Douglas Floyd » Blogs Worth Reading

Integrating my interests and my work

dougfloyd — Thu, 30 Nov 2006 16:47:05 +0000

I wrote about the idea of integrity and integration earlier in the month. The divisions between our personal and public lives do not appeal to me. I want to live as a whole person whether in the workplace, the ministry, the home or even online. When working at Philips, I had the opportunity to use my interest in creativity and play to lead workshops among co-workers. This excited me because within the workforce, I found a way to integrate personal interests with work in a way the I believe benefited the company.

Another key interest in my life has been community/relationship building. That’s why I track social networks and trends in culture. I am interested in how these trends online and offline will impact the formation of relationships. I’ve had the privilege of bringing this interest in community building into several companies, but the focus has primarily been within a company not between the company and their outside stakeholders (customers, vendors, et al).

So I’ve tried to find connecting points between this interest and the company I’ve been working with most recently: Jewelry Television. We’re making some baby steps toward community/social networking. They recently gave approval for me to start a Jewelry Television blog. It’s very low radar right now. We’ve not promoted or mentioned it much at all.

This is still an ongoing experiment. While I want the blog to direct people to our site (so I post ads and videos from the site), I also want to blog to reveal the human side of the company and open the door for conversation with customers. Eventually, it is a step toward building a more socialnet based dialogue between JTV and customers as well as other folks online.

Take a look at it, if you have chance and give me any feedback. I’d appreciate it.

Integrity and Integration

dougfloyd — Fri, 10 Nov 2006 22:16:54 +0000

For multiple world, our modern/postmodern world has forced many of us to split our lives and now even our identities into multiple slots such as work and home, public and private, inner and outer. Now many thinkers even suggest there is no real person behind the roles we play. I don’t have time to respond to that here, but I disagree.

The nature of personhood is more complex and interconnected than modernism may have realized and the Church Fathers offered a far more nuanced view of the person than the modern idea of the individual. This tendency to create separate identities between home, office, house of faith, hobbies, friends, and the multivarious online social computing personas is dis-integrating. It does tend to make us think there is really no me to me: just another face, another mask. This potentially could lead to many negative and even dangerous manifestations.

Since I believe the person is real, I believe that integration of these various worlds and identities are important. Thus my values at home are the same at work are the same among my friends are the same in the online world. I try to be the same person everywhere (inner and outer).

Thus this blog does not section off technology away from faith away from art or other interests, and that’s why I put the Pope Benedict XVI quote earlier. It captures some of the essence I think the word

Now enough from me. I’ll have to spend more time on this on my Floydville blog sometime. If anyone disagrees, feel free to let me know.

Interview with Songbird Founder, Rob Lord

dougfloyd — Thu, 02 Nov 2006 22:01:23 +0000

A couple weeks back, I mentioned the developed preview of Songbird(the Firefox of media players). I think this signals another shift toward convergence. For those who are hyped up on this, you may want to read this interview with Rob Lord from the P2P blog.

Web 2.0 goes to church

dougfloyd — Tue, 24 Oct 2006 16:00:17 +0000

What does Web 2.0 have to do with church? Well, that’s a question I’ve been pondering some lately, thinking about how the world of social networking has interesting implications for people of faith. Turns out someone else has been thinking about this. Dawn sent me a link for Church Marketing Sucks: a blog look at church, Seth Godin, word of mouth, and more.

Go to Google School

admin — Thu, 24 Aug 2006 19:44:27 +0000

I discovered a helpful section on Lifehacker today. They’ve tagged a whole series of articles called “Google School.” These entries provide helpful tips on searching. I like it, so maybe you will to.

Search Blog Help

dougfloyd — Mon, 07 Aug 2006 18:43:16 +0000

Lifehacker offers helpful tips on searching for blogs in Technorati.

Iranian Bloggers

dougfloyd — Sun, 23 Jul 2006 21:48:27 +0000

Lisa Goldman continues to provide interesting comments, links and information on the Middle East conflict. She also provides content for Global Voices Online. This is a great clearing for what bloggers are saying about various issues around the world. I ran across this interesting piece on Iranian bloggers commenting the current Israel-Lebanon war.

Thank You!

dougfloyd — Sat, 01 Jul 2006 23:34:13 +0000

Jeremy’s wondering the appropriate way to respond to a thank you. Thanks for the blog Jer.

Grogger?

dougfloyd — Thu, 22 Jun 2006 21:38:35 +0000

Jeremy Floyd thinks I've started yet another blog only to become a grogger (a blogger who falls asleep at the wheel). He's probably right, but who knows?

From Floydville to Floydville

dougfloyd — Thu, 22 Jun 2006 19:07:23 +0000

I've been blogging occasionally at floydville.blogspot.com for the last several years. Primarily I blog occasional meditations. Instead of short, pithy bogs, I tend to write reflective post about living a life of faith as a trinitarian Christian. Lately I've wanted to add a few other aspects to the blog such as the latest web trends I've been observing, so I wanted the capacity to add categories. Blogspot seems the be able to add this feature through some scripts but it may be easier in WordPress. So I am going to experiment in both for a while. Then I'll choose one blog to focus all my new posts. If you want of sense of my previous reflections, visit floydville.blogspot.com.