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>#cisforchurch (and everybody else)

June 9, 2010 / Benjamin Welby / 0 Comments

>Earlier today I saw a tweet from @ShareCreative about CisFORchurch. Behind the link was some church research inspired by Seth Godin’s book ‘Tribes’. Through discussions with church leaders and members the authors consider what 21st century church community looks like and some of the common obstacles or concerns that exist.

The Conservative slogan of ‘Broken Britain’ gained traction because there is the perception that communities have fractured. Perhaps that’s supported by people not knowing their neighbours and 70% of us being selfish but the internet has seen them reborn. The social web exists because people want to share their lives with others, they desire more than simple individualism or quiet desperation. And while some of those social spaces remain entirely virtual the real value of everything web 2.0 is seen in the act of transition to the real world. It is word becoming flesh.

And it’s great to see some creative people recognising this and trying to help the church understand it. Christianity is all about relationships. The Trinity is a beautiful image of relational community. The Bible is the story of God’s desire for relationship with His creation. The church exists to encourage and support, to connect and transform, to be both home and sanctuary. We’re meant to be modelling community beyond just pitching up for a few songs and a prayer predicated on subscription to some specific beliefs.

So whilst C may stand for Church, what we discuss on a Sunday is not just for Church and Christians. The relevance and value remains without belief in God. There is a massive amount to say about the leadership of people, the management of performance and the very nature of organisations. In the last 7 years, at work and in study, it’s remarkable how much of what has been offered as good practice has characteristics or motivation that resonates with my theology.

The first page of text ends with this paragraph, it’s good stuff for everyone faith loaded or not:

when there is a thriving sense of community, there is a healthy degree of communication and an increase in communication leads to more collaboration. This type of environment is conducive to developing innovation, creative ideas and productivity

Take a look, have a think and let me know if you think I’m talking absolute rubbish 🙂

Open publication – Free publishing – More typography

>OK, so what’s next?

May 7, 2010 / Benjamin Welby / 0 Comments

>While we don’t yet have a new government the thirteen years of Labour rule are almost certain to come to an end. Even if there is no agreement between Conservatives and Liberal Democrats with the result that a LibDemLab coalition is birthed it would be met with consternation by the 10.7m people represented by those who won the popular vote.

Whatever box you crossed, and whoever your local representative is our future is a future heavy on Cameron, Osbourne, Gove et al. It is one in which Conservative policies you agreed with, or detested, will lurk. Irrespective of a coalition with Clegg the Conservatives have the greater clout, outnumbering their prospective bed-fellows by 5 to 1.

And so, Big Society will be the order of the day.

The Conservative campaign left me uneasy. I found it contradiction heavy and substance light. An invitation to be part of the next government is hollow when it goes hand in hand with state bribes for a given value of ‘family’. It is a ludicrous claim to propose that we’re ‘all in this together’ when referring to austerity whilst simultaneously rewarding those who have amassed estates valued at £1m.

On Thursday I read this chilling article in the Independent of what Compassionate Conservatism looks like when put into practice. If you haven’t already seen it, please take a few minutes to read it.

It should hardly be a surprise that in the quest for lower taxation, which this article suggests is the mark of ‘success’, services would be cut. Nor should it come as a shock that the drive for smaller government means lines are drawn in the sand about what’s important and what’s not, what’s funded and what isn’t.

Big Society, compassionate Conservatism holds as the ideal that individuals build community, that they are the solution to any or all issues and that the state should facilitate but not provide. Clearly in Hammersmith & Fulham the facilitation hasn’t always worked and people have suffered as a result. If this is the nature of the politics to come and the outcome of the government we have chosen what are we going to do about it?

Our response, at every level, has to be more than just disappointment at the outcome and more than just thinking about what a politics of opposition can achieve in the next 5 years with an eye to the next election. A lot is being said about a hung parliament being a wonderful opportunity for parties to work together. The unspoken subtitle to this is ‘because they’re forced to’.

I hope that I’m not alone in believing that the men and women we ask to represent us would have a greater desire to work alongside the other parties than this seems to indicate.

