NLab Social Networks Conference – Panel

 

 

 

X-posted from custardether.co.uk

The conference concluded with a panel session consisting of Roland Harwood, Chris Meade, Vijay Riyait, Andrea Saveri. Here is a brief summary of the questions raised and some of the responses…

 

o.    How do you get people to see that these tools are not just time wasting devices?

-       more conferences

-       more opportunities for people to get together and learn form each other (both small and large businesses)

 

o.    What social networks would you keep?

-       Roland = Twitter and Facebook

-       Andrea = del.icio.us and blog aggregator

-       Chris = Facebook and the blog (as a platform for everyone to have their say)

-       Vijay = Facebook and Twitter

 

o.    What is the killer reason for cash-tight, small businesses to use social networks?  What is the commercial incentive?

-       depends on the business

-       saves money

-       most businesses are already doing social networking offline, but now they can do the same thing cheaper and quicker online

-       you wouldn’t expect a return on the plumbing, but the business cannot function without it

-       expand markets and jump out of small market niche

-       getting information/feedback

-       collaboration

 

o.    Do people get fed up?  Users are more savvy and will spot the agenda

-       people still want stuff and want it sold to them in a way that is authentic and relevant

-       there is always a competition when new technological developments come along, so it will sort itself out

 

o.    We haven’t addressed the massive shift in landscape (China has more graduates than we have children).  How much do you think social media will support this shift in landscape?

-       China has the large number of bloggers, so they are participating

-       The collaborative nature of the net means that people will swarm together

-       Anyone on the internet can make a change that will affect everyone else on the internet

 

o.    Social networking enhances relationships with customers and forces traditional businesses to think about how they do business.

-       we need case studies from academia to businesses

 

So, the final thoughts for the day?

 

Lots of mystique gets built up, but Andrea recommended that businesses pick one small, low risk thing to experiment with to find out what’s right for their business.

NLab Social Networks Conference – Jim Benson

 

 

 

X-posted from custardether.co.uk

The concluding keynote for the day came from Jim Benson, who discussed how to get the most from your social media experience – given that small businesses do not need more stuff to do!

 

He used a flow diagram to demonstrate that if you want benefits out of a community, you have to put stuff in.  You can get good business advice from a system like Twitter, if you participate in the community, but you have to be clear what are you seeking from the community, whether it is a tangible or an intangibles benefit.  You also have to be aware that you cannot just be a leach – because people will pick that up and you will not get the benefit of the community, as it is not community behaviour.

 

Benson emphasised that it is important to know your limits in relation to social media.  He advised businesses to recognise which networks are appropriate to their needs and to experiment.  This was one of the most important messages of the day for many of the delegates – the idea that you do not have to be on and involved in everything going!  Benson explained that simple, “old fashioned” emailing lists are often the strongest social networks.  His advice was straight-forward: start small and work your way up… directing your use to your immediate needs, your business and your business’ personality.

 

The personality of a business is important.  All businesses rely on their proximity to clients and to information – the community involvement needed to get these things may be in different geographical areas and social networks can lower the costs in achieving these things.

 

This all lead to a discussion about over-hyped social networks, whether all of the tools are appropriate to every business’ needs and how businesses have adapted their use of these services to meet their own needs.

 

The key idea that I took away from this discussion was the view that social networks are a mechanism for saving money as well as a way of making money.  An idea that many of us loose sight of in our quest to monetize every second of time we spend working.  Later, Andrea Saveri would crystalise this for everyone by pointing out that plumbing is essential for all businesses, but you wouldn’t expect to make money out of it.  Social networking is exactly the same – essential, but not necessarily a means of directly generating income.

 

I went on to participate in Jim Benson’s workshop entitled “Dealing with the Negative: What to Do When Social Media Bites You”.  In my own business experience I have found that the mental barrier many people face is the idea that people can “say” bad things about your company online and it appears in print for the whole internet to see for all time.  One of the aspects of the Women, Business & Blogging conference that interested me most was how to deal with negativity, which can inevitably occur, and I didn’t feel that I was fully equipped to deal with this, despite extensive discussions – focussing mainly on cyberbullying.

