I'm just off the phone with Mark Brown (the CEO of Bible Society in NZ) basically, since he visited Carey before being appointed and sounded interested in the use of the Bible online, I've been meaning to talk to him about several of my dreams and projects. It makes such a pleasant change to talk to a "church leader" who not only thinks the electronic world is important, but who seems to "get it".

Mark has a blog [he also is some kind of Anglican Bishop of Second Life!], and I've added it to my Bloglines subscription because in the ten minutes since getting off the phone I've found several interesting posts there. Check it out!

Among other things we talked about ways to make PodBible more interactive. Mark suggested I look again at Twitter.He has a post that will suggest something of what he said: What am I doing right now? Twittering that’s what. I'd looked briefly at Twitter, and spotted instantly that it is not for me, that instant communication doesn't suit me, not least because I live in NZ and 95% of the world lives in a different time!

After a second look, I still don't think Twitter is the answer, but I suspect it's part of the answer... as well as "old fashioned" asynchronous discussion forums, and maybe instant messaging etc. perhaps a Twitter (or twitter-style?) sidebar which shows what people are "doing now" could be great.

I'm beginning to get an idea of what PodBible's YouTalk section should look like. A means to navigate (linked to tags, both of Bible references and other topics) an area to write "posts" and comments, the capacity to IM (perhaps with an asynchronous capacity like the IM tool in Moodle) and a twitter-like "how I'm responding to the Bible now" section. At least... When I talked with Stephen about all this last week my ideas were pretty unformed, now they are coming together...