LDS General Conference and the Twitter Backchannel

General

Early in the evolution of the Internet, a messaging system developed which allowed connected members to send text messages to each other. Instant Messaging, ICQ, SMS, and eventually Twitter all spawned from those early text messaging systems. During technical conferences and conventions an instant messaging channel would be setup for connected attendees to converse with each other in the background during presentations at the conferece. This background communication is called a “backchannel”.

Twitter has opened up a new backchannel. Now people don’t have to be at the conference or convention to participate in the background conversation. Yesterday’s LDS General Conference sessions were a marked example of this backchannel. Twitter generally works in a subscription model. That is, I choose to receive someone’s Twitter messages, or in other words, I choose to “follow” them. I receive the short messages sent out by those that I follow and do not receive any messages from those that I do not follow. However, all Twitter messages are broadcast on Twitter’s public timeline. Several programs designed to facilitate receiving and sending Twitter messages have incorporated an ability to “search” the public timeline for specific words. Any messages that meet the search criteria get displayed and the rest continue to be ignored. Through some kind of a general agreement, the community of Twitter users interested in LDS General Conference used a special tag #ldsconf in all their Twitter messages (called “tweets”) about conference. And in that way a Twitter backchannel came into being during the General Conference sessions.

All that is just background!

I sat at my computer yesterday during the morning and afternoon sessions of Conference, watching conference on a TV and watching the Twitter backchannel on my computer. It’s was a very interesting experience. Most of what was on the backchannel was people quoting snippets from the talks. For instance:

lutez The 6 destructive d’s doubt, discouragement, distraction, diligence (lack), disappointment, disobedience. #ldsconf

fringies RT @bjhomer: “Net Usable Faith = Total Faith – Doubt and Disbelief. Interesting concept. #ldsconf (Said better than I did!)

somethinggirl “You don’t have to spend time as a Laman or Lemual to know that it’s better to be a Nephi or Jacob.” -Ballard #ldsconf #ldsconf

myldsnotebook We can not do a Google search to gain a testimony -Elder Ballard, I love it! #ldsconf

somethinggirl “We live in an area when boundries of decency/good taste are being pushed to the point where there’s no boundries at all.” #ldsconf #ldsconf

cboyack “The commands of God have taken a beating in the vacillating marketplace of ideas.” – E. Ballard #ldsconf

cougartex We need strong Christians who can defend the gospel of Christ against moral relativism and militant atheism. – Elder Christofferson #ldsconf

These were interesting in that they quickly showed what was important to the people watching the conference. More importantly, I was quickly supplied with a delightful list of quotes with little work on my part. The program I was using (from Yahoo! called “Sideline”) gave me the ability to “favorite” any of the tweets in the stream and collected them in a separate tab. I could later export this list of favorites and have my own quotebook. I really like that capability.

Another important part of the backchannel were the snippets of additional information. For instance, Sterling Fluharty (tweeting as PhDinHistory) sent out a couple of very interesting sets of statistics as the historical report for the Church was being read in General Conference’s afternoon session:

Increase in Children of Record during 2008 was up 24% over previous year – this could be the largest annual total since early 1980s #ldsconf

Annual growth of LDS wards & branches: 1.65% in 2004, 1.56% in 2005, 1.43% in 2006, 1.28% in 2007, 1.01% in 2008 #ldsconf

Converts Baptized per Missionary: 4.32 in 2003, 4.72 in 2004, 4.67 in 2005, 5.13 in 2006, 5.3 in 2007, 5.06 in 2008 #ldsconf

I was pleased that he had the data at hand and was able to quickly calculate these interesting statistics. It certainly added a new dimension to what was going on in the conference.

In another example, when President Monson announced that Elder Neil L. Andersen had been called to the Quorum of the Twelve to replace Elder Wirthlin, the official Church twitterer LDSNewsRoom sent out a link to Elder Andersen’s bio information. Later when the new Young Men’s Presidency and the new Sunday School Presidency were announced, links to that information were tweeted by LDSNewsRoom. While it was information that was fairly close at hand, I didn’t have to go look for it, Twitter brought it to me.

I’m looking forward to today’s General Conference sessions … and to the Twitter backchannel. It definitely adds another dimension to the conference!

