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Category: the church of jesus christ of latter-day saints

If You Think You’ve Got a Tough Life, There’s Always Someone With Worse

Posted on by jessestay

I’ve been meaning to share this for awhile.  This is something the “Mormon Messages” Youtube channel for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints produced recently.  Stephanie Nielson is a popular local Utah blogger who, if you want someone who truly understands life, you should follow. You can follow her blog at the NieNie Dialogues. Or follow her on Twitter here. You won’t get through it without shedding a tear, I promise:

Whenever you’re down, watch this and think, “It could be worse!”.  Stephanie is an inspiration for us all.

Be sure to follow Mormon Messages on Youtube, Facebook, or Twitter for more great inspirational messages produced by the LDS Church.

Changing the World Quite Literally Through Social Media

Posted on by jessestay

The rumor is out – I thought I’d make it official.  This week I have started as the new Social Media Architect for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.  In summary, I am in charge of the architecture and integration of Social Technologies for the Church.  I will be in charge of finding ways that make sense to integrate technologies such as Facebook Connect, the Twitter API, @Anywhere, OpenSocial, Google Buzz, Google Wave, FOAF, Google’s Social Graph APIs, OpenID, and just about any other Social technology you can think of in to the Church’s web properties.  This is quite a task!

The LDS Church (also called “the Mormons” by others) has some of the most visited websites on the internet.  I’ve talked about it before. As of now, LDS.org, the Church’s site for members of the Church, ranks at number 2,460 in Alexa rankings.  The Church has the largest database of genealogical information in the world.  The Church has one of the largest philanthropic organizations in the world, contributing significantly to the efforts in Haiti, Chile, and many other causes (you can donate over on the right).  The Church’s Relief Society is the largest non-profit womens organizations in the world, contributing to the welfare, support, and moral guidance and relief of women throughout the world.  The Church has a global audience, speaking just about every language you can think of, and the Church’s technology has to support that audience.

That’s why this is such an incredible opportunity.  Never in my life have I had the chance to support such a large, global audience in a way that could impact so many.  I see the use of Social Media enabling the Church to reach into areas and touch people in ways it was never able to do before.  I see Social Media enabling the Church to help more people, strengthen, and make the world a better place without boundary.  I will get to not only use Facebook and Twitter to help others benefit society, but on a global scale I’ll get to use Orkut, Hi5, Bebo, and other global networks, and find ways to deeply integrate these technologies into the work the Church is doing, on a global scale and to a mass audience.

Will this affect my business, SocialToo?  I anticipate not.  I am taking a leap of faith here for something I feel has an even greater effect to change the world, but my intention is to continue running SocialToo part-time (at least).  As it needs more attention we will see where things go at that point.  I don’t anticipate anything changing on SocialToo, and I also expect some really amazing new features, new partnerships, and more to appear, even while I am fulfilling my position at the LDS Church.

“I don’t like X about the LDS Church” — I don’t intend to respond to many of these comments, and if they’re persistent I may remove or block them – IMO they are irrelevant to the position I hold.  I am responsible solely for the Social Media-related technologies of the Church, nothing else.  Any post here I make in representation of that position will be technology focused, not Church Policy focused.  I’ve made it clear my intentions are to make the world a better place with this position.  It doesn’t matter what your personal beliefs or motivations are – I think we’re all in this purpose together, and IMO, that’s what matters most.  I hope you can support me in this.  I hope to work for better standards in the realm of Genealogy.  I hope to work for better, more friendly International standards, and better ways people can communicate globally in different languages.  I hope what I do can change the poverty levels, and the welfare of the world through technology.  That is my purpose.

There is no better job where I can “do no evil” better than in what I’m doing now.  This is something where I feel I can truly make a change for the better.  Will it help my faith, my religion? You bet!  What I’m most excited though is the effect this position will have on the world.  My faith and my religion are entirely centered around that, and my hope is that I have an effect on this more than anything else.

Have any questions? Please don’t hesitate to ask in the comments and elsewhere.  I’m very happy, as always, to answer questions and discuss these matters and my beliefs in the Church especially.  You can definitely expect much more from me on some of the related technologies we’re working on as I am able.  I’m excited to where this leads!  There is something very powerful about Social Media technologies and the potential they have to change the world.

As always, the content of this post and any other post on this blog are my own opinions, not the reflections of my employer, nor an official statement on my faith or religion.  Any comment or post outside official LDS Channels are my own opinion and views.

