their primary Web browser (besides, it’s free). (2) Until we see better compliance with basic Web standards, creating Web sites will continue to be overly time-consuming — which creates problems for small non-profit groups and small congregations.

Do-It-Yourself:
Printing with CSS — general principles, from “A List Apart”
CSS styles for print in WordPress

Semantic Church?

Over the past couple of days, I’ve been reading up on the Semantic Web. First, I sought out a concise definition — here’s the definition according to the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C):

The Semantic Web provides a common framework that allows data to be shared and reused across application, enterprise, and community boundaries. [Link]

Next, I asked myself: should I care about the Semantic Web? –or is it just another technology buzzword that I can ignore? Pretty quickly, I came to the conclusion that maybe I should care about the Semantic Web, because it may solve a problem I have.

The problem is one you may share: the volume of information available via Web Classic has become so large that search engines like Google are getting to the point where they are no longer adequate for my purposes. A few years ago, I experienced search engines as opening a door for me; now I often experience them as frustrating bottlenecks. As time goes by, I find myself relying more and more on other methods for finding links to good information: blogs, Wikipedia, tags, etc.

It looks like the Semantic Web may help address this problem I’m currently facing. One of the more interesting developments is the link between the Semantic Web and knowledge management. Knowledge management can use hi-tech tools like content management systems, online learning, wikis and blogs — but knowledge management also includes face-to-face interactions like mentoring relationships, formal training, and informal learning from peers. Considered from the point of view of knowledge management, the Semantic Web is just another tool to help manage knowledge (albeit a tool that is potentially very powerful).

I’ve also started thinking about how the Semantic Web might be useful in a church setting — what problems could the Semantic Web solve for a local congregation? One of the biggest problems in most local congregations is knowledge management, because local congregations tend to be fairly isolated from one another, and from the denominational bureaucracy. If you face a problem in your local congregation, all too often you’ll probably wind up solving it on your own, even though there are lots of other congregations out there who have gone through exactly the same problem — the knowledge of how to solve your problem is out there, but it is difficult for you to access that knowledge.

As a minister, a significant proportion of my work life is spent seeking out sources of knowledge. I’m the only person in my profession working in my small congregation; I don’t have the option of asking the person in the next cubicle for advice. Instead, I read books and blogs and magazines on churches, I go to workshops and take classes, I attend professional meetings, I talk to a church consultant twice a month, I have informal mentors, and so on — I find other ways to increase my stock of knowledge.

However, lay leaders have a more difficult time increasing their stock of knowledge. Most lay leaders work on a part-time, volunteer basis; many have full-time jobs and/or families that require their time and attention. Most of the lay leaders I work with do not have the time to go to workshops and classes, attend professional meetings, have a mentor, etc. They might have time to read a few articles (in either print or online publications), but that’s about it. This is why the Interconnections newsletter for lay leaders has been so wildly successful in my denomination — it has become the primary source of church knowledge within Unitarian Universalism, because the editor, Don Skinner, presents best practices and other institutional knowledge in a concise and easily accessible format.

Marc Fawzi, writing in the blog “Evolving Trends,” has been speculating on what he calls “Web 3.0”. Fawzi speculates that Google’s dominance of the Web will be broken by the development of peer-to-peer Semantic Web engines. In another post, Fawzi speculates that Wikipedia is actually best positioned right now to break Google’s dominance because Wikipedia has already begun to map out knowledge domains that could help structure a truly useful Semantic Web.*

Applying this to the church world, imagine if the “Interconnections” newsletter utilized even more peer-to-peer interaction? What if there were a wiki component to the “Interconnections” Web site, such that the knowledge that is currently presented could be further refined over time by succeeding generations of lay leaders? Of course, realistically I don’t think that’s going to happen — at least, not within Unitarian Universalism, a denomination that has been more concerned about presenting a carefully controlled image to the outer world, than sponsoring and supporting the infrastructure for peer-to-peer interactions.

What I’m hoping is that local congregations, and individuals within those congregations, figure out how to do knowledge management with or without denominational support. Working outside denominational bureaucracy would also give us the benefit of being able to interact with peers in other, related, denominations. In fact, constructing a good set of Semantic Web ontologies will only facilitate knowledge sharing across denominational lines.