 

In the workshop people discussed their own worries and business circumstances in relation to this issue and we were able to formulate some conclusions about good ways to mentally and actually handle negative comments made online.

 

1.            Monitor reviews – reach out the individuals when things go wrong and try to undo the damage by responding constructively.  Not only will this help to resolve the problem for the individual who has had a bad experience of your company, but will also look good to others – showing you care and will act if things go wrong.

 

2.            Search – the Americans use a website called “Yelp”, which collects reviews of businesses.  Make searching part of the process (an element of PR) to ensure that you stay on top of things and can therefore respond

 

3.            Be present and engage with people – I have observed quite horrific amounts of negative press against a company in one social network, the company response to which was nothing… nowt! They just ignored it and hoped it would go away.  However, part of the point of a social network is that people want to be engaged – they want the conversation!  They will certainly not think better of you if you are not prepared to enter into the discussion with them.

 

4.            Recognising that actually, negative criticism is useful because it is an untapped area of feedback – giving you the opportunity to respond and correct an issue.  If people say it online, you can generally find it.  If they say it on a bus or over dinner with friends or in the pub, you have no way of accessing that feedback and acting on it to improve your business.

 

 

5.            The Net appreciates openness.  Hands up if you get it wrong, and discussion all the way – it will help to build a relationship with your customers and foster trust.

NLab Social Networks Conference – Ken Thompson

 

 

 

X-posted from custardether.co.uk

I was very interested to hear Ken Thompson’s talk, having read his white paper about the concept of Swarm Teams and explored his website, which goes into the biological parallels of his system in more details.  Swarm Teams is a text message-based system, similar to Twitter, but based on the way teams work in nature.

 

He posed the question: What can we learn from nature’s social networks?

 

To address this question, he started by describing the traditional team model that we are all very familiar with – the Military-style team:  getting people to do what they don’t want to do and if in doubt, don’t do nothing.

 

In comparison, he then looked at biological teams and the way they operate.  He described how he got into this line of thinking when designing online systems, starting out with the creation of the Bumble Bee blog to collect articles about using biology to improve teams, then leading to Swarm Teams – a text message system enabling people to operate like a bioteam.

 

He highlighted the main benefit this system can have for small businesses – namely getting small businesses together to go for big contracts by creating a network. 

 

In addition, he described SwarmTribes – a version of the Swarm Teams concept – which is used to connect the likes of musicians with their fans – developing a degree of intimacy between bands and fans.  This is aimed mainly at small bands who want to develop their fan base and interact with them – having a conversation as Steve Clayton described earlier in the day.

 

The main benefits of swarms are:

 

1. You can ask the network
2. When one knows, all knows
3. Mobile co-invention

 

Thompson then demonstrated SwarmTeams by getting us to join his swarm using our mobile telephones and sending messages (on silent mode!) comparing soccer teams with work teams

 

He pointed out that no one gets as excited about their work team in the same way as they do about their football/sports team.

 

He moved on to talk about collective leadership – noting that natural teams are not lead by only one single leader the whole time.  Instead, they work on the principle of the right leader, for the right task at the right time… single leadership teams are not relevant in nature.

 

He explained that short messaging is what creates dynamic mobile teams both in nature and in human interaction, compared to document messaging, hence a surge in sms messaging – this is a natural, instinctive form of communicating and disseminating information.

 

The structure Swarm Teams is designed to mimic works on the principle that you should not try to broadcast to the whole group – but instead go to the best communicators.  The whole principle of mimicking the way communication works successfully in nature seems completely obvious when it is explained, but for some reason it is not the way our management structures and work teams work. Thompson’s advice was to treat social networks like living networks and to remember the very poignant statement that: “The most successful teams on the planet are not human teams” when using social networking to develop cohesive teams and communities online in our business practices.

