kinnon.tv

Missing My Blog

That's me who is missing my blog. I have lots to say. Ideas galore. But every waking hour is spent working.

One of the joys of owning your own production company (or co-owning it in my case - Imbi and I have been married almost 26 years and in business together for almost 25) is that you work when you have work. And. Thank you Lord. We have an avalanche of good work. While Imbi is also finishing her Master's thesis - a very interesting documentary.

All that said, if you find yourself missing my pithy comments (yah, right) you might find Liam Kinnon to be a more intelligent commentator to fill any void. He's been blogging a little more regularly of late. (Though, methinks that may slow down in this coming week. I'll let him tell you why...or not.)

Liam Kinnon

This Blog's a 4 Year Old - Explains a lot, eh!

Four years ago right around now, the blog was birthed. My world was a rather different place then. I was a senior leader in what was billed as the fastest growing church in some significant part of the planet.

We'd moved as a family from our beloved Toronto to be a part of this supposedly collegial team that was going to have real impact. We thought the impact would be for the Kingdom. Instead, it was for a kingdom - and we apparently served at the pleasure of the royal family.

This blog was meant to show said royalty that social media had merit. Six weeks after the blog's birth the "king" cried, "off with his head." I had deigned to request answers to some appropriate questions - at least appropriate by any sane measure.

In fairness, perhaps, it was more, "having dared question the king, you are no longer welcome in this place. And, by the way, we'll be practising a scorched earth policy when it comes to your good name." Of course, the latter was not said in so many words... though it was practised.

The blog went from a way to prove the merits of social media to a place where I worked out a little of my angst around the segment of Christendom where I'd hung my hat for far too many years. Because I'd offended "a king", others who were themselves confused about their own "kingships" but had been friends of mine for years, abandoned me and my family. No returned calls. No email responses. I had become persona non grata in that purportedly Christian world.

As an aside, I now find it rather amusing that these supposed leaders who will go to Kings and Chronicles to justify their leadership style - manage to ignore the fact that the lion's share of those leaders lead the people of Judah and Israel astray. Hmmm. Perhaps it's not that amusing, after all.

In it's early days, while talking a lot about leadership, I also wrote about technology - an area in which I have some modicum of interest. But as the weeks turned into months and the months turned into years, I realized my primary focus was the church - where it was now and where I saw it headed, in my role as a child of Issachar, of course. :-)

And that is the space that these once achievable ends now occupies. I've had the pleasure of developing great relationships with a lot of different bloggers and even the opportunity to impact one or two. This blog has allowed me to get to know people I never would have met IRL - and I'm profoundly thankful for it. Many of them have played a great role in helping me through my church detox process (The Missional Tribe Instigators, Michael Spencer, Erika Haub, Robbymac, Darryl Dash, Dave Fitch, Andrew Jones, Jordon Cooper, Ed Stetzer, Ed Brenegar and many, many others.)

My ego was stroked earlier this year when Church Relevance rated this blog in the top 60 "church blogs" in the world. Of course, I immediately began blogging much less often. And that lower rate of blogging will continue until the beginning of May, as I am producing a huge project for a large and wonderful technology client. I will blog when I can.

Thank you for choosing to read this humble corner of the interwebs. Let me leave you with a little video that shows some of the silly banners that have graced this blog. The early ones were reminders of how much I love East Africa. (The images were all taken by my wife, Imbi Medri-Kinnon - other than the Christmas tree from iStockphoto.) The image that graces the blog today was taken by Imbi on a street in London last spring. The ad on the side of the double decker bus was pure happenstance. That's why I love it.

The music clip is from Ian Thomas' band, The Boomers. The song is called "You Got to Know." Think of me singing it to the IC. Or not. And make a point of buying one or two of the Boomers albums - so I don't get hassled for the clip, eh!

From achievable ends to kinnon.tv from Bill Kinnon on Vimeo.

blog anniversary

Pot. Meet Kettle

I almost laughed out loud when I read this.

...his words often lack the charitable nuance we might well hope for.

A little self-awareness might be helpful, young man. (And yes, I have intentionally not linked.)

Apparent Arminian misunderestimations of Calvinism, Calvinist Charity Call

In the immortal words...

...of a Monty Python character, "I'm not dead yet!" Even though the weather is surely trying.

Goodbye 2008 - Glad to see You Gone!

2008 will not be remembered with great fondness by me. Yes, there were many good moments. In fact. Some very good moments. But. By and large. It is a year I will be glad to see behind us.

Fragmenting friendships, illusions dissed, income evaporating, declining parents, recurring hearing problems - be ye gone 2008.

But I will not focus on the bad.

Some high points.

