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Friday, August 07, 2009

One Young World Unveils Findings of Global Survey of 20-Somethings and Launches YouTube Contest to Identify Future Leaders to be Delegates at Inaugura

Global Nonprofit Calls 20-Somethings Worldwide to Participate in Phase III
Online Survey

Inaugural Summit in 2010 to Feature Counsellors Kofi Annan, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Bob Geldof, Professor Nick Haysom, EMI Music Chief Executive Elio Leoni Sceti and Oscar Morales

LONDON, Aug. 5 /PRNewswire/ -- One Young World, the global nonprofit
organization that serves as a platform to raise the voice of the next
generation of world leaders on global issues, has unveiled the findings of
a global survey of mid-20-somethings addressing the topics of Environment,
Business, Politics, Media and Religion. Co-founders David Jones and Kate
Robertson presented the findings in London on Friday, alongside Carole
Stone, Managing Director of YouGovStone, just-announced Counsellor Oscar
Morales and philanthropist Bill Liao.

"The way to create a better future is to listen to and empower the
leaders of the future. The digital revolution has not only given this
generation of young people access to knowledge and information on an
unprecedented scale but it has also given them massive influence. We've
founded One Young World to help empower the leaders of tomorrow to shape a
better future."

-David Jones

The event also marked the launch of two initiatives aimed at gathering
input from the world's 20-somethings on critical issues:

-- YouTube contest: People born between 1984 and 1986 from around the world
can go to http://www.youtube.com/OneYoungWorld upload their video submissions
on YouTube's One Young World Channel, to be voted on by the YouTube
community. Those with the most votes will be invited to be Delegates at
the 2010 Inaugural Summit in London.

-- Phase III Survey: People born between 1984 and 1986 can log on to
http://oneyoungworld.com/global-consultation/index.html to participate
in the next phase of survey research, by completing an online survey
about today's key issues.

"The global consultation process is vital to engendering a productive
dialogue at the One Young World Inaugural Summit in February, which is why
we are launching Phase III through social networking and online
communities," said Robertson, who also serves as Group Chairman of Euro
RSCG UK.

Survey findings will be used to shape the program at the One Young
World Inaugural Summit on 8-10 February, 2010, which will be attended by
designated One Young World Counsellors, including Kofi Annan, Archbishop
Desmond Tutu, Bob Geldof, Professor Nick Haysom, EMI Music Chief Executive
Elio Leoni Sceti and Oscar Morales. The One Young World Annual Summit will
be a yearly global gathering of future leaders that is truly representative
of the world's population -- weighted for the first time ever to reflect
the most populated regions and countries, and not necessarily the richest
or most politically influential.

"I hope that the delegates of One Young World, the ones who will
inherit this planet, will join us as partners in the Global Alliance for
Climate Justice."

-Kofi Annan

This is an inspiring article for young people especially. Please click on "external source" to access it in its entirety.

Labels: One Young World, religion, youth, YouTube

Permalink | Link to External Source Article

Friday, June 19, 2009

Are some churches going overboard in their attempts to package and market religion?

By JEFF STRICKLER, Star Tribune
June 13, 2009

A Church Is A Business

Eyes roll when Rabbi Hayim Herring tells his fellow clergy that they should spend an hour a day on Facebook, MySpace and Twitter.

Listeners at his seminars exchange smirks when he says blogging should be considered mandatory. They look aghast when he recommends posting short video clips from their sermons on YouTube.

It's a lot better than the reaction he used to get.

"They used to look at me as if I'd just said a four-letter word," said Herring, the former senior rabbi at Beth El Synagogue in St. Louis Park and now the executive director of STAR (Synagogues: Transformation and Renewal). But in its seven years, the organization has seen more converts to what many call one of the dirtiest words in religion: marketing.

Please click on "external source for the complete article

Labels: Facebook, Jeff Strickler, marketing, MySpace, religion, Twitter, YouTube

Permalink | Link to External Source Article

Monday, February 04, 2008

Streaming video on Internet seen as new way to spread Gospel

By Franz Klein
Catholic News Service

LA CROSSE, Wis

Streaming video is all the rage on the Internet, and some people are starting to realize how valuable a tool this technology can be in reaching out to young Catholics.

