The World According to Taquoriaan

I don’t think it is possible to wrap the whole day in one single blog post. Too much good stuff during the keynotes and the break-out sessions and lots of food for thought. I think I need to ruminate for a while on everything before being able to write about it. Instead, I want to summarize the days as it happened outside those sessions: the get-together of all these great people.

The folks at SQPN always stress that this event is not a conference, but a celebration. And boy, did we share in the joy of faith. We were brought to the Archdiocese’s Pastoral Center in Braintree, MA, which is about 10 miles south of Boston. It’s a very new accommodation given to the archdiocese by a local benefactor after they had to sell most of their possessions after the whole abuse scandal ten years ago. It is very modern, has all facilities and very fast internet. I was surprised to see lots of people watching the ustream feed that was being broadcast from the same connection and it didn’t glitch. The bandwidth must have been over a gigabyte per second.

After we arrived at the centre, we got breakfast and coffee before moving over to the big room for the opening session. I will discuss the other sessions in upcoming blogposts and only get to the opening and closing session here. I loved the session with Mac Barron. For me it was immediately clear that he was doing a spoof on an Apple Keynote. He talked and moved like Steve Jobs, he even wore a similar sweater. It was too funny to hear afterwards that a lot of people didn’t get it, especially given the amount of Apple gadgets at the celebration. I think I counted more iPads in the room then there would be in any given Apple Store. And then the Macbooks and iPhones… It was too funny!

For me, the opening session was also an opportunity to upload stuff online, because my internet connection at the hotel wasn’t working. I had to sign up for internet at the desk, then I had to give my credit card details and if I would be a member of the special program, then it would be for free. I don’t have a credit card, so therefore I couldn’t access free WiFi. Am I the only person who thinks this is moronic? But anyway: I did have internet at the pastoral center and tried to update my social networks, while listening to keynotes while making notes myself. I can imagine that if you are following me through various social networks, that the updates from me from the events were sparse. I’m sorry I cannot multi-task like that, even though I’m female. But I don’t think anybody minded it.

After the hilarious opening by Mac Barron it was time for an introduction by Scott Landry which gave me goosebumps. His story about how the Archdiocese got the Pastoral Center and how they got help after the disastrous financial situation after the abuse scandal was very touching. He was very real, his emotions were real.  After that it was time for the first keynote by Fr. Reed from Catholic TV. I will discuss the contents of this session in a seperate blog posts, just like the contents of all the other sessions, because putting everything in one post wouldn’t give them the credit they deserve.

In between sessions there was time to get coffee, eat a bit, connect with people. I don’t know to who I talked, there were so many people I wanted to talk to, but there was so little time, I felt overwhelmed by everything. I hope in the future the CNMC will be more then one day, so I have a chance to genuinely talk to people and hear about what they do in New Media. I talked briefly to Denyse and Deborah, which I saw in person for the first time but I could not do quality time. I’m still a bit frustrated over that.

I also would have loved to make more audio recordings, but everything went by so fast: there simply wasn’t the time to do interviews. I think I got more out of it compared to last year when everything was so very new to me, so perhaps I won’t have this feeling of being overwhelmed as strongly as this year. What I will remember of all the interactions I had was the passion and joy everyone was radiating, you could clearly see that the Holy Spirit was working in overdrive.

The closing talk was by Cardinal Sean Patrick O’Malley. He encouraged us to continue and keep up the good work. But you could tell he didn’t really know who we were and what we are doing.  That’s also what he said: before hosting the CNMC, he didn’t know what SQPN was and what we did. He talked about a Catholic radio station and a newspaper they started, which are of course not New Media, but “Old Media”. He explained how he got into blogging and shared his experiences in New Media. Basically the blog was something he was supposed to do for a visit to Rome, but because of the success and the fact they got 3.5 million hits in the first week, there was no way he could stop blogging.

I found it hard to connect to both Fr. Reed and Cardinal O’Malley. I think the reason is that both are not really connected to New Media. Fr. Reed does ‘Old Media’ with Catholic TV and seems to treat New Media as the internet variant of Old Media (which it isn’t) and Cardinal O’Malley’s talk was about the Catholic Newspaper and the Catholic Radio they used before. If he thinks that’s about the same as we do in New Media, then he clearly doesn’t “get” New Media. New Media is not a digital form of a newspaper and Catholic Internetradio. Both would be only broadcasting stuff, not interacting with the listeners/viewers. It shows that we need to reach out more to these kinds of people. When we teach them, when they ‘get’ New Media, it will be a great way to push things forward. That in itself is for me a great motivator to try to show bishops and other key figures what we can do on the internet and maybe get some funding or backup that way. I hope that the speakers who weren’t really into New Media yet also caught a glimpse from the joy and passion that was radiated in the corridors, I hope we were able to impress them and set them on fire as well.

