TallSkinnyKiwi

Tangible Kingdom

The Tangible Kingdom: Creating Incarnational Community, by Hugh Halter and Matt Smay
Excellent book from two guys who understand grassroots, missional movements. I really enjoyed reading through it. Made my blood boil in a good way. My recommendation is on the back cover which is the ultimate sign of QUALITY ASSURANCE.
“Plunging deeper and deeper with Jesus into a grassroots incarnational life is what this book is about. Many aspire to it, some write about it, but very few live out the rhythms of such a holistic lifestyle in the way that Hugh and Matt and their families are currently doing. I am thrilled to see their journey in book form.”
Andrew Jones, Boaz

Technorati Tags: hugh halter, missio, quality, tangible kingdom

Five Senses BBQ

On Saturday we went out for a BBQ on the beach, hosted by Malcolm and Rachel. Malcolm runs the All Five Senses Tours in Orkney and does the whole fire-starting, connect with nature, survival in the wild, windy, wacky, wilderness thing. And his BBQ was PRETTY IMPRESSIVE!

The menu was nettle soup, grilled limpets, sausages on willow branches, dandelion leaf salad, potatoes roasted in the embers, and for the climax . . . half a lamb cooked in the ground on hot stones, wrapped in seaweed and covered over for 4 hours.

The lamb was spectacular. Only pepper was added. The salt taste came from the seaweed and it was just the right amount. Malcolm felt that 3 1/2 hours would have been perfect but we were all too infatuated with this neo-lithic Orkney ordeal to argue. Well done, Malcolm!!!

Technorati Tags: five senses, orkney

Community Interest Company - Just like a Cooperative but totally different.

So. Apparently the government has finally found a slot for our us. It looks like our social enterprise, which kicks off next month as The Sorting Room, will not be an official Cooperative after all. There is a new type of forth sector company, introduced in 2005, called a "Community Interest Company" (CIC) that seems to fit us. I actually haven't heard the name before until today.

Definition:
"A CIC is a new type of company, designed for social enterprises that want to use their profits and assets for the public good. CICs will be easy to set up, with all the flexibility and certainty of the company form, but with some special features to ensure they are working for the benefit of the community." CIC

Clive Sheppard is the consultant who has come up to Orkney to check us out. Really nice guy. Does a lot with eco-villages, youth work, social enterprise, and he once had Kaiser Chiefs play at his recording studio/music venue. We have Euan Smith to thank for this connection: Euan the entrepreneur extraordinaire, and our ambassador for Highlands and Islands Enterprise. Euan met Clive at a social enterprise meeting in Inverness 3 weeks ago and things have really taken off since then.

Anyway, thats all I know. Not much more than you. Heaps to learn about CIC.

Related: TSK on Fourth Sector and Mission

?? - what would be equivalent in the USA?

Technorati Tags: cic, community interest company, social enterprise

Google Webmaster Tools: Search Results from each country

Google webmaster tools now has a feature that lets you see what google searches people did to find your site FROM EACH COUNTRY! I had no idea they were so different. Its really worth a look. Here are my number one search queries in which my site appeared:

USA - "andrew jones"
UK - "habbohotel uk"
New Zealand - "kiwi nudes"
Germany - "Horst Schafrenek"
France - "sex house"
Turkey - "i dress"
Netherlands - "andrew jones"
No results yet from China, Australia and a few other straggling countries.

And if you don't have Google webmaster tools, then do it. And set up a site map so you can control those Google bots, wild beasts all of them, and point them to the blog posts they need to see.

Technorati Tags: blog, blogging, google webmaster

HTML Email Signature in Apple Mail

Thanks to Josh Brown and the excellent instructions by C. Wess Daniels, I now have an html email signature that works inside Apple Mail. Not as straight forward as it sounds but very rewarding to see my Web 2.0 addictions on display for the world to see. Next step is to add a dashboard with the same addictions to my blog. When i get time . . .

A Gothic thought

There's an old gospel song that goes . .

"Oh, the land of cloudless days
Oh, the land of an unclouded sky
Oh, they tell me of a home where no storm clouds rise
Oh, they tell me of an unclouded day"

Thats probably not attractive to Goths.

"Cloudless skies? Oh my Gawd! Can we bring our umbrellas?"

Hey - if you are into all things Gawthic, then check out Steve M's poetry on his Outcast Press site. Steve has been a friend for a decade and we have enjoyed his poetry written on street sheets . . . and now available online.

Technorati Tags: goth

UGC Finder: Piping Hot News into your Wurld

My friend Robin Hamman (Cybersoc) has just released a tool for tracking down news based on key words.
Its called UGC Finder.

"I've dubbed it UGC Finder - for journalists that uses Yahoo Pipes to aggregate and filter the results of keyword searches for tagged content and conversations in social networks and media sharing sites." Robin Hamman

"The UGC finder will track much more than Technorati blogs - it will track
* Tweetscan (search of public tweets on twitter)
* Flickr (photosharing)
* Youtube (video)
* Technorati (blog search)
* Icerocket (blog search)"

This could be really helpful. Basically, I have been reading the blogosphere through key word searches for the past 2-3 years. Rather than reading the same blogs or authors, I have been doing a key word search on technorati, creating a watchlist, and then dropping the RSS feed from that watch into my news reader. Everyday I track the words the whoever is using them. Which is ok, and its gets me to the site within ten minutes of when that word is posted, but my results have been limited to whatever ends up in the Technorati basket. All that is about to change. I think. If Robin's dastardly invention proves successful.

BY JOVE, my dear Cybersoc, you have solved the mystery! The answer was in the PIPES all along!

Trivia. Last week I was in Australia, doing some online research on the rhizomic structure of the internet and the article i was reading on rhizomes was from the Cybersoc himself. Small world.

Technorati Tags: cybersoc, robin hamman, ugc finder

Doved Out

For those who found this week's Dove Awards a little sickening, Steve Camp suggests the Episkopos Awards.

Tom Sine interviewed

Rodney Olsen interviewed social entrepreneur Tom Sine yesterday. Jarrod McKenna was in the studio and makes the cut. Available here on Sonshine FM [MP3] I was with both the Sines and Jarrod last week in Australia. Good to hear their voices broadcast wider.

Online Communities and Church 2.0

The sandbox for iGoogle opened yesterday. Should be exciting to see new apps for Google's Open Social. I am really interested in the idea of spiritual communities launched natively through phone and web apps and I think this one could be a part of the scheme of things.

Are you also thinking about online spiritual communities? And the potential of Web 2.0 for Church 2.0? Love to hear what you are thinking. Send me an email. I may want to ask you some questions.

Also, any readers out there who are considering attending the Graphing Social Patterns Conference next June or attended the GSP West Coast conference last month?
What about Google's Developer Event in San Francisco in May?
Are you at Web 2.0 Expo right now???? [Lucky sod!]

Come forward please. Come on up to the front. Yes . . . I see that hand . . .

Technorati Tags: web 2.0