making conversations

Learning the ways of a road warrior, as I’m in Dallas during my 6 weeks in a row of weekday travels. Traveling does have its own subculture that has its own habits and vibe, or lack thereof. I’m feeling it in the sense of disorientation (I turned the wrong way from my hotel room to the elevator 3 times already), daze and gaze of people at airports, and other soul-emptying feelings. Now when I actually arrive at my destination, and I get to line up meaningful meetings with people, those are great.

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.