YWAMKnowledgeBase:Monthly Newsletter
From YWAMKnowledgeBase
In order to foster more communication I have started a Monthly Newsletter. I hope to write this as regularly as possible but it might not happen as well as I would like. I am happy to leave this role so, if you are keen to replace me I will make it happen! Needless to say the emails you have registered with this database will only be used for this newsletter and this wiki site and not divulged to any third party.
Contents |
Monthly Newsletters
November 2008
Greetings Infonauts!
Life Chez Kevin has been busier than ever last month with 3 trips away from Brussels and the ever gorgeous twins to look after. Sorry for the lack of communication - I just got snowed under.
I have been reading the excellent "The Starfish and the Spider" which is all about the power of leaderless movements of people. It is a great read. Getting so snowed under made me realise that a project like YWAMKB really does not want me as a spider-like leader - I will get so bogged down with work the project could stall. Plus if I go away or forget to pay the domain fees so will the KB. That must not happen! Of course I can also slow innovation too. For example, I would have never thought of having a Facebook group for the YWAMKB but Arnoud did and just... did it! (In fact I really don't hang out on Facebook at all - I must be getting old!) He had 65 members in a week (now 73). He has something to develop now. That is the power of leaderless organisations. You can sign up here: http://www.facebook.com/inbox/?ref=mb#/group.php?gid=46220161302
So in our future meetings we should really look at how we can set the KB free so that if I am ever out of the picture the whole project can continue. The next YWAM KB meeting will be at 16h00 GMT+1 on 10 November, 2008. Please see YWAMKnowledgeBase:Meeting 20081110 for agenda and add your thoughts. Why not join in?
That's all for now. Keep telling everyone you know about the KB. Please write articles. Please correct all my bad spelling and make my articles look the best!
Cheers,
Kevin
September 2008
Greetings all Infonauts!
After a very long break for my furlough and the successful birth of my twin boys, Luc and Joshua, I am now back to work. In between quick naps and nappy changes I have chance to write a letter on the KB, so I am taking it!
I was thrilled to be away this summer and leave the admin of the YWAM KB in the hands of Little Eagle, Neo, Crashsystems and others. It shows that the team behind the KB is growing plus the hardware and software is robust and healthy. I am glad this project is growing beyond me and my domain and becoming our thing; something that belongs to us and we can work on together. Giving away knowledge is absolutely vital. The alternative of which is to hold on to it and creating a little kingdom of our own. And that is so unhealthy. Especially when you consider our calling is to make God known and anything that hinders the increase of effectiveness in making God known in YWAM is not from the Lord!
Did you know we have passed 200,000 page views? These are views as counted by the wiki software so if you take all the caching that happens on the internet that means we have probably had many more views of the pages. It is great progress and a consistent growth curve. Already over 1% of YWAM staff are registered users; I presume the unregistered users are many more than this. When we reach 340 registered users we will have 2% of all YWAMers!
What encourages me about all this is that we are helping our fellow missionaries make a difference where they are. And we need to keep working at it! We currently have a DTS outreach team here in Brussels from Byron Bay in Australia. I had never heard of the place but as we chatted I realised it is a place of world pilgrimage for back-packers! It is a small town of 9,000 people but 1.3 million back-packers turn up there each year for the sand and the surf (and etc.) What a place to be YWAMers and do outreach! So I begged them to write about how they do what they do so that those of us who reach similar people groups can be inspired to reach out too. Ibiza probably is very similar to Byron Bay, so YWAM Australia has much to offer YWAM Europe... but only if we take the time to communicate!
So please try to set aside just half an hour this month to write about something you are doing, no matter how dull or obvious it may appear to you - it will help others to grow in their effectiveness in making the knowledge of Christ known in the world!
Cheers,
Kevin
June 2008
Dear All,
I have been very busy so this newsletter is both late and brief! As we head into the summer I though you might like to know where the YWAM KB users are located?
