webcast with 2 Catalyst guys
I’ve never been to that mega-conference called Catalyst, missed meeting Brad Lomenick at Q NYC (I think that’s where our paths crossed), and didn’t catch them on their road trip. I’m not able to go cross country this year either.
But, at least I’ll get to see Brad live via the internet and maybe conjure up my best question to ask during their webcast:
CATALYST LIVE WEBCAST: Thursday @ Noon (Eastern) / 9:00am Pacific
This Thursday, Oct 2nd, @ 9am Pacific / 12pm Eastern, CATALYST is hosting a LIVE Webcast on Mogulus.com/catalystspace. Brad Lomenick and Chad Johnson will be giving you a view of Catalyst behind the scenes and answering your questions.
I had drawn up a grid a few years ago about leadership development, and the different kinds of programs to develop that. Nothing replaces the practicing of leadership, which is often not spoken of; but the programs that can be packaged and produced, those get a lot more air-time. I even came up with acronyms to chart out a comparison betwen different approaches/ programs: conferences, courses, classes, cohorts, coaching. Maybe there was one more C. I’ll have to dig that up and share it with you.
Saturday surprises: being a human being
Lots of buzz words dominate the conversations I’m hearing: excellence. productivity. purpose. effective. passionate. mission. vision. results.
Frankly, it’s overwhelming to me. The past 2 weeks have been humbling to me, and I’ve had to slow down. And, Craig Groeschel spoke to this powerfully last Sunday. Towards the end of my travel season, some circumstances have indicated to me that I gotta pace myself better and add margin. No need to worry about me — my health is fine.
So, what I’m learning is to not push myself so hard, trying to be frenetically driven, always looking for ways to be more productive, more excellence. It strikes me as being more workaholic. I’m not saying that we shouldn’t do our best, or that we shouldn’t grow and improve ourselves. Not to say we shouldn’t achieve and do great things. What I am saying is there’s more to being human and healthy and sanity.
It doesn’t help that I’m surrounded by so many task-oriented driven high-achievers. I’m just little ol’ me, relational-oriented, not goal-oriented, and all about conversations and connections. At the end of the day, it’s all about relationships, as stories of deathbed last words goes.[t] Sigh.
Here’s a thought, just came to me: it’s people from afar that care about achievements. It’s the people up close who care about their relationship with you, who love you for being you.[t]
On another note, random finds for this Saturday:
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Live from ChurchTechCamp
Spending the day at ChurchTechCamp; see the live streaming video, chat room, live tweets, and live blogging >>
Here’s a quick video scanning the #churchtechcamp audience
Search for hashtag #churchtechcamp for multiple simultaneous voices; follow me at twitter.com/djchuang for mine
This afternoon about 1:30ish (Pacific) I’ll kick off a discussion / conversation about whether blogging still matters, with these articles as a starting point:
- State of the Blogosphere 2008 (intro, parts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5)
- In Web World of 24/7 Stress, Writers Blog Till They Drop - New York Times (April 2008)
- Death by blogging - Slate
- Death by Blogging? - The Daily Dish / Andrew Sullivan
- The Death of Blogs - Christianity Today (September 2007)
[update] open wiki at churchtechcamp.wetpaint.com for list of participants + sites mentioned + #churchtechcamp gets mention at official Twitter blog (!)
finding better words that connect
Words mean things; they have a lexical definition. But that’s not all. There’s more! Words carry emotions based on one’s experience and context, both nature and nurture (personality bent and family upbringing, respectively.) And effective communication is all about finding the words that transmit the sender’s (speaker or author) ideas to the receiver (audience or reader).
Here’s a list of words that don’t connect with me. These trigger words are burdening, off-putting, unappealing, turn me off. I translate these trigger words into better words that better connect and/or motivate me, so I don’t feel weighed down or repelled. Don’t want to be wordy or verbose, so I’ll just list them [format= trigger word vs. better word]:
- discipline vs. habits
- obey/ obedience vs. do the right thing
- routine vs. rhythm
- challenge vs. adventure or rally
- decision vs. choice
- plan vs. choosing the future
- goals vs. milestones
- accountability vs. support or reinforcement
- performance - haven’t found a better word for this yet; I do work in a high quality kind of way, but the performance evaluation part gives me the willies
I could write paragraphs ad nauseum on why those trigger words don’t work for me. But, happy to entertain them in the comment thread (so I don’t clutter my blog post with extraneous tirades and rabbit trails.) And, this list is probably great fodder for a psychiatrist to analyze my psyche with.