We’re A Two-Car Family Once Again

General
"New" Toyota Avalon
"New" Toyota Avalon

Nina and I drove down to Orem today and picked up our new (to us) Toyota Avalon which was bought for us last Friday at an auction in Las Vegas. It was a good day to be somewhere besides outdoors as it was cold, windy, with rain and snow squalls.

We drove the Tracker down and drove two cars back … with two nice respites. We stopped on the way back at Heather’s to show Ty what he had done for us. They left almost right behind us to go to California for Spring Break.

The second stop was in Ogden at Maple Garden Chinese restaurant. This was one of our favorite restaurants when we lived (many years ago) in Pleasant View and the food was as good, or better, than we remembered. Nina ordered take out to bring home!

We’re back to being a two-car family … one car for each person. While it hasn’t been a problem, I think we both appreciate the ability to not have to coordinate every trip out of the house with whether or not the car will be available!

Triple-T For March 31st

TripleT

Time to put some random thoughts down!

  1. We had a wonderful week of spring temperatures, the snow had all melted, and I was right ready to pull the cover off the motorhome and start getting it ready to do some local trips. Then the weather changed and we’ve had a week of winter. It’s snowing now … and thundering. If there’s thunder then there must be lightning. I don’t think I’ve ever seen snow lightning.
  2. The “new” car has passed the inspection and hopefully we’ll go down to Salt Lake and pick it up on Friday. It’ll be nice to being a two-car family, but more importantly, to have a much more comfortable car to drive longer distances than my Chevrolet Tracker.
  3. We have General Conference of the Church this coming weekend. I really enjoy conference and am looking forward to it.
  4. I’ve put in a bid on building a website for another small city in southeastern Idaho. I’ll hopefully know tomorrow night if my bid is accepted.
  5. Small towns seem to have the ability to spend money on a website where the larger cities are cutting budgets. I’m wondering why that difference.
  6. A week from today the local school district is running another levy election. The last one failed in February. They cut back on the amount being asked and are running another election. If this one fails, the school system here will be decimated. The prospects of the levy passing don’t look good, however.
  7. I’m about halfway through the second book in the Wheel of Time fantasy series. I think this is my fifth time reading this book in the series. I’d still rather read the book than do about anything else.
  8. Last fall I joined a newly-forming Rotary Club. This will be the fourth Rotary Club in Pocatello and will be called the Portneuf Rotary Club. In order to charter a new Rotary Club, there have to be at least twenty signed-up members. A week ago we reached that goal and will be chartered by the end of April. It’s kind of cool as I’ll get a Rotary pin to wear on my lapel that says “Charter Member”.
  9. After upgrading my Macbook’s hard drive, I needed a new backup hard drive for the Time Machine software (very cool Mac backup software). I started formatting the new backup drive on Saturday morning and the formatting program is still running 84 hours later. Something doesn’t seem right.
  10. Another installment of Tuesday Ten Things is ready to publish. ‘Til next week!

Buying A Car

General

Yesterday I bought a car that I’ve never seen from a person I’ve never met using text messaging and Twitter. I still find it amazing. Nevertheless, in a few days we’ll be a two-car family once again.

I usually go down to Salt Lake around the last Friday of the month for a couple of meetings I enjoy attending. This time both meetings were on the same day with a podcasting conference during the day. The monthly CTO Breakfast (hosted by Phil Windley) started the day at 8 a.m. The podcasting conference was interesting, put on by another friend Thom Allen. Then the day was capped off by the monthly Geek/Blogger dinner arranged by another good friend, Laura Moncur and her husband Mike. So, I drove down Thursday evening to stay at Heather’s place in North Salt Lake. I sent Heather a text message on Thursday to see if the guest bed was available. It was, she replied. I got there about 9 p.m. Ty opened the door…

“Father! I didn’t know you were coming down!”

Then he turned to Danielle who was at the computer, “Did you know grandpa was coming?”

“No,” she replied.

When I saw Heather the next morning as I was leaving for the breakfast, she told me she was sitting in the Bountiful Temple in a session when she suddenly remembered she hadn’t told anyone I was coming. I appreciate the use of the guest bedroom. Someday I need to fix the hole in the wall that’s pretty much my fault….

