Reverb Consulting: Vatican Goes Techno

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Reverb Consulting is a young consultancy interested in helping people and organizations fulfill their missions. Our name is inspired from one of Phil's heroes, Buckminster Fuller. Bucky Fuller said, "I seem to be a verb." We love that because it is all about action, action that we believe is derived from active thinking, re-thinking, re-formulating the pieces of the puzzle that confounds you. In re-directing learning and understanding, we help people see anew, or re-see, so that more is possible. We are Reverb because the need to re-_____ is always there. The process is evolutionary and never ending. Change, therefore, is natural, desired, and celebrated as life.

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Margaret Wheatley's work is truly inspiring. Like ecosystems and biological systems, organizations are dynamic. Their cultures can be healthy or unhealthy, uncooperative, hostile, and disengaged. One of the best ways to re-energize and discover the nature of an organization's culture is to have it expose its thinking through focused and facilitated conversation around questions that count. Our conversation-based workshops actively involve large groups in thinking together. The results are astonishing. Key to the success of such a workshop is having realistic expectations for outcomes, understanding the value of the process which is fluid and not open to explicit control, and determining right questions.

Monday, January 5, 2009

Vatican Goes Techno

In a recent post, Jeff De Cagna of the Principled Innovation blog, writes about the Vatican joining the social media revolution. He asks, simply and provocatively, "If the Vatican can do it...."

It seems that the Vatican's got its on gadget and web designer in Reverend Paolo Padrini who has written an application for the iPhone that downloads the liturgy, in seven languages. The application is called iBreviary. The daily prayers, daily mass, and other special prayers are available at a touch to catholic priests and believers around the world.

The liturgical application, iBreviary, costs $1.10 and is available in the iTunes store with free updates. The proceeds from the sale will go to charity.

MSNBC reports that the Catholic Church is using social media technologies as a means of bringing its message to the world. Monsignor Paul Tighe, secretary of the Vatican's Pontifical Council for Social Communications, says the Church "is learning to use the new technologies primarily as a tool or as a means of evangelizing."

Even Pope Benedict XVI is in on it. During last summer's World Youth Day in Sydney, Australia, he sent out mobile phone text messages citing scripture to thousands of registered pilgrims — signed with the tagline "BXVI."

The Catholic Church is arguably one of the largest global organizations around. And, they have a stout reputation for being extremely conservative. Yet, they have a committee, the Pontifical Council for Social Communications, creating and selling their message via downloads. Priests, even the Highest Priest, are texting and using iPods.

When is the next meeting of your organization"s committee on social media and when will its app be available? I guess we should pray for those with their heads still in the sand.