Clearly, this is not the place to debate the “right” versus the “good.”

In closing, I’ll only suggest that if you want to tweet the legislative sessions, then give up your seat to someone who will devote him/herself completely to the job, and instead join the press corps. Visitors can (and should) tweet what they witness: That is why they attend the sessions.

The Deputies, on the other hand, should take on the discipline of being fully present to the session for a couple of hours, and tweet to their hearts’ content in between. (Human beings cannot, by the way, multitask. Plenty of research has shown that you cannot tweet and drive at the same time, so the argument that “I think better when I’m tweeting” is the red herring.)

Stephen

Generally speaking, in pastoral care, I do not sit there and takes notes, for example. But when I meet with couples for pre-marital counseling and we’re covering family history, I often take notes for future reference. Disrespectful? I don’t think so.

Sitting in a room with 800 people, I do not think it is disrespectful to tweet — if it doesn’t distract other people. My guess is that 25% of Deputies in Anaheim were accessing the Internet while the House was in session. And yet the world continued to spin.

There are, I think, at least three issues here. One is the paternalistic attitude of determining what a Deputy may or may not do. Lots of us would like to be treated as adults. Second, there is a related question about the effectiveness of Deputies. If it doesn’t harm anyone else, and if I can serve as an effective Deputy, what’s the downside to me tweeting or otherwise using the net? Then there is the potential upside to changing the policy. Might there be benefits in me being able to check with others about specific bits of legislation or things that are said? Might there be benefits in us sharing our experience with the wider church and the world?

David, and others, I’m not asking the church to give me electricity or Wifi. I can use my own stuff to get access.

Speaking of which, surely there’s a better way to run things than killing entire forests every day to fill three-ring binders? It’s all related. General Convention needs to get with the times.

Peace,
Scott

Not that I do it regularly, I have tweeted during worship. On more than one occasion the rector had made a great point during his sermon that I wanted to share. If I had waited until after the worship service had ended, who knows if I would have done it? You get distracted with other things.

There was also one occasion where the sermon so-did-not-speak-to-me that it was going to be either Twitter or the Articles of Religion. Since there was something spiritual (believe it or not) I wanted to track and follow up on Twitter, I decided that the Articles of Religion could wait this time. (I have years of reading the Articles under my belt, along with the Psalter.)

I wouldn’t dream of doing a review of the choir anthem. Too many people know me.

(There was once the time I did a review of the church school Christmas pageant in the style of David Sidaris’ “Front Row Center With Thaddeus Bristol.” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Iherkj4ano Since, again, people know me too well in the parish, I kept it fun. I made sure to mention all the names I could. I may be crazy but not stupid.)

I can’t think of a higher compliment for my rector’s sermon than to let people around the world know about it.

I can’t think of better advertising (yes, advertising) for worship services at my parish than to send a tweet out?

I do know there has been at least one person that has shown up on Sunday morning because of my Web 2.0 stuff. http://twitter.com/ehelm Considering my parish is 20-25 minutes from downtown Everett, don’t think it was simply because we both list Everett in our profiles.

Getting back to delegates to GC and Twitter, I can’t think of a better way of calling “bullshit” on a speaker than to have someone tweet a web link that disproves a point being made in a speech on the floor. Just sayin’ that sometimes we all have need of encouragement to not bear false witness.

I can say without a shadow of a doubt that the wide ranging discussions and sometimes breaking news quality of some tweets following the GC hashtag enhanced the experience for people following along.

Twitter has become a pretty powerful communication tool.

Way to shut down the conversation, Stephen….

(Hint: Not all cultures define “respect” as sitting quietly and listening to someone drone on. Ever been to an Orthodox church?)

If you have difficulty focusing because of ADD, and you think that typing would help, then take notes.

So let me ask you this: Do you tweet in Church during worship? Why or why not?

Stephen

Stephen–I can see your point. But not everyone defines “respect” the way you do. As someone who struggles with ADD, I find it terribly difficult to sit still and pay attention to people talking for long periods of time. If I were tweeting from GC, it might actually help me pay BETTER attention if I was trying to distill what someone was saying into a 140-character tweet.

