Bathroom Stalls & Ministry Signs

So I spent most of my time yesterday at my church here in Chicago, Park Community Church because I was volunteering on the tech team and I worked for all 3 services.

So I was sitting in one of the bathroom stalls at Park doing my business and I hung my hoodie on the coat hook and sat down. When I looked up I saw a 8 1/2x11 sign for a ministry at Park for people who are just starting out in their faith journey, and I thought to myself "Hmm, thats a good idea, to put up signs about different ministries." But not only is it a good idea, but they were very intentional about it. So intentional that they moved the coat hook to the right side of the door so that they could put a sign directly in the middle. Most coat hooks on stall doors are directly in the middle, but people at Park had planned on putting those signs up so they moved the coat hooks.

Here is a nice little picture I took, cause I knew I was going to write a blog post about this as soon as I saw it.

I know you are probably thinking that this is a ridiculous thing to be writing about, but if you think about it, it is the small things that just put something over the top. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that we should choose a church based on its convenience, or cultural relevance, or branding, but it is a small thing like that that makes people realize how intentional a church is about investing into people's lives and transforming their lives with its ministries.

Maybe you think I'm completely off on this one, but I don't think I am.

If you think I am, let me know.

Microsoft's Marketing Still Sucks

Well Microsoft still sucks at marketing. In fact, they suck more than ever.

Some of you might know that Microsoft is launching their new operating system, Windows 7, in the next couple weeks, so to try to get people to buy it they have hired a company that markets "house parties." So their marketing strategy for Windows 7 is to try to get people to have "house parties" for Windows 7. I'm not exactly clear on what a house party is, but it sounds like a less geeky LAN Party (Local Area Network Party). Basically where everyone brings their computers to someone's house and plays with them.

I'm not bashing the idea of a house party as a marketing strategy, but the actual video they made to promote this is absolutely horrible. The acting is horrendous and makes me laugh every time I watch it.

So without further ado, here is Microsoft's Windows 7 house party video, Enjoy!

Uplifting and Encouraging

If you asked me today how my weekend was, you probably got a response like "It was the most bum weekend ever!" which means that I did absolutely nothing, and I laid around the room all weekend, except to go to church.

To be completely honest I was a bit depressed this weekend. Well...maybe "depressed" is a strong word, but usually a lazy weekend is a great weekend, but not this weekend. This time "lazy" was equivalent to being very unmotivated to do any work whatsoever. This led to me being in a state of almost depression. (Don't worry, I'm not going to do anything rash)

So anyways, that was my weekend, but now let me get to the meat of this post.

So my weekend was not the greatest, but God knew that I needed some encouraging and lifting up, especially because I had a class at 7:30am on Monday morning and Lord knows I did not want to go to that class with everything that was within me.

So here's what happened:

I ran into my good friend and neighbor Josh Jalandoon on my way to breakfast which was great.
My good friend Josh Puckett was at breakfast when I got there, so I got to eat breakfast with him, which was great.
On my way to class I ran into again my good friend Josh Jalandoon, which was great.
After class on my way to my room once again I ran into my good friend Josh Jalandoon...which was great.

To sum up my morning, it was great, except for the fact that I had class, but everything else outweighed the tiredness of class.

Moral of the story is...God cares for you and knows what you need at all times, whether or not you feel like He cares.

facebook fail

I don't know how many of you have been experiencing problems with facebook today, but I have not been able to login at all, whatsoever. I know I may be acting a little overdramatic, but this is not good when I conduct some of my business over facebook.
(Ok, so I don't conduct all my business over facebook, actually most of it is over email, but the principle I'm about to discuss still applies)

It's crazy how much we (and when I say we I'm more speaking to myself, but I know it applies to others as well) depend on the internet today. And not just the internet but specific services on the internet...facebook, email (gmail my personal preference), twitter, blackboard, etc.

You don't really realize how much you depend on it until one of those services goes down, or your network as a whole goes down. Just imagine if your email client (gmail, yahoo, hotmail, or your own personal server) were to cease to exist. And by cease to exist I mean that all of your emails were gone, you had no way of sending or receiving emails at all. Just imagine what it would be like.

Ok, so we would be fine as far as communication goes, we would still have our phones, and texting, etc. but sending files or attachments would be difficult, sending a link to that portfolio or video would be difficult.

And the same principle applies to facebook or twitter. Although I don't think they are as essential as email might be, but they are essential for bloggers. For me at least, facebook and twitter are my two biggest ways to generate traffic to my blog. So of course when one of those services is down it kind of throws a wrench in my traffic. Thankfully I don't monetize my blog. If I did then facebook and twitter certainly wouldn't be my main sources of traffic. LOL.

