I’ve found my use of twitter to evolve over time, and here’s 2 tweaks I’ve made recently:

1. I follow more people and removed my 10% ratio cap. I used to follow no more than 10% of my number of followers, thinking I’d catch tweets of interest on my home feed. That’s not possible with 500 follows, much less 200, really.

The difference to follow or not to follow is whether someone can DM me or not. When I want a better chance of catching tweets from people I want to keep tabs on, I’ll use a twitter list. When I want to listen in to a convo, I’ll do a saved search on a hashtag and/or keyword.

2. I’m using my main twitter @djchuang for more replies and convo’s. I used to keep my tweets limited to retweets, making announcements, and sharing links + resources + quotes. These would be more obviously valuable to 1,000s. Yet, to only do the above makes it too much of a one-way broadcast rather than a two-way conversation.

I’m now more actively replying on @djchuang as I think there’s definitely value to the conversations too, for both the replied and others listening in. The conversational tweets don’t have to be bumped to my personal twitter.

Yes, twitter can be used as a real-time broadcast feed of updates and announcements; twitter conversations make it even more valuable.

How has your use of twitter evolved?

[aside: while composing this post on iPhone didn't save draft, thus this is shorter than it coulda been]

I’ll be hangin’ out at the Pan Asian North American Student Lounge, located at The Holiday Inn Select St Louis Downtown in between sessions.

Follow @urbana09 for official announcements. Follow me @djchuang247 for live tweets. The official hashtag to use is #urbana09 according to the twubs.

[update] here are 4 videos I’ve posted via YouTube from #urbana09:

I think that discussing highly-emotionally charged issues in an asynchronous public forum like the online blogosphere is mostly ineffective. One party describes the pain of the impact from the (alleged) offense, while the other party tries to describe the original intent, all sincere and good. To quote Sam Chand, “The difference between reality and expectation is conflict.” Both sides have unmet expectations. Both sides have different perceptions of reality. Conflict ensues. It’s more than misunderstanding.

I’ll confess that I’m rather new to the impact of public communications by influential leaders. I prefer a world of open book open source unfiltered communications, and am learning to filter and edit based on readers’ response. But realizing that words mean things, and sometimes words can be mean things to the listener even though the speaker didn’t intend it.

I’d be curious how other influential Asian American leaders like Eugene Cho, Dave Gibbons, Charles Lee, Ken Fong, would respond. My guess is that a direct conversation between Mike Foster and Soong-Chan Rah, in a safe private environment, will bring faster resolution than any further color commentary.

[update 11/4] Mike Foster and Jud Wilhite have issued a public statement that “some of our earlier messages … were mixed in with some defensiveness on our part. … we deeply regret anything we did to offend our Christian brothers and sisters in the Asian and Asian-American communities. … that is why are we reaching out this afternoon to hear the concerns and the best way to move forward together in a positive way that corrects past mistakes, respects individual viewpoints and, importantly, advances the ministry for everyone.”

There are some topics not good for small talk: “… it is not safe to discuss subjects that society deems controversial such as religion or politics.” Yet, politics get lots of air time, even though it’s controversial. Lots of mainstream media and social media time at that.

One British etiquette website describes what’s safe and not safe for small talk conversations:

Which topics are safe for small talk? …

- The weather, eg “It’s a lovely day today, isn’t it?”
- Sport, eg “Have you been watching Wimbledon?”
- Hobbies, eg “What do you enjoy doing in your spare time?”
- Work, eg “What sort of work do you do?”

… Which topics are best avoided for small talk? …

- Money, eg “How much do you earn?”
- Politics, eg “Who did you vote for at the last election?”
- Religion, eg “Do you believe in God?”

Yawn.

What about philosophy and religion? Now these two topics make for much more INTERESTING conversations!

There you have it. Sounded to me like just do it, and start the conversation. No magical how-to. How have you talked about this subject with your peers? Your children?