These are kind of the word-choice equivalent of pet peeves. I’m sure you have some words that set you off too.
free conference on technology and church
Church TechCamp is set for next Friday, September 26th, at Fuller Seminary in Pasadena, California. It’s an unconference for followers of Christ to talk about web technologies and the church; it’s an all-day participant-driven gathering. There’s a a website at churchtechcamp.com, a FaceBook event page, an editable agenda wiki, blog, and online registration. Very eco-friendly.
I think with short notice on this 1st go around, it’s sorta like an alpha launch and most participants will be local to Los Angeles / Orange County / Southern California. It’ll be great to hang out with old and new web friends. (I like that term more than virtual friends or people I’ve met online but never met in person.) I’ll be there. Hope you will too — someone will probably bring a webcam to live stream video for some (or all?) all of the gathering.
Unconferences are like those other conferences with presenters and attendees, but $0 registration, i.e. free, and a more dynamic unstructured environment where you can have more conversations with presenters and attendees, less bells & whistles production, and everyone can give a little (or a lot). The content is comparatively less polished & less recycled, but it may well be more valuable because of the collective wisdom of the crowds. An unconference is what the participants make of it; contrast that with a paid conference that’s what the producers make of it. I like it, like it a lot.
Aside: Unbeknownst to my mind, my body and emotions get more worn out during travels than I’d imagine or anticipate. So that cuts back on my blogging and my keeping up with emails. Posting photos is easier — you can see my photos from the past week at daily.djchuang.com .
Aside #2: for Information Technology (IT) professionals in churches, check out www.citrt.org and their Fall 2008 conference at Seacoast. The high-end tech talk is over there.
why I love Chicago, except in winter
I love cities! I’ll be in Chicago until Tuesday for a conference and a couple meetups. Love the culture here with great food, arts, music, neighborhoods, skyscrapers, public transit, vibe, et al. Haven’t lived here, only occasional visits every few years. What do you love about Chicago?
I would type more, but iPhone virtual keyboard discourages lengthy prose. But, I’m standing here at Chicago O’Hare airport, stranded with 100s of others bc of flooding. Shuttles aren’t running. So I’m not going anywhere. And I’m not on wifi bc that’s behind a virtual toll booth, i.e. you gotta pay beaucoup $.
update 1049a- 1 staffer said airport transit is running, and can take us off the island! Chicago here I come ! … when all said and done, got in a rental car at 1157am. had landed at 845am. A massage and jacuzzi sure would be sweet .
Will have dinner with blogger friend Dan Brennan for the 1st time. You could say we met online. 
There are few Christ followers who advocate the richness and depth of cross gender friendships- wish there was a better term for man and woman being non-romantic real friends.
[aside 3:40pm] Now in hotel room. Looked for news about the airport flooding, which wasn’t very news-worthy, just a couple of paragraph mentions in local news, couldn’t find any media photos. Above pix are the yellow warning signs around the buckets collecting water from leaky roofs inside the terminal; below pix is a plane stuck at gate [ht: vatovn].
U Michigan stadium drive by
1st leg of my tri-city trip in Ann Arbor, Michigan. My first time here ever. Hangin’ out with Seth Kim, who pastors Harvest Mission Community Church, which is now a multi-site church in 4 locations: Ann Arbor, Evanston, Austin, and Chicago. You could call this pastoral visitation. Ate some award-winning mac ‘n cheese at dinner, and heard a handful of great transformational life stories here over dessert. Joyous!
We drove by the largest football stadium in the United States at University of Michigan. I just fact-checked, and currently, Michigan Stadium is technically the 2nd largest stadium due to renovations (capacity = 106,201, down from 107,501), and the largest is Beaver Stadium at Penn State University (capacity = 107,282). Seth was proudly saying that was the largest stadium, and I don’t have the heart to correct him. Hope he’ll overlook this blog entry — don’t want anyone losing face. [update: Seth blogged kind words about my visit @ DJ in Town - he doesn't allow comments, so you can react in my comment thread here]
FTW, here’s a list of the 15 largest football stadiums in the United States.
Aside: no picture of food. But here’s a picture of my rental car. Bed time. Good night.
