Granted, as a deep student of Carl Gustav Jung and Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Yungblut’s definitions of those three adjectives may not have exactly been old-school. This particularly goes for his reflections on the word “evangelical.” But the dynamic conversation among these qualities — different definitions and all — may be vital if Friends are to grow in usefulness to the Body of Christ, and to those who’ve not yet been convinced.

https://blog.canyoubelieve.me/2018/10/quakerism-of-future.html

Throughout Quaker faith, divergence from its roots has brought newer, modern audiences to Quakers and progressed with new pathways while abandoning the shared past commonalities. Yet as a splintered tradition, Quakers have begun to suffer each other as distant relatives do when dining during the holidays; a failing coordination of growth which has led instead to disunity and a lack of understanding and respect for common roots essential to creating a mutually enhancing ecosystem of faith grounded in the Light.

Convergent Friends as New Jazz Traditionalists

Don McCormick’s piece has a bold title: Can Quakerism Survive? He talks about thr decline that many Friends geoups have been experiening and wonders who it is that might have. vision for twenty-first century Friends.

The article has garnered over eighty comments. The range and depth of that conversation has been humbling as as editor. But this is a good cross-section of visions of Quakerism. An excerpt from McCormick:

Over the past 40 years, I have been part of and seen organizations that had high ideals and did good work but were focused on internal dynamics and paid little attention to threats to their existence. As a result, they went under. I worry that our yearly, quarterly, and monthly meetings will also.

Yesterday I had a nice video chat with my friend Greg Woods, whose article, Organizing Young Adult Friends Online, appeared in November’s Friends Journal. Greg and I have been having variations on this conversation for years. Back in 2011, we worked together alongside Stephen Dotson to put together a now-dated Young Adult Friends website (watch us eat in double-time in its promotional video!). I believe it was the fourth YAF organizing website I had built since the mid-90s. Greg is now putting together a network of Quaker campus ministries. It’s one of those obvious needs that I hope Friends will support.

• Strongtowns blog and podcast. Charles Marohn
• Geography of Nowhere. James Howard Kunstler’s 1993 book on suburban sprawl, which I loved at the time.
• The Big Sort. Bill Bishop, 2008.
• The Great Good Place. Ray Oldenburg. Popularized the “third places” concept of places people can gather together outside of home and work (as example: the coffee shop in which we met, Grooveground, didn’t seem to mind six people nattering on about urbanism until closing time).
• Amy Cuddy’s Ted Talk, “Your body language shapes who you are” (in our context, we were suggesting a correlation between road rage and the physical poses of driving)
• The End of the Suburbs.  Leigh Gallagher, 2014
• Fighting Traffic. Peter D. Norton
• Wrestling with Moses. Anthony Flint’s 2009 book that goes behind the scenes of Jane Jacob’s planning battles with the near-mythic highway builder Robert Moses, a subtext that underlies Death and Life but is mostly just hinted at.
• Antifragile: Things That Gain with Disorder. Nassim Nicholas Taleb, 212.
• Jacobin Magazine has published pieces about how Jane Jacob’s insights and language have been coopted by market forces. See “Liberalism and Gentrification” and “The People’s Playground.”
• I kept thinking about a big issue Jacobs kepts skirting about: race.  It’s really impossible for me to look at urban patterns without thinking about Ta-Nehisi Coates’s “The Case for Reparations.” Decades of redlining and the racial components of who gets mortgages is a big factor in our social geography (see also TNC’s Atlantic colleague Alexis C. Madrigal’s “The Racist Housing Policy That Made Your Neighborhood” and ponder why charming Collingswood is 82 percent white while adjoining Camden is only 18 percent).
• Robert Moses: The Master Builder of New York. Pierre Christin and Olivier Balez. A graphic novel of Robert Moses (no way!). “How New York Became New York” is an review of the novel.

Update: And also, from Genevieve’s list:

• Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Douglas Adams, for its absurdist humor around the bureaucracies of planning
• Green Metropolis. David Owen,
• “What’s Up With That: Building Bigger Roads Actually Makes Traffic Worse,” an article by Adam Mann in Wired on the phenomenon of induced demand.
• Vision Zero Initiative
• The Pine Barrens. John McPhee, the classic which I brought up.
• The Power Broker. Robert Caro.
• The Ecology of Commerce. Paul Hawken
• Organizing in the South Bronx. Jim Rooney
• Re: race: Dalton Conley’s Being Black, Living in the Red and When Work Disappears by William Julius Wilson.
• Re: bicycles: Urban Bikers’ Tricks & Tips. Dave Glowacz

Excuse me for the next six months while I read. 🙂

Many of these same constraints and models underlay blogs as a whole. Most blog home pages don’t feature the most post popular posts or the one the writer might think most important. No, they show the most recent. As in comments, the entries are ordered in reverse chronological order. The pressure on writers is to repeat themselves so that their main talking points regularly show up on the homepage. There are ways around this (pinned posts, a list of important posts, plug-ins that will show what’s most popular or getting the most comments), but they’re rarely implemented and all have drawbacks.

Here’s the dilemma: the regular readers who follow your blog (read your magazine, subscribe to your Youtube, etc.) probably already know where you stand on particular issue. They generally share many of your opinions and even when they don’t, they’re still coming to your site for some sort of confirmation.

The times when blogs and websites change lives–and they do sometimes–is when someone comes by to whom your message is new. Your arguments or viewpoint helps them make sense of some growing realization that they’ve intuited but can’t quite name or define. The writing and conversation provides a piece of the puzzle of a growing identity.