The breakfast and conference were held at Neumont College in South Jordan. Both were a lot of fun and I enjoyed the day. Kudos to Thom Allen for putting together a very good podcasting conference. About 9:30 a.m., my iPhone rang and it was Ty. His friend Greg was in Las Vegas at an auto auction and there was a Toyota Avalon coming up on the auction in 9 minutes. It sounded like it would be a pretty good deal. I called Nina and we agreed on a price that we’d go up to. Several text messages and tweets later, we had bought the car. It looks to be a very good deal … we bought the car at about what a dealer would have bought it for, so we saved the dealer’s markup. Greg, who does this car buying regularly, will have the car thoroughly checked out and can return it to the auction if everything isn’t in good order. If all checks out, we’ll go down to Salt Lake next week, hand over the check, and come back with the car. It was just that easy.

Triple-T For March 24th

TripleT

It’s time again for Ten Things Tuesday!

  1. One really nice thing about big snowstorms near the end of March is that I can justify waiting for it to melt rather than dragging out the snowblower. The sun will surely be shining the next day.
  2. The other nice thing about big snowstorms near the end of March is that they are very wet snows and we definitely need the moisture.
  3. I cranked up the pressure on my CPAP machine (used to treat sleep apnea) and have really liked the results. It took quite a while to find something online that would tell me how to adjust the pressure setting. While doing the search, I found that my machine went out of production the month after I bought it.
  4. We’ve had some visitors from the eastern part of the United States (one from Connecticut) and sometimes it takes visitors to help appreciate the beauty we have around us.
  5. There are some fabulous canyons to the east of Logan. On Saturday afternoon before Ashlyn and Eric’s wedding reception, Nina and I drove up to the Hardware Ranch State Wildlife Management Area. It was a beautiful 15 mile drive through the canyon. We will definitely go back sometime. By the way, it’s interesting to me that the visitor’s center for the ranch is only open in the winter, and is now closed for the summer and fall.
  6. I’m wondering about, and doing some research, on what can be done so that I might be able to avoid going into a nursing home as my health deteriorates in my old age. Looking around my house it is clear that it’s only good for reasonably able bodied folks.
  7. One of my nieces said yesterday that she could see no value in algebra as it is never used outside of school. I’ve been making notes of the times that I’ve used algebra since then. I have surprised myself and have begun to wonder what people do when they don’t know algebra. It’ll be a blog post one of these days.
  8. Car shopping is not fun. It seems that all the advantage is with the dealership. Being a one-car family is going just OK. Nina and I have to do a lot more schedule coordination than before.
  9. I’m hooked again on the Wheel of Time fantasy series. The final (?) volume in the series is rumored to be available by Christmas. I plan to finish rereading the entire series, all eleven plus the prequel, by the time the next volume is published.
  10. This marks the third installment of Triple-T. It’s also getting shorter! That’s likely a Very Good Thing.

Emotional Rollercoasters

General
Bear River Massacre Memorial
Bear River Massacre Memorial

What an amazing and emotional time we’ve had for the past couple of weeks. Lots of family visiting a week ago (including a surprise visitor) and then a wedding and a funeral this past week. It seems there’s been no time to do much with the blog, so today has been pretty much dedicated to getting pictures posted in the picture album and to writing up a bit about the events.

Last week on Friday the 13th, my nephew Bryan took his wife Sydnee into the hospital to deliver their baby. Bryan is the oldest son of my sister Terry. In the course of events, the baby Dana Arlene Harris did not survive long after the birth and Sydnee was also in pretty serious condition. She had lost a significant amount of blood and is just now beginning to return to health. An autopsy was performed on the baby (the results will not be known for a while yet, if there are any useful results) and the burial services were scheduled for this past Friday, March 20th, down in Salt Lake.

I took mother down for the services on Friday. We first went to the funeral home for a viewing at 11 a.m., then to the cemetery for a short graveside service about noon, and then went over to Bryan and Sydnee’s ward house for a luncheon put on by their Relief Society sisters. It was a beautiful spring day with temperatures in the upper 70’s. If I had to pick a day for a burial, that would have been the kind of day I would have chosen. Bryan and Sydnee were most gracious and, although this is perhaps one of the hardest things that parents can do, they were both rock solid.