A politics of opposition is what we’ve had and from my perspective that has created a tit for tat world where across the country it’s all about finding the silver bullet that is the solution, or the flaw that will deal it a fatal blow. It’s a tear up and start again approach because if you hold opposing views and the balance of power swings then necessarily Everything Must Go. Take the Pupil Premium, it may be a good way of targeting deprivation but it is such a departure from the current mechanics that it is not just a tweak but a rewriting.

Big society might not be something we like. We might believe that those who are vulnerable (to whatever extent) are the whole point of public services and the whole raison d’etre of sending men and women to Westminster to give voice to the voiceless and for government to be nothing if not a tool of social justice.

We also might be very uneasy with the Conservatives having the balance of power. But this is democracy, sometimes you lose. We might be concerned about where the scythe will fall, how important areas of policy are approached and what the long-term holds in a bluer nation. But, this is democracy and when your politics loses, other people have the opportunity to govern.

Conservative influence and Big Society will characterise the immediate future of Britain. And that means everyone will have to play ball, to embrace those ideas and get stuck in. Because if you don’t volunteer, then who will?

We now need to be part of our communities in a way that delivers social justice and challenges the gaps a withdrawing state might leave behind.

History is claimed to go in cycles and whilst we will not return to a true laissez-faire regime (marriage tax breaks for example are a fairly obvious example of state interventionism) as that found in the 19th century we might end up closer to it than we are now. In a Britain with low taxation, bureaucracy and state intervention there was little in the way of education, health or support that didn’t come from the generosity and compassion of those in local communities. It was on the back of socially conscientious pioneers who challenged this status quo that the Welfare State was eventually built.

I believe that the Welfare State is one of the greatest things about this country. Not just for what it has done and will continue to do but because it places at the heart of the nation a fundamental understanding that there is justice in the state acting corporately in support of those who have the least as well as those with the most. A humility to understand that we are ‘all in this together’ which breeds compassion and mercy, not self-interest.

It’s obviously both premature and extreme to say that there will be a systematic dismantling of it. But with the extent of cuts forecast something will have to give. There’s serious talk of Proportional Representation amongst the non-Cons but isn’t this just losing badly? After over a decade in power in which they have enjoyed a stonking majority rule, and even then subverted the legislature, the Labour Party have turned to this now they are faced by the spectre of losing influence. It’s worth remembering that in 2005 a majority government was elected with 35.2% of the vote, less than Thursday’s Conservatives.

What is real from the point of view of the people is a genuine desire for engagement. Even though the hyped ‘massive turnout’ did not materialise (the total increased a mere 4% to 65%) there is an enthusiasm to be involved with the political process where our MPs represent us and do what we tell them to do (even if so far they have fallen short of what we’ve asked on issues like 10:10 and the Digital Economy Bill).

Organisations like MySociety and 38Degrees demonstrate the potential for people to get involved. Tom Steinberg, founder of MySociety, has been co-opted by the Tories so does this mean that Big Society is being planned to harness this basic enthusiasm for participation, and the ability for people to self organise?

The state is about to shrink, the services and opportunities people have access to must not be allowed to follow. Standing on the sidelines and complaining about the incompatibility of Conservative and Liberal Democratic politics doesn’t fix that, continuing the petty and snide mockery that has characterised too much of the election serves the needs of nobody, hoping that in 4 years’ time the public are disappointed and crave another change in government is selfish.

We should all be striving for this Parliament, which will be one of the hardest five years in a very long time, to be a success and to be able to turn around in a few years and declare

‘you know actually Cameron has done a good job, Osbourne hasn’t seen a double dip recession, Gove’s schools have genuinely raised standards, Compassionate Conservatism has reduced inequality and we’ve surpassed commitments to international development and the environment’.

At this moment in time I don’t see it, but even as a Labour voter there’s nothing wrong in my saying I want it to happen. How do we, the public, put our politics and disappointment to one side in order to help make sure it becomes a reality? And for all we might want to whinge about Westminster, we make that happen by being part of the solution ourselves. I hope that the 10.7m people who voted Conservative follow that up by being wherever the state no longer is. But more than that I hope that the other 19m do that too.