NLab Social Networks Conference – Andrea Saveri

 

 

 

X-posted from custardether.co.uk

Andrea Saveri from the Institute for the Future had so many fascinating things to say that my note-taking rapidly descended into desperately trying to write down everything she was saying. 

 

Her theme was the amplified individual: the superheros within organisations.  She also explored how the practices of amplified individuals and the tools they use can benefit organisations. 

 

The trick is to use social networks and the associated amplified individuals to actually to amplify what small busineses do well – build relationships, understand niche markets, be agile in exploring new areas – and to help make up for what small businesses lack – management expertise, training, access to capital, limits of small business infrastructure (a negative from the perspective of the rest of the market).

 

She went on to describe amplified individuals in slightly more detail.  Amplified individuals are highly social – using social interaction to filter information and deal with information overload.  Online, this can mean the use of social tagging (i.e. del.icio.us) to see who else tagged pages and go talk to them, whilst filtering information to find what is meaningful.  It can also include sharing photos and using tagging in Flickr, engaging with social objects around which people gather such as a product, visual stimuli etc, using aggregators like Digg to filter information or Twitter, which gets businesses into a social network and is a quick way to source, filter and disseminate information (such as during the fire disaster in San Diego recently).

 

There are other ways in which social networking tools can be used by amplified individuals to benefit business.  Social networks enable people to collectively solve problems using intelligence of crowds – effectively expanding staff, without hiring staff (a huge benefit to a small business) – and collaborative activity. Wikis are great for exploring new areas – asking people to contribute to a knowledgebase.  In the words of Harold Rheingold: “get other people to scratch your itch”.  There are also market predictions aggregators available, which are good for small businesses to gage market predictions rather than having to do all the research in house, which is obviously costly. 

 

Social networks also enable businesses to tap into crowd spirit – running competitions asking customers to submit design ideas, which can be voted to be produced in prototype can engage the customer and aid the again otherwise expensive process of product development within a small business.

 

Saveri also advocated putting out problems to attract creative minds – possibly offering payment – who could provide a solution to a specific problem.  This gets people out there with skills to start submitting solutions – effectively leveraging intelligence to get it to your problem.

 

Another suggestion involved using alternate reality games for training and development in a cost effective way – creating them in such a way that people have to collaborate to solve the problem/mission/quest rather than working alone, thereby using a game framework to get people to learn.

 

But this is getting away from the theme of the amplified individual and on to the myriad of ideas for the application of social networks.  Back to the main thrust of Saveri’s speech:

 

Amplified individuals are highly improvisational.  They are also highly augmented – using different tools to enhance cognitive abilities and coordination skills.  Small business employees and leaders often wear many hats, so need these skills to context-switch, often using devices to enhance memory, concentration etc.  Life Hacker is an example of such a system, featuring anti-procrastination alert.

 

Saveri noted a number of emerging super-powers of amplified individuals:

 

Mobability – they work in large groups, organising and collaborating with lots of people simultaneously.

 

Influencing – they are persuasive in multiple media spaces/contexts

 

Ping quotient – they have a high ping quotient, in other words they are responsive to other people’s requests for engagements

 

Protovation – they are fearless innovators, working in rapid iterative cycles

 

Open authorship – they are comfortable creating content resources for public consumption and modification, particularly given that lot of online work is about putting up drafts or perpetual beta versions

 

Multi-capitalism – they are aware of the many different forms of capitalism and their respective values – be it natural, intellectual, social or financial capitalism… with particular understanding of the notion of reputation as a currency (social capitalism)

 

Longbroading – they are able to think in terms of higher-level systems and see the big picture

 

Effective signal to noise management

 

Cooperation radar – they are good at spotting the best collaborator for a particular task within a social network

 

These skills things all amplify small business’s ability to increase their scope – working around the constraints of big business.

