More Good Foundation Blog

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During BYU Education week, Ron Schwendiman spoke on the “Future and Vision of the Church on the Internet”. Here are my notes from his lecture:

Scientific discovery and inventions are given by God, but…

“In our time the belief that science and technology can solve all of mankind’s problems has become a theocracy. I would despair if I thought our eternal salvation depended on scientific, technical, or secular knowledge separate from righteousness and the word of God. The word of God as spoken by His prophets through the centuries justifies no other conclusion.” (The Shield of Faith by James E. Faust)

“Increasingly difficult for the Apostles to reach all the members of the Church” - L. Tom Perry May 2000

Church employees frequently refer to President Kimball’s talk When the World Will Be Converted to know how they can use technology effectively and efficiently.

“We want to provide more technology but we can’t do it at the expense of other countries. We will always support the lowest common denominator (low tech) while still looking at high tech options.”

“Remember, the marvels of modern science and technology will not exalt us. Technical savvy is not fully useful unless there is a spiritual purpose and meaning to it.” (This is Our Day by James E. Faust, April 1999.)

Sampling of Church sites:

• lds.org
• scriptures.lds.org
• lds.org/churchmusic
• audio.lds.org
• videos.lds.org
• mormon.org
• familysearch.org
• providentliving.org - only place, for example to get updated Providing in the Lord’s Way (PDF)
• ldsces.org

Web sites currently:

• Most are English-only navigation
• Organized by HQ department
• 45 million pages view a month (LDS.org = 14 million)
• 4 million unique visitors a month (LDS.org = 1.5 million)
• 50k pages of content
• 41 pages with as much as 3,000 pages of downloaded content
• 61 country sites

LDS.org in the future:

• Full site navigation and content in 10 languages - English, Spanish, Portuguese, German, French, Italian, Russian, Chinese, Japanese, Korean (these 10 languages represent 95% of Church population)
• Site organized by user need or interest
• Primary customer — members of the Church
• Secondary customer — friends of the Church
• Single-source authentication to provide content based on roles and positions
• Expanded and integrated search capabilities in all 10 languages
• Administrative application to support programs (Duty to God, YW Personal Progress, Missionary Application, etc.)
• Ward and stake information sharing and collaboration (notes or recordings from meetings for people that weren’t there, etc.)
• Increased content for youth and children (not necessarily Church content but all good sites)
• Interactive sites to provide training and strengthen learning
• Improved access to materials for teaching, leading, and strengthening families
• Goal to put up all CES videos by this fall, through YouTube, Google Video, Yahoo Video, etc.

On whether to use MySpace: if your local leader says no, don’t use it. Otherwise, there may be purposeful ways to get involved.

We’ve got to use the Internet to support our traditional methods so investigators can validate what they’re hearing from missionaries.

What is happening?

• Major investment in technologies and tools to support new efforts
• All sites are being redesigned, teams working on building new sites and integrating tools
• 200k pages of content are being converted and prepared for delivery in 10 languages
• Focus groups are being conducted and feedback is being sought from members around the world on content and function of the sites
• Sites are being developed for leaders, youth, and children
• Technology is being constantly evaluated to see how it can be used (RSS, Video, Podcasting)
• It’s a slow process because we do it on an all or nothing system

Technological World

• growth of cellphones
• growth of wireless Internet
• accessible, inexpensive, functional
• communication, content, and services
• constant state of change
• we watch, we wait, we learn, we apply (Ron’s mantra, his job)

More can be done by good people doing good things (the Church will never do all that can be done for individuals and families on the Internet.)

• the Church will add content in additional languages
• good people need to put up websites, talk about what they believe, create communities
• don’t do anything related to Church administration or for units
• create belief sites about your neighborhood, your community, strengthening families, creating friendships, increasing faith and values
• encourage linking across content areas
• encourage good things to be done by good people
• encourage use of technology to spread the Gospel and other good works and services
• increase search engine rankings

The web has bad things on it — do something about it. Those who can “do good” on the Internet, should. You can get involved with the More Good Foundation or other good efforts online.

What’s next? beta.lds.org with search and Gospel topics index. New site includes index of many Gospel topics, as well as search for more obscure (including some controversial) topics. New site will include human readable URLs.

“The Church is true, even though you’re really slow to engage technologies.” — We get this comment all the time.

“I am so deeply thankful that we have the wonders of television, radio, cable, satellite transmission, and the Internet.” (Living in the Fulness of Times by President Hinckley, October 2001)

While preparing these notes, I found a PDF copy of Ron’s lecture slides from 2 years ago. Many of the slides are the same: Catch the Vision and Future of LDS.org

Ron also stated that he is working on putting up revised versions of his presentations, and potentially even audio files.