1 44.92% United States 2 17.49% Great Britain (UK) 3 9.27% Norway 4 5.53% Netherlands 5 5.29% Russian Federation 6 2.20% Belgium 7 1.98% Germany 8 1.88% Australia 9 1.46% Thailand 10 1.34% Sweden 11 0.93% Romania 12 0.79% Unresolved/Unknown 13 0.54% Philippines 14 0.51% Canada 15 0.46% Latvia 16 0.44% Spain 17 0.35% Bosnia and Herzegovina 18 0.32% India 19 0.30% New Zealand (Aotearoa) 20 0.28% France 21 0.28% Portugal 22 0.27% Switzerland 23 0.22% Brazil 24 0.22% Finland 25 0.19% Japan 26 0.18% South Africa 27 0.18% Argentina 28 0.17% Korea (South) 29 0.16% Gibraltar 30 0.14% China
I found this list fascinating. I hope that it continues to grow and grow.
Today we are holding a KB Meeting [1] at 16h00 GMT+2. Love to chat to you all then! It is a truely international meeting - last time we were from the US, Australia, Belgium, Holland and the UK!
I will be heading onto Furlough at the end of the month and be absent for 2 months. If you have trouble with the KB or need some help please contact some of the Support Desk folks (you can find their details at the bottom of the main page!). I will be back to work in September.
Cheers,
Kevin
April 2008
Dear All,
There is a bumper crop of news this month, as I really did not have time to write anything for the last couple of months!
The good news is that the KB is enjoying record popularity! The last month has seen the number of page reads go up by 30,000! This is quite a lot. In fact it is 1/3 of all page hits ever since we started in one month. Looking at the other log files it looks genuine, although I am not sure who in Spain is looking at the KB but the single largest group of hits come from there! Anyway we will see. But good news!
Talking of records I have added a league table of contributers. At the moment Steve and myself rest on top by an embarrassingly large lead. However the Top 10 are:
- Kevin: (Too many to make it fair)
- Steve: (Too many to make it fair)
- Adelaartjes: (65 Edits on 9 pages)
- Flyingkiwi: (44 Edits on 13 pages)
- Cforbes: (22 Edits on 5 pages)
- Belindaloo: (13 Edits on 9 pages)
- Bob: (11 Edits on 3 pages)
- Keever: (11 Edits on 7 pages)
- Crashsystems: (11 Edits on 7 pages)
- Groove1950: (9 Edits on 7 pages)
- Neo: (9 Edits on 6 pages)
- Robzilla: (9 Edits on 4 pages)
- Compelardo: (9 Edits on 3 pages)
Congratulations to all on the Top Ten. I will continue to publish the league table as a motivation for all! This also means I don't have to remember your names and logins and can merely refer to you as No. 3 or No. 27! (You know who you are!)
We have also received a donation of a dot com domain! Thanks Mike. People can now put www.ywamkb.com in their browser and find us. New users can't actually register like this - you can only register at ywamkb.net.
If you get the chance to talk about the KB you might like to know there is a Presentation on the KB. Just to avoid the "Death by 1000 Powerpoints", I made a Presentation on the KB and there is a little tour too. It is always best to tweak the presentation for yourself and check all the links work! Beware some joker in the audience changes your last slide before you get there! (The power of wiki's!) Presentation is at: http://ywamkb.net/kb/index.php/YWAMKnowledgeBase:Presentation_Title_Page
One thing people often ask about when you chat about the KB is support for other languages. Internationalisation has not been forgotten - we are not an Anglophone mission! But if you have seen my written French you will know why I am not racing into writing French articles. The preferred solution for the KB is to do what Wikipedia does: It has parallel wiki's with each article written independently. Inter-wiki links are added when there is a clear pairing of articles. But generally it grows organically like that. We are not ready to launch another wiki for a language. As a medium term proposal I would like to suggest that if you write an article in another language you make the article name like this:
DE/Meine Atikal FR/Mon Prémiere Article FR/Mon Deuxième Article etc.
Please put the language code in capitals followed by a forward slash. You can see that sometimes this technique elsewhere in the wiki like the notes from the WELC conference Steve put up. (http://ywamkb.net/kb/index.php/WELC08)
That's it for this month! Have fun.
Kevin
January 2008
Dear All,
Welcome to 2008 and I hope you are ready and raring to go! From the KB point of view we are waking up from the calm Christmas period. Perhaps not all of you took the cold, dark winters nights as a cue to start working on the KB! Perhaps you have a life!!!