Of course, the day and the events brought memories strongly to the surface from some 34 years ago when Nina went into the hospital in Neuss, Germany and after an emergency C-section, our daughter Traci was born and then died about twenty minutes later. The time after Trevor’s death eight years ago and all that had to be done in such a short amount of time came to mind as well. My heart really goes out to them and I understand a little bit about the emotional rollercoaster that Bryan and Sydnee are riding. You never forget. They are always close by in memory.

I’ve posted some pictures from that day in my picture album. Click on the link or click on Pictures! at the top of the page.

On a high note, this was also the week that Ashlyn got married. She’s Nina’s niece and has been attending BYU-Idaho and was kind of despairing that she’d never get married! Then all of a sudden the absolutely perfect guy came into her life and Eric and Ashlyn are now husband and wife for time and for all eternity.

Thursday evening, March 19th (my birthday!) we went up to the Rexburg Temple for the 6 p.m. session where Ashlyn and Eric took out their own endowments. It was a jam-packed session and a very lovely session.

Nina’s sister Pamela flew out for all of the festivities this past week and stayed at our house for the week. Her good friend from High School Anne also flew out last Wednesday and spent the rest of the week here as well.  We had a lot of fun with them here … and a lot of Very Late Nights for Nina. On Friday while I took mother to Salt Lake for the funeral, Nina, Pam and Anne went to Jackson Hole sightseeing and shopping. We all arrived home about the same time … me from Salt Lake via Pizza Hut for takeout, and them via Idaho Falls and picking up my MacBook computer that was getting an upgrade.

Saturday morning we left about 8:30 a.m. to drive to Logan where Ashlyn and Eric were to be sealed in the Logan Temple. Their sealing appointment was at 11 a.m. and we needed to be at the Temple at 10:30. We arrived quite nicely about 10:15 and by 10:45 we were in Sealing Room #1 in the Logan Temple. Lots of friends and family were there for a delightful sealing and marriage ceremony. The officiator gave them some outstanding advice (Eric’s sister did a good job of making notes later of that advice) and then pronounced them man and wife for time and for all eternity. We were very privileged to be there and to be a small part of their day.

I also took a bunch of pictures and have posted them to the picture album. Click on the link or click in Pictures! at the top of the page.

Finally, yesterday was another very busy day. In addition to normal Church responsibilities, I had an assignment as a High Counselor to speak in one of the Wards in our Stake at 12:50 p.m. Further, I had a meeting at 6 p.m. scheduled to begin the work on a Stake Preparedness Plan. Meanwhile, my favorite brother Perry had a couple of his daughters visiting (one from Las Vegas and one from Green River, Wyoming) and they were going to Soda Springs on Sunday to visit with dad. Nina and I also wanted to see our nieces and spend a few minutes with them.

So, Nina went with me to the Ward for my speaking assignment. We left directly from there at 2 p.m. and drove to Soda Springs, arriving about 3:15 p.m. We visited for about an hour at the nursing home, and then dashed back to Pocatello so I could go to my 6 p.m. meeting. We had a short, but nice visit with Mindy and Jayme and their kids. We also met Jayme’s new husband Joe for the first time. We were very happy we went over, in spite of the lousy weather! It rained most of the day here in Pocatello and when it wasn’t raining, it was snowing. However, the weather turned out to be a non-issue for all of us, which was nice.

There’s also pictures of that event posted in my picture album.

Triple-T For March 17

General, TripleT

It’s Ten Things Tuesday once again. A week passes by rather quickly it seems. So, here we go:

1. Last week was lots of fun with visiting family. Our daughter Jaelene from Chandler, Arizona brought her three sons up for a week during their Spring Break. They got here on Tuesday and left to go back home on Friday. Our son Jared from Seattle, Washington flew in on Wednesday evening and stayed until Sunday morning when he flew back to Seattle. On Friday our daughter Heather from North Salt Lake brought her husband and four children up to Soda Springs.

The purpose of all this visiting was to spend some time with my father who is in the nursing home in Soda Springs, Idaho. We all descended on the nursing home on Friday the 13th of March and spent about four hours with him and mother at the nursing home. We had a great visit.