There will be reasons people say they can’t do it. But people have turned out to campaign for Proportional Representation as I type. Would we be so keen if it meant having to volunteer at the sharp end of service delivery? In the toss up between flopping on the sofa at the end of a long day or going to support others what will we choose? And how do we achieve it with anything like the coordination that’s required? Who provides the leadership and the steer and the guidance?

I’m fairly disengaged – I work in one city and live in another, I’m out of the house for 12 hours a weekday. Am I willing to foresake my comforts to help the least? To add something else to my weekly diary? What will I do with my married couple’s allowance, if we qualify? Will people use it to support those no longer helped through SureStart? Will those who benefit from an inheritance tax break be bothered that encouraging their wealth might mean denying support to those on the margins?

Unless we use what we have the state is not going to deliver a fairer Britain. We will have to be part of the solution from the pitch, not just the sidelines. And that might mean that Conservative policy works, and you’d be involved with making that so. Like I say, politics and ideology on one side. Big Society here we come…

>Why Hugh Bayley helped make #debill become the #deact in his own words

April 16, 2010 / Benjamin Welby / 1 Comment

>Earlier this week I received a letter from the Prospective Parliamentary Candidate for York Central to respond to the concerns I had raised with him about the Digital Economy Bill when it was first mooted. Well, I call him my PPC but despite the letter being dated April 12th Hugh actually referred to himself as an MP and used House of Commons headed paper, I don’t really care but I thought once Parliament was dissolved this was frowned upon.

Anyway, here’s what he wrote, at least I didn’t get the stock letter that’s been doing the rounds

The Digital Economy Bill covers a wide range of issues. There is a pressing need for new legislation to stop the UK falling behind other countries in the digital revolution. For example the Bill will require Channel Four to provide public service content, it will provide more flexibility over the licensing of Channel 3 and Channel 5 services and allow Ofcom to appoint providers of regional and local news. It will extend the role of Ofcom to include reporting on communications infrastructure and media content and allow the Secretary of State to intervene in internet domain name registration. It extends the range of video games that are subject to age-related classification and deals with the issue of the digital switchover which affects local radio stations like Minster FM. I am glad that the government agreed last week to amend the controversial provisions on copyright. In doing so it secured cross party agreement to the Bill going through.

I think it is reasonable for the creator of an artistic work to collect royalties. Writers, composers and musicians deserve to be paid for their work. I used to make television films – which cost tens of thousands of pounds to produce. The people who worked for me depended for their wages on our company being paid when our films were shown. Nowadays films and videos are distributed on the internet but the people who create them still need to be paid. I hope you agree that the principle of authors being able to collect royalties from people using copyright material is reasonable.

The point at issue with the Bill was the power to disconnect people from the internet if they repeatedly downloaded copyright material without paying. I agree that you need to protect people who have not broken the rules. I wrote to the Minister, Stephen Timms, about this. Last Wednesday evening in the House of Commons he proposed an amendment to the Bill applying a super affirmative procedure. This means that further legislation will be required, after the general election, before technical measures, such as disconnected, could be introduced. This further legislation will be subject to further consultation, and additional scrutiny and amendments by both the House of Commons and the House of Lords and both Houses will have to vote in favour of the legilsation before it can be brought in. Given these safeguards I voted for the Bill.

I hope you welcome this climb down by the government which secured cross-party support.

So, there you have it. In this constituency where my vote carries the weight of 0.063 the incumbent MP is in a very strong position. Maybe the Digital Economy Bill will be an election changing issue in some parts of the country but in York I doubt this will be the case.

Listening to the interwebs

March 19, 2010 / Benjamin Welby / 0 Comments

The other day I saw a tweet that pointed me towards @SavvyCitizens and their Top Ten online resources for getting savvier ahead of the general election. It really is a top list of resources and all but one of them are fully featured, for free.