The last three weeks have seen a flurry of activity with lots of new pages being added. We now have some useful tests to see how stressed you are and how to deal with it, a model for base leadership, where am I going on outreach and where have I been on outreach tools, a spiritual gifts questionnaire and an article on overcoming the Fear of Man!. If you have anytime left over from that you might like to start a business.
During January I was invited to a meeting and, of course as a YWAMer, I am drawn to meetings as a moth to a flame. I met with the EuroCom guys who are asking the question: how can we improve our internal and external communications in YWAM? What came out of that meeting were some concrete steps to help us all in YWAM Europe to evaluate and improve our existing communication. As part of that we talked about using the KB to help by hosting the EuroCom communications pack and toolkit.
I was very pleased that I could offer the KB in this way and also that the KB has the potential to be used by YWAMers all over to help with the projects like this. I think it is important to say that the KB is not my thing - it can be all of our things. If it helps you to pool knowledge over your special area, or collaborate together with others and might have a wider use than for you then you really should see what it can offer you. Those of us currently shepherding the project would really like you make the most of this tool. We don't want to become a bottleneck. Please get in touch if you want to explore some more.
On the theme of making the KB more widely known there are business cards available to help pass on the word. These have been made for the moment when a subject arises and you say "Aha, yes, there is something helpful about that on the Knowledge Base, here have this card, you will find it at this web address". You can print your own cards using business cards templates with micro-perforations and the downloadable files on the KB. So print your own or send an email with your postal address to office@ywambrussels.be and we will send you 50 by post! Perhaps someone would like to take up the task of giving a card to each member of the GLT? I will supply cards!
We try to meet each month via a Skype chat and the next meeting will be a 15h00 (GMT+1) on Meeting 4th February. And, if you can't make that then please come and hang out with us at the café during the WELC in Holland at the end of March.
Regards,
Kevin
December 2007
Dear All,
What a month! We hit the 10,000 page views barrier. That means someone is reading a page every 4 minutes. (It is probably Google and other indexing robots but I think the statistic sounds good!) What is more important is that it is yet another month of continued growth for the KB.
Some interesting pages
- Steve has added a resource people page. The idea is we should write about what we are good at so others can call on us for help. Make sure you allow people to email you from your preferences or you might not be as much help! (STEVE!!!!) [2]
- The Main Page has had a make-over. Do you like it? I hope it is more professional looking. Suggestions for continued improvements welcome.
- The Genesis section tells much more about this important way of keeping connected. It answers a number of questions you may have had about this tool.[3]
And lots more!
Thanks for all the response last time to the request to set time aside to write for the KB. Thanks all the edits that resulted! Some folks have made their first contributions. Thank you!
Breaking the barrier
I was writing to someone the other day about writing for the KB. There is a psychological barrier I keep hearing. That is some people really don't feel qualified to contribute. I really want to re-assure all of you that the only qualification is willingness! If you have ever thought "I should remember this thing so that could others learn from this" then that is the only qualification you need! This KB is a meritocracy, that means the authority comes from the quality of the contribution not from an external source. You gain the authority to write from writing! Just be willing to allow others to improve your work. You will learn a lot. I have! If you disagree (we should at times disagree) do so politely; make an edit that combines your view and another's together.
Another way to get involved is to join us in our monthly meeting (Monday 3rd December @ 15h00 GMT). We welcome you all. Please add your points to the agenda and join with us! [4]
Till next month!
Kevin
November 2007
Dear All,
Things here in YWAMKB central have been hectic over the last few weeks as I have been out of Belgium for two different meetings. It was fun to meet with the leaders of Western Europe in Harpenden and to see a number of them really "get" the idea of the KB. It helped of course that Steve Goode was editing at the time so they could see another leader getting on and making a contribution.
Of course making a contribution is the hardest thing! There may be a number of reasons why...
- The wiki is a bit complex and there is lots to learn
- We don't have enough time
- We don't feel we have a voice or anything to say!