My Mother. After more than a month of transitional hell for my dear Mom, we were miraculously able to move her into Bethany Lodge, a wonderful Christian facility in the north end of Toronto at the end of November. Smiles have returned to her beautiful face - for which Imbi and I are more than grateful. (See pic a little further down.)

Imbi and I celebrated our 25th anniversary. Most days I feel like I'm too young to have been married for a quarter century - but a quarter century of wedded bliss has past. (The kids, who threw us a great surprise party, joked it was "twenty years of wedded bliss in 25." I'd say more like 23 or 24. I would also add that marriage is never easy - but it helps when you marry a good woman. Proverbs 31 comes to mind.)

Our Kids. In 2008, Liam, our oldest child, turned 21. Incredible. My chest puffs up with pride when I think of my kids.

Liam, Rylan and Kaili are true gifts from a loving God. (Imbi and I both honour my Mom in how well these three have turned out.)

Very good musicians, they are busy working together to produce some captivating tunes - while also attending to the demands of post-secondary education. Stay tuned for more proud papa moments here @ kinnon.tv in 2009. (The picture is from Christmas Day this year. My Mom with three of her four grandkids - from left to right, Liam, Kaili and Rylan with Grandma Nina.)

Shooting Imbi's Documentary in England in the Spring. I've often mentioned Pete & Kath Atkins here @ kinnon.tv. Getting to spend almost a week with them in Lincolnshire while shooting segments for Imbi's Mission-Shaped doc was a complete blast. As was the time we got to spend with Bishop Graham & Pastor Jacquie Cray along with a number of the Fresh Expressions team. Graham, who led the team that created the Mission-Shaped Church document, is now leading Fresh Expressions.

Imbi's doc (being produced in HD) will be completed in '09 and will add significantly to the missional conversation. (It includes folk like NT Wright, Graham Cray, David Fitch, jonny baker, TSK and many others.)

The birth of a missional social network. I am excited by the potential of Missional Tribe birthed out of blogging and missional order friendships.

MT RECIPE: Take a pinch of Clay Shirky's Here Comes Everybody, add a little Open Source sauce, stir vigorously with Seth Godin's Tribes, add some of Lesslie Newbigin''s curry powder, season to taste with a little Gospel and Our Culture Network, flavour it with large amounts of the missional blogosphere and top it off with a healthy dose of the UK's Fresh Expressions - then sit back and watch what the Holy Spirit bakes together.

Music. My life seems to run on music. Steve McCoy and Vince DiPersio both raved about Elbow - and they've become one of my favourite bands. This song (which is actually about a friend of the band whose drinking gives his wife the reason for the title) is very well constructed - as is this - my favourite.

Technology. I shoot with a couple of Sony Z1U's, but have fallen in love with the Z7U's that I recommended to a client. Killer HDV cameras made better by the ability to also record to Flash Drives (HVR-MRC1).

But the technological high-point of '08 for me was the purchase of an iPod Touch.

I really bought it for media playback, thinking the screen was too small for a good computing experience. I was wrong. I love the apps I've added to the Touch (including Facebook and Twitter clients.) Web surfing works well. It would be the perfect Netbook if it was about 50% larger. Hopefully an announcement to that effect will come next week.

And now back to the future. I look forward to a good 2009 - which has begun with great promise.

2008 in Review, Graham Cray

Dash Blog Missing - No Need to Panic

Yes.

It's true.

The family of blogs that reside @ Dashhouse.com - including that of the famous blogger, Triple D (Darryl Dash to those of you not part of the cognescenti), comes up with a rather ugly screen from GoDaddy right now - if it appears at all.

It seems that Brother Dash has left Movable Type to place his blog(s) within the confines of TypePad, MT's ugly step child. (Where this blog resides.)

Triple D said on Twitter yesterday, that we'd all have to wait 'til the new DNS pointer propagates - whatever that means. (Triple D can be found as @dashhouse on Twitter. And I'm @kinnon, in case you were wondering.)

Well.

We are still waiting.

But. At some point soon, Dashhouse.com will reappear in all it's TypePad glory. (Now if only we'd all just copy jonny baker's new look and feel - TypePad hosting could be a beautiful thing.)

Darryl Dash, TypePad, Movable Type, jonny baker

Broken Shift Key Prayers

I've dragged this up from the archives based on a fun Facebook mini-conversation from last night. It was originally written in May of 07 whilst I waited for my flight in a Starbucks @ Heathrow's Terminal 4. (It's been lightly edited.)

let me rant for a moment if you will. in spite of content that might suggest otherwise, I'm actually trained as a writer, and certain idiosyncratic formatting issues of bloggers and commenters drives me crazy.

one of the things that should occur on blogs (where humanly possible) is clarity of communication. the idea is to make your point(s) as comprehensible as possible. it's about communicating, right? but it would seem many folk in the blog world are dealing with broken computers. that broken gear is impacting the effectiveness of said attempts to communicate.