Council Monitor is the one that you have to pay for to get all its features. Now, for a basic ability to look around the country and see your council’s sentiment rating or look at how it compares to others this is excellent. It can give you at a glance that sort of information. However, to find out anything more you need to pay. And, for me, the costs they’re suggesting make this a little bit more than just Freemium.

The basic subscription of £99 a month gives you insight into your own organisation and allows you to actually see the mentions being made about you. For an extra £100 a month you can add 5 keywords and for the princely sum of £299 a month you can have up to 10. And they’re the special introductory prices.

OK so that’s only about £1,200 a year and no more than £4,000 tops, so what’s the big deal? After all that’s nothing for organisations with budgets in the multi-millions. But it’s this seemingly common attitude to the pennies leaves me thinking that it’s no wonder we have a problem with the pounds. So, perhaps what will follow is not worth your effort but I end up feeling a bit disappointed that we’d rather end up paying for a service than shaping the tools that are out there ourselves*.

Council Monitor is an aggregator of content that can be found ‘out there’ but happens to be housed within a shiny package that allows for comparison across the national picture. I have nothing at all against the shiny but what is most important is actually hearing what is being said, listening to it and then responding. It’s gratifying to know that ours is the council with the most positive mentions in the country but it’s not what’s important.

What’s important is recognising that people are saying things and we need to hear them because our service delivery can be improved by responding to the comments being offered in cyberspace. Not in a terrifying Big Brotheresque fashion but in the way that we’re coming to expect of organisations and companies that are important to us. The way that sees a need and then fills it or hears a criticism and fixes it so that not only are people valued for their contribution but the next person benefits from such a proactive response.

So, on that basis it’s content which is key. It’s not the overview of sentiment, which can be picked up for free but it’s the actual information itself, the stuff that sets you back £99 a month for a single keyword that an organisation wants to hear. Set against Radian6 or one of the other very impressive, and fairly expensive reputation management/social media monitoring services that seems good value.

But we don’t have the budget even for the good value. Dave Briggs flagged up this list of Social Media Monitoring resources which are free and sometimes have similarly shiny interfaces. But we’ve been thinking about how we make something that we can control and that which can pull a variety of different sources into one place. It is still in a prototype stage but the idea of doing something ourselves, whilst it might seem daunting, may actually be preferable.

But first, 2 caveats, and 3 tools:

These are not pretty solutions
There is a lot of potential to improve them
A variety of search engines
Yahoo Pipes
Netvibes

There is an impressive array of tools with which to interrogate the internet. We identified the following 15 services as being useful for different reasons but it is by no means exhaustive.

Almost all of these use APIs to enable the interrogation of their results from afar. What this means is that we can enter a search term away from the site in question and get a response directly to us or as part of an RSS feed or into an email or a widget.

In order to do this I use Yahoo Pipes. Now, I’ve blogged here and here about how to do this for wildly different purposes and I like Yahoo Pipes. It is certainly quite daunting to begin with and it can be quite temperamental but on the whole it is a very clever environment in which to build tools that can search for information, connect it together and then filter it as necessary. We’ve used it to make pipes for the search engines listed above.

So, using that lovely technology we’ve put together a pipe that looks at SocialMention, and, crucially, for the point I’m hoping to make, it does return sentiment too. At the moment it is pulling two pipes – the Social Mention search and the Sentiment tracker into one.

If it doesn’t work in the page then take a look at one of the following:

SocialMention (all mentions)

SocialMention (sentiment)

SocialMention (mentions and sentiment)

We’ve got pipes for all the search engines we listed above and had wanted to make a single feed from these individual elements but find Pipes cannot cope with this although, if we had there was a recognition of what we could do and a commitment to resourcing it I think we could probably identify some other solutions too. And the beauty of it? Once you have it set up outputting for one search term you can set up more using the same infrastructure (if you want it all lumped together it will accept multiple search terms separated by commas).