Everything I Learned About Social Media I Learned From Professor Harold Hill

Posted on by jessestay

Coming out of High School I had a dream, like many Mormon boys of my age, to have good grades and get accepted to Brigham Young University. It was the “Notre Dame” of the Mormon faith, and having sat through many BYU football games with my family cheering them on and getting the nudge from my Dad I felt I was destined that I too would go there some day. I was very disappointed after High School when, while my 3.5 GPA was decent and I excelled in extra-curricular activities, it wasn’t decent enough for the school of my dreams and I would never graduate from there. I went on to follow the dot-com boom and bust, and get my degree late, graduating Summa Cum-Laude at Strayer University (take that BYU!). Even today, I’m still a very strong BYU football fan, and longed for that dream of the “BYU Experience”.

Today, my dream came true, and I was able to finally participate in the school I grew up so dearly loving. I guess you could say it was my “Rudy” moment. I’ve spoken many places recently but this was truly a highlight. Today I had the opportunity to Guest-Lecture an Intro to PR class at BYU. Despite having some issues getting YouTube to load on the BYU network (I’m told it’s not due to censorship, but rather strain on the network – yeah right), the lecture went extremely well! I compared the likes of Professor Harold Hill in “The Music Man” and that small town of River City he was selling to to Social Media, and used his lessons learned to share some of how Social Media should be used. My slides are below and if you ever want to see it in person I’d love to present it for your group or organization! For those in the class that are now readers, thank you to all of you and Dr. MacFarlane for the great opportunity you gave me!

Transformation Of Pr Through Social Media[swfobj width=”425″ height=”355″ src=”http://static.slideshare.net/swf/ssplayer2.swf?doc=transformationofprthroughsocialmedia-090319033655-phpapp01&stripped_title=transformation-of-pr-through-social-media” type=”application/x-shockwave-flash” allowscriptaccess=”always” allowfullscreen=”true”]

View more presentations from Jesse Stay.

Hate

Posted on by jessestay
[swfobj width=”400″ height=”300″ src=”http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=2184623&server=vimeo.com&show_title=1&show_byline=1&show_portrait=0&color=&fullscreen=1″ type=”application/x-shockwave-flash” allowfullscreen=”true” allowscriptaccess=”always”]
Salt Lake City No on Prop 8 Rally from Reid on Vimeo.

I came across this video tonight after a protest they called a “hate rally” in downtown Salt Lake in front of the headquarters of my Church. You can see the temple, one of the places we worship, and the place my wife and I were married in the background. It’s normally a peaceful, tranquil place to be – I enjoy visiting, and feeling the spirit that is there. This video was not like that. From an outside standpoint, I see a lot of anger, a lot of hate, a lot of people mad at my religion, and frankly that has an affect me because this religion brought me up to be the person I am. It hurts a lot to see so many people hating something that has brought me so much joy.

Then, I see stories like this one of people wanting to boycott Utah because “Mormons are in Utah” and “Mormons supported Proposition 8”. Tracking Utah and SLC on Twitter I’ve seen a lot of Tweets, some from people I talk to regularly and would consider friends doing the same thing. And at the same time I’m thinking for the most part I’m on their side – I don’t know what I would have voted for if I were in California, but I do know I don’t fully understand why my faith thought this proposition was important enough to publicly announce support. Frankly I don’t care and I don’t think it should matter. Do those in other states not realize that there are people in Utah on their side?

After all, the “No on 8” campaign did raise more than the “Yes on 8” campaign so surely they can’t be blaming this election on the campaign contributions of the “Yes on 8” campaign. After all, regardless of the Mormon Church’s involvement it was its members who contributed as a whole, and many members who contributed to the “No on 8” campaign as well. What happened to Democracy and the choice of the people being the reason elections are won? Campaign contributions weren’t the cause of this proposition going through. Frankly, if the Mormon church had not stepped in, the pro-campaign wouldn’t have had anywhere near as much money as the anti-8 and the vote would have been unfair. I’m not saying I’m pro-8, but I think the pro-8 campaign won this fair and square.

Then there’s these “lists” I keep seeing passed around showing members of the Mormon church who donated for Prop 8. Ironically, many of those were put together by members of the Mormon faith, living in Utah!. Where’s the “list” of those Mormons who voted against the campaign’s contributions? Where are the “lists” of Catholics who contributed, or Evangelicals or Jews who contributed to the “Yes on 8” campaign? What about Gay people who contributed? The bias in this campaign, especially after the fact seems as though the Mormons were the only ones fighting for the campaign, when in reality, the Mormons were actually in the minority when it came to total voters voting for the proposition. Add to that the Mormon-targeted videos like this, see why I feel hated?

