 |
|
|
|
IEC ENewsletter - August 2007
Stimulating and accelerating web evangelism within the worldwide Body of Christ
|
| IEC Annual Meeting Registration Deadline |
|
September 1 is the registration deadline for the Internet Ministry Conference (IMC) 2007.
IMC 2007, at the Calvin College Prince Conference Center in Grand Rapids, MI, runs Wednesday evening, September 19 through 12:30 p.m. Saturday, September 22.
The IMC will include an Internet Evangelism track that serves as the Internet Evangelism Coalition's (IEC) Annual Meeting. The Internet Evangelism track will include speakers, workshops and networking with others involved in online evangelism. Registration costs are as follows:
-
Full conference, $499
-
Full conference if an IEC member, $375 (with special IEC registration code)
-
Attending just Wednesday and Thursday, $300
-
Attending just Friday and Saturday, $300
If you're an IEC member, please contact Wendy Walker, IEC Program Assistant, (iec@webevangelism.com) for the IEC Member registration code you'll need when registering online or for more information about additional discounts.
IMC registration includes some meals, but does NOT include lodging. Participants are responsible for their own hotel reservations. For more information on hotels in the area go to: http://www.internetministryconference.org/venue-and-travel.
GospelCom is providing bus service from hotels listed on that page to the Prince Conference Center.
Speakers at this year's IMC Internet Evangelism Track include:
-
Debra Brown, Brown Governance, Evangelism in Second Life
-
David Bruce, HollywoodJesus.org, Exciting Opportunities within Our Changing Culture
-
John Edmiston, CyberMissions.org, The Edges of Cyberspace
-
Karen Schenk, TruthMedia Internet Group
-
John Sorenson, Evangelism Explosion, Effective Models for Evangelistic Testimonies
-
Bret Purves and Cam Hall, Local Church and Community Outreach
-
Emmanuel El-Shariff, Blending Media Tools to Reach the Muslim Community: Content and Strategy
-
Robby Richardson, Community Sites
A list of speakers, their bios and topics is available here: http://www.internetministryconference.org/schedule.
If you have any questions, or need additional assistance, please feel free to email iec@webevangelism.com. We look forward to seeing you at the IEC Meeting!
Please note: If you're not currently a member of the IEC, or need to renew your membership, join now and you'll still receive the discounted registration rate for this fall's meeting. Learn more about IEC membership at www.webevangelism.com (click on Membership) or email iec@webevangelism.com.
|
|
|
|
|
|
| SecondLife: Christians and Virtual Reality |
|
 Source: Assist News
SecondLife is a three-dimensional imaginary world built and populated by seven million real people. Since it opened on the Internet in 2003, it has grown to become a vast digital continent on which people buy and sell property, carry out business and pursue similar leisure activities to those in real life.
In the midst of this virtual world, a group of Anglicans from around the world have banded together to buy an island and build a fully-fledged medieval-style cathedral.
Full Story
Also of Interest on SecondLife
CBN.com
Decatur Daily News: Let Us Pray Virtually
Reuters: Jesuits Say Take Word to SecondLife
Spadaro Article in Italian
UC Berkeley: God, Sex and Family, Faces of Faith in SecondLife
|
| Greg Laurie Harvest Crusade Online |
|
 Over 100,000 people gathered 3-5 August in Anaheim, California USA for the annual Southern California Harvest Crusade with Greg Laurie. Nearly 33,000 people watched the Harvest Crusade online at www.harvest.org, with more than 70 indicating decisions for Christ. Over the course of the three-day crusade, more than 9,500 people made a profession of faith in Christ.
A Harvest Crusade blog (cc.harvestlive.net) offered current information about the gathering as well as the opportunity to post feedback. Footage of the event is available online in English, Spanish, Vietnamese and Korean.
|
| Resource Announcements from Tony Whittaker, Web Evangelism Guide |
|
Tony has just put up a page about evangelism and mobile devices on the Internet Evangelism Day website: http://ied.gospelcom.net/mobile-outreach.php. Tony welcomes comments, ideas and experiences to add to it.
Dan Heinrich and the team responsible for the 2005 web evangelism conference at Liberty University have transcribed the conference into a book, available for free download.