If St. Augustine were alive today, he "would have done his 'Confessions' in video and streamed it on the Internet," Travis Boudreaux, the tech-savvy Louisiana Catholic who founded Catholic-Tube.com several months ago, told The Catholic Times, newspaper of the Diocese of La Crosse.

On his Catholic-Tube blog, Boudreaux posts daily some of what he considers the best Catholic videos and podcasts uploaded to major sites such as YouTube.com and GodTube.com, as well as smaller Catholic operations such as LoveToBeCatholic.com and SQPN.com.

A veteran Web watcher, Boudreaux believes that video is the future of the Internet.

"There will always be room for audio and the written word, but video provides a dynamic that's not there otherwise," he said. "Imagine if you could see St. Augustine's emotion. There's so much that's lost without voice inflection and hand gestures."

YouTube.com was created in 2005 and was bought by Google Inc. in October 2006. According to Alexa.com's statistical analysis, YouTube is currently the third most frequented Web site on the Internet.

On YouTube, users can upload, view and share music videos and television clips, as well as video content of their own creation. More than 65 million videos have been uploaded to date. While no pornographic or nude videos are permitted, YouTube relies on its community of viewers to identify and flag such uploads, meaning there is a definite time lag before they come down.

A quick search of YouTube's contents for "Christian" will return a staggering 329,000-plus videos, while a search for "Catholic" will yield 21,000-plus results.

Several bishops use the site, including Philadelphia's Cardinal Justin Rigali, who posted a series of reflections, and Toronto Archbishop Thomas Collins, whose monthly "Lectio Divina" meditations have been watched by thousands of viewers.

But nearly half of the videos on the first page of search results for "Christianity" portray the faith in a negative light. And while a search for "Catholic" will yield an inspirational video by "KaterinaMarie" called "Why I am Catholic," and a clip of a Mass with Bishop Fulton Sheen in 1941 among its initial results, there's also a video parodying the church sex abuse scandals, as well as many others that are anti-Catholic or contain salacious material.

"That's why we believe biblical topics need to be discussed in a forum that is respectful of the Word," GodTube.com co-founder and chief executive officer Chris Wyatt said in a Catholic Times interview.

With its first version launched last January, GodTube's quick growth has been phenomenal. The site, which recently added an alternative to the secular networking site Facebook.com, already contains more than 48,000 videos. Wyatt said the site logged more than 10 million visitors by the end of 2007.

But accusations of anti-Catholicism have plagued GodTube, as some users have posted videos that try to discredit the church's teaching on the priesthood, the sacraments, the papacy and other things.

Wyatt, a Baptist, said anti-Catholicism would not be tolerated. "We don't stand for that," he said, although he admitted there were some anti-Catholic videos on the site until a recent string of articles brought them to the company's attention.

Even with these videos removed, clips claiming to discredit elements of Catholic teaching remain on the site, including a John MacArthur lecture series on "The Pope and the Papacy."

Thomas Hall, founder of LoveToBeCatholic.com, believes he has come up with a better alternative.

"About a month ago, I typed 'Catholic' in on YouTube, and six of the first 10 responses were anti-Catholic propaganda," Hall told The Catholic Times. "I felt Catholics needed an equal voice and a safe environment to learn about their faith and to evangelize."

With a background including Web work with Fortune 500 companies, Hall, who just moved from Chicago with his family to Minneapolis, naturally turned to the Internet.

At the end of October, he launched LoveToBeCatholic.com as a test. Like YouTube and GodTube, LoveToBeCatholic is a Web platform for people to post videos. But unlike them, LoveToBeCatholic is specifically Catholic, and Hall works to ensure that nothing anti-Catholic gets posted.

Hall said the online Catholic community has embraced his site. "In the first month I went from zero to 3,000 visitors per day," he said. "I immediately ran into bandwidth problems. I've had to upgrade the servers twice, and I'll have to do that again this year. But that's a really nice problem to have."

Videos range from priests' sermons to humorous skits and church events. Some of Hall's favorites are vocations videos that show young religious in habits engaged in sports or other activities with youths. "You can't capture that in text or audio," he said.

Labels: Catholic, Catholic-Tube, Franz Klein, Godtube.com, YouTube