In spite of the fact that some folks are calling the Semantic Web “Web 3.0,” I am reluctant to call this overall concept “Church 3.0” because a network of evangelical Christians is already using that term to refer to mission work in a postmodern, globalized world.

So maybe call it “Semantic Church” — a framework using Semantic Web standards to allow us to share data and knowledge across boundaries that currently keep us apart.

* Update (23:07 EST): Suddenly Wikipedia’s founder is talking about using a wiki platform as a kind of search engine [link to BoingBoing post], saying search engines are no longer working.

Church 2.0 wiki

Peter Bowden and I have been talking about ways to nurture an ongoing conversation about what we’ve been calling Church 2.0. Given the philosophy of what we’re doing, it seemed like the best thing to do would be to create a Church 2.0 wiki, a Web site where anyone can contribute ideas or report on real-world projects. Of course I had to use open-source software to create the wiki (PMWiki).

Read or contribute to the Church 2.0 wiki

If you are asked for a username and password, use “edit” for username and “3d1t0rz” for a password (the fifth character in the password is a zero).

If you would like to contribute, click on “Edit” at the top of the screen. You will be asked for a password — just enter “3d1t0rz” (the fifth character in the password is a zero).

Microphone tips for everyone

Anyone who speaks in public should learn how to use a microphone properly — that includes all of us who speak in churches. If you think you will ever speak in public, here is a list of things you might want to learn so you do not annoy the people who will have to listen to you:

  • If you are a scheduled speaker, arrive early and ask to do a sound check with the microphone that you will use.
  • When you do the sound check, learn where the on-off switch is so that you can be sure the mic is on before you speak.
  • When you do the sound check, learn where the on-off switch is so that you don’t accidentally turn it off while you’re speaking.
  • When you do the sound check, learn where the “pop” zone is for the mic you plan to use, so you can avoid it when you speak.
  • When it’s time for you to speak, make sure the mic is on.
  • If you hear the mic cut out while you’re speaking, assume you flipped the switch (and take your hand off the switch!) before you blame the sound system.
  • If you hear yourself causing the mic to “pop”, move your head and mouth so that you are talking beside or over the “pop” zone.
  • Be careful about bumping the mic or hitting it when you turn pages.

Here’s the short version of the same list:

  1. Know where the on-off switch is on the mic and don’t fumble with it.
  2. Don’t cause the mic to “pop”.
  3. Don’t bump the mic.

But what you should really do is spend time practicing and learning how to use a microphone well before you have to speak in public. Here are some suggestions for learning how to use a mic before you have to speak.:

  • Learn the difference between different types of microphones. Wireless mics often require you to speak very close to the mic in order to prevent feedback (a “rock ‘n’ roll” mic), whereas some stationary mics will pick you up from a long way away. If someone hands you a random mic, you need to be able to tell if you’re using a mic that requires you to hold it next to your mouth or one that you can stray away from.
  • Practice using both types of microphone in front of a friendly critic who can let you know how you sound. If possible, record yourself speaking into both types of mic so you know how you sound in each type of mic before you go live.
  • Then take the next step: learn how to hear your voice in the loudspeakers as you speak.
  • While you are practicing with the mics, listen for “pop” sounds when you use plosive consonants like b, d, p, and t. Learn to hear when you make pops come from the loudspeakers, and then learn how to adjust the relationship of the mic to your mouth (basically, talk past the mic instead of directly into the mic) so you don’t cause pops. Note that different mics have different sensitivities to popping.
  • While you are practicing with a rock ‘n’ roll mic, train your hand to hold the mic the exact same distance from your mouth all the time. In other words, don’t ever try to use your microphone hand to make gestures because doing so will make your voice fade up and down in volume as your hand moves towards and away from your mouth.
  • While you are practicing with a rock ‘n’ roll mic, train your hand to hold the mic so you never, never touch the mic switch.
  • While you are practicing with a stationary mic that can pick up your voice from a good distance, practice leaning into the mic and talking in a softer voice. This technique gives your voice an intimate quality, like a radio announcer.
  • While you are practicing with that same stationary mic, try standing back from it and speaking to the back of the room as if there is no mic there to amplify your voice. This technique gives your voice an oratorical quality, like a preacher or a politician.
  • To round out your mic skills, practice using a wireless mic, a handheld mic attached to a wire, a mic on a stand, a clip-on (“lavalier”) mic, and a mic at a lectern or pulpit. The more comfortable you are using different types of microphones, the happier your audiences will be (you can practice, or they can suffer, it’s your choice).

