A friend of mine gave me a YouTube video and I was particularly interested in it as I was having a difficult day. The real question you should ask is:
Will it blend?
Special shout-out to James Shufelt who still doesn’t have a blog.
-Michael
I’ve been meaning to write this post, but when I saw Matt post before me I knew that I had dropped the ball. I’ve been so busy recovering from my job @ ABTech rather than the church that it’s just crazy. Now mix that also with the fact that I’ve been planning my wife’s Mother’s Day gift and it finally came together yesterday and one could say I’ve been busy.
Wait wait wait…Mother’s Day you say??? That was 3 weeks ago!
Let me explain. I didn’t give my wife her Mother’s Day gift on well…Mother’s Day. I gave it to her yesterday. Why? Because it required careful planning and coordination! I am leaving for Ney York City for business next Monday, and now it’s for business and pleasure as my wife is coming too! 5 days in The City! Back to the point…
Matt and I had a blast and the best part was for different reasons. I actually find it kind of funny because we were driving back to the hotel one night and we had asked each other what we’re getting out of this. I was surprised that in the typical roles that we play in the church, we switched here. Instead of me being the hands-on “how to” techie, what I got out of this conference was more of the “why” and philosophy of F1. Matt said it was he was digging the hands-on stuff. Now of course, I learned stuff on the tech side and I know Matt grew to better understand F1 from his normal point of view, but overall I got the feeling we approached it differently and it was refreshing! Of course he was his normal self and always up to meeting new people and I was the introvert shunning everyone…
And on another note, I did learn something else! I learned to always take a camera and not let your friend Matt have all the equipment. That way you don’t have to beg on your blog to have him send pictures and video to put up on your blog.
Also closed on our house and we’re in now. Got back Saturday around noon and started moving everything with the help of friends and family. Where would you be without them???
I know that I have been off in some other world recently, not blogging at all. Here’s a little rundown about what has taken place in my life lately.
WE BOUGHT AND MOVED TO A HOUSE!!!!!!! Whoop! We went from a tiny little apartment ( where Zaeda had hardly any room to run around) to a three story, almost 2,000 square foot home! We love it! It is absolutely the most wonderful place! However, Mike keeps saying that it is too cold ( yeah next to a little apartment that heats up to about 90 degrees when you turn 1 computer on and we had 4 computers in our home!) and he also says that it is too light. TOO LIGHT! What??!!!!??? I love how light it is. I can actually see things without having to turn lights on. There are so many great windows! I love it. I told him he can go downstairs to the computer lair and keep the lights out and the heat on.
When we first moved in there was/is a problem with some urine that the previous owners doggie left behind. We had the carpets professionally cleaned- but to no avail. One room ( will be Zaeda’s room) still has a prevailing odor of urine. Anyone out there have any luck with how to remove pet urine from carpet??
I will post pics of our new house… but right now, I don’t even have my camera out of a box.
So- what else is going on? Well, since Mothers day Mike has been saying that he had a surprise for me for mothers day. He wouldnt tell me what it was- although he told me several hints ( some of which were just to throw me off.) Then, yesterday he told me my surprise! I AM GOING TO NEW YORK ON MONDAY! Wow. I never expected that. A trip to New York!??! That is so awesome. I have a million things that I want to see in New York City. The first two days I will be on my own ( Mike has work to do with a client in New York- which is why we get to go in the first place!!!! ) and we will be staying in a town in New Jersey, but then we will be staying in New York City. So- any one have any ideas about what I should do or go? I want to see so much, but I only have five days.
The hardest part about this vacation is that I have never left Zaeda - not even for one night. She will be staying with my Mom and Dad, but I am so scared to leave her. I hope that I can have fun even though I will miss her so badly. We are going to set up Skype and a camera at my folks place so that we can see and talk to her every night.
Wow. What a day! Today was filled with training sessions and random conversations. Most of my sessions were on topic with technology and probably the best one was the Terry Storch and I loved his title, digerati pastor. I’ve been thinking a lot about the concept of a digerati and find myself fascinated and also identifying myself as one. Don’t know what it is? Click here to find out. I certainly found some of myself in Terry, and for some reason that was an eye opening experience. He is doing so much reaching people for Christ and is utilizing technology to do it. I believe they recorded the session, if it is posted up (which sounds like Terry) I will post a link. Other than that, remember when I told you that I wouldn’t see Matt a whole bunch during the conference? Right…I found myself with both Matt and Rachel (from Abundant Life) in the advanced query builder session. I will let it be known though, that was in the technology track and therefore my track.
My flight is about to leave, I will update this when I reach Chicago! Oh yea…here are Terry’s notes that I jotted down!