The presentation. This presentation consisted of 59 PowerPoint slides. If I ran thru them Lessig style, no big deal, but I dwelled on many of them, skipped a few, and lost track of time. Meaning, I think I went long– I did go longer than I had planned to. As I debrief here, it dawned on me that since I first built this presentation in September 2007, I’ve added on more slides to cover frequently asked questions. Now after (maybe) 5 iterations, I’ve only added more and more slides — didn’t remove any. No wonder I went long! If I were to take Guy Kawasaki’s 10/20/30 rule of Powerpoint, get it down to 10 slides, I maybe could summarize it as:

1. The opportunity is huge and urgent to reach more Asian Americans. The population will double in less than 50 years.
2. Churches naturally have a life cycle like any organization. From time to time, church must adapt to cultural changes to revitalize, or else.
3. Ethnic Asian churches have adapted to several models of multi-generational multi-lingual churches to accommodate both Asian-language speakers and English speakers.
4. We’ve got so much more to offer. On the whole, in comparison to other racial groupings, Asian Americans are the most educated and have highest earnings. These resources have yet to be fully activated for Kingdom purposes.
5. Healthy churches grow AND reproduce.
6. In the past 10 years, there’s been an exponential growth of new churches effectively reaching next generation Asian Americans.
7. New churches doing church a new way are found all over the United States. It’s not just a “West coast” phenomena.
8. We still need more new English-speaking Asian-led churches to reach the next generation, and the unchurched majority.
9. Ask not how can we keep “them” in church. Ask how can we reach more people for Jesus.
10. It takes all kinds of churches to reach all kinds of people.

The group. About 20+ attendees, comprised of both seminary students and a handful of church leaders from area churches. Rarely do I have the opportunity to talk about the work I do and tell the stories of next gen Asian American churches, and to have an audience so interested (or it seemed to me.) Most of the time, people give me blank stares or their eyes roll back.

So, being with a rapt audience mesmerized me. I even saw 2 old friends (okay, acquaintances) I hadn’t seen for years. Best question of the night: “What do you mean by ‘Asian American’?” Several questions were along the lines of “Have you seen a church that…” My answer to that is veering more and more towards: there are all kinds of churches, and anything is possible for those who believe. And, have strong leadership, freedom to experiment, and the conviction of God’s leading.

The potential. There are seemingly few people I’ve found in all my years who are thoroughly thoughtful about how to live out our Christian faith as next generation Asian Americans. Few that are interested in discussing the long unaddressed issues of Gospel and cultures. If we don’t critique ourselves, and both Asian and American cultures, who can? It’s all too common for Christian of Asian descent to either use faith as a reinforcement for a moral lifestyle or to assimilate into mainstream culture of a “generic Gospel.”

Where I hope the conversations will go is beyond the walls of academia. I know of (and respect) a growing group of professional theologians and scholars who are working in the academy to wrestle with Asian American theologies. Keep your eye on this: some heavyweights are available to go on tour. There’s rumored negotiations to bring it to Fuller Seminary. (!)

I’d love to see thoughtful conversations flourish among the masses too. Plenty of Asian American Christians, as they’re prominence is obvious on many college campuses. To be fair, these conversations about faith & culture do happen in face-to-face gatherings once-in-a-while off-the-record. These conversations can also be had online in the open, using blogs, twitter, tokbox, chat rooms, conference calls. Break the isolation and rid the ignorance. This is readily available for non-techies and techies. The success of Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, and Google (to name a few) shows how internet has given voice to the average Joe computer user.

Let’s keep the conversations going. Let’s open it up. Let’s take it online. Let’s connect. Conversations change the world. It’s the way to take ownership of our faith, our heritage, and for our generation.

Permission is granted to mirror the article, and I’ve chosen to extract several excerpts:

… One obvious genius of the internet is that it’s “viral.” Information explodes to the whole world. … Instantaneous transmission produces some wonderfully good things. Truth, like joy, is infectious. A great idea feeds into a million inboxes. But it also produces some disastrous evils. Lies, rumors, and disinformation travel just as far and just as fast.

So what should you do when you hear “bad reports” about a person or church or ministry? We want to offer a few thoughts on how to remain constructive. To paraphrase Ephesians 4:29, “Let no unwholesome words come out of your computer, but only what is constructive, in order to meet the need of the moment, that what you communicate will give grace to everyone who ever reads it.” [nb: other key verses = James 4:10-11, Proverbs 17:9.

… Passing on negative stuff always undermines love and respect. It’s never nourishing, never constructive, never timely, never grace-giving.

… To savor the tasty morsels of gossip and bad reports is very different from grieving, caring, and wishing nothing less than the mercies of Christ upon all involved.

… you only really need to know something if it touches your sphere of life and relationships.

… If you hear bad reports about other Christians you must either cover it with love or go to them personally before speaking of it to any others.

… to simply suspend judgment. Don’t pass on bad reports.

Read the full article.

We desparately need more civil conversations in the public square of the blogosphere, especially among professing Christians. I think this article masterfully deals with not passing on bad reports via blogging, and to deal with personal sins personally. What may show up in a follow-up article or in the collective wisdom of the crowds, is how to discuss issues online when individuals have obvious disagreements.

