Twitter.com is not just fluff. There’s a fair share of “Making a sandwich” and “drinking my seventh Starbucks,” there’s also a lot of useful ways to use Twitter.

A few ways i’ve seen Twitter be a useful little web app.

1. Comcastcares - Comcast has a person on twitter who scans twitter for complaints about Comcast. I’ve done my fair share in the last 3 months. Comcastcares actually responds, and apparently is a customer service big wig who can make things happen and get problems resolved. This is a great customer service tool, even if you’re usually pissed with the service by the time you make a post on twitter (tweets as us nerds call them)
2. I put up a post on twitter about how I love getting food from our CSA share (community supported agriculture - we own a share with some friends and get a bag of veggies straight from the farm each week). One of my twitter friends was interested but had never been able to get connected to a farm before. I was able to quickly pass on info to her and hopefully she’ll be supporting a local farmer soon too.
3. A while back I posted on twitter that I was working on some new web strategy ideas. A twitter friend, and well respected authority on the issue, responded that she would review my strategy docs and give feedback. It was very helpful in framing this new project. 
4. Had a friend who needed a recipe for chicken breasts. Hit reply, great dinner.
5. Book suggestions
6. Music suggestions
7. Software suggestions
8. Idea sharing
9. Link sharing
10. Useful work-related connections

I’ve got a new homemade recipe over at Tastyplanner.com
Sarah said it’s one of the top recipes I’ve ever made…I loved it too.

It’s easy, but I do suggest slow cooking the chicken. I came home for lunch and tossed it in the oven, then just took it out when I got home later in the day.

The impact of your message is far greater with audience participation. If your audience doesn’t have to interact with your message, they probably won’t.

The World Wildlife Fund put together this brilliant PR campaign that forces the audience to be the message. When you take the towel, you see yourself as part of the problem. You can’t help but pause and think about how in the world can my impact be minimized? I don’t want to be responsible for that!

Forcing the audience to interact with the message leaves a mark and carries the message farther.

Totally enamored by the enovo house. It’s unbearably beautiful. I love the clean lines, the use of different textures (wood, metal, glass) on different planes, and the amazing use of outdoor space in this model (car port, upper balcony/deck, pergolas).

The brilliance of modern prefab comes down to a few factors:

The use of largely sustainable materials.
The speed of build time.
Designing for energy efficiency.
Re-imagining what living space can be.
Configurability

The enovo house is all of these.

If you don’t get Dwell magazine, you should. Even if just to push you towards new ideas about our shared future. We have little choice but to change our footprint. When will we start?

Sanctuary Community Development Corporation

Sanctuary Community Development Corporation from Sanctuary Covenant Church on Vimeo.

To prepare for another family of 4 to move into our 5 bedroom house as we attampt to live “in community” together, I gave up my bedroom-size office and the boys gave up their playroom.

Now, I’m sporting a brand new corner office. In the corner of my bedroom closet that is…

there’s no longer my stuff on one side, and sarah’s stuff on the other. No we have one wall for the clothes (significantly pared down) and one corner for the office. I’m really liking it. It’s made entirely of scrap wood and a few “parts” I picked up at home depot.

In the process of making this transition, I had to purge a lot of stuff.

Here’s how it happened:

• Two large lawn size garbage bags of throw away stuff.
• Donating about 300 books to a friend’s organization that does great work with St. Paul youth.
• Reused screws, boards, and scraps from previous projects.
• Measured, measured wrong, then remeasured, then settled.
• 3 Trips to Home Depot. 2 trips to Target.
• From 2 extra long file cabinets, down to 1 small one.

This is a big change. It required giving up a lot of space, a lot of stuff, and a lot of aesthetic. I look forward to the gains of living in community with others. Pics below.

