There are many industries that we have seen killed (or almost so) by the web and Internet. Just what has been killed or so radically changed?
- Fax machines
- Newspaper industry
- Book industry
- Travel agencies
- Postal services
- Radio industry
- Music industry
So which industry is next? It’s the television itself. Maybe not so much in the physical form that we drool in front of late at night, but in how we interact with it. The TV has long been a target of companies like Microsoft and now Apple, Google and many others. The transition is already happening, but it’s subtle enough and stretched out long enough that we don’t really notice the radical changes taking place.
So just what are some of the big coming changes for the future of TV? Well, here are some of my predictions and a few that are already in progress.
- No more Channels. In the future, there will no longer be any channels to change. We will still have content publishers like NBC, Fox and ESPN, but we will be gathering shows from them on our own terms. We will watch what we want to whenever we want to. We are already seeing this happen with DVRs like the Boxee where we can just pull down whatever we want from the Internet.
- Direct interaction with items on screen. So all these new gaming systems that are coming out can track our motions and what we do with quite a bit of accuracy. Well, the Microsft Kinect team is officially real easing developer tools to do all sorts of things with that technology. Since our TV is basically a computer screen, combine the TV with the Kinect, then combine that with video annotation tools like you can find on every YouTube account, and suddenly every item you see on the TV becomes something you can interact with. The easiest thing to imagine would be selecting an item of clothing one of the stars is wearing at the Oscars, searching for who made it, who has knockoffs for sale and placing your order for one, all in real time. This would be easier to achieve than you think.
- Everyone is a TV station. Well, this is another one that isn’t really a prediction, but more of a reality. Anyone can already publish their videos to YouTube and Vimeo for free. This has created a number of online online video stars. As this becomes more popular
Publishers (and organizations) that understand this and take advantage of it now can prepare and be well ahead of the game as it happens to reach worldwide audiences. I’m positive there will be more to it than this short description, but I’m confident in these changes coming over the next five years.
What do you think will happen to this little glowing box that so many of us worship every night? Will it finally make the leap to something more useful?
How Do You Teach Millions About God?
Since the printing of the first Bible, most Christians have not been very good at taking the time to study God’s Word. We primarily rely on our teachers and pastors to bring His Word to us. But God has called on everyone to teach one another. We are not all teachers, but He isn’t worried about that. In order to teach though, we must grow in our own understanding and faith.
When Jesus was here, people were taught by Rabbis. Disciples, or students, would follow the Rabbis and listen to their teaching all day to gain a greater understanding of God. Well, we can’t follow our pastors around every minute of the day as they did, but we do have access to a wealth of teaching online. These teaching resources are available to help anyone understand God’s message. The problem is that these resources are not well organized, they can be hard to find, and they are just dumped online without any further teaching behind them in the hopes that people will just watch and learn on their own. But that’s not enough.
His Vision
About 10 years ago God put a vision on my heart for a tool that would bring Christian resources together that could dramatically improve people’s understanding of God’s Word that would foster a greater amount of teaching for everyone. That tool would be called “meek” and it would be capable of reaching millions of Christians and non-Christians.
Over the last decade, I’ve tried several times to have it built. We came very close once, but pride got in the way and I see clearly that God put roadblocks in our way. I gave up on the idea out of frustration, but God, thankfully, had different plans.
He has re-awakened my passion for using this tool to reach the lost and teach the Christian. It’s been 10 years since the initial idea and 5 years since I first gave up. The world is a much different place now. Many more people are connected and technologically, we are capable of so much more. God’s timing is perfect. This is the best time for meek, but we can not do it alone.
Restarting
Our plan is to start small. We are simply going to create a media player that organizes audio and video streams from the leading teaching pastors around the world as well as online Christian radio stations. We’ll expand this to mobile devices and start adding social features, virtual classrooms and live events. The number of ideas to expand meek is limitless, and we’ll invite both the development team and our users to help guide new customer needs.
Just as a missionary takes His message to the world, we’ll be going into the online world and taking the best Bible teachers with us. But we can’t do it alone. We need help. We are looking for the core team that can help us grow and deliver God’s Word and teachings. We need developers, community managers, marketers, project managers and social media experts that want to give their time to make this a reality, to make this calling their passion; a passion to think big and reach millions of people for God.
Why?
Why are we pursuing this dream placed on my heart? Because He asked us to go and teach people to obey His word. We want to live our life for His mission. Watch Mr. Chan below for a great explanation of this idea.
So, assuming you watched that video, I want to live so that when I face Christ, I know I did everything I could to reach people. We want to help pastors reach the world. I want to save lives. How about you?
Just Don’t Do It
If you are honest with yourself, can you truly say you are successful? I don’t mean how much money you have in your account or the size of your house, but are can you look at your life and claim success? Are you satisfied, even when the storms beat against your walls? Well, you can be, and even though the secret to success is not a secret, it takes work, but not the kind you would expect.
Whether you are a stay at home Mom or the CEO of a multinational company, life throws everything at us it can. We usually want to give everything we can to one or two things in life which may include kids, job, spouse or friends. but life keeps asking for more and we usually give in. But this alters our actions so that we don’t give our all to anything. We make excuses for being mediocre because of being too busy. We even let some things slide because we think our spouse/kids/friends will forgive us.
The first part of the not so secret to success is “Just don’t do it”. Everyone else is “just doing it” and its robbing them of their time for the best things in life. Yeah, it goes against common knowledge, but the goal here is satisfaction, not conforming to the world. We have to focus on the best things in life. Even just focusing on the good things will rob you of time for the best things.
So what are the best things in life? That of course depends on you, and here’s the hard part. Very few people ever discover what the best in life is but the secret can only found in the Bible from Romans 12:2. So hang around and I’ll dig more into that next time.
In the mean time, just don’t do it!
Ideas are everywhere
As I was driving the family to church the other day, my wife turned to me and began explaining an idea she thought would be a great service for churches to get permission to play licensed songs. I had to agree, it was a great idea and typed it up for a future project.
My point in mentioning this is that if you want to start a business, but don’t have any unique ideas, the best thing you can do is to start listening. To this day, I still see new, very obvious products and services that I have to kick myself for not thinking of because they are so … obvious.
If you want to start your own company, don’t let anything hold you back. Start today and don’t stop. If you need an idea, just listen to the people around you then get up and do it. It may seem obvious, but those companies and individuals who are truly successful aren’t those with the best idea or even the first to market, but they are those people who don’t give up, even when it gets really hard.
So? What are you waiting for?
Reaching the world with the Word
I received a note about a live webcast being hosted by YouVersion a few weeks back. I have downloaded their app to my iPhone and used it a few times, but to be honest, I like reading from my Bible. So I was absolutely floored when I heard how popular their app is and how much they have accomplished with such a small team in a relatively short time.
They are a prime example of agile innovation. They started with something basic, kept the product focus, but continued to add on to its functionality based on their goals and user interest. They’ve continuously added onto their product and so far it has reached 10 million people worldwide on many different platforms. Truly amazing. And then I remember we are talking about reaching people with the Word. I wish I could hear some of the stories they have received over time.
God’s Word, no matter what the format (digital, print or spoken) will reach people. As an “electronic” missionary, we go where people gather, we have to adapt to how people communicate. As more and more people around the world come online, they are adapting to this medium of communicating. No, the Internet isn’t new to many places in the world, but the delivery of the Word in native languages in useable applications has a way of reaching people in new ways and enabling them to share and learn from one another, building them up, creating disciples. Woohoo!