Yesterday, I saw article after article of protesters protesting my faith’s religious places of worship, yelling at passers-by, and much of the same things you’re seeing in the video above. Yet, I see no one protesting at Catholic places of worship, Jewish synagogues, or Evangelical ministries.

This hate hits at the very cause these people are fighting for. Bigotry, equal rights, and freedom for all. As a Mormon, I don’t feel very free right now. I feel really hated. We need to all stand up for freedom, equal rights, and liberty for all – attacking a single faith for sticking up for their own rights to worship accomplishes nothing.

Freedom is accomplished peacefully, without hate or guile, with equality for all. Hate, and even anger, gets us nowhere.

I’m closing the comments on this post for the first time on my blog – if you guys want to discuss this on FriendFeed, so be it, but I’m writing this simply to get my feelings out on this subject. Those of you on FriendFeed know my position on this. I think the approach these protesters are taking is wrong.

LDS Church Ranks Top Among Churches on Alexa

Posted on by jessestay
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An article on the website, LDSMediaTalk, pointed me to an interesting statistic today. It appears that the official website for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, LDS.org, ranks at the top of all organizational Church websites on the internet. In fact, at #3,095 and having peaked at near 2,500 at the beginning of October, it is one of the most visited websites on the Internet.

Looking at the rank, and the current membership of near 13 million members worldwide, one would wonder if it’s not just members visiting the site. Could it be mere curiosity about the Church, activity of members themselves, or does the Church itself have a more technical background than others? As a practicing member of the Faith, I have to admit these numbers were surprising to me, and I don’t have an answer to those questions. It isn’t too surprising though, in that the Church has pioneered many technologies around Family History and recently has encouraged its members to blog and use the internet for good. The church has also created a Youtube channel at http://www.youtube.com/user/LDSPublicAffairs.

Amazingly, the church’s other main websites, FamilySearch.org (a website for Genealogy enthusiasts), and Mormon.org, at 11,342 and 63,314 respectively, also rank fairly high when compared to other religious websites. Here are the Alexa rankings of other large Religious organizational websites:

Catholic.org – 25,990

NOI.org (Nation of Islam) – 576,153

SBC.net (Southern Baptist Convention) – 204,346

Watchtower.org (Jehovas Witnesses) – 19,072

Venganza.org (The Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster – just for the non-believers) – 70,560

Being not as centrally organized, I had a difficult time finding a single source for Hinduism, Buddhism, or Judaism. I also realize that Nation of Islam is only one sect of beliefs within the Islamic faith – I would be interested to see any other major Church websites out there you may be familiar with. It would be nice to see a greater presence on more Church websites like this. What other Churches rank high in Internet visibility and traffic?

LDS Church Switches to MoveNetworks in Time for Annual Conference

Posted on by jessestay

med_6786Audience34.pngJust in time for its Semi-Annual General Conference, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints recently switched all of its video for the conference to MoveNetworks. The Church will be streaming the conference live throughout the weekend using the service, and has started its broadcast with a stream of the Annual General Relief Society conference, a worldwide meeting for women of the Church (the Church houses the worlds largest volunteer womens organization, called “The Relief Society”). MoveNetworks powers video for popular sites such as CW, Fox, and ABC.

The move to MoveNetworks continues a long legacy of technology improvements, giving the church high-quality, live video over the internet to its membership of 12 million plus people worldwide. Each talk, prayer, and musical number (the world-renowned Mormon Tabernacle Choir performs at each conference) will be clipped and available in segments via the MoveNetworks player.

The LDS (or Mormon, as it is called) Church is well known for its technology efforts, in particular in the areas of Family History, and has websites at LDS.org, Mormon.org, and FamilySearch.org. It has recently built a presence on Facebook, its CIO is on Twitter and FriendFeed, and you can now even chat with missionaries via their site online. Looking at their news site (which you can subscribe to via RSS), they even have links to Digg, Delicious, Facebook, Reddit, Stumble, and more. The Church is the largest centrally-US based church founded in the United States and continues to be one of the fastest growing churches worldwide.

