The New Internet – An Introduction

I’m really enjoying the new Internet experience – especially the opportunity to read and comment upon the blogs of other Anglicans in the worldwide Anglican Community.  My nascient tendencies towards teaching and selling got the better of me, so I volunteered to give a talk on this “New Internet” at the adult forum at my church.  When I shared the draft speaker’s notes with colleague and fellow blogger Tim Bray, he suggested that I post it on my blog when it was finished.

After I gave the talk, a fellow parishioner asked to have extra copies of the handout, so she could share it with friends who might want to give the talk at their own churches. I decided then to publish all of the materials.

If you decide that you want to replicate this talk at your own venue, feel free to use the materials linked below.  An attribution to the JarsOfWater author would be appreciated.

• Speaker Script (.odt, .pdf )- This was the script I planned. It took about 35 minutes, including the question/answer period at the end. I lost WiFi internet access half-way through, which shortened the talk, but I think many of the questions would have been answered if I had been able to do live demos of the aggregators.
• Handout for Attendees (.odt, .pdf) – I printed this, make copies, and cut them in half to give out at the end of the talk.
• Speaker Outline (.odt, .pdf) – I printed this on one sheet of paper, double-sided, and referred it as I was speaking, to be sure I covered everything in my script. It also includes what to write up on the whiteboard (or flip chart). I preloaded all of the Internet links in tabs on my browser, to save time.

Click on the .pdf documents to see what’s in each file. You can use them as-is, but if you want to be able to edit the file, download the .odt version.

If you don’t have Microsoft Office, StarOffice, OpenOffice or NeoOffice on your computer, you can still use the .odt documents. Go to OpenOffice.org and download the free software there. I use it at home and at work, and it’s the bees knees. Not to mention being free.

One last thing: be sure to allow plenty of set-up time up-front to connect your laptop to the projector or big-screen TV, and to set up your internet connection. A WiFi connection that just works for someone else, may not be so easy on your machine.