While in France, these are things I’ve been noticing…

• Whether you are a bike, scooter, motorcycle or a car, you can park anywhere. Sidewalks and “In the way” included.
• There is very little brand building here. Minimal advertising, very few chains. Other than Ikea, I haven’t seen a big box store yet.
• Apparently it rains every day. 8 of 8 so far. 
• TV is a little behind. It’s a bit sketchy. 
• There is a fascinating mix of the ancient and the modern.
• Laptops seem to be a scarce item. I’ve seen less than a handful at coffee shops and cafes so far. 
• Gravel is often used in place of grass. 
• The Bordeaux Tram must be free, because people rarely pay.
• There is almost no American fast food. A few Mickey D’s. Instead, everybody eats baguette sandwiches and pain au chocolat (chocolate croissants).
• Coke is still best served in glass bottles. I agree. 

So I’ve added one more book. 

The World Without Us by Alan Weisman

I heard this guy talk for an hour on NPR. He was fascinating, the book sounds incredible.

I think I have about 1100 pages scheduled for the next 4 weeks. Hope that goes well.

I should have a lot of coffee shop/cafe time on my hands.

Some recent photos at a friend’s birthday party, complete with pony rides…

Photo Gallery

A few weeks ago I showed the Kithaus 3. It’s a sleek little model perfect for a backyard office, a secluded lakeside retreat, or even a small guesthouse. 

This week, I’d like to rave about the Kithaus 1.

This thing is so beautiful to me. I love the extra angular stack of clearstory windows at the top. It comes in a few configurations (not sold quite yet). Kithaus is a built on an aluminum frame that clamps together in a few days on site. I really feel this could be an amazing modern retreat space.

How to get into your own kithaus:

1. Find land and buy it (preferably on a lake). 
2. Pick a combo.
3. Pay 50% down, 50% when ready to ship. 
4. Build foundation if necessary.
5. Get it delivered.
6. Build in a few days.
7. Dream good dreams.

I know how I am, if there’s no one around, I don’t use my blinker. It just seems like a sensible time saving step in my life.

Yesterday, I was driving to work after dropping my 3 year old off at preschool. The guy in front of me suddenly braked hard and turned right…I had to use evasive maneuvers. I didn’t have any warning and I didn’t see it coming.

On the way home from work, I sat at a stop light turning left (I had my blinker on). The person across the intersection had their blinker on to turn left, so I thought I could go. They went straight, left blinker on the whole time. I had to do much more severe evasive maneuvers. I saw something coming, but it wasn’t what I expected.

Either way, I guess no signals or the wrong signals are sending the WRONG MESSAGE.

In church, we send the wrong signals all the time.

We tell people we love them
We tell them they are part of a community here
We tell them that we’ll be there for them

Then, their sin is too big for us to handle, or we never make the effort to connect…or we just don’t act very loving even though that is supposed to be what we’re all about.

People get hurt. The church looks like a hypocrite. They don’t want anything to do with our message anymore…

Transparency is the only message that matters.

I’m working through this myself right now.

The difference between Windows and Mac OS X

As we sit in our office today…gunshots ring out. They are close. I duck.

We watch young men run with guns. Young men who were just trying to kill each other…if someone’s dead, someone will snitch. Someone will go to jail. And for what? Territory? You looked at me wrong? You don’t respect my affiliation? You screwed me in a deal?

My boys play in that park. My wife takes them there to swim in the wading pool in the summer. Meanwhile, other boys try to kill each other there. There’s bullet casings in the parking lot outside our window. Pastor Kevin watched the dude shooting fifteen feet from him as he sat in his office…

What the hell?

I guess I have something to stretch into 12 minutes of prayer for today.

Strategic Planning has been a struggle for us… as I’m sure it is for most churches composed of a bunch of people with passion for ministry, but little background in organizational structure, strategic planning, human resources development and a host of other skills.

Hopefully we can get some great help from the swerve lab.

Been reading Marcus Buckingham’s, “Now Discover Your Strengths.”

Well here they are:

• Self-Assurance
• Learner
• Significance
• Deliberative
• Analytical

Read what they mean over at the family blog…