what appears broken, you wonder? well, it seems their shift keys don't work. capitalized words at the beginning of sentences and on proper nouns are non-existent.

now. the broken shift key problem would appear to be endemic. particularly amongst the kool bloggers. i wonder what's caused this. as the little fingers are the primary digits used for these keys, it shouldn't be an issue of the keys being hit too hard - thus causing breakage.

perhaps it's just that the kool bloggers have weak little fingers. that must be it. kool bloggers suffer from acute digitus minimus manus strength-loss syndrome. (ADMMS-LS, er, sorry, make that admms-ls). it isn't that their computers are broken. it's just that they don't have the strength to push the shift key down. how very sad.

perhaps we could begin to pray for the kool bloggers.

then, as they develop strength in their little fingers, they might even begin to be able to depress the Shift key. Wouldn't that be great. Suddenly they would be more comprehensible. No need to scan everything twice when we read their posts or comments. Their writing would be easy to chunk, as it were. Their thoughts would appear to be more comprehensible (even if they aren't necessarily).

So I'd ask that you join with me to pray this prayer.

Dear Lord, please heal the kool bloggers suffering from admms-ls. We'd love to be able to understand them better, to easily read what they write. And Lord, if they don't actually suffer from admms-ls, would you please just give them a quick Whack on the Side of the Head. Perhaps then they will use the Shift key.

Amen.

admms-ls, shift key

Blood:Water, TED & Turok - Blog Action Day

I ended my "Get Serious" post (two posts ago) with an addendum. In it I quoted Dr. Al Mohler, speaking on the wonders of American capitalism. Apparently, it wasn't obvious that I was being sarcastic in my quote. Mohler seemed as inflicted as most North American Christians with an almost exclusive focus on ourselves - and the really horrible times we are going through. (I need to quickly finish this post so I can rush out to the food lines in hopes of getting a piece of moldy bread and a cup of thin gruel.)

Perhaps we could look for sympathy in the two-thirds world, where most would simply be happy with clean drinking water. Or in sub-Saharan Africa, where mosquito nets costing only a dollar per, would dramatically reduce the number of children who die daily from malaria - one every 30 seconds. (Only 3% of the most at-risk kids have the nets in place.)

Clean drinking water and effective anti-malaria protection would have profound impact on the economic well-being of individuals, families and nations in sub-Saharan Africa - where up to 40% of health expenditures go to treating malaria alone - that treatment doesn't deal with the parasites and diseases that accompany dirty water.

I want to point you at two things on this Blog Action Day. The first is the Blood:Water Mission.

Blood:Water Mission is partnering with groups and individuals to empower Africans to build healthier communities through sustainable clean blood and clean water solutions, while developing social responsibility in the U.S. through initiatives that provoke personal engagement and ownership.

$1 = ONE YEAR OF WATER FOR AN AFRICAN
YOUR ONE DOLLAR WILL SAVE A LIFE

We've given to Blood:Water today, and I'd ask that you'd consider giving as well.

The second thing I'd ask is that you watch this video from Physicist Neil Turok, 2008 TED prize winner. Perhaps the next Einstein will be saved by the clean water and mosquito nets we help to provide.

UPDATE: Read Brother Maynard's Blog Action Day Post, please.

UPDATE 2: Please read Jake Meador and Jamie Arpin-Ricci, too.

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This post is part of Blog Action Day 08 - Poverty

Blog Action Day 08, Blood:Water Mission, Neil Turock, Poverty, TED

A Rather Fun New Title Bar

Imbi was glancing through our iPhoto library and noticed something that made her smile. She was getting a shot of me standing with Pete and Kath Atkins after we'd had lunch together in London this past spring.

Note the ad on the bus behind my head.

It's now the title bar at these rarely achievable ends - a name I hope to move away from as soon as possible.

And here's the staged shot of the three of us - the bus has moved on.

Blog Design

In Case You're Missing Me

Perhaps Solomon was speaking of blogging when he said, "Vanity of vanities! All is vanity." (Ecc 1:2B NASB)

I do confess a certain level of vanity when I think you may have missed my blogging.

But. In the off chance you have, the good folks at downintheblog have provided an opportunity for you to listen to me pontificate on my long essay/short book, A Networked Conspiracy (downloadable here), the state of the church (and my post-evangelicalism) and a few other topics (including Clay Shirky, internet prophet) in a rambling interview from earlier today.

If nothing else grabs you in the interview, the audio platform that Rodney McCarthy is using is rather interesting - the Google-purchased Grand Central.

And may I recommend you check out the other posts and podcasts at downintheblog. I look forward to lots of good stuff from the brother/sister blogging team of Rodney McCarthy and Sally Loftis.

interview, downintheblog, Rodney McCarthy