A few years ago, I heard that a guy named Tom Davis was going to be in Charlotte for some kind of celebrity sports event, a fundraiser for the organization he led called Children’s HopeChest. I knew we had a number of friends in common at the time (193 at the latest count, according to Facebook), so I hit him up for a meeting, and he agreed to meet me for coffee in the restaurant of the hotel he was staying in downtown (or uptown, as we say here in the Queen City).

I think we hit it off, because on one of his next trips through Charlotte, he invited me to a small, private dinner in the basement wine cellar room of Del Frisco’s Double Eagle Steak House — paid for by our host (well, to be accurate, Tom’s host – Tom just invited me along for the ride!), the CEO of Coca-Cola Bottling Co. Consolidated. It was a beautiful night, just getting to hear Tom share in that intimate setting his story and his heart for orphans around the world.

Novels on the Edge of the World

Tom quickly became a hero of mine. Not only for his tremendous work on the behalf of the poor across the globe, but also because he’s managed to do one of the things I’d most love to do: publish a novel.

His first novel, Scared, opens a window onto the HIV&AIDS epidemic in the country of Swaziland — a place Tom has spent a good deal of time and where Children’s HopeChest is doing remarkable work. By the end of chapter two, I was in tears. It’s just a fantastic book.

Now Tom has a new novel coming out called Priceless. This book promises to shine a light on the tragedy of sex trafficking and human slavery in Russia and Eastern Europe.

Tom was recently in Moldova—where I had the opportunity to travel with the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association in 2005—with a group that included blogger Anne Jackson (aka Flowerdust). Anne wrote a riveting blog post called “The Sex Cafe” that instantly transported me back to Chisinau, the capital city of Moldova. I was excited to learn that Tom had connected with my Moldovan friends Oleg and Vitali Turlac, whom I met in 2005.

This issue of human trafficking—or, let’s call it what it really is, modern-day slavery—was really driven home for me when I read David Batstone’s groundbreaking book Not For Sale: The Return of the Global Slave Trade—And How We Can Fight It. Batstone’s book sparked the Not For Sale Campaign that is one of a growing number of organizations, including Children’s HopeChest, that are part of the movement to end slavery in our day and time.

Just as Not For Sale opened eyes through its non-fiction stories of pain and suffering, I hope that Tom’s new novel Priceless will reach an even wider audience and open more eyes to the tragedy unfolding on the world stage.

By the way, Tom is now blogging about social justice over at Beliefnet — just another thing to make me envious but really just appreciate him more.

Sex Trafficking in the U.S.

On a related note, Halogen is getting set to air a new TV series later this year on the subject of sex trafficking, called Tainted Love. The same tragedy that’s happening in Russia and Eastern Europe and Asia is happening right here at home, as well, and Tainted Love will be telling that story to raise awareness and prompt people to take action.

You can watch a full episode of Tainted Love over at HalogenTV.com, if you like, but here’s a preview to get you started:

I thoroughly enjoyed being a part of the Theology After Google conference last week at Claremont School of Theology.

As one of the presenters, I was challenged to follow the TED Commandments and present something original and entertaining and funny and succinct (I had 10-12 minutes). With at least one TED fellow in the audience, the pressure was pretty intense to deliver. Well, let’s just say I had fun despite having to work through some technical difficulties (I could’ve definitely planned better than I did). You can see the results by watching my presentation:

Philip Clayton is the main proponent behind Theology After Google and the broader Transforming Theology project at Claremont, which I’m tremendously excited about. Philip interviewed me following my presentation to dig deeper into the question of whether online community is “real community” and what practices we can bring to our online interaction that can lead to a better world. Here are my responses:

Highlights from Theology After Google (#tag10 on Twitter) for me include the brilliance of Callid Keefe-Perry, Monica Coleman, Dwight Friesen, Jeff Jarvis, and Barry Taylor; the fun of competitive cornhole; the rare opportunity to sit in conversation with John Cobb and Glen Stassen; and most of all the joy of new connections and friendships.

And from now on, I can say I spoke at the same conference as Jeff Jarvis. That’s a dream come true.