One last point: Practice makes perfect — and you should never stop practicing. I started doing community radio back in 1976, I preach weekly, and yet I’m continually refining my microphone technique. Just three weeks ago I went to the installation of Paul Sprecher as minister of Second Parish in Hingham, Mass., and was just stunned by the excellent mic technique of Rev. Kim Crawford Harvie of Arlington St. Church, Boston, and that of Rev. Jane Rzepka of Church of the Larger Fellowship, Boston. When I got back to New Bedford I tried out their very different techniques myself, and have now added more range to my mic technique.

Since practice makes perfect, go thou and practice.

Update: The last two paragraphs have provoked some strong reactions, expressed in a number of email messages. Let me say that no one should learn microphone technique just for the sake of producing certain vocal effects — microphone technique should serve your message, not the other way around. I learned a great deal from watching Kim and Jane, but I would never, ever use their techniques myself because I could not do so in a genuine way — as a preacher, I do not speak in a conversational tone, and I do not ever speak in an intimate tone (I think a male minister trying to preach in an intimate tone would be very creepy). Yet I still learned a lot from Jane and Kim, especially about using training and muscle memory to keep yourself a certain distance from the mic, and about learning how to listen to yourself in the loudspeakers as you speak. Now go out and practice.

Update: Another rant on microphone use: Link.

Making progress…

One of the most important uses for technology in church is to increase accessibility. And one of the projects I’ve been slowly working on is trying to figure out the best way to make and distribute audio recordings of worship services, for members of our congregation who can’t make it to church for whatever reason.

In terms of distributing audio recordings of worship services, right now the best solution here in our church is probably putting the audio recordings onto CDs. Yes, I would prefer to distribute audio recordings via our Web site, but many of the people who would like to get audio recordings of worship services either don’t know how to use a computer to download audio files, don’t own a computer, or don’t have high-speed internet access (New Bedford is not a wealthy community, and some of our members cannot afford computers or high-speed internet access). But CD players are so cheap now, we think we can count on everyone owning a CD player.

In terms of making the audio recordings during the worship service, up until this week we have been stymied. We need to be able to process the audio recordings (cleaning up sound through compression, and deleting certain elements of the recording such as personal testimonies or requests for prayers during the worship service), and the easiest way to do that is using a computer and audio processing software (we use GarageBand on my Mac). I have been reluctant to record onto CDs because of their time limitations (about 75 minutes of recording time, not really enough to squeeze in prelude, worship service, and postlude). Fortunately, our music director, Randy Fayan, has a day job working for Avid, a company which makes digital media creation tools.

Randy borrowed a nice little digital audio recorder — it’s about the size of a deck of playing cards — which will record about 17 hours of monoaural audio in mp3 format (at 128kHz), onto its 1 gig flash memory. Yesterday we put the digital audio recorder on the pulpit and recorded the worship service, and then downloaded it onto my computer. It was incredibly easy. The sound quality was excellent, and the recorder picked up nearly all of the worship service with pretty good quality.

We still have a few problems to solve. We like to plug the digital audio recorder into the amplifier that provides sound to persons with hearing difficulties, but if we do that we will have to set up another microphone to pick up the piano. Then there’s the issue of processing the audio file. I spent yesterday afternoon editing the audio file we made and trying different compression rates, but I can’t spend four hours every week doing that and I’m going to have to learn how to process the file in less than an hour. Then we have to decide if we want to make the audio file available via our Web site, which may mean paying for more bandwidth — which we really can’t afford, and which won’t help us with our main goal of making worship services available to shut-ins.

Right now, it’s still a work in progress. But it does feel like we’re making some real progress.