So I'm not offering a certain solution to this idea, all I have to say is that we need to always be careful how much we depend on the internet. Have your emails backed up, and maybe have multiple email addresses registered with different services. Don't put too much stock in different social media such as facebook or twitter because they are not flawless unfortunately, and they will be down periodically.

Just a simple reminder from your friendly neighborhood blogger Josh Burns.

Have a Happy Monday!

facebook status mentions

As you all know, and as it says in my profile, I am a social media enthusiast. Therefore I enjoy using social media and analyzing different social media strategies and what social media organizations are doing.

You may or may not have noticed that this past week facebook released a new feature within their status update. You can now "mention" a friend within your status and it will turn that friend's name into a link to their profile.

For those of you paying attention, they took this idea directly from twitter, which has included this functionality since it's inception 3 years ago in 2006. So for those of you who are on twitter this may look extremely familiar. And believe it or not you implement the functionality in the exact same way as well. Just as on twitter, on facebook you can now "@" a friend and it will mention that friend in your status. So it is pretty obvious that facebook has taken this idea directly from twitter.

Just for the record, about a year ago when facebook began to do a major overhaul of their design and user interface, it was me who said that they were going directly after twitter. I said this because they changed the home page from the old newsfeed to a single feed that contains everything, and again it looked extremely similar to the UI of twitter. And now they have gone and done something like this.

So let me just ask this question...who the heck cares that facebook has now implemented the "mention" functionality into their status updates? I'll be the first to say that I don't care, and I'm sure there are many others who couldn't care less. In fact let me beg a second question...who the heck even knows about this new "mention" feature?
For many of you this may be your first time hearing about the feature. Let's face it, facebook didn't exactly do a great job of publicizing this new feature, and chances are that when people found out about this feature they probably asked the question, so what?

That brings me to my third question...so what?
So what if I can now mention a friend in my status update? If someone is not already friends with that person then it is not like twitter where you can just follow someone without going through an approval process. Whereas facebook is much more private. Becoming someone's "friend" on facebook means alot more than it does to "follow" someone on twitter. So if I see someone mentioned in my friend's status but I don't know them, the chances of me clicking on that their name and "friending" them is not good.

Let's be honest, since this new feature has been released I have literally seen one status that has "mentioned" someone else. Again, I think there are two reasons for this, 1. people have no clue that the feature exists, and 2. people don't see any purpose in this feature.

The truth is, facebook and twitter are two completely different things, and I hate to come out and say it publicly but facebook needs to stop trying to be like twitter. You don't see twitter stealing ideas from facebook and implementing them, in fact the two most recent revisions to facebook's UI have been ideas that have been taken from twitter.

It has been said that twitter is the future of social networking. While, yes, that may be true, at the same time I think facebook is also the future of social networking, but not if they continue to take ideas from twitter.

Regardless, I will still continue to use facebook and twitter for distinctly different purposes, and yes, I will probably use the new "mention" feature on facebook every once and a while, just because it is available, but I honestly don't see this as a revolutionary feature for facebook. They need to stick to what they know and that is private social networking.

Do you use this new "mention" facebook feature?

Why or why not?

Weekend Update 9/19

It's quite obvious, but I haven't written a post in a couple months. Part of that is just craziness of life, the other part is that whenever I think about writing a post I just question the value of what I have to say. Is it really necessary to write a blog post about whatever I am thinking? Sometimes I think not, but most of the time I think it is necessary, I just need to dedicate the time to doing it.

So here I sit.

So since the title of this whole blog is "Updates in the life of...Josh" I thought I would give you some updates in my life.

I had a great summer where I worked as the "Media Consultant" at my church back home in Covington, Kentucky, Calvary Baptist Church. I absolutely loved that, and learned a ton about many different ares in life. Media, Print Design, administration, decision making, among other things. So it proved to be a profitable summer.

Now I am back at school at Moody Bible Institute in Chicago, IL. The bad part about that statement is the part about school. The good part of that statement is that means that I am back at college. I've said this several times but college would be awesome if it weren't for the school part. So as you can tell, I'm not a big fan of school. But it has been awesome to back with friends, and playing soccer again.

Speaking of soccer, we now have a 6-2 record, which is the best record that we've had in my 4 years here, so it poses to be an exciting season for our team.

Also, me and my roommate Nate and our neighbor Alan are back in action with producing "Wheel Seat" episodes. We have put out 3 more episodes since being back at school and they are all great, especially the most recent episode entitled "'I Am T-Pain' - Taylor Swift" where we address some recent happenings in the entertainment world, and we have some fun with autotune. So you all should check it out below.

And be assured that I will begin to post more frequently. Enjoy!