 

Saveri concluded by explaining that it is about economies of sociality, not economies of scales, and about asymmetric power – i.e. using these tools to amplify your impact, even though you are small, and using tools to be responsive to niche markets and also resilience when these disappear by identifying new niches.

NLab Social Networks Conference – Roland Harwood

 

 

 

X-posted from custardether.co.uk

Harwood’s whirlwind talk collected together lots of thoughts, research and parallels considering the question: “Are social networks the new cities?”, a title which Harwood noted is more than just a metaphor. Social networks are already starting to fulfil some of the functions that grow cities – creating a networked business economy and fostering public characters, who act as connectors within communities, developing common experiences and associations for those within the community.

Harwood referred mainly to two texts: Jane Jacobs’ “Death and Life of Great American Cities” and Steve Johnson’s “Emergence”. He talked of the rise of urbanism in the world and the way in which technology changes places. People who study urban growth, look at the rule of technology. He also noted that we are only at the start of understanding how the web is changing places…

In a quote from Jacobs, Harwood explained that the essence of cities – why they are exciting – is the freedom to walk around the busy streets – in a car-dependant society you are isolated from other individuals, whereas whilst walking the streets in a city means there is interaction and changed behaviour in response to your actions and those of others.

What interested Harwood about social networks is the way you interact with people you don’t know well – the weak ties. I referred to this recently in my post Translating the Reality into the Virtual when I noted that we have taken the “Christmas card list” social convention online. In online social networks you can build relationships with people who are on the periphery of your network –sometimes building relationships before you meet people.

Harwood went on to say that social networks allow communities to form in our pockets, which replaces the isolation of cities. For communities to develop, there has to be a balance between the quality of interaction and the convenience of interaction. Cities erode both of these elements, whereas social networks help replace them.

translating reality into the virtual

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It is really quite odd to consider what elements of real life people choose to translate into their virtual existence on the Internet.

 

We have translated the “Christmas card” – a symbol of former friendship and regard – into the badge of appearing on someone’s “friends” list, receiving cursory updates and greetings from acquaintances/former friends who are no longer part of our current lives via tools like Facebook.

 

We have taken advertising with us into the virtual world, but done away with ad breaks, which force us away from the box to make a cup of tea.

 

We have translated our forums for chat – our coffee bars and our high school reunions – but we have not translated our quiet spaces to ponder.  The Internet is a doing place, afterall…

 

The reason I have come to consider this odd division of things we have translated and things we have not is because I am currently trying to improve on a standard online system by translating real world values into a virtual format.

 

I am trying to create an online tour.  If you look at most online tours, they can look pretty neat… you can usually swivel round a 360^o picture until you feel sick and click on a few hotspots to get some information in the form of text.  No problem there!  A virtual equivalent of a real world activity – taking a look around a place and getting some contextual information about it…

 

But is that what a real, live-guided tour does?

 

Very often, we get so wrapped up in the idea that our lives have a virtual parallel dimension that we forget to compare the virtual with the reality to see whether we are really achieving this dream.

 

In the case of virtual tours, they generally miss out so much of what a real tour guide is doing that aside from giving a visual experience of a place, they can hardly be said to be “guides” at all. 

 

I analysed the role of a tour guide and compared this with a survey of the variety of virtual tour variations available.  I was surprised by the number of recommendations I could make for improving existing standards and concepts of “virtual tours” based on this comparison.  It was almost as if the designers and standard setters, whoever they may be, had devised a way of doing a really cool thing, called it a tour, but never really thought about what a real tour does at all. 

This sounds like a harsh analysis, but when I started to look deeper, I found that this was often the case.  Virtual equivalents to reality are being developed all the time without much reference to the actual reality that they are trying to represent. 

 

Sometimes this is a good thing.  We can improve upon the reality we have in our virtual world in a kind of utopian fashion.