(The same is true of someone walking into a new church; it’s almost a cliche of Friends that a newcomer feels “as if I’ve been Quaker my whole life and didn’t know it!” If taught gently, the Quaker ethos and metaphors give shape to an identity that’s been bubbling up for some time.)

So if we’re rethinking the mechanical default of comments, why not rethink blogs? I know projects such as Medium are trying to do that. But would it be possible to retrofit existing online publications and blogs in a way that was both future-proof and didn’t require inordinate amounts of categorization time?

What is Sidewiki?
Google started its sidewiki project in September 2009. It’s a sidebar that can attach to any page on the internet via the Google Toolbar. Users gain the ability to comment on any page on the internet. Google uses a ranking system based on votes and various algorithms to determine the order of the comments.

When a user of the Google Toolbar visits a page with Sidewiki notes they see a small blue button of the left side of the page with two white chevrons (see screenshot on the right). Clicking on this opens the Sidewiki sidebar. Here they will see comments left by previous visitors. They are be able to add their own comments.

Visionaries have long dreamed of a web with this kind of two-way communication but similar sidebar commenting systems have failed to gain enough momentum to become viable. If this were just another venture-capital-fueled attempt, it would be something marketers could ignore unless and until it became widely used. But with Google behind Sidewiki, it’s a service we need to take seriously from the start.

Users Talking Back
When we put together websites, we get to control the message of our little corner of the internet–we have the final say on the material we present. If Sidewiki becomes popular, this will no longer be true. Fans, disgruntled employees and competitors can all start marking up our sites–yikes! But those brands that have embraced the Web 2.0 model will love another place where they can interact with their audience. Today’s marketing goal is mindshare–how much of a user’s attention span can you win over. The more you get visitors to think about your brand or your message, the more likely that they will buy or recommend your product or service. You need to be active on whatever online channel your audience is using.

Watching the Conversations
What’s a good brand manager to do? The first thing is to make sure you have the latest version of Google Toolbar installed on your working browser (get it here) and that you have the Sidewiki service enabled (I’ve started a Sidewiki for this entry so if it’s working you’ll see the blue button in your browser).

Brand Management
Google allows website owners the first comment. If you are registered as the owner of a site via Google Webmaster Tools, then you get first say: when you post to the Sidewiki of a page you control, Google gives you the top spot. This is very good. Should you do it?

Probably not. At least not yet. I don’t see people using Sidewiki yet. Most websites still don’t have any comments. Even Google’s projects often fail to gain traction and there’s no guarantee that Sidewiki will take off. If your page doesn’t have any comments, I wouldn’t recommend that you make the first. If there are no Sidewiki entries, the blue button won’t be there and visitors probably won’t even think to comment.

If you notice that a visitor has started a Sidewiki for your site by leaving a comment, then it’s time to log into your Google Webmasters account and leave an official welcome message. Even though you’re second to the conversation, you will get first position thanks to your ownership of the website.

The introductory note should briefly welcome visitors. It will appear alongside your website so there’s no need to repeat your mission statement, but it is a place where you can give helpful navigation tips and stress any actionable items that the casual visitor might miss. You might consider inviting visitors to sign up for your site’s email list, for example.

The Future
Users can tie their Sidewiki comments into Twitter and Facebook accounts. They can leave video comments. If the service takes off there will surely be a mini-industry built around comment optimization. Spammers will get hard at work to game the system. But none is really happening now. Despite a bit of fear-mongering on marketing blogs, Google Sidewiki is a long ways away from being something to lose sleep over. 

More Information:

• Google Sidewiki page
• Sidewiki Bookmarklet (useful for browsers without Google Toolbar support)
• Google Toolbar Wikipedia entry
• Techcrunch on the Sidewiki debut
• Google Webmaster Tools

Of all of the many people I spoke with, only one had any kind of
featured role at the conference. Without exception my conversation
partners were fascinating and insightful about the issues that had
brought them to Philadelphia, yet I sensed a pervading sense of missed
opportunity: hundreds of lives rearranged and thousands of air miles
flown mostly to listen to others talk. I spent my long commute home
wondering what it would have been like to have spent the weekend in the
hotel lobby recording ten minute Youtube interviews with as many
conference participants as I could. We would have ended up with a
snapshot of faith-based peace organizing circa 2009.

Next weekend I’ll be burning up more of the ozone layer by flying to California to co-lead a workshop with Wess and Robin M. (details at ConvergentFriends.org,
I’m sure we can squeeze more people in!) The participant list looks
fabulous. I don’t know everyone but there’s at least half a dozen
people coming who I would be thrilled to take workshops from. I really
don’t want to spend the weekend hearing myself talk! I also know there
are plenty of people who can’t come because of commitments and costs.

So we’re going to try some experiments–they might work, they might not. On QuakerQuaker, there’s a new group for the event and a discussion thread open to all QQ members (sign up is quick and painless). For those of you comfortable with the QQ tagging system, the Delicious tag for the event is “quaker.reclaiming2009”. Robin M has proposed using #convergentfriends as our Twitter hashtag.

There’s all sorts of mad things we could try (Ustream video or live
blogging via Twitter, anyone?), wacky wacky stuff that would distract
us from whatever message the Inward Christ might be trying to give us.
But behind all this is a real questions about why and how we should
gather together as Friends. As the banking system tanks, as the environment
strains, as communications costs drop and we find ourselves in a curious new economy, what challenges and opportunities open up?