This is my first posting from Cape Town 2010. As the Creative Director for Cape Town 2010, the on-the-ground team here has been working 24/7 and I’ve been trying to keep up with everyone…our print team, Internet team, social media team, video team, translation team (8 languages), and analytics team, media tea, public relations team. At any given time of the day, we number well over 100. It’s an impressive effort. I constantly worry about brand and message integration.
Deadlines and the tyranny of the urgent drive everything. We are in constant motion, with frequent accelerations and decelerations. The pace is dizzying. One of our lead video producers told me earlier this morning that the frustration level is “danger-level high.” We need to pray.
In my more reflective moments, I ask myself, “Are we making a difference?” Who’s paying attention? Who really cares about what 4,000 of the top Christian leaders in the world are having conversations about?
Finally, we heard this morning, the most searched item on Google — in the world — is “Ajith Fernando.” Ajith is our Bible expositor for this first full day of Cape Town 2010. I’ve asked our lead Web analytics person to actually track the how often the term “Ajith Fernando” is Google’s Number 1 in the world.
One of our lead IT persons just told our press coordinator that Cape Town 2010 has now broken the record for bandwidth usage for any single location in Africa — ever. Even more than the World Cup. And our media people are also reporting that Cape Town 2010 has doubled the previous record for the number of Internet devices ever used at any event here at the Cape Town International Convention Center.
I’m pretty amazed about what this all means…for the Church. All this is an indication of how the Church is advancing in our age, a measure of the progress the Church has made in our world.
The world’s top Christian leaders are themselves “wired” and have followers who stay connected with them online and travel with them wherever they go. They are not technology skeptics, but technology enthusiasts. They see the new breakthroughs opening possibilities for new ways to access information and knowledge, for connection to others, and as a tool for tackling some of the most enduring problems that the Church faces.
It’s a new day.
Kn Moy