 

But in other ways we risk missing out skills in our new world which would enable and facilitate users greatly.  The skill that the virtual tours miss out is narrative – none of them provide you with an overall narrative for the place they are exploring in the way a real tour guide would, and so we have a virtual world where spaces – physical or otherwise – are described with nuggets of information and connected by hyperlinks, rather than being connected by a narrative that could enhance understanding and contextualise the information.  It is almost as if the virtual world is a stripped down version of reality in this sense: dispensing with the subtleties of connections whilst claiming to make links and connections between things clearer. 

 

If this is the world we are supposed to be bringing storytelling into, we need to be thinking not just about places we can locate stories, but rather the whole attitude and design of this virtual reality and how it could be altered to enable storytelling in all its forms – just like the real world does.  Basically, we need to think more about how and what we are translating into our virtual realm from our real world, and how it all hangs together, rather than just trying to blindly create a utopian equivalent in flat pack form.

Moving On From Manvers Street

I have recently launched my digital documentary Moving On From Manvers Street as part of my ongoing studies in New Media writing at DMU.  The trailer is very tongue in cheek, but that is characteristic of the tone of the whole piece.  

The documentary focuses on using Web 2.0 principles to present the story of the first bus station at Bath, which was located in Manvers Street until its demolition in July 2007.  As someone who both worked there and has an interest in the way buildings fit into our culture, I wanted to examine how this functional building would be remembered and how people would engage with those memories in a digital format.

Defining and designing a digital or Web 2.0 documentary was a challenging process.  How and where does one present a Web 2.0 documentary?  What should it look like?  How will people interact with it and contribute to it in the spirit of Web 2.0?  What features of a traditional documentary should be retained? What elements of Web 2.0 philosophy should be included to make it a web-native design, rather than an online version of a traditional documentary?

 

I had two options: producing my own website enabled for user interaction, or making use of existing Web 2.0 tools such as aggregators, which would involve sacrificing an element of control over the content and design, but provide pre-existing mechanisms for collating and disseminating information – common purposes of documentaries.

 

I experimented with two similar aggregating tools – PageFlakes and Netvibes.  Both involved layouts that comprised of boxed widgets for live feeds, which would mean that I and others could add content about the Manvers Street Bus Station at various locations (such as YouTube or blogs) and it would automatically be collected and presented by the aggregator.

 

There were several issues:

 

-       Although feeds were easy to set up, both platforms had limited customisation facilities and it was difficult to add static elements other than text or still images.  The latter was particularly problematic when considering how to add the commentary element of the documentary, which would provide the context for all the content sources.

-       The commercial nature of the sites meant that templates and features could change, so the way the project would appear over time could change without prior notice to me as the creator.

-       There are also issues of ownership of content involved not just in the aggregator interface, but in every individual widget – I needed to manage accounts with several content hosts (such as YouTube, Flickr etc) and to have investigated the degree to which they individually claim ownership of content stored there.

 

I therefore opted to design my own site and instead consider how to integrate Web 2.0 principles and facilities into its design.  I really focused on interactivity and user-generated content as the two main features that I needed to work into my design. 

 

The first consideration was integrating the piece with existing Web 2.0 facilities.  I developed a trailer for the project, which I uploaded to Daily Motion (a video hosting site) and disseminated via Facebook.  I also uploaded interview clips to this service so that the participants involved can embed and forward the clips of themselves to their contacts – all with a link to the URL for the project.  This was partly a promotion strategy, but also established a connection between the project and an audience who are already familiar with interactive sites.

 

Within the site itself, I added several opportunities for contribution.  I invite people to contribute to the Wikipedia article I started, detailing the history of the bus station, and provided a blog with short posts posing questions, which invite comments.  This use of a blog was inspired by Sue Thomas’ use of her blog The Wild Surmise as a research tool.  In both instances I used the <iframe> tag in html to allow the external site to appear within a page of my own – thus helping to retain the audience, rather than allowing them to wander off into other sites.