Web Evangelism Guide
|
| Live Without TV or the Internet? |
|
A comprehensive survey in 12 countries of more than 7,600 young people ages 16-29 shows that 77% of today's online youth would sooner live without television than live without the Internet. China has the most devoted young Internet users, with 87% choosing the Internet compared to 13% favoring television. In the United States the figures were 77% for the Internet and 23% for TV. The survey was conducted by New Paradigm, a Toronto-based think-tank headed by Don Tapscott. The survey is part of a $4 million study of today's digital-savvy youth - whom Tapscott calls the "Net Generation (N-Geners)" - who have grown up "bathed in bits."
Other survey findings included:
-
When asked to choose whether they want to be smarter or better looking, 69% of the world's N-Geners choose being smarter
-
56% of the world's online youth would prefer to make the world a better place than to improve their local community
Commenting on why so many N-Geners choose the Internet over TV, Tapscott said that "television is unidirectional and passive, and doesn't allow meaningful participation by the viewer. In contrast, the Internet enables users to find and share information and take action."
Twenty companies are sponsoring the N-Gen study, including Nokia, MetLife, Fedex, Accenture, Cisco Systems, and MasterCard.
|
| China's Online Population Explosion |
|
 The Pew Internet & American Life Project says there are now an estimated 137 million Internet users in China, second in number only to the United States, where estimates of the current Internet population range from 165 million to 210 million. The growth rate of China's Internet user population has been outpacing that of the U.S., and China is projected to overtake the U.S. in the total number of users within a few years.
Pew says the influx of tens of millions of new online participants each year can be expected to have far-reaching consequences for the Chinese population, for China itself and for the larger world. At the very least, it reports, the Internet will offer "ever greater numbers of Chinese a much more sophisticated information and communications world than the one they currently inhabit. And because the Chinese share a single written language, despite the multiplicity of spoken tongues, it could have a unifying effect on the country's widely dispersed citizenry."
Pew Report On China's Growing Internet Population
Also of Interest
EMarketer: The Chinese Tiger Roars Online
|
| Online Video Use Increases |
|
 Fifty-seven percent of online adults have used the Internet to watch or download video, and 19% do so on a typical day, according to a report from the Pew Internet & American Life.
Pew says the growing adoption of broadband Internet combined with a dramatic push by content providers to promote online video has helped pave the way for mainstream audiences to embrace online video viewing. Three-quarters of broadband users (74%) who enjoy high-speed connections at both home and work, watch or download video online.
The Pew Internet & American Life Project's first major report on online video also shows that more than half of online video viewers (57%) share links to the video they find with others, and three in four (75%) say they receive links to watch video that others have sent to them.
Video viewers who actively exploit the participatory features of online video, such as rating content, posting feedback or uploading video, make up the motivated minority of the online video audience. Young adults are the most active participants in this realm.
"Young adults are among the most contagious carriers when it comes to understanding how viral videos propagate online," said Mary Madden, Senior Research Specialist at the Project and lead author of the report. "Younger users are the most eager and active contributors to the online video sphere; they are more likely than older users to watch, upload, rate, comment upon and share the video they find."
Overall, just 8% of adult Internet users say they have uploaded video content online, while 15% of Internet users ages 18-29 have contributed video.
Professional videos are generally preferred to amateur productions online, but amateur content appeals to segments of the young male audience.
Pew Report on Online Video Use
Pew Report on Broadband Adoption
On a related note, according to a news release from comScore, its comScore Video Metrix report for May 2007 revealed that nearly 75% of U.S. Internet users watched an average of 158 minutes of online video per user during the month. Google Sites topped the monthly rankings with both the most unique video streamers and most videos streamed.
Americans reportedly viewed more than 8.3 billion video streams online, and Google Sites ranked as the top U.S. streaming video property with 1.8 billion videos streamed (21.5 percent share of streams), 1.7 billion of which occurred at YouTube.com. Fox Interactive Media ranked second with 680 million streams (8.1 percent), followed by Yahoo! Sites with 387 million (4.6 percent) and Viacom Digital with 237 million (2.8 percent).
Other notable findings from the comScore May 2007 report show that:
-
Average video stream duration was 2.5 minutes
-
Average online video viewer consumed 63 video streams, or more than two per day
|
|
|
|
|