Bonus: Watch more presentations from Theology After Google »

Action: Leave a comment with your thoughts on “theology after Google” »

This is just a quick update to say I’m having fun working with the team at Halogen, a new socially conscious cable television network based here in Charlotte. It’s also a shameless attempt to get the most views on my Halogen staff video! (Click to watch above)

Seriously, since I joined Halogen three weeks ago, we’ve done an online survey that gave away 7 iPads, co-sponsored two local events, and there’s some other really exciting things coming up.

And my new title (Social Media Manager) hasn’t resulted in too many people asking me that inevitable question, “So you just play on Facebook all day, right?” Sure I’ve gotten that a couple of times, but Facebook has 400 million users worldwide! (If Facebook were a country, it’d be the third largest country in the world.) With numbers like that, you have to spend a good amount of time and thought and energy there.

What can I say? I’m living the life—loving my job, learning a lot, and playing a part in an exciting new venture.

I (heart) futurists. I actually fancy myself to be sort of an armchair futurist (*wink*). I especially love learning about new technology and looking ahead to the potential implications and ramifications of these advances.

Here are a couple of videos that I watched recently that scratched my futurist itch …

Pranav Mistry shares at the TEDIndia conference his research into developing SixthSense technology:

This video by MAYA Design creatively explains “the invisible but fast approaching challenges and opportunities in the pervasive computing age”:

Last night, I enjoyed the Social Media Holiday Party put on by the Search Engine Marketing Association of Charlotte. Jeff Elder led a panel discussion with four of the Queen City’s social media professionals, and the conversation included future technology and “what’s next” in social media. While Foursquare got a mention, the panel seemed to agree that the real innovations that are set to change the game in 2010 are geo-tagging and augmented reality (a.k.a. location-based) applications.

Today, Mashable hunk Pete Cashmore dropped his “10 Web trends to watch in 2010″ on CNN.com. Cashmore includes location-based applications and augmented reality in his top 10, along with: the real-time Web, content curation (I like this one!), cloud computing, Internet TV/movies, software/hardware convergence, social gaming, mobile payments, and last (but certainly not least) fame abundancy/privacy scarcity.

I don’t have the programming chops to create groundbreaking devices like Pranav Mistry or setup cloud computing or what-have-you. But I would love to be involved in creating content for some augmented reality applications and/or curating content (which is something I feel like I’ve always done, to some degree). Got any projects for me? [makes "hang loose" hand gesture and puts up to face, mouthing, "call me!"]

I had the opportunity to speak on theology and social media recently at the Christian Education 2.0 conference at Pfeiffer Unversity, which gave me a chance to think about three distinct challenges facing churches as they engage social media (e.g., Facebook, Twitter, Second Life, blogs, etc.). I posted the presentation “The Theology of Twitter” on SlideShare, where it was featured several times on the homepage, and it’s now been viewed nearly 1,800 times:

To get the full content, be sure to view the “Notes” tabs on each slide.

In summary, the three challenges that I identified at this point in history are:

1. Be reverse incarnational
2. Maintain the physical in the sacramental
3. Promote spiritual practices, such as fasting from media and devices

Just days after giving this presentation, I was intrigued to find out that the world’s first “online baptism” had occurred through the Internet campus of Flamingo Road Church in Cooper City, Florida, of a woman (Alyssa Eason) in Fayatteville, Georgia:

Having quoted at length from Gavin Richardson’s blog series on “Spirituality and Social Media” for my own presentation, I was intrigued to read Gavin’s comment on the “online baptism” post at ChurchCrunch: “I’ve been a part of some worship communities a few years back which actually did some baptism via the Internet within the virtual worlds there. I’m not a fan of them as I see a sacrament needing some physical proximity to it. However, from what I am told the instances I knew of, people eventually went to counseling or into a church community through the encouragement of the [Second Life] community that they were baptized in.”

I just hope that churches like Flamingo Road that are going down this path of disembodied sacraments are asking the theological questions and counting the cost.

