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I'm currently in a steep learning curve season of life. My new role at LifeChurch.tv has put me in a place of having to stretch mentally, spiritually, relationally, and professionally. Learning how to interact with my team, learning from mistakes as a project manager, feeling the weight of working with super-smart people and trying make it look easy, figuring out how to work 1000 miles from my colleagues and not feel disconnected...it's hard.

There are certainly some upsides to this learning season. I'm learning what it feels like to be a part of something big, monumental, historic, God-sized. I'm learning how to lead and how to follow. I'm learning how to handle small failures with grace and move on. I'm learning that people can feel like family, even though you've known them for a short time, only met once, and live 1000 miles apart.

God is moving in my life in new ways; ways I haven't seen him move before. Very subtle movements, like nudges. He's teaching me to balance drive and patience, confidence and humility, accountability and kindness, ambition and generosity.

He's using every single person I work with to teach me something that changes me for the better. I see passionate and talented software developers sold-out to a vision of seeing the Bible reach people around the world. I see successful people take a pay cut, demotion, and step out of the lime-light to be a part of reaching people with the Gospel. It's overwhelming and I thank God for every moment of this season in my life.


rhettsmith says...

I love Donald Miller. Blue Like Jazz was one of those life changing books for me. I picked it up after overhearing some guys at conference talk about this book. I remember going to like 3 bookstores in Pasadena asking them if they knew a book that had something like jazz in the title, or maybe blue in the title.

I finally hit gold when Vroman's in Pasadena knew exactly what I was talking about. That was sometime in 2003. I had the privilege of bringing Don out to our college group in 2005, and I thought he was one of the most humble and sincere writers/artists I had ever met.

I have been waiting for this book to be published for a long time and am so looking forward to it.


Chuck Norris can kill two birds with NO stones!

Sent from my iPhone


Ben says...

If you know me then you know I love the artistic stylings of a man called John Mayer. He is a true talent and is one of my fav guitarists. This to me was the best part of the Michael Jackson memorial. Mayer stayed true to the original arrangement, while adding his own flair. I also love how toned down he was. It truly felt like a memorial and not a concert.


ChrisBrogan says...

It wasn't my intention to start a stampede.

  
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Human3rror says...

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Sorry for the brevity and rampant spelling errors... This was obviously "Sent from my iPhone".


Steve says...

Photo credit: Stream by aspheric.lens

The following is also my column in next week's Adage.

Media consumption is changing. You don't need me to tell you that. However, you maybe unaware just how much it's shifting as we embrace "the stream."

What's the stream? It's a way of consuming content as a continuous feed of brief bits, singles, ten-minute videos, tweets and status updates. It's reflective of the societal shift from analog to digital. And it's a natural fit for the web, where attention spans are minuscule.

Streams are everywhere. The Facebook news feed and Twitter are two prime examples. However, streams aren't just on social networks. You can spot them on sites like MuckRack.com or Timeswire from The New York Times. It's where, when the news is important, it finds you.

As it becomes the primary way we interact with content, streams threaten longer formats like TV shows, articles, albums or books. Over time, we will find we're no longer a nation that eats media meals. Rather, we're all-day content snackers - which means we become more source agnostic too.

This dawned on me recently as I considered how my own habits have changed.

For years I would engage long-form content like books or audio books in continuous blocks of time. I enjoyed each sitting like a fine meal. But that was back in the day when I would be disconnected for hours at a time - or the mobile experience was poor.

Nowadays, however, thanks to the iPhone, the web is always on. I find it all too tempting to dip into Facebook or Friendfeed for a quick fix of the stream. Yes, the Net ate my books.

Now, granted, I am an "edge case" - an early adopter. Still, if you think about your own patterns, I believe you will agree that streams maybe taking over. Sound scary? I can understand it might and I promise a future column devoted to tips to "keeping up" and managing your stream (versus your stream managing you).

As the age of the stream takes hold, it will force marketers to get more creative about how we break through. It's unclear if ads will be welcome. If they are, they will need to be brief, useful and funny. Otherwise, they will just get in the way and be ignored.

Filed under: advertising, essays, Lifestreaming, marketing, media, streams, trends

dewde says...

Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry


Human3rror says...


JustinWise says...