We have a dump of all our pipes onto one page. Some of them do not contribute anything to us and will be rooted out; some of them duplicate content and that may mean those two feeds could be merged into one; and being a public page makes tracking and storing activity impossible. In practice this would be a private page accessible to whoever has the responsibility to keep track of the content that had been seen and/or dismissed and that which was still of interest or had not yet been looked at. The Comms & Marketing team are going to be testing it out and exploring how best to use the information and how to process it for the benefit of the organisation.

It is true that we might not be getting the same results as Council Monitor and we might not be able to gauge sentiment elsewhere (although with the right commitment to developing this we could certainly get there). It’s also true that we can’t get trends but that’s just a metric that means nothing if we’re not hearing or responding to the people who are talking about, or to, us.

We’re exploring how we make this better and more useable. I’m moving placements but I’ll look to blog through the technical aspects of making these things happen so that you can make your own sentiment monitoring tools. But, in the meantime, feel free to test ours and see whether they’re useful as an alternative to spending money.

🙂

*I feel the same about GovDelivery. What they offer is much more technical and would require more effort to duplicate but, nevertheless, it is essentially publishing content in ways that would not be difficult to fashion yourselves. At least that’s my take on it.

Crowd Sourced Church

March 10, 2010 / Benjamin Welby / 1 Comment

Last week was a bad week at work. The bid process for the fourth and final placement of the graduate scheme did not result in the outcome I had hoped for. And the circumstances surrounding that had left me both depressed and despondent.

On Sunday evening, church turned that on its head.

Earlier in the week there had been a slightly cryptic message sent into the Twitterverse

As Al started the service he said something along these lines and it started to make sense

We don’t really have a plan, there are going to be some songs, we’ll commission St Barnabas and Ursula will preach but we want to get you contributing to the service. So, tag your tweets #smlb and text your thoughts to this number or just come to the front and share

And what that resulted in was a wonderfully diverse, and rich, stream of contributions flashed up on the screens. There were texts, there were a lot of tweets and from the front there were the voices of those sharing stories without the anonymity and complexity of technology.

A church like ours is full of talented people and is incredibly well resourced in terms of preaching and leadership. That makes for a very polished experience (even when it doesn’t finish at 8.30 on the dot) but there is a certain inevitability to our slipping into being consumers and sitting passively, waiting to be entertained and edified.

The leaders of this service have a difficult task in striking the right balance and on Sunday the crowd sourced approach really worked. It did mean that things were unpredictable but it gave God the opportunity to use a variety of channels and a number of different people to be his mouthpiece.

The whole God speaking thing is one of those things that makes Christians sound mental. The kind of suggestion that gets us thrown funny looks and underlines the delusional nature of our very existence. But nevertheless, bear with me (if you’re still reading), Sunday was a wonderful example of knowing that it’s more than just coincidence. It was one of those evenings where seemingly random activity looked, and felt, very much like the well orchestrated action of a loving saviour.

The very nature of the service – built up round a sermon on forgiveness (Ursula Simpson on top form) – addressed the stuff I had gone through last week. Dealt with it and moved on. From beginning to end the service could not have been better designed if I had sat down and thought about what I needed to hear. And it wasn’t in individual songs, or words, or music, or tweets but it was in the presence of God and the answers to prayer that was evident as a product of the whole.

(Mind you, I don’t actually think that faith is a prerequisite for enjoying the content of the tweets which you can find here on What The Hashtag.)

The service came together from the contributions of the people in the pews but there was no mistaking a common thread running through it, a singular inspiration working through more than just those labelled ‘leader’.

We believe in a priesthood of all believers but often it’s hard to get people out of the pews. Did Sunday see the first shoots of something significant? It was certainly a great experience of being, not just doing, church.

I hope this isn’t just a random experiment but is something that can become a really important source of encouragement, praise and worship from day to day, not just on a Sunday. I think there’s a lot of mileage in exploring how some of the emerging trends in communication can work in a church context. It will be interesting to see if that’s true.

>Football League Referee Appointment Checker

February 27, 2010 / Benjamin Welby / 0 Comments

As you may know I am the editor of Vital Bradford and produce content for it (with appalling infrequency). One of the things I like to do is a little penpic of whoever will be in charge of the game.