I didn’t really delve very much in my presentation into the whole debate over “virtual community” with Shane Hipps, which I’ve written about elsewhere. And here’s another gem from N.T. Wright that I had planned to include in my talk, but unfortunately it was left on the cutting room floor:

There is a video of me giving my presentation on “The Theology of Twitter” out there somewhere that I’m hoping to get my hands on. If/when I can get that posted online, I’ll update this blog post with the video. Stay tuned …

UPDATE: Well, thanks to the Twitters, I received a DM (that’s “direct message” for all my non-Twitter readers, all two of you, hi Mom and Dad!) from Jake Johnson alerting me to the series he’s writing currently on “Ministry in a Post-Christian, Digital Society.” At first glance, I can tell there’s great food for thought and conversation fodder there. Here’s just a snippet: “I’ve been thinking that post-modernism is dying. It’s on its last legs. Taking its place is what I’ll call Digitalism. Whereas Post-Modernism (in simplified terms) was the subjection of truth to cultural context, Digitalism is the subjection of truth to personal context.” In his first post, he also shares a brutal quote from William Gibson. Check it out »

On this anniversary of 9/11, I want to pass along an interview I did last year with my friend Rev. Dr. Fred Burnham regarding his personal experience at Ground Zero and how it led to his discovery of emergence theory, as he saw it play out in real life in the days following this national disaster.

When planes crashed into the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, Fred (then Director of Trinity Institute) was hosting the Most Rev. Dr. Rowan Williams (then the Archbishop of Wales) at Trinity Church, just one block south of Ground Zero. Both Fred and Bishop Williams (the future Archbishop of Canterbury) thought they were going to die many times that fateful morning. But they both survivied, and Fred threw himself into the recovery effort, becoming a night supervisor at the relief ministry for emergency workers that emerged at St. Paul’s (a chapel of Trinity Church), directly across the street from the World Trade Center site.

Since the recovery operation closed down in 2002, Fred has traveled the country speaking about the holistic healing process at St. Paul’s Chapel that brought about the miraculous transformation of countless lives at Ground Zero. Through stories about heroic acts of goodness and compassion in the face of desolation, Fred seeks to contribute to the creation of a new global sense of human dignity and solidarity.

Fred has said of 9/11, “As a night supervisor of the ministry at Ground Zero, I watched as a totally random but amazingly gifted gang of volunteers spontaneously organized themselves into the most loving and compassionate community of ingenious human beings that I have ever known—a vivid and dramatic foretaste of God’s kingdom.”

Watch my video interview with Fred Burnham:

Educating My Kids About 9/11
I had a conversation about the 9/11 anniversary with my two oldest kids on the way to dropping them off at school yesterday. My daughter, who was not even one year old when 9/11 occurred, was able to tell me that 9/11 was when the “twin buildings collapsed,” and when I asked her why, she said it was because a plane hit them. She thought it was an accident, and I had to tell her that there were actually two planes (one for each building) and that it was not an accident. That, in fact, “terrorists” had done this, which leads to the whole “What is a ‘terrorist,’ Daddy?” conversation …

I’d love to find a video online that gives a sober, accurate re-telling of what happened on 9/11 that can help educate my kids about this day and the significance of it. Unfortunately, it appears that nearly everything on YouTube is a “9/11 Truth” conspiracy video. Does anyone have any suggestions for 9/11-related videos that give a good overview for kids (ages 3-9)? Please post the links in the comments!

Last night around 10:40 p.m., I saw an update on Twitter from Gary Vaynerchuk asking,

I want to stream live with a friend we are in 2 locations we want u to see both of us, is there a platform? how do we do?

I shot back a quick reply,

@garyvee Have you guys tried Tokbox.com?? What do you think?

A little while later, I saw this update from @UstreamTV come through my preferred Twitter app,

Q&A ALERT – Kevin Rose and Gary V cohosting on Ustream – Hurry over there with your questions! http://bit.ly/z2SJ

The link took me to Kevin Rose’s channel on Ustream, where I was one of 700+ viewers listening in on a really casual conversation between these two tech/business moguls. It was a rather surreal experience to listen to them talk about everything from the iPhone to the Blackberry Storm to the Flip Mino HD camera to SXSW to the future of Apple in the post-Steve Jobs era. (Gary thinks Apple is “in trouble”; Kevin thinks Jon Ive should/will be the next CEO and will CRUSH it, as Gary would say.)

