Hang in there, Ryan. Thinking of you often. In prayer.

How did I miss this post last year? One of my favorite books!

I went into it looking for a treatise on the digital. What I found was more profound: his extensions of McLuahan's ideas ("the medium is the message") into how faith itself is transmitted. It's a huge idea to contemplate that our faith, today, is affected and shaped by the medium of print (just the last few hundred years).

What's more, Hipps posits, we're [re]entering into an era of the image. People are going to understand faith through the lens of imagery, art, and digital communication. How will that shape our faith? It's both scary and exciting to me to contemplate.

I found some of these points so profound (the other big thread is the nature of community), I pretty much forgot all about the digital/visual stuff. =) I'm sure I'll get back to it.

Oh man, you just unpacked the "theology of our hymns is wacky if you actually read the lyrics!" box... =)

Great analogy, in all seriousness. Might be a good jumping-off point to explore art criticism.

This reminds me of the travails of logo design.

What? What's the connection, you ask?

Sometimes clients place too much emphasis on the logo mark itself - thinking that it has to carry the entire burden of communicating the clients' brand en toto. A logo is just a part, a door, a taste, a gateway to the entire message or idea. I've seen many FrankenLogos result from too much pressure.

Some seem to be evaluating this video/concept in complete isolation to how it will be presented. Not every single image needs a scripture reference baked into it for it to be valid, or to encourage or motivate.

An excellent profile. Stories like this remind me of the power of still photography.

Very impressive. My wife and I started a small photography business last year, turning a mutual hobby & passion into something we could do together and for (hopefully) a profit. I've been shooting for 15+ years, but just in the trailer I'm seeing things I could learn about lighting, creative approaches, and integrating social action/ministry with photography. Great stuff!

Another fun podcast story: I spent many days on buses riding through the hinterlands of East Africa last year (long. dusty. hot!). I shared my earbuds with different English-speaking Africans (a businessman, students, etc.) while listening to the Great Speeches podcast. They enjoyed it immensely and it got some great conversations started. One of the speeches was RFK's speech telling the crowd MLK was just assassinated; the Africans related and were fascinated by the backstory, and related to their reality of political assassinations.

The students also wanted to hear "Rock music" and Michael Jackson. We sang together, it was a hoot!

Ah, this is a favorite subject. I wrote two blog posts on this subject: Podcasts that make you smarter and Smart Podcasts: economics. So, for some more detailed recommendations, read those and tell me what you think.

One I might recommend to you, Scott, is Dan Carlin’s Hardcore History; it's quickly become a favorite. A self-described “fan” of history (as opposed to an academic), his deep love for the stories and drama of the past comes through clearly. A former radio personality, the production is excellent (clear, well-edited, some nice foley for effect). Usually monthly and clocking in at nearly an hour, he ranges from topics on thoughts on great men of history such as Churchill and Alexander the Great, to moments like the year 1066. His three-part exploration of the Punic Wars between Rome and Carthage are epic in scope and as dramatic as any film. It’s simple storytelling with thorough research and lots of great stories.

Recently he did a 4-part series on the Eastern Front of WWII that was just devastating, powerful and so educational.

I listen to podcasts on my commute as well as traveling or doing chores. I feel like I'm getting a graduate degree in political science and history along the way.

Edit: fixed link formatting. NOW I see how IntenseDebate does it...

Radiolab is just wonderful. The abrupt, overlapping editing style is jarring but somehow works brilliantly. I've often wondered how to do the same thing with video, but I don't think it would translate. I love their topic selection and personality.

Here's the short version:

"A person can't be best friends with 2,000 people. It's just not possible to read & respond to the tweets of 2,000 followers."

While this may be a true statement on the face of it, in practice it's not necessary to directly interact with each and every one to be engaging in the SM space.

The key is knowing *when* - and how deeply - to interact. Having advanced keyword search tools (knowing when someone's talking about you or your product), identifying key influencers (say, on a Twitter list), and really looking at social media through a CRM lens (vv. using a dashboard tool like CoTweet or Hootsuite) can all address the "scale" challenges.

This is where much of the true complexity lies. The principles the Mike describes in this article are excellent and common-sense; these are good principles to apply to the overall philosophy and strategy of the organizations social media interactions.

The *real* SM experts, I predict, are going to be the ones that understand these fundamentals, and can also help businesses with the "plumbing" of tying these myriad channels together and welding them into a usable business tool.

If done right, the "users" (the people in your company who use SM channels to interact with customers) just have simple, elegant ways to get their jobs done; the complexity is hidden (think of, well, my iPhone).