March 29th, 2009
BibleTech 2009; reaching eternity through technology
I love getting together with a bunch of tech geeks and talking tech and I also enjoy getting together with a bunch of brothers in Christ to talk about the Word. Logos Bible Software brings these two worlds together for a conference in the Seattle area and I had the pleasure of participating in BibleTech:2009 on Friday and Saturday. This was the second year of the event and it was encouraging to hear it grew from 77 to 119 attendees. My main interest was in how mobile computing can be used to study and spread the Good News and I was encouraged to see there were three sessions devoted to mobile, with others related and including aspects for the mobile user since mobile tech is becoming more and more a part of our daily lives.
I saw one other T-Mobile G1 and a couple of Nokia devices, but the large majority of people had iPhones. In one session they asked how many people were on Facebook and it looked like 90% of the people raised their hands. I did see a couple of netbooks, an OQO, several Windows laptops, and several Macs (about the same number as Windows units). The group was definitely a techy crowd and not just people who had a passing interest in tech.
With the number of attendees at the conference, it was very nice to be able to start off with an intro from Bob Pritchett, president and CEO of Logos Bible Software followed by personal introductions from every person in attendance. The event then kicked off with the hourly sessions with a format of two going on in two different rooms so you had to make a choice about which ones to attend. This was a bit difficult since there were so many great topics, but each presentation was recorded so we will be able to download and listen to each one in a week or so when they are posted on the BibleTech:2009 conference page. I have a few thoughts and some coverage of the sessions I attended below. You can check out the full list of speakers and their abstracts.
Session 1, Day 1: SMS Texting for Churches, by Craig Rairdin from Laridian. I attended this one because Laridian develops my favorite Windows Mobile Bible program, PocketBible, and my church is pretty high tech so I thought this service would be interesting to consider. Craig launched Church Texting Manager as a service to help churches get messages out quickly and easily. His presentation was interactive with the audience signing up for one of his “groups” and then testing out the service. He talked about how email is slow, relatively stable and easy, but does require the person to check to find messages. Telephone calls are another way to get messages out, but many times the message goes to a voicemail and may never get to the person or get to the person too late. I know if people call my home number and leave a message I will rarely get it so I always tell people to call my cell or text me. Text messaging is quick, reliable (sms protocol supports delivery confirmation), and easy.
Craig went into the technical details of the system behind text messaging that is managed by the carriers and it is a fairly complex system with lots of backend hoops to jump through. You can do much of what Craig’s new service provides, but it requires lots of time and coordination along with technical expertise. There are multiple carriers to deal with, billing disputes, testing limitations, etc. Their service is available for $25/month for up to 3 groups and 300 messages a month.
There are some very cool functions that are supported too, including viewing the messages in a microblog, using text messages for polling, and the ability to send out announcement only messages. For instance you could have a bulletin board outside your church with a number that people could text and then get sent back directions, times, and more. Craig conducted a poll during the session regarding our favorite operating system and I voted quite a few times to bump up the Android OS. He then showed how you can filter votes by number so multiple votes by the same person only count once.
The service looks like a great way to send out reminders, updates when meetings change, prayer requests, and other types of timely messages.
Session 2, Day 1: How the Ancient Rabbis Invented Web 2.0 Before Their Time, by Dr Ellen Frankel. Dr. Frankel is the CEO and Editor-in-Chief of The Jewish Publication Society and gave a very informative presentation that made me feel like a child learning a new language. I have very little knowledge about the Jewish faith and was extremely impressed by the vast amount of information and advanced study that she covered in her presentation. She spent some time talking about the history of the Jews and how culture changed from oral to written over time and how the written words became extremely complex and well organized. The Tagged Tanakh project they are working on was extremely impressive and shows how digital technology enables her team to collaborate several different references into a single volume that is highly interactive.
Session 3, Day 1: Dramatizer by Mr. Jim Albright. Jim’s presentation centered around a solution he has created to turn the written Scripture into scripts that people around the world can use to create audio version and dramatizations of the Bible. He stated that 60% of the world cannot or do not read and that by assisting missionaries with a way to parse the Bible down into character roles they can help these people to create audio versions in native languages around the world that can be listened to by local regions.
He gave a demonstration and showed how Dramatizer is about 95% effective at automatically marking the Word. There are then some steps that the user takes to finish up the final pieces. Dramatizer is available for free and could even be helpful here in the US for creating scripts to act out the Bible in youth groups or churches.
Session 4, Day 1: The Wild World of User Submitted Content by Bob Christenson. Two of the speakers in the program are podcasters that I listen to regularly and this first speaker records the Geeks & God podcast that focuses on tools for the church. His latest podcast is title Facebook for Churches and was covered in his presentation. My church is on Facebook and our pastor uses it daily to post devotions and thoughts.
Bob stated some of the Facebook stats that are publicly available, including that there are 175 million active users, 3 billion minutes a day are spent on Facebook, and 850 million photos are added each month. He highly encourage churches to get a presence on Facebook and share it with the congregation and the world.
Bob talked about opening up church websites to user submitted content and open two-way dialogue with trust being the major roadblock to such an open system. He talked about the benefits (gives users ownership, users feel trusted, richer content on the site, and forms a community rather than a corporate image) and different methods of moderating a site. While it seems quite risky to fully open up a site, he recommended that churches start with a free and open system and then throttle things down if it gets out of hand. Bob said things may not be as bad as we might think and that churches should trust the users. The talk was definitely one for pastors and churches to think about and encourages two way communication and open dialogue.
Session 5, Day 1: Web-Empower Your Church by Mark Stephenson. Mark was an engineer who then felt a calling to give up that life and focus on ways to minister to churches by empowering them to make their presence known on the Internet. He is the director of the Web-Empowered Church and provides churches with free and powerful tools to help churches reach the world. He ran through some of the tools they provide and modules (sermon management, devotions and journaling, media communication, and many more) that any church of any size can use and implement to have a valuable presence on the Internet.
I was very impressed with the tools and functionality they provide for free and wish I would have used these back when I ran the church website a few years back. I also like how their software provides auto linking to any Bible verse that appears on the site to the EBible so you can quickly jump to Scripture while browsing the site.
They also provide church hosting services so it truly is a one stop shopping place for churches looking to have a presence on the Internet.
Session 6, Day 1: Software Tool for Bible Translation, by Frank Böegelsack. Frank is a mechanical engineer who created his own tool as he tried to develop a deeper understanding of Scripture through study of the Greek and Hebrew translations. He went from notes on paper, to Excel spreadsheets and then into a database application that he called BibleStudy 2006. He is now working on finalizing BibleStudy2009 with a scheduled launch date of July 2009. This is a free tool that you can use to help with your personal Bible study.
The conference then held a dinner followed by Birds of a Feather open discussions. Unfortunately, I already had other commitments and was unable to make it to the BOF sessions.
Check out some thoughts on Day 2 »
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Matthew Miller is an avid mobile device enthusiast who works during the day as a professional naval architect in Seattle. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
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