I thought it was kind of funny that these high-tech, industry guys were using a standard webcam sitting on top of a candle pointed at a computer monitor where Rose was videoconferencing with Gary V via Apple’s iChat software. But, hey, this was pretty impromptu and low-key—even though the conversation was fascinating!

Inside Dish
Mid-way through the webcast, as the chat screen just flooded with questions submitted by the hundreds of online viewers, Rose invited David Prager from Revision3 (an Internet TV network) to join the videochat, which he did. (I felt somehow comforted and vindicated, in some strange way, when Prager blurted out that he had “30 tabs open in Firefox,” and he was opening the Ustream channel in Safari because Firefox was running too slow!)

The three then started to share “insider” information and tech/business ideas, as well as answer questions from the audience (myself included). Rose shared (for the first time anywhere apparently) a rumor that Apple’s next iPhone will have a built-in FM radio tuner. He called his source “75% reliable,” but apparently Rose’s personal track-record for Apple rumors is not so hot. Still, this was fascinating stuff to watch.

They each dished one business idea they’d like to pursue: Prager proposed a simple iPhone case that would hold a few credit cards and cash; and Kevin Rose suggested an online book discussion club with a videochat/social networking component to it. (Sorry, I completely forgot what Gary V’s brilliant business idea was. Can you believe that? Seriously. I should’ve taken notes …)

Twitter Talk
Here’s the discussion that I found the most fascinating, though: Twitter. Gary V said he’d just done an interview with the Wall Street Journal about Twitter. He’s on NPR’s Weekend Edition tomorrow, talking about Twitter. In fact, Gary V and Kevin Rose both basically said that all of the buzz right now is around Twitter, and it’s only going to get bigger and bigger over the coming months. (More vindication of my own predictions about Twitter.)

The big question, though, was: How is Twitter going to make money? When these guys finally fielded this question, which had been coming up over and over in the chat stream, they were almost laughing at the ridiculousness of it. Rose commented, “If they need the money …” they have a killer platform ready to exploit. Gary V offered, “I think they have 4 or 5 business models,” and started to rattle them off and debate them with Rose—targeted advertising was one of them. Offering a “premium” version (and other value-added services) to businesses was another approach that both agreed could be successful for Twitter. They also agreed that the data Twitter has from (and about) its users is “sick” (meaning, really really good—and valuable).

The conversation went on until about 1 a.m., which is when Gary V called it a night, followed shortly thereafter by Kevin Rose and David Prager, umm, and me.

TokBox Take 2
So this morning at work, I noticed a re-tweet (RT), passed along by my friend DJ Chuang,

RT @dbillian: @kevinrose The Tokbox video conference is probably best with 20-25 folks (more possible); can have indiv perf. issues w more

I thought to myself, “Hmmm, that’s interesting. Kevin Rose tweeting about TokBox. I wonder* if that has anything to do with …”

So I went investigating, and here’s what I found from Gary V’s Twitter feed from Thursday night:

@kevinrose and I are chilling in here, come and hang http://bit.ly/153QZ

And on Kevin Rose’s Twitter feed:

about to live video w/@garyvee, not sure how many people this can support: http://bit.ly/5W8MS

Both links went to a TokBox videoconference, and when I opened it on Friday morning out of curiosity, this is what I saw:

In case you can’t tell, that’s 450 squares representing 450 people on either audio (the white boxes with text) or video (the black boxes) in the TokBox conference room—on Friday morning, hours after the tweets had gone out the night before. Pretty wild.

Note to TokBox: Add a “webcast” feature, where two or more people (like Gary V and Kevin Rose) can broadcast a videochat between themselves and have a large number of listeners/viewers who can text chat but their individual audio/video boxes do not show up in the main window (unless allowed by the initiator of the webcast).

*I probably wasn’t the only person to suggest TokBox to Gary V when he asked for suggestions on Twitter, but it’s pretty cool to think that I might possibly have been then one to suggest a new technology to these two techno-savvy guys (even if it didn’t work exactly right for what they were trying to do).