Pick Me!

Each March, for the past six years, I’ve attended the South by Southwest Interactive conference in Austin and have always wondered why there were no panels on faith or spirituality. The Internet has made a huge impact on how people interact with each other and this area in particular has always fascinated me. Will “cyberchurches” replace megachurches? Can people worship together when they’ve never physically met? How is the web changing how we talk to each other about faith? I decided I’d like to find out, so I’ve proposed to moderate a panel at next year’s conference.

About 200 other people have made panel proposals, too. Which is where you come in. Check out the handy-dandy Panel Picker and nominate the ten best ideas. It’s ok if you don’t think mine is one of them. But if you’re intrigued, and are going to be there (hey, even if you’re not going to be there), do me a favour and throw me a vote. My proposal is under the “Community” and “Miscellaneous” categories, and is entitled “Ghost in the Machine: Spirituality Online.”

Your input on the panel is welcome as well.

Free Wine for Bloggers!

If you’re one of those lucky bloggers who lives in the U.S., the Mankas Hills winery will send you a free bottle of wine. The winery is fairly new and is trying to get the word out on their wines.

It’s all in the pursuit of good “word of mouth” marketing and to be fair, you should blog if the wine is crappy as well as if it’s good.

Let me know if you take advantage of this. I’m curious.

Inconvenient

Brooke and I went to see An Inconvenient Truth tonight, which was fantastic. The horrible thing was sitting through three car commercials before the screening. I’ve been starting to count the number of commercials that are for cars and I’d say, according to my unscientific guess, that one out of every three commercials I see these days are for automobiles or things that support the automobile industry. We are truly addicted to these things. I don’t mean to sound high and mighty. Though we don’t own a car, we borrowed my dad’s gas-guzzling SUV to drive up to see Brooke’s parents this weekend. But the car culture is so pervasive, we don’t even notice it anymore, and I think that’s dangerous.

TED Talks

TED is an elite conference designed around issues in Technology, Education and Design, and is notoriously selective about who gets invited. Even with an invitation, it costs $4,400 to attend. Now, they’re making online versions of several speakers’ talks available for free. So far, I’ve only checked out one, but it’s a keeper.

Hans Rosling is public health expert and the founder of Gapminder, a non-profit initiative to bring global health and economic statistics alive. His presentation is incredible and really brings some positive news from a huge pile of seemingly boring numbers. On the Gapminder site, you can download a number of animated presentations of global reports. Rosling’s work seems to embody the perfect synthesis of technology, education and design. Check out an online version of some of Gapminder’s work.

You’ll need the Flash plugin installed to watch online, but you can also download video or audio. Other speakers in the series include Al Gore and David Pogue.