My Blogging Frequency Diminished Due to IRC, Twitter and Life

Ah life ... it's been one of those extended seasons in my life where it seems no matter what I try I can't keep up.  Basically I'm living in a mode of the most critical stuff gets dealt with while all else fades into the background.  It's not pretty or efficient, but it's working well enough for now.  A number of you have emailed me various questions over the past few months ... I got your email ... I will reply ... it just won't be anytime soon ... sorry :-(

I've even stopped reading blogs for the past several weeks unless I get a ping via my google alerts ... aren't you curious what alerts I have setup? ;-)

I'm bummed I don't have more time/energy to be blogging more frequently, but I've found 2 outlets that feed my need to be "connected" with others in the church IT world ... IRC and Twitter.

IRC: Typically a few times each day I poke my nose into our Church IT Roundtable IRC channel ... it's basically an online chat room where a number of church IT staff and volunteers hang out.  Here I can catch up on the latest news, ask questions, give answers, and just get to know better my fellow IT peers.  A contributing factor in my recent hiring of Justin Moore was from being able to interact with and watch him interact with others in the channel almost daily since last winter.  You can learn a lot about a person by hanging out in a crowd together, even if that crowd happens to be virtual.

So I'd strongly encourage anyone involved in IT (yup, we have non-church IT guys/gals joining us as well) to get involved in this virtual community.  Together we can accomplish so much more! Here's a link you can bookmark that will take you to the chatroom with a single mouse click...nothing to install...that's about as easy as I can make it for you.

TWITTER:  I know a number of you think Twitter is stupid and pointless...I did...then I started seeing it's potential value.  And I'm happy to report it's return has been greater than I expected ... even moreso if you tie Twitter to your Facebook status (I rarely visit facebook anymore so this was a big plus).

So, I don't have/make time to create blog posts to keep those interested up to date on what we're doing IT wise at GCC.  I DO have the time to blast out quick 140 character updates throughout the day.  I've also asked for help via Twitter and gotten almost instant feedback ... even from vendors!  Now that's service!  I'm diggin' that 2 way instant interactive aspect of Twitter.

You can easily get overwhelmed by the amount of "noise" flowing back and forth in Twitter.  You have to determine what your acceptable signal to noise ratio.  My suggestion is to add people you "follow" slowly and strategically.  And no, you don't have to follow everyone that follows you.  I'm VERY selective in who I follow right now.  No offense to anyone if I'm not following you (yet), but I've only got so much space right now :-)

So while you wait for future blogs posts ... you may want to follow my Twitter.

There ya go ... Twitter and IRC make me feel like I'm still able to contribute to the IT community even if time is scarce and their reach is not near as great as the number of people subscribed to this blog.  There are other neat social aspects to of each of these as well, but I'm out of time for now to tell ya ...

Comments

[Andy Rowell]

Jason,
You are doing a great job of nurturing IT community. It has been fun to watch the development of this strength from a distance. A couple of years ago when we met at Granger, you weren't as confident as you are now. I'm glad to see it and continue to funnel IT people your direction.

all the best,
andy

Andy Rowell
Doctor of Theology Student
Duke Divinity School
Durham, North Carolina
Blog: Church Leadership Conversation http://www.andyrowell.net/

[T.R. Knight]

Thanks for the update Jason. All you do is appreciated. Hopefully I can pick up some of the slack for you. ;) If you have something that would be good to blog and research you can toss it my way and I could write something up and thus save you time.

As for IRC, do you use the website or a chat client? If client, which one do you use?