What have you noticed about watch blogs? I find it unfortunately ugly when certain individuals equate a difference of opinion / conviction as if it were a public moral sin. It’s not.

After church, ran into Stanley & Leslie Jee, and she recognized the pattern on the booth decor at the Georgia Aquarium cafe in the pix, and knows the person who designed the pattern! And then they treated us out to a great sushi dinner at Kabuki! (well, had you going there for a moment; they weren’t total strangers — they’ve known my wifey since the teen years.)

In the afternoon, talked at length with Art Scott, who gives great piano lessons in South OC. So if you’re in that area, or know of someone in that Aliso Viejo / Laguna Hills area, be sure to check out Piano Lessons by Art Scott. Turns out he is quite an organist and had several connections (like me) back to Virginia. He shared a great story about his first time in an airplane, which happened to be a private Lear jet. What a way to fly! (while convenient on the boarding, I think I prefer the smoother flights of a large plane like a 747, thought I can’t really say since I’ve never (yet?) flown on a private jet…)

And met 2 or 3 others who struck up conversations too b/c of the Virginia Tech logo, or maybe it was just the bright orange color that matches my orange Crocs on my feet, and makes me stand out like an orange traffic cone. (So, with response like that, I just had to order 3 more VT logo shirts.)

Last night I hung out with Xangans Edward & Christina Lee and felt replenished. The conversations went on for hours, and was only cut short b/c I needed to get some sleep last night for my work today. And tomorrow’s work will be a longer day. So it’s not for lack of ideas that I’m not blogging more, but it’s for lack of time and finding a consistent source for me to get replenishing and energizing for myself.

For example, I’d to write more about the Next Gener.Asian Church Skypecast (up to 100 skypers), which became a Skype conference call (limit 9 skypers) b/c none of us could get into the skypecast b/c of server load or something. Host/moderator David Park wrote up a recap along with two others on the call, and we did get it recorded. On the call I mentioned the “big umbrella” label of “Asian Americans,” and I’ve found more Asians than not disassociate themselves from that label, even though they fit the bill. And then today’s USA Today had a piece, Evangelical: Can the ‘E-word’ be saved? Again, another label from which increasingly more people are disassociating themselves.

Back to the skypecast. It’s new technology, it’s free, but it’s not working too smoothly and reliably yet. So I’ll propose this solution to David and Next Gener.Asian Church — let’s use a conventional conference call service. This will open participation to normal phone users, and Skypers can dial the landline number too. Plus, many people have free weekend minutes on their cell phone calling plans, so cost to participate can be kept essentially free. I’d recommend freeconference.com that I’ve used on several occasions, and have been pleased with their service. Another one with a very similar name, similar services, but different, is freeconferencecall.com, with the added bonus of offering a free recording service, but I haven’t used it before.

1. While conferences, seminars, events, workshops provide an opportunity for networking, networking doesn’t actually happen 99% of the time, b/c that time is used to put a name to a face, and conversations skim the surface with small talk. Networking requires intentional + regular follow-up and conversations, both in-person and virtual (IM, phone, email, msg boards, chat rooms, IP telephony, etc.) The ol’ mediated “Say hello for me” doesn’t quite count.

2. Networking with people requires actual people who are connectors and/or facilitators to run the network, to keep it running, to keep it going. Technology can support the networking activity, but someone has to be traffic facilitator, coordinate some conversations + meetups. Just as a computer network [LAN] requires hubs and routers, so does human networks.

3. Extending and growing a network involves meeting new people and connecting with them. Through conversations, you broaden your horizons, learn new perspectives, meet great people, open up possibilities for synergy + collaboration + mutuality + combustible ideas.

4. Maintaining a personal “network” of a few close personal friends, a la friendster, doesn’t really tap into the power. That’s just bunkering down into a clique, comfort zone, a gang, a clan; not there’s anything wrong with that.

5. On a good day, I can get 5 meetups in 1 metro area, including travel time and brief interims to decompress or transition, if needed: breakfast, lunch, mid-afternoon tea at Starbucks, dinner, evening meetup. This is my trade secret, yours for the taking [attribution would be nice, but not required] for being my faithful blog reader.

6. If you know of a job or a company that would value my contribution in meeting up with people for simply the pure love of networking [and NOT making a sales pitch, or using people; just connecting with them, and building relationships], reply back to me with an intro, b/c that’d be a dream job for me!!

This blog entry courtesy of JetBlue, who gets it, offering free Wifi hotzone here in the (otherwise boring) lounge @ Long Beach.. JetBlue, you make me happier every time