My response to this would be:
- Persevere! It does get easier. Please read the many pages or help and watch the videos we have made. I have also taken the opportunity given by a recent upgrade to the wiki to install a trial of some WYSIWYG editing facility to the wiki. I hope you like it. It has a great way facility for making links. I actually have turned mine off (preference menu) as I find the wikitext code straight forward. But I hope it helps you!
- I never have enough time! However, this project for me is important because I really want to see my peers and those up-and-coming YWAMers equipped and knowledgeable. Perhaps we all ought to give a small proportion of our time to training others around us?
- Finding your voice and having confidence to use it is not easy for all in YWAM. But I want to welcome EVERYONE, whether, experienced or new to YWAM to contribute whatever is on their mind to these pages. Please express your opinion here. Don't fear offending anyone!
Where next?
Steve updated the Goals on the front page again. We are aiming for 500 articles and 250 members by Christmas! What about it? What can you offer? What can you edit? Who can you invite? (Please try to shake more leaders into action to write their wisdom to these pages!) Lets see what we can achieve by Christmas!
cheers,
Kevin
October 2007
Dear All,
September has been so intense for me here in Brussels I have not had time to send out a little newsletter for the KB. Anyway here we are!
The Wiki has been experiencing strong growth recently, partly as a result of me announcing it via ywam-base-announce newsletter. It was great to see people signing in daily! We now have over 100 users - that means just over 0.5% of all YWAMers are subscribed! What does it feel like to be a part of an elite club?
I have also started http://www.planetywam.net news site too which I hope will result in cross-pollination of the two projects. Planet YWAM is a good way of keeping up with latest YWAM news from those sites plus the latest changes to YWAMKB! I will also be posting this newsletter on my blog too to see if we can get a wider readership. Please keep doing what you can to encourage people to use the KB.
The Wiki is a powerful tool. I spotted this news story recently http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/7015024.stm about the New Zealand police force using a wiki to compose new laws. This is powerful stuff; I wonder what the result will be. I am hopeful this experiment will bear fruit.
New Articles
There have been some interesting new articles this month notably from Steve Goode (thanks):
- Manila Covenant - We corrected the spelling to no longer rhyme with "Vanilla"!
- YWAM Licensing MOU - advice on not loosing our right to use the YWAM logo and name YWAM!
- Jomtien Statement - YWAM's important statement on Mercy Ministries
- Backup Data - Some ideas on how to protect your data and never loose your important documents and details.
- Windows Computer setup guide - A helpful list of Free and Open source software that you can install free of charge on a Windows computer to make it a productive tool for your staff. You can click each link to download the latest and greatest versions of software.
- Why Leaders Fail - a very interesting article for leaders!
- Depression - an article I wrote to help YWAMers support each other and those struggling with depression
- Category:Business As Missions - a whole bunch of documents from the Business as Missions website
I hope you enjoy browsing the KB and seeing what is new!
Every now and then people request articles. Recently Sergio, from Italy asked me if there were any application forms for DTS that embodied the best principles for Data protection/privacy. In the EU the data protection law is very strict and applies to all countries in the EU - thus it makes sense to share the data. YWAM England has a lot of good practice in this area. So can we help Sergio out by writing about what Good Practice is in Application Forms and also giving him source documents that he can adapt for his own use?
Lastly, I recently got a change to present the KB to the National Leaders in Western Europe. I may have bored then to death (not really) but I think it went very well. The proof is in getting people to contribute their knowledge to the heap! I get a lot of positive feeling that this is important to them. I also noticed signs that there is a danger of information overload for some as the mushrooming number of YWAM websites is overwhelming (Have you seen YWAM Web pages recently? Any ideas on how we can help?
Till next month,
Kevin Colyer
PS For those wanting help to get their documents into the Wikitext used on the site help is coming soon we hope! Until then note that the very latest version of OpenOffice (FREE!) has an export Document as Mediawiki option that converts any document you load (Word .doc's for example) into wikitext format! See here: (Help:Converting the Heathen#The Best Conversion Tool)
September 2007
Dear All,
August has been a slow month here on the Knowledge base for two reasons. One, because it is August and we are all busy at evangelism or resting our tired and aching bodies. And two, because a slight side project has happened. Let me tell you about it.