The Football League launched a shiny, and fancy website at the start of the season called Refworld. It’s a good place to find all sorts of information about the men in black. And it provides a feed of latest news stories.

However, if I’m honest, all I care about is the person who could be ruining my afternoon. I want to know who will be in charge of my fixtures. And I want to know as soon as possible when it’s announced.

And there’s no way of doing that. There’s no way of seeing all upcoming fixtures for your club, or all past appointments. In a nice, easy fashion.

Yahoo Pipes is an excellent tool. I shared with you previously about how I put together something providing travel alerts from the BBC. And it’s a similar principal behind the Football League Referee Appointment Checker.

Basically tell it which club you’re interested in, or the referee who is notoriously dodgy and voila, you’ll have the upcoming fixtures and the referee, his two assistants and the 4th official.

Subscribe to the RSS feed it generates, add an iGoogle widget, a Yahoo Pipes ‘badge’ or subscribe to it by email. In theory, it should update whenever the football league announce new officials.

It will be interesting whether or not it does but I hope that someone finds this useful. Even if you don’t, I will.

Jury Service

February 21, 2010 / Benjamin Welby / 0 Comments

On Thursday I finished my stint as a juror. It was a very interesting experience and one that I would happily repeat. My fortnight was as action-packed as it could be. I was lucky; many others go on Jury Service to find that they sit around twiddling their thumbs, reading books or doing jigsaws.

So, what did my fortnight involve?

1 book
2 completed jigsaws
3 cases
2 court rooms
3 judges
6 barristers
13 live witnesses
34 jurors
over 8 hours of deliberation
2 guilty verdicts, 1 ‘yes’ verdict

I didn’t talk about jury service very much while I was doing it. As jurors we ‘judge the evidence’ so talking about the intricacies of a case with anyone else, no matter how briefly, could lead to us being influenced by people who haven’t sat in the jury box and committed to truthfully carrying out our duties.

Now it’s over, our verdicts are in and those involved in the cases are waiting on their fate I thought I’d sum up my impressions of the experience (and hopefully not find myself getting into trouble for doing so).

Swears

February 9, 2010 / Benjamin Welby / 2 Comments

I’m doing jury service at the moment. And the courts are full of spiritual connotations. If it’s not bowing in reverence, or calling judges ‘Lord’ or ‘Worship’ it’s the very presence of an advocate interceding on behalf of someone else. Mind you, it’s hardly a surprise that an environment built to house truth and justice should remind me of God.

However, what’s most striking is the spiritual barometer of trustworthiness, the swearing of an oath on the Bible.

‘I swear by Almighty God that I will faithfully try the defendant(s) and give a true verdict (true verdicts) according to the evidence.’

All those on my jury chose to do this. I didn’t.

And you may think that’s quite strange given that I am a Christian, that I believe in a personal relationship with God and that the Bible is a phenomenal tool for equipping us to live to our potential (actually irrespective of whether you have faith or not).

I don’t know whether the 11 people who swore on the Bible would describe themselves as Christians. If they wouldn’t then it seems a little strange to start court proceedings with what amounts to a falsehood (not that this is an accusation of perjury!).

It might make the Daily Mail weep but I just don’t understand the reason for having a spiritual barometer of trustworthiness. And the reason for that is because Jesus tells his followers that oath taking, that swearing by heaven or by God isn’t necessary.

The Sermon on the Mount is one of the most well-known chunks of Jesus’ ministry (and another one of those moments in the Life of Brian where the two figures are demarcated). In amongst the Beatitudes and a warning about our thoughts rather than just our acts Jesus talks about oaths.

Again, you have heard that it was said to the people long ago, ‘Do not break your oath, but keep the oaths you have made to the Lord.’ But I tell you, Do not swear at all: either by heaven, for it is God’s throne; or by the earth, for it is his footstool; or by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the Great King. And do not swear by your head, for you cannot make even one hair white or black. (Matthew 5:33-36)

And why shouldn’t, as followers of Jesus, we take oaths? Because Christians should ‘let your ‘Yes’ be ‘Yes,’ and your ‘No,’ ‘No’; anything beyond this comes from the evil one’.

