YWAM Information Technology

Here's the review for the 2nd & final week of the seminar in Sweden at YWAM Dalarna. Over the weekend, we had some downtime where we all just spent time together & had fun playing cards, calling folks back home via Skype, as well as the occasional IP connection with YWAMers over GENESIS. We went to a church in Borlänge & then went for lunch. Some of us then walked around a local mall, while the rest of us went to Aquanova, an indoor water park with slides, pools & the very important sauna.

Monday was back in gear with presentations given by each participant on what GENESIS is, followed in the afternoon with more practice links that contained more realistic content. My team presented worship & intercession in a kind of tiny version of the One Voice event. We got a little bit fancy with a Skype call to one of our team members that couldn't join us for the actual link. It was a good learning experience to actually do that because of all the issues we had with making it work. It turned out to be a powerful time, though.

Tuesday Sindre shared on the GENESIS Information System (GIS) which is a way of advertising upcoming GENESIS events, as well as a way to book speakers who are available to speak over GENESIS. GIS is a service hosted within the ywamconnect.net community, but It's not yet online. I'm sure someone here will be sure to let you know when it is.

In the afternoon, Paul Hawkins joined us over GENESIS from Colorado Springs to talk about the 9 points of GENESIS, as well as the Fear of God.  After several technical problems with connecting, Paul shared a wonderful & poignant message of what to keep in mind when operating GENESIS. Aside from the 3 or 4 times that we had to reconnect because of system lock-ups or IP packet loss which resulted in a frozen picture, Paul's challenging message & a time of sharing on both sides made a lasting impression on us all.

Wednesday Sindre shared about production, which helped us to think about audio, lighting, camera positioning, picture framing, etc. In the afternoon we had more hands on time.

Our last day, Sim joined us from Lausanne over a GENESIS link to tell us about the many different types of events that can be setup over GENESIS. I was amazed at the number! Aside from the most common use of connecting a teacher to a remote classroom, you can also have cultural celebrations, art conferences, birthday parties & even arrange dates for YWAMers! This just names a few uses.

Sim then gave each of our 3 teams 15 minutes to come up with our own link between 3 "locations" (each team had a unit in a different room). My team had our Norwegian friend, Arne (the same we called on Skype in a previous practice link) telling a classic Norwegian fairy tale of the Seventh Father of the House. The 2nd team shared a time of Russian rap in the "Suomi Hip-Hop" link & the 3rd team showed us how to make a traditional "Indian" dish. I think we all learned how creative you really can be in a short amount of time.

Overall, this seminar was a great experience for me to learn about an amazing tool God is using in YWAM that is multiplying what He's doing in the earth. And having met so many new, dear friends, I can now look forward to future live GENESIS links with them & many other YWAM locations across the globe.

Cheers,
~Chris