Some updates on the earthquake in Haiti yesterday

Posted on January 13, 2010 by Matt


From Flickr

There is no way to even begin to share the things we’ve heard and seen since 5pm yesterday … yes the four story Caribbean Market building is completely demolished. Yes it was open. Yes the National Palace collapsed. Yes Gov’t buildings nearby the Palace collapsed. Yes St Josephs Boys home is completely collapsed. …

Thousands of people are currently trapped. … Precious lives hang in the balance. When pulled from the rubble there is no place to take them for care.  Haiti has an almost non existent medical care system for her people.

There are friends and co-workers that are missing. … The horror has only just begun and I beg you to get on your knees – I truly mean ON YOUR KNEES and pray for the people of this country. The news might forget in a few days – but people will still be trapped alive and suffering. Pray. Pray. Pray. After that – PLEASE PRAY.

From LivesayHaiti

Photos

News

Aid/Organizations

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On Twitter and conciseness

Posted on December 6, 2009 by Matt

Twitter has helped me learn conciseness. Earlier today, I had a thought that I wanted to write down. It started as just a one-sentence thought, but then quickly spiraled (in my head) to become paragraph after paragraph of elaboration. I caught myself, thinking, “I only have 140 characters (the length limit for Twitter messages) to get across this message. Fix the sentence to make it communicate what you want; don’t just elaborate forever.”

Obviously, the fullness of each of my thoughts can’t be explored in 140 characters. But no matter how long I make this post (before I edited it, it was almost four times longer), its summary will always be simply the post’s first sentence (which is far less than 140 characters): “Twitter has helped me learn conciseness.”

Edit: I chose to change to the word conciseness. I prefer concision, personally, but conciseness is a better communicator–there’s much less of a pause between reading the word and understanding it, as conciseness has only one meaning and concision has multiple.

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Dear Internet

Posted on November 30, 2009 by Matt

I love being able to keep my friends and family (and some random strangers) updated about every thought that crosses my mind. I’ve long enjoyed writing long, intimate blog posts about things that matter to me, and engaging in conversation with people who read the blog. I also love feeling like my family and friends who aren’t close to me geographically can get an update on how I’m doing.

This blog, Twitter, Facebook, and then an IV blog, IV facebook and IV twitter, have given me so many outlets for expression that I’ve reached the point of emptying myself of anything significant to say. I find myself always referring to “that post I wrote last week”, or, “did you see that thing I posted on Facebook?” Something had to change.

This blog, taking the most effort to update, was the first to drop. I’ve begun to limit my Twitter & Facebook updates pretty severely as well. I’m moving more towards generating content I want other people to see, and away from just talking about my life, my frustrations, etc.

Hopefully this is a good sign for the blog, because it’s my best place for generating content. It’s hard to have a teaching moment through Twitter. We’ll see.

It does mean it’ll be harder for people to just keep up with my life through these online mediums. So, if you ant that, and you miss it, please give me a call, email me, text me, comment here, or whatever else it takes to get in communication. I’d love to hear about you, and maybe tell you a little about my life as well.

But, for now, if you want to be kept a little more aware of my goings-on Internet-wise, feel free to follow me on twitter. Otherwise, pray that I use my time, attention, and expression wisely and in a way that helps others, leaves me with impetus for non-Internet conversation, and glorifies God.

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First update on using Facebook pages for campus ministries

Posted on September 28, 2009 by Matt

I wrote in June on Migrating Intervarsityuf.org to Facebook, and I have some thoughts about how the last few months have gone in using a Facebook page for our InterVarsity chapter at UF.

Benefits of switching to a Facebook page (from a group)

  • You can generate status updates and posts to your wall, allowing you a much greater capability for daily interaction with students.
  • People are more likely to be a fan of something than to join a group.
  • You can have multiple “tabs” (meaning you can have multiple pages to your Page.) You can choose which is the landing page when visitors first visit your site, and you can customize these to look almost any way you like (although some customizations might require the knowledge of HTML).
  • Pages get detailed user interaction tracking (called Insights) about fans added, fans who leave, and how fans interact with their posts and updates.
  • The user interface is more like the personal profiles they’re used to interacting with, making the page feel more dynamic, comfortable, and personal.
  • Once you reach 100 users, you can create a custom URL for your page (for example, ours is http://www.facebook.com/intervarsityuf ).

Detriments of switching to a Facebook page (from a group)

  • Becoming a “fan” of a page has less feel of commitment than joining a group. More people become fans, but it carries less weight than joining a group.
  • You cannot message your members; you can only send updates. Both show up in their inbox, but updates are not the default view, and also don’t show up in their unread message count.
  • You cannot invite all of your fans to an event; you can only invite people you’re already friends with.

That’s all I have for now. I’ll try to update this if I think of more. Overall the experience has been great, but the limitations on event invitations and messaging is putting a huge damper on our plans to use the Page exclusively.

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