Part of being a Christian is being trustworthy, of having integrity, of being credible and living a life that reflects the person of Jesus (or tries to). This is what Jesus is saying. He’s saying if you follow my teachings then you don’t need to swear oaths to make a promise. If you promise to do something, why would you do anything other than keep it?

When I said I was affirming there was slight confusion about what that meant. Someone said it was “for those who aren’t religious”. Obviously, for me, it was actually for completely the opposite reason.

If the court system was to lose the spiritual barometer for trustworthiness there would be OUTRAGE and it would be further evidence of a creeping secularism. Would it? Wouldn’t it actually be Christians recognising that it’s in conflict with what we believe and for those that don’t have a relationship with God, or even any faith in Him, creates a situation that may actually ring hollow?

>4 Cs for #cnvrstns in 2010

January 15, 2010 / Benjamin Welby / 0 Comments

>This week has seen the 2010 restart to our church, Conversations, and another new venue. Vodka Revolution might be a surprising venue for god-bothering, it might not be an obvious place for people to worship God and enjoy fellowship with one another but on the basis of this week it’s going to be a great location. There was an air of excited expectancy amongst those of us who were there on Wednesday evening and a real buzz around the venue and its public that had been lacking in some of the other places we’ve been.

One of the things that’s integral to the way we ‘do church’ as Conversations is not to leave our relationships at face value in services but to be active in supporting, praying, encouraging and seeing each other during the week. One of the ways we do that is through cell groups. That’s not cell in its negative connotations but in the organic sense – following the imagery of the Body of the Christ and recognising that we hope to grow and eventually multiply from one to more.

Thursday nights are cell night and it was great to have fellowship with each other over food wonderfully prepared by Mrs Wellers. As we digested we chatted about what the coming year might look like. The upshot of this, in a delayed New Year Resolution styleee, was commitments around 4 Cs (only because Christians need alliterative groups of cheesy words, not because we’re sticklers for grammatical accuracy):

Our Celves (I did warn you)
Our Cell
Our Church
Our City

One of the amazing things about cell is the space it allows us for accountability, relationships and confidentiality so I’m not going to blog about those except to say that together we’re going to support each other in continuing the commitments we wanted to make for ourCelves and revisit them as the year progresses.

We’ve committed to making our cell work, to ensuring that we meet for cell but beyond that we are a community, not just people that meet up once a week.

We’re committed to our church, to supporting the work it does in prayer and by turning up but also in making sure that the welcome we’ve had is true of the experience for anyone else who visits on a Wednesday night.

And in doing this we’re committed to York, to our city, to loving it and supporting it and encouraging it. By more prayer, through the work of Besom and Street Angels and in being a credible and relevant example of Jesus to those around us.

If you’re around us hold us up to those standards, help us to get the balance right between being part of Conversations, part of our cell and part of our city and challenge us if we’re falling short of these standards.

I have a funny feeling that 2010 is going to be a good year. Exciting.

How to get BBC Travel updates via RSS using Yahoo Pipes

January 10, 2010 / Benjamin Welby / 0 Comments

Here’s a bit of a departure from my normal blogging content, sporadic though it is.

I’ve just been at university and while I was there I got an email from a colleague asking about good examples of transport content for local government websites. I didn’t throw the query out to Twitter particularly well as the responses I got were about examples of dynamic travel news such as the Highways Agency Clearspring/GovDelivery widget or Godalming’s repurposing of the same content to give geographical proximity.

Yesterday I was looking at how I might get back to York because of the weather. During the afternoon’s lecture, cursing my stupidity at not leaving at lunchtime, I visited the BBC and discovered, to my surprise that their traffic details offer nothing in the way of subscription.

With plenty of time on trains, platforms and coaches to tinker I thought I’d see if I could manage to do something about that. The terms of the BBC’s travel feed are that they are for personal and non-commercial usage so if you want to be able to get the latest information for yourselves then here’s how to do it very simply.

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