2. Saturday, March 14th got some media attention as being “pi day“. High school geometry students and others might recognize Ï€ as ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter. The first few digits in the value of Ï€ is 3.1415926…. Ï€ is an irrational number, meaning that no matter how many decimal places are calculated, there is still a remainder. The date of March 14th (3rd month, 14th day) is one of the dates during the year which kind of approximates the value of Ï€. Wikipedia lists a number of dates which can also be characterized as “pi day”. For instance, March 4th can also be considered a Ï€ Approximation Day as that is when Ï€% of the month has elapsed (as a result, each month of the year has a Ï€ approximation date). There are many more Ï€ approximation dates based on the earth’s orbit and other arcane number combination. So, why is July 22nd another of these “Ï€ Approximation Days”?

3. We are now officially car shopping. The insurance company reported Nina’s Camry as a total loss and have given her a check for the value of the car, which is substantially less than what will be needed to appropriately replace the car. Ugh.

4. Have we reached the point where the stock market truly begins to recover? Economists suggest that when enough stockholders have just had enough of the hemoraging of the value of their stock, they just sell out and flock to the sidelines. They call this “capitulation“. I capitulated early last week and moved our 401(k) into the safest possible investments after watching more than 35% of the portfolio value evaporate. Then starting on Wednesday, the stock market started climbing and so far has grown by 9%. If that was truly the turn around point, you can thank me. If I capitulated, many others did as well as I’ve found I’m generally in the mainstream.

5. This week Nina and I both celebrate birthdays. I’m 64 on March 19th, she’s 63 on March 8th. When I write that, it seems old. I certainly don’t feel old. Consequently, I also think my dad doesn’t feel old, either. Sure would be nice if the body kept up with the mind.

6. The space shuttle Discovery launch on Sunday evening was, as always, exciting. I never get tired of watching a launch. When I was working for Systemation in Cleveland, Ohio and on a business trip to Florida, I had the opportunity to watch a launch of an unmanned Delta rocket. Our Stake President at the time worked for NASA and made arrangements for us to be at the Cape for the launch. Even though the viewing area was a mile and a half away from the launch pad, the sight was spectacular and I could feel the noise in my bones. A few years later when working for Thiokol, I made two business trips to the Cape and had the chance to go out to the launch pad where the shuttle is launched and to tour most of the facilities at the Cape. Perhaps in the lifetime of our grandchildren space flight will become commonplace. I hope they’ll occasionally think about us folks who would have done anything to get into space and never had an opportunity.

7. The hot pools at Lava Hot Springs are a lot of fun and we spent a delightful couple of hours soaking in them last Saturday. We’ll definitely go back … and I’ll take my water shoes with me next time.

8. It seems that Nina and her roll-over were topics of discussion at Church last Sunday. No one seemed to know what really happened. That resulted in an assignment given to our Home Teacher to call and make sure Nina was OK. She was and is. She’s also not very excited by all the attention.

9. I’m happy that I registered my full name as a domain name a few months ago … rolandksmith.com … there’s nothing there under that domain name (yet). But there’s now some kind of a music thing in MySpace named “Roland K. Smith & the Sinners”. They have no relationship with me, except that they wanted to buy the domain name from me. No sale. Besides, their offer was only a thousand dollars. Make that a million and I might consider.

10. Spring seems to be arriving in Pocatello. I can see green showing up under the thatch in the grass. I think it’s kind of early for spring and we don’t quite have enough snow in the mountains. Maybe a wet, rainy spring is coming?

The Relatives Keep Coming

General
Dawnmarie, The Bag Lady
Dawnmarie, The Bag Lady

This evening Nina’s sister Pam along with Pam’s daughter Ashlyn arrived. Ashlyn is getting married on Saturday in the Logan Temple and the busy wedding week has commenced for Pam. We’re glad to have her here for a couple of days. Ashlyn will be going through the Rexburg Temple on Thursday evening for her own endowment in preparation for the Temple Sealing on Saturday morning in Logan. Eric, the groom, is a fine young man and we’re happy to welcome him into the family. He’s marrying very well!

Tomorrow afternoon Dawnmarie begins her journey home. She’ll go to North Salt Lake to spend the evening with her sister Heather and family and goes from there to the Salt Lake Airport on Wednesday morning to fly back to Pittsburgh.

Dawnmarie made up a batch of caramel to bring out for me. It’s delicious and is just about all gone. My daughter Heather, also knowing my sweet tooth, gave me a sack of caramels on Friday last week. I’ll be going into sugar withdrawal in a couple of days for sure. My daughters sure do treat me well!