Cultivate 2011 Thoughts

Stumbled upon Cultivate 2011 when I came across Kem Meyer’s tweet. I met her when she visited UBC a couple of weeks ago and was taken by her thoughts on church communications. I was a bit curious with the #cultivate11 hashtag. Thank God I clicked on the link because it led me to a world I only dreamed about.

The cast of characters includes: Phil Cooke (yeah THE Phil Cooke), Mark Horvath (from InvisiblePeople.tv) and Mel McGowan, among others. The panel discussions at the end of each talk were as enriching as the talks themselves. While I admittedly haven’t been to a lot of Christian conferences, I would say I was highly impressed on their use of technology, especially Twitter. They set up a live streaming that was pretty on point. Kudos to the tech guys because THAT was very difficult to do. The Twitter discussions were quoting the speakers, which is good for note-takers like me. I easily re-tweeted a couple of them so much that I think I borderline annoyed my followers. It’s hard to pick my favorite talk since all of them are equally good in their own way. But my favorites are Charles Lee and Richard Kang.

You can check more about Charles Lee here. But basically his whole talk was about generating ideas AND implementing them. Now I can relate because my training is strategic planning. I’m blessed (and sometimes it feels like a curse LOL) with an analytical brain. Creativity flows, yes. But it’s more of trouble-shooting, problem-solving, how can we make this better kind. I can’t draw to save my life. I paint like a 4-year-old and Play-DOH is pretty much all I can do for sculpting.

Going back, Charles said something that struck me:

It’s one thing to have a great meeting, it’s another thing to have actionable steps.

I’m guilty of having all the creative solution ideas in the world (or at least for a project) and not knowing how to execute them. I was never an executor/implementor. All I can do is point these much-more gifted people to the right direction. It sounds like a cop-out but it’s a weaknesses I find hard to admit. I’m slowly training myself to make actionable steps on the goals I set out to do but I’m still a work in progress.

As for Richard Kang (more information here), I liked his talk because he is such a futurist. And I am too in some ways. Maybe it’s the communication technology major in me but I preached the impact of mobile phones even way back in college. Cellphones were not really as popular as it is now 8 years ago. I wrote countless papers on the potential of mobile phones as the new public sphere (yes, my favorite philosopher Jurgen Habermas) and my group’s thesis is centered on a choose-your-own-adventure TV show via text. Take note, this was before the American Idol popularity.

Anyway, bottomline, I felt like Alice falling into Wonderland because this has been my passion all along. When I was growing up, I told my dad I wanted a media empire. Marshall McLuhan affected me so much with “Medium is the message.” propaganda. My passion for marketing communications started when my dad introduced me to David Aaker and Al Ries’ books. It evolved when I discovered Malcolm Gladwell, Seth Godin and their cohorts. I guess being the geek that I am (yes I may not look like it but don’t be fooled, I am a dork), it just fell naturally that I would love the intersection between communications and technology. Hence, I chose my major. But over time, as my spiritual life grew, God modified the desires of my heart a bit. I truly believe we are in the age where the Gospel can literally be shared all over the world. Christians, we have no excuse now. We need to use the tools that are available to us and fashion them for the proclamation of the Gospel.

My greatest dream is to attend TED. I think this is the TED of church communications. It blew me away how everyone had something intelligent to say. I never knew there were so many like-minded people, Christians at that! I’ve always thought I think way too much ahead or I’m weird for even thinking about the impact of new media in Christianity today. But I pretty much agreed on the things people were discussing and they even fine-tuned some of my philosophies. All were geared towards sending THE Message loud and clear. And I was more than giddy to be a part of it even though it was just live streaming and a few tweets.

I can write about the Cultivate talks all day but I think Tim Schraeder did it so well in his blog. I’m not a fan of duplicating efforts so check it out. Trust me, it will be worth your time.