You can watch the conference live online via their website in English, Spanish, Portuguese, and American Sign Language. You can also watch it in select areas on Cable and Satellite television, all starting tomorrow morning at 10:00 am Mountain Standard Time. Sessions will be recorded and available on the site afterwards.

Disclaimer: I am a practicing, believing member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and ascribe to its teachings. Although I avoid preaching on this blog, as I would any other church or organization, I enjoy sharing technology related stories about large organizations such as this.

The Mormon Church/Wikileaks Fiasco (or not-so-fiasco), A Mormon’s Perspective

Posted on by jessestay

Note that I’m not going to provide any links to the mentioned content here – you can go research yourself. Unlike Wikileaks, I respect others’ copyright.

One thing you may notice on this blog is that while I rarely pipe in with religious thoughts and my own personal religious beliefs (although I used to quite often), I will not hesitate to step in when a Social Media-related religious event occurs. An interesting Groundswell is happening today between the Headquarters of my Faith, and the controversial anonymous sharing site, Wikileaks. However, I don’t think it’s occurring in the way people think it is.

This morning on Slashdot you may have seen an article about the Mormon Church (or “The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints“, which is the Official name of the Church) sending a Cease and Desist to Wikileaks for posting links to a Copyrighted, yet old version (1999) of the Church’s “General Handbook of Instructions” for others to freely download.

I don’t understand why this is news. Having been in LDS Bishoprics before as a Clerk and Executive Secretary, I am very familiar with this manual. It is simply a guide for leaders of the Church to know how to council and guide members of the Church, and according to my understanding, NOT (fully) DOCTRINE. It is simply a Policy manual, and while Bishops and other Leaders of the church may follow its council, in the end they are left up to their own judgement (encouraged by the Church “to follow the promptings of the Spirit”) to decide how to handle matters in the Church. The Church considers the Bible, Book of Mormon, Doctrine and Covenants, and Perl of Great Price to be the Official Doctrine of the Church.

The Mormon Church is simply requesting Wikileaks remove the content because it is their own IP, not Wikileaks, and they are removing it as they would any other Church-owned and copyrighted document. Wikileaks and other sites are also portraying the contents of the manual as though it is doctrine for the general membership of the Mormon church, when in reality it was only intended as a guide for Leaders in the first place. The Mormon church has to protect the dissemination of false information as well.

In Charlene Li’s and Josh Bernoff’s book, Groundswell, she starts out with an example that happened last year on Digg.com where a user shared a blog post about how the HD-DVD Encryption standard had been broken. AACS LA quickly sent a cease and desist to Digg.com and the Digg.com founders promptly removed the link. Before Digg knew it, their own users began to backlash against them, occupying the entire front page of Digg with copies of the HD DVD encryption algorithm. Digg had a Groundswell of its own between its own users and it knew it had to do something. What did they do? They listened to their users and put the link back up, stating they would go down fighting rather than ignore their users.

I think with the post on SlashDot this morning some people may be thinking (and some hoping) a similar Groundswell is going to occur with the Mormon Church. Those that think so will be pleasantly surprised – there’s a difference between a Groundswell of your own members and those outside of your membership talking about you. How do you handle a Groundswell of people outside of your customer-base/user-base/member-base? You get in the conversation!

I want to share with you a video from Elder Russell M. Ballard, a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints Quorum of 12 Apostles – religious or not, I’d like to encourage you to read this not just from a religious perspective, but also a business perspective and how you can disseminate correct information about your business:

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is getting in the Groundswell through its own members. They encourage their members to blog, Twitter, get on Facebook, and clarify misconceptions. The Mormon Church will overcome this Groundswell (if you can even call it one) via its own membership, correcting misinformation Socially rather than through news releases and other means and letting the general media and blogosphere say what it believes. They have a Youtube channel here. They are on Twitter. They have a Facebook Page.

I encourage other churches and even businesses to take this response – there is a lot that can be applied from a religious, or even non-religious perspective from this. When you get your own followers of any business, brand, or religion to spread correct information about your brand it can overcome any misinformation spread about it.

Wikileaks is wrong in this case – they are sharing copyrighted information, not owned by themselves, and without the permission of the owner. The LDS Church isn’t going after them because the shared links are “secret”, but rather it is copyrighted material, and Wikileaks does not have permission to share it! As a book author and software developer I don’t want people using my content without my permission (which I’m generally pretty relaxed on in my personally owned content). Why would I want Wikileaks sharing the content I personally own on their site let alone others?