We need to be ambitious and not accept mediocre results, neither should we strive for mediocre goals because we think we never can reach the ambitious ones. We shouldn’t think in terms of what is not possible, we should think of what is possible and aim for the highest goals, just like St. Paul said in the first letter to the Corinthians, chapter 9, verse 24-27 (NIV translation):

Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one gets the prize? Run in such a way as to get the prize.Everyone who competes in the games goes into strict training. They do it to get a crown that will not last; but we do it to get a crown that will last forever. Therefore I do not run like a man running aimlessly; I do not fight like a man beating the air. No, I beat my body and make it my slave so that after I have preached to others, I myself will not be disqualified for the prize.

I think that’s the attitude we need to have when it comes to New Media.

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Today was THE day. It’s finally August 4th, 2010, a day I’ve been looking forward to because I would travel back to the United States again to meet old and new friends at the CNMC hosted by the Archdiocese of Boston and an initiative of SQPN, the Star Quest Production Network. I didn’t sleep in the night leading to the big travel day because of stress. I’m usually not so much stressed out by travelling itself, but by the uncertainties that come with travelling on stand-by. For those not familiar with this way of travelling, I will explain it before describing my day.

When you travel on standby you can travel for free or for a very low fee (usually you only pay for taxes). You can only get a ticket for this if you are related to or friends with an airline employee. The ticket is called a ‘buddy pass’. The advantage is that you can travel for low prices, the disadvantage is that you don’t have a confirmed seat on the plane. You can only go when there are empty seats left after all regular passengers got on the plane. This means that when it’s very busy, you won’t be able to travel at all. Also, being a buddy gives you the lowest priority possible. Employees who work for the airline have a higher priority and will be seated before you.

I heard from Fr. Roderick, who initially tried to travel on stand-by on Sunday that there were an insane number of standby passengers for only a few seats: 90 people standing by, only 20 seats available. And this situation was going on for weeks already. It would be very hard, maybe impossible for me to travel into the United States on a buddy pass. He bought a ticket to get there, that’s an option I simply do not have.

Getting up at 4am to get the 5am train, I hoped the best for it. I checked in at 7:30am and had to wait until 11:15am to know if I was on the flight or not. While waiting at the gate, I discovered to my great horror that I had forgotten to check myself out for the train. If you don’t check out, it means you will charged the maximum amount of money for a ticket since they assume you travelled by train for the rest of the day. I could not get back to the trains because that would force me to leave the gate. If I would leave and my name would be called and not show up, my seat would go to another person. The fact I didn’t get on the 11:15am flight on Wednesday was a relief, because I could rush back to the train station, check out, have some lunch and go to the next gate for my next try.

Boarding would start at 12:15pm and things were looking bad. 20 people standing by, only 4 seats available. I saw online that they were selling business class tickets only and heard people who weren’t expected to show up showing up anyway. So the flight left without me and without any other standby passengers, because it was completely full. I had spent most of the day on Schiphol Airport with no results and had to decide what to do. If I would go back to Groningen, that would mean a three hour trip, get some food, sleep, get up at 4am again for another three hour trip back and hope for more luck on Thursday. I was already tired for not being able to sleep, the stress would only make it worse so therefore I decided to stay the night with friends near Amsterdam, who live only 15 minutes by train from Schiphol.

I decided to make the best of it, tried to enjoy Leiden anyway, despite the fact I visited it the Saturday before. After dinner I went over to my friends, had a nice chat and went to bed early because I had to get up at 6am to get on the 6:43am train which would arrive at 7am at Schiphol Airport.
To be completely honest I didn’t believe for one second I would make it today on the plane, because of the situation. The flight attendant at the gate said that tomorrow doesn’t look necessarily better than today. Lots of people standing by, very full flight. I will go to the airport and try, just because of my friends over in the United States who are praying for me and my flight situation and who would love to see me on Friday. But in my mind I already have given up on the idea I will walk around in Boston this weekend.

There is something however, that gives me also the feeling this is a test to have faith. If God really wants me to go there, I will go there. I just try tomorrow to see if I have any luck not because I believe in it, but to allow for a miracle to happen. If it works, I will have a great story to tell afterwards.

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