I was told there’d be a road of yellow bricks.
I spent the night in Las Vegas’s airport in July because of a weather-related canceled late night flight. Quite unpleasant. Let’s hope it doesn’t happen again!
(According to rumor, the flight crew had exceeded its in-the-air hours, but the airline blamed the weather. Airline’s fault = free hotel stay. Weather’s fault = sleeping on grody airport chairs or paying for your own expensive near-the-airport hotel room.)
Rest easy, everybody.
***Scroll down for questions***
A gathering of Christians working to advance the Kingdom through blogging + internet technologies.
I’m headed back to Vegas!
I’m returning to the God Blog Convention, sponsored by Biola University in La Mirada, California. This year’s convention will be held at the Blog World and New Media Expo on September 20 and 21. (Last year’s GodBlogCon was in Vegas, too.)
Why a Christian blogging convention in Vegas? Blog Expo founder Rick Calvert wanted to organize a sort of blogging tradeshow where all kinds of bloggers (faith, tech, business, etc.) could gather and network. He asked the GodBlogCon organizers if they’d consider holding their annual gathering at the Expo, and they were happy to do so.
***Live-blogging at Boundless Line and below***
***For earlier live-blogging, see Part II***
This photo was taken yesterday by Jim of Gateway Pundit. More photos here. Pictured: Matt Sheffield of NewsBusters.org, me, and Soren Dayton of RedState.org.
10:05 a.m. PT: It’s Day Two of the Blog World Expo/GodBlogCon Convention. Biola University professor Paul Spears will discuss “Trafficking in Substance: A Blogging Dilemma: The Case for Blog Euthanasia.” Christians interested in God blogging need to be representatives of a “bigger thing.” What does it mean to have “substance” on your blog?
Paul says Christians have a responsibility to enable our audience to come to an understanding of larger things. It takes work, but there’s no other way around it. This assumes you want your blog to be significant, to come from a place of substance and help other Christians in their walk toward Christ. Paul showed a series of famous paintings. These artists created the kind of beauty that lasts. Lofty idea for mere bloggers, but we should strive to create something meaningful that endures.
What’s the story we’re telling? For me, I want to share the story of how Christ affects lives, my own and other people’s. There’s more than enough blogging out there about the latest trends and hottest politic topics. What we need is transcendence.
***Live-blogging at Boundless Line and below***
***For earlier live-blogging, see Part I***
1:20 p.m. PT: Ran into Matt Sheffield, blogging pal since the early days, and Henry Copeland of BlogAds, who remembered attending my faith blogging session at BlogNashville back in 2005. Met Andy Beal of Marketing Pilgrim. I did some consulting work through one of his former companies.
Rhett Smith is up. He’s discussing social media sites like Facebook and how Christians can use the “new media ministries” in youth ministry. Rhett does youth ministry and was reluctant to create a page on MySpace. His online forum was getting little traffic, so he decided to try MySpace. He started getting visitors to his site. He also joined Facebook, a site that I have yet to get into.
Rhett said he had to go where the teens are. Put yourself in the shoes of high school kids, he said, or young adults. They’ve always had the online world, with social networking sites. For an oldster like me, even though I’m a blog consultant, I have no use for MySpace or Facebook. Yet. If you do youth ministry, of course, you’ll need to familiarize yourself with those sites.
[UK update side note: I mentioned my desire to go to the UK to a couple of people this morning and got two more leads on places to stay. Cheaply. One sounds really cool - Related to C.S. Lewis. I'll keep you posted.]