 

The remainder of the design featured video clips of me presenting the content of each page, thus providing a narrative to the site and a cohesive gel to the content without masses of text.  Within the piece I cast myself as the presenter, but my overall role varied from page to page – sometimes I was a writer (Wikipedia, The WTF File), sometimes a archivist (Interviews), sometimes an editor (The Last Day), sometimes a facilitator for audience participation (Memories), sometimes a composer…

 

 As a documentary inviting audience contributions, I felt it was difficult to be overly analytical or probing in my narrative.  Instead, I opted to raise issues in the introduction, then simply present the different view points and contributions so that the audience can mull over whether I had a valid point that functional buildings, like the Manvers Street Bus Station, should be remembered and what we miss by dismissing them as ugly.  Several of the responses I received were quite insightful on this issue, but several interviewees did have difficulty separating the Bus Station from being “on the buses”.  This confirmed for me that culture – which has moved and lives on – was the integral feature of the building, not its fabric.

 

The documentary can be found at www.manvers-street.com.  Any contributions to the project, or thoughts about the issues raised here concerning the design of a digital documentary, are very welcome!

 

Status: intrigued

I am ashamed to say that Facebook has been taking over my life. 

I find myself checking my news feed between tasks and when I am on the bus… I update my status frequently… I message people… I am generally hooked. 

The reason for this confession is that I have noticed an interesting communication phenomenon whilst engaging in all this social interaction: status conversations.

One of my contacts has subscribed for the Facebook Mobile service, whereby he receives text messages when anyone updates their status.  I don’t need this with the iPhone, but regularly check my friend’s status updates anyway.  This has enabled us to engage in a type of dialogue through our respective statuses.  I say a type of dialogue, because we are not talking to each other directly.  We are broadcasting our state to everyone on our contacts list, whilst effectively making a slanted comment towards each other.  One might say they are “extremely tired and wrecking havoc on the roads” whilst the other might respond that they are “considering the need for caffeine injections for all drivers”.

There is actually more of an art to this than might at first be apparent.  In each case, our status must make sense as a statement of our current position – relevant to all of our contacts, but at the same time making a conversational statement towards one particular person.  Since we share only four mutual contacts, only four people can actually follow the conversation in full, should they choose.  It is like having a public text messaging conversation, in which each side of the conversation must make sense in its own right. 

It strikes me that this is a very odd way to communicate – particularly given that I see the person involved every day at work and rarely speak with him properly in person.  However, we both seem to appreciate the play involved here and have most recently taken to winding each other up via Facebook.  Updating my status to “Kirsty is worried by references to throwing buses around” when sitting unobserved a few rows back on the bus, might get the response: “X has eyes in the back of his head”.  These conversations occasionally spill over into real face-to-face conversations, which equally seem odd to others around in real life, as they appear to start with reference to some invisible factor.  Walking in and asking “so, how many sandwiches does it take?” breaks conversational norms in most contexts, but status updates provide a context for this type of conversation, no matter what Mr Grice says. 

I imagine the same effect must also be created using Twitter and other applications which feature some form of status update mechanism.  I have started conversations with people on MSN before based on the content of their “personal message” statement, but this is usually a private interaction, which triggers a more normal conversation pattern.  The difference being that through Facebook the conversation is public, and broadcast to different people in different ways, depending on their presence on one, other or both friend lists.  This effectively creates three levels of “listening” engagement in the conversation, which have to be considered whether conscientiously or otherwise, by the two people involved.  I have not yet participated in a conversation like this between more than two active parties, but theoretically it would be possible. 

What this demonstrates, for me, is how conversation can be utilised for purely playful reasons.  It is an intriguing type of interaction – but that might just be me!  Has anyone else got any interesting observations about status updates and how they are used?  Don’t bother with the postcard – just comment below.  Or ponder.  Whichever suits.

anti-social socialising

I came across this article earlier in the week about the anti-social networking sites Enemybook and Snubster.