But, then again, it might not.

I think it’s unfair to compare getting up to go to the restroom and tweeting. One is a physical necessity and the other is a distraction.

Again, I use Social Web tools all the time for collaboration, and I have been part of conferences that are tweeting as a meta-conversation about the learning. It’s absolutely great. But the contexts are different.

I believe that for the House to do its job, we owe it to one another to put aside all distractions to devote our attention to the primary business, with the same concentration and devotion as to prayer. It’s not that we can’t pay attention and tweet at the same time, it’s that we show respect to one another by not tweeting at the same time.

Taking notes is different. When you take notes, you’re in conversation with yourself. When you Tweet, you are in conversation with the world, and you’re not only “speaking” but “listening” as well.

Stephen
L2, Ohio

Right now the world can access legislation and the status of legislation online from the church website in real time. I think convention information has become more accessible to the world — for instance, as soon as legislation is reported out of committee or voted on in a house, the information is available to the world at the same instant as it is recorded at convention (see gc2009.org/ViewLegislation). The question is whether thousands of dollars need to be spent so that deputies can have private access to the internet on the floor of the House. Certainly they already get access in their hotel rooms, in other wifi hotspots or by going to the computer kiosks.

If the cost for a wifi hot spot goes way down by 2012, it would be a non-issue and it should be installed. But the electrical power and the access costs for making the floor a wifi hotspot seem to be the real reason why deputies in session can’t access the web, not some conspiracy to keep deputies from accessing information.

I REALLY don’t like the idea that deputies are told that they may not communicate–I don’t care *what* the format is. Deputies are grown-ups, and we ought not to be “managing by exception.”

If there’s a problem with some individuals, deal with those people. Otherwise, it simply looks like the church is afraid for people outside of convention to know what’s going on. And it’s not as if “they” (whoever “they” are) can control the flow of information anyway. All they do is delay the inevitable, and create ill will and suspicion in the process.

While the House is in session, I can get up to use the restroom. I can receive notes. I can walk over to another table to chat with someone. All of these things would permit me to be influenced, were I so inclined.

This, of course, invites the question: is outside influence a bad thing? Must good decisions be made in a bubble? But I digress.

If we are really concerned with outside influence, we’d want to sequester the House. To permit one kind of outside access (free access to the outside world by Deputies) but not another (internet access) exposes the double standards at work here.

Peace,
Scott

Frankly, I see little downside to opening things up, and there’s plenty of upside.

When used as many did this past year at GC, it’s the equivalent of taking notes in class. If anyone would like to make the assertion that a person taking notes in a class is not paying attention, I’d be glad to hear the case for banning Twitter on that assumption.

Following the conversation here, I believe I’m on the side of not tweeting from the floor of the House.

Thanks so much for this piece, though!!!!

Stephen
L2, Ohio

SG

I’ll write more about this, but I think your premise is flawed (just as I didn’t state any particular argument very clearly). There are plenty of Deputies who can tweet and pay attention to the proceedings. I do not need to be infantilized and told what to do or not do. If elected again, I certainly will fully enter into the work of being a Deputy. My failure to do so would be rightly criticized.

Were I to attempt knitting, I would be unable to pay attention to meetings. But I can recognize that this is different for others, whose attention is actually aided by a seemingly unrelated activity.

There’s a generational issue at work here. For people younger than me, texting is second nature.

To put my point another way, if we want General Convention to be connected to people outside the church geek set and the bureaucratic love-fest, we need to try new things. Lots of people don’t give a @#$! about “media”. They want relationships. And tweets can help create them.

Peace,
Scott

P.S. “Please” was a bit over the top for you methinks. I’m wondering why this one is so annoying. Really, I am.

But I believe that when people have no solid information to fill in blanks, most of us tend to fill in blanks with fears and anxieties. I think our official as well as unofficial communications folk do well when they further appropriate transparency.