I was talking with Dovovan Palmer, YWAM England leader, following a little article he wrote about the RSS links many websites have these days (to understand this read: RSS). I had been playing about with a clever little program that brings content from many websites together to one website and so http://www.planetywam.net was born. I am running it as a sister site to the KB so I hope we will get healthy cross-pollination as a result. Please spread the word about Planet YWAM and make sure you have an RSS reader up and running or you will miss out! (All the best ones are free). Till then bookmark http://www.planetywam.net.
- Since the last month we have a net gain of 11 pages and a gain of 12 users. It is nice to see new users eclipsing new pages! There were 3,716 page views and 116 edits of pages.
- We have the start of a new category with the contribution of an article on Mercy work. This is one of our smallest categories and yet is claimed to be 1/3 of all we do. Help us to expand this area. Our Evangelism section is small also but growing. Check it out!
- A new category is growing Category:Being a Missionary and made the 4 article threshold to get onto the Main Page tag cloud. There are a few articles on tax, pension and such there that well all need to take note of. It would be great to get non-specific to UK material on there too.
- A portal page is in draft form as a more pictorial entry point to the KB. Also I added some bio-graphical details to the Why I joined YWAM page. Please add your story too however mundane or exciting it is - it gives up much clearer understanding of how to recruit.
- Finally the list of YWAM Web pages continues to grow and has been structured a bit better too. Please keep submitting new sites and correcting bad links. We are becoming a DEFINITIVE site for YWAM information.
That is it for this month. Why not make this coming 30 days a time to dip your toes in the wiki waters and add something to the KB.
Cheers,
Kevin
PS Remember our next meeting is on Monday at 15h00 Brussels time via Skype (kevincolyerwork)! All welcome.
August 2007
Dear All,
July seems to have been a quiet month on the KnowledgeBase. It was good to see the number of new users grow more than the number of new articles! (But it would be good to see more of both really!) It was a quiet month though as summer outreach has been the priority for many and holidays the other pressing need for some! (Including me)
So for this issue of the newsletter I thought I would highlight some interesting changes the last 31 days have brought us. (I will put only the page reference so please add the http://www.ywamkb.net/kb/index.php bit yourself)
- At the beginning of the month I completed some instructional screenshot videos at Help:Contents. This is a visual way of teaching how to contribute. Let me know if more are wanted as they are not hard to create.
- Where do I start a new team?, How to find a building, Finding a Man or Woman of Peace are a suite of pages on the New Teams category that are very key questions for those starting a new team in a physical location.
- EuroCom pages were added by Reblevins. His plea is that we can find more ways to help communication prosper in the mission. It is gratifying to see this project working to reach the goals the Communications teams have been proposing.
- YWAM Web pages have seen the most edits as people keep adding in new YWAM sites and correcting the many incorrect entries there. This has been satisfying to see as the POINT of Wiki is that it should be quick to correct and up to date! It also seems to mean that this page is an important one for many users. See also Cforbes' helpful comments about these pages. (Talk:YWAM Web pages)
- Main Page has gained computer-translation support from Google. This is a barely adequate way to browse the KB in another language - but hopefully it will help us to make the KB more useful for hundreds more YWAMers around the world. If you want a cheap laugh browse the KB with a native speaker as they attempt to read the translation!
- The award for the most baffling page goes to Cforbes for Xml data from ywam.org!
- Yet again we had a page count of approximately 4,000 hits this month. The growth curve is climbing! Keep telling everyone you know about the knowledge base!
Till next month,
Kevin
PS why not make Special:Recentchanges your home page!
July 2007
Dear All,
Welcome one and all to the Monthly Wiki newsletter. The rate of growth has been increasing and we have now (26/6/2007) gained 12 new users, 6 new articles (lots of pruning going on though) plus 2000 page hits in 3 weeks compared to 14000 total to date! This is very pleasing to see - it seems like people are finding this site useful and starting to pitch in. This is good as there is lots to do!
We held our first Internet meeting about the wiki which was an interesting experience. We all met on Skype chat and actually made some positive progress. We are eager to have another meeting so please join us on Monday at 3pm Brussels time. Agenda is here. Just think how we will be reducing our Carbon Footprints by meeting like this!