-Michael
Definition: Reach- Making contact, influencing, interesting, convincing
1.1 Billion People online today. Redefines a mega-church
We’re a media driven society. We want content and we want it NOW!
24 year old video editor using xbox 360 and Halo to have a bible study. It’s not about a building anymore.
Juiced.com/ real time TV broadcasting
Reach- How?
Reach- Why now?
Technology
High Speed Connections. Simple tools. Youtube, Apple TV, etc.
Users
Empowered Users, Personalization
Content
User Driven & custom quality!
Whats Next?
Reach- Now is the time!
So I already informed you about our interesting travel arrangements, but I what about the rest of the day? Yesterday we met up with the Abundant Life and the rest of our team from Sunset and arrived at the conference. We started out with our tracks and again, I’m in the technology track. I learned something very important. Data Exchange in F1 is so much more than what I thought it was. I thought it was just a simple little tool that converts data from/into Excel spreadsheets and other forms of static data. Oh no. It’s an entire module that has web services and API’s that you can code against and aggregate data from your F1 database! Holy Crap! People are doing some amazing things with these API’s. I even heard someone having Exchange lookup data with it. Now that’s what I’m talking about!
After the sessions there was some meet and greet. Kembe, Tara and I are introverts though, so we huddled together at a table while Matt made the rounds. As Matt always says (and reminded me) it’s not what you know, it’s who you know. I’m not there yet…heh. We had some dinner which was good for how many people they were serving and just some good fellowship with the Abundant Life folks. Afterwards we all piled into the main conference room and sat in my first “Keynote”. I had high hopes that this was going to be awe-inspiring.
It wasn’t.
It was actually kind of bad. Now before you read too much into that, let me explain. The content was there, and it was good. It wasn’t great, but it was good solid content. It was the time, the speaker, and presentation that drew me away. I was really looking forward to Jeff Hook and still listen and disseminate what he is saying, but the presentation and the way he talked just didn’t cut it for me! It was only an hour long and it felt like 2.5 hours! Absolutely nothing against Jeff, you can tell he is a great guy! But the time was also not the greatest. It started at like 8:00pm or something, when people were tired and fat from all the food.
Would I go to another keynote from him? The answer would be yes. I want to hear him speak again, give him another chance because I have a feeling he can do better.
-Michael
It’s been an interesting trip so far! Not only did I wait and narrowly miss my flight because of Matt, but…yea…I narrowly missed my flight! Matt and I are having a blast down here with the video camera. Texas is certainly…different. Unique, not bad but different. One thing I notice is that there are a whole lot more trucks out here. Big trucks, and people like mullets. We caught an enthusiast who liked mullets on camera; we’ll post the video sometime soon. Other than that, I scolded Matt for getting a pedicure but must admit, if it was a present for his wife I suppose it’s ok.
Why do I feel weird saying that??? Especially in Texas.
Looking forward to the Dynamic Church Conference and I’m hoping I have the privilege of listening to Jeff Hook kick it off at the keynote. As you might have suspected, I’m taking the technology track. Matt said something about “cross-pollination”, pfft…who knows what he meant though!
I know I have been lax on the updating…I’ve been preparing for Texas and house signing, but when I saw this I just had to post!
Michael Moore wrote a letter to Fred Thompson challenging him to a debate. You can find that here. Now Fred has responded…and I must say…fricken funny! You can find the rebuttal here.
-Michael
Using the wonders of technology, I can see how people find our blog. And although we are now self sufficient (Thanks Jenni C for all the referrals!) I am finding that there are some interesting ways to get to our blog.
Search engines are awesome. You can find out so many things with them. Most users don’t know the power Google and the likes have, but the stuff you learn from them can be unique. For instance, someone got to our blog by typing in “wife emotional detachment”. Yea. Here is another one, ” “hot male” hotmail”. Someone was searching for hot male and clicked on my blog.
Major ego boost here.
-Michael
I’m going to be busy next week. Scratch that, busy the rest of the month. We close on the house on the 15th. I’m heading to the great state of Texas on the 16th for the Dynamic Church Conference with Matt. We (being my wife) are picking up the keys to the house on the 18th. I get back on the 19th and start moving the entire week. On the 25th, I leave for New York City again. I love to travel, but is this pushing it?
On a happier note for everyone, Matt and I will be bringing you updates from the church conference I’m sure! Also, for all the church IT guys out there, Sunset Pres is working on something special just for you :p Stay tuned to both mine and Matt’s blog!
-Michael
Although there have been so many names for this service, it’s finally out! I don’t use it but my wife does. The new UI looks a bit like Outlook. I’m sure there is some marketing reasoning for that :p
In any case, they released some videos to get the word out. I think most of them are kinda low quality but I liked this one. You can find the rest on Soapbox here.
Video: Live Hotmail - Hot Male
-Michael