I found the concepts of these two sites quite intriguing. Social networking sites that designed to provide a platform for anti-social behaviour. Are these just tongue-in-cheek parodies getting pixel-space on the back of the current Facebook-fad or are they a subtle indicator that all elements of human behaviour will find a mechanism for expression through t’internet, no matter how petty?

I raised the article with my colleagues on the Online MA in Creative Writing & New Media, who also raised the issue of employer-googling, which is becoming an increasing concern to those of us who actively engage in the web. What damage are these type of applications likely to cause? Will they be viewed as a light-hearted game or taken seriously?

What it all comes down to really is whether it is necessary to broadcast one’s frustrations and annoyances about those around us. You could argue that if people devise these applications, people must feel the need to have this type of feature, for whatever personal theraputic reason… so let them use t’internet for that purpose. Alternatively, you could adopt the stance that lables these as dangerous gimmicks (or just regular gimmicks) which only encourage out the worst in people. We already have plenty of examples of how t’internet can be used to feed the worst elements of the human psyche…

My personal view? Well, it makes perfect sense for these applications to exist and if there is a demand for them (beyond the hype and humour factor) then they will continue and develop along with that demand. They represent an element of social interaction that is just as real and valid as any other. Afterall, it would be naive (dare I say wishful?) to expect people to leave their hang-ups at the door when they come onto the net. I wouldn’t use them, and find the whole idea of anti-social networking quite repulsive – where it is genuinely meant. However, I do find it interesting to watch the discussion generated as people observe afresh elements of their day-to-day interactive and communicative lives from the real world translated to the online world. It is almost like looking in the mirror and seeing the enlarged pores we try to ignore each day illuminated with satirical disco lights – puss and all!

Gross, but life.

Counting Prayers

Spirituality might not sound like something that should really have a presence online. However, I find I have reason to speak of it as I blog from the 50th floor of the Millennium Hilton Hotel, New York on a glorious Sunday morning.

My mother and I have just returned from a service at St Paul’s Chapel - known as “the little chapel that stood”. On 11th September 2001, the chapel witnessed the world-changing terror attacks first hand, and was the only structure in the square around the WTC that did not suffer any damage at all. That, in itself, is an amazing feat, that cannot really be explained by earthly-minded people. However, the chapel then played an important part in the emergency efforts, with firefighters sleeping in the pews as the round-the-clock rescue efforts got under way.

Today, the chapel is more of a museum, with exhibits around the edges detailing events and banners of support still hanging on walls around. There is a constant flow of site-seers, even throughout services, and the place seems to be constantly busy with people – for many of whom this is a kind of pilgrimage.

For us, it is the nearest church celebrating Eucarist close to the hotel (I can see the chapel from the window of the hotel landing (as pictured). We went to experience the quite different style of service at this Episcopal church. What we found, was that we ended up at the launch of a spiritual online iniciative.

Today, at St Paul’s Chapel, the Counting Prayers project was launched. A very simple prayer, aimed at tackling world poverty, was said several times (followed by the church’s traditional response, which is to sing “we are your hands, we are your voice”), thus launching an online project to count the number of times this prayer is said and how many prayers it will take before the UN Millennium Delvelopment Goals are met. The site can be found at www.countingprayers.org and I have a copy of the counter here on my blog, so we can keep up with how they are doing.

Religious people (not just Christians) are suddenly realising the power of the Internet to spread prayer. What will be interesting to see (and study prehaps) is the way in which the t’internet is used in relation to spirituality in the future. Will it be a way of just delivering messages and counting support for spiritual ideologies? Will it become a part of the spiritual experience? Can you have a spiritual experience using a computer? Is this what we want?

I may well have to come back to these ideas. For now, I shall leave you with them… as I really want to enjoy the view!