LDS General Conference and Twitter

This past weekend was the General Conference of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. Both this conference and the last conference that was held in April, I followed what people were saying about it on Twitter (hashtag: #LDSconf). There was both good and bad about the experience.

It was fun to see that it was trending nationwide (and even worldwide at one point). Social media is a great way for people to share the Gospel of Jesus Christ. The Church (both the organization and individuals) have been doing a great job of using technology to this end. It was fun to hear what people had to say – some of it very insightful.

I was disappointed, however, that most people were just tweeting quotes from the conference or commenting on silly things like what color tie a specific speaker was wearing. I was also disappointed that some people were using the forum to share other agendas.

Lastly, while I did learn some from following the conference, I probably would have been better off just paying closer attention to the speakers. I had a hard time listening to the conference and reading the conversation online. I know I missed a lot of both and I am glad I can review them both after the fact.

Technology always offers a trade-off. For example, with mobile phones we can be contacted anywhere and anytime at the cost of having to be in touch all the time. In this case, it is great that we can share the Gospel online to everyone willing to read it as well as hear what others have to say, but the cost is that we also get some junk and maybe get distracted from the hearing the message fully ourselves.

Genealogists vs. the Rank and File

I currently work as a web developer at FamilySearch.org. Since working there, I have noticed an interesting dynamic: some people are very dedicated and intense about genealogy while others are casual and untrained. FamilySearch struggles to please dedicated genealogists without intimidating or confusing people new to family history research. Imagine being such a newcomer and inputting some data about your family tree. Later, you discover that somebody else had edited a lot of your work, adding many more names, dates, and sources (this is possible because FamilySearch uses an "open edit" model where anyone can make changes). You might feel hurt or intimidated and would certainly feel less confident about continuing to do the work. I do not know the solution to this problem, but I think awareness is part of the answer. Hopefully with awareness, more people will get involved without getting scared away.

World Vegetarian Day

I just found out that today is World Vegetarian Day. I feel grateful towards the many individuals and organizations that try to spread awareness and I love how the Internet facilitates that process. Awareness is a major key to understanding. The more we know about a particular cause or misfortune, the more likely we are to be kind towards those who care about that cause or suffer because of that misfortune. I hope that we can all try to be more understanding of others, especially when using the Internet where it is so easy to hide behind a mask of anonymity while saying potentially harmful things.

Working with intellectual property is scary

The other day Goldman Sachs was at my college campus trying to recruit computer programmers. As the recruiters described how wonderful it is to work for Goldman Sachs, I couldn't help but recall an article I read about how Goldman Sachs prosecuted a former employee, Sergey Aleynikov, for stealing intellectual property. I don't know all the details of the case, but essentially, Aleynikov was trying to do what was right and legally required by open source software licenses and contribute code that he created back to the open source community. I would never work for a company like Goldman Sachs, because I believe that open-source is a good thing and ought to be promoted, not discouraged.

You can check out some of these articles for more information about the trial: Vanity Fair, Above the Law, Forbes

So much to read, So little time

Recently, I added Y Combinator's Hacker News to my RSS feed. I quickly learned that there were more interesting articles posted than I could possibly read. My main purpose in subscribing to Hacker News was to become a better programmer, yet I found myself reading articles on how to run a successful startup and how healthy eating is an engineering problem. Later, I decided to just do a Google search for "how to become a better programmer." In the first few hits I found an article with a list of specific suggestions and measurable tasks that I could do. Most of the time, more information (like from Hacker News) just takes our focus away from actually doing anything worthwhile. I could continue reading articles about becoming a better programmer, but until I actually implement the ideas in the articles, I am just wasting my time.