If you can't make that meeting I do have some suggestions to help you contribute something to this site! The suggestion is this: find, call or kidnap a senior leader and interview them! This can only be a helpful exercise (except if you get arrested for a kidnapping). What you might like to ask them you can make into an article or enter into the following pages:
- How did they start/rescue a base/team? (For our Case Studies category e.g. YWAM Plymouth)
- How was a base paid for/ or how were funds raised for a team/significant project? (For this page: How to buy a base)
I think you will find it very helpful and it will only take a little while to do! I eagerly await your contributions.
Finally, for this month is a continuing plea to enable the email feature on your account name! It is easily done as the picture to the right shows. Some folks are concerned about spam, but actually it is not possible to receive more spam in this way as only registered users can send email. Also your email address is never shown. Mostly the reason is that I want to send a really warm and fuzzy welcome email to you all. As I can't do that I have been leaving a message on your User page or mytalk page (link is top right by the little man). We can never communicate enough and it will help us to have a vibrant community here!
Cheers,
Kevin
June 2007
Dear All,
Welcome to the second monthly letter of the YWAM Knowledge base.
If was great to see so many people at the Festival of the Nations. We seem to have grown in members too by about as many who came to my workshop! Welcome to one and all! (Check your User talk pages!) I hope you are finding this useful! Please send feedback!
I enjoyed giving the seminar. It was nice to see some people really get excited (other than me). I have started a few conversations with the Eurocoms folks too - I see what we are doing with the YWAMKB as complimentary and hopefully additive; that is as this site takes off so the communications in YWAM will too and vise versa.
Whilst giving the seminar I realised that we have two groups to tell about the site: Contributers and Users. Whilst most Contributers will be Users it is clear than in order to make the site work we need lots of Contributers! It is important to note that you don't need to be the most authoritative person to write on a subject, but by writing about it you are getting the ball rolling. In the end you may end up authoritative on a subject! Also the beauty of wiki is that as you start something, someone else my come along and finish it off! You will find many unfinished articles around. Please add something too then!
That is about it for this month but please note the following four things:
- Pass the word - I have set a new goal to increase the number of registered users to equal the same number of articles on the KB. Most important tell your leadership about this site! Servant leaders train and empower - that is what this site is all about so please pass on the news!
- Please, please, please can you register you email addresses and allow other users to email you so we can more simply chat directly. Plus can you fill in a bit about your selves on your user page (if it is red then it needs some information!)
- We will be working on clarifying the Categories and the structure of the KB on Monday 11th at 15h00-17h30 Brussels time (GMT+2). Please join us via Skype (kevincolyerwork) or MSN (kevinandnicki@thecolyers.net) or something. (http://wiki.ywambrussels.be/kb/index.php/YWAMKnowledgeBase:Meeting_2007-06-11)
- One last thing: a challenge - during this month why not edit an article?
Please be bold and make big changes! It will help!
Cheers,
Kevin
May 2007
Dear Friends,
This is the first, of what I hope will be a monthly letter, to let you know the status of the YWAM Knowledge base project. My aim is to help you feel in touch with the growth of this site and to inspire you to contribute and share the resources here with others!
This month there are two important things to tell you about. The first is a comment by new user Tofirus (User:Tofirius) who has some concerns about the site logo. I think it would be good if we all could participate in seeing what we could have in place of the current idea (which expresses collaboration and partnership). The exercise of talking this through together is of greater importance than the highest quality logo, so if you come up with an idea on a napkin, please add it in! Tofirus has started a discussion on the Main Page Discussion page: Talk:Main_Page. Have a look!
The other interesting news item is that I will be running a seminar on the KnowledgeBase at the Festival of the Nations next week. If you are there it would be great to see you in person. (We will have a big blue tent) If you can`t attend please tell others about the seminar. Also if you can help contribute ideas to the presentation then I am starting a list of things to talk about at the seminar (YWAMKnowledgeBase:Presenting_the_KB). I will develop the presentation online so if you see typos please correct them!
Until June...!
--Kev-The-Hasty 10:22, 21 May 2007 (BST)
PS If you are wondering why I am using wiki.ywambrussels.be instead of www.ywamkb.net it is because in the base here the official domain doesn`t work and I have to use my local alias. You can use either...
