Programme ECIC 19

Open Internet, Open Church, Open Source

2-5 June 2014

"Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have." This call for accountability by the apostle Peter gains new relevance today, as internet culture makes our convictions – and to some extent also our institutions – more transparent to acquaintances and strangers alike.

At the same time the internet has become a space for people to live out that basic human "impulse to share what we like or have created ourselves or even things we think are good for us as well as for others" (quoted from the foreword to the 2005 publication Love to Share - Intellectual Property Rights, Copyright, and Christian Churches).
 
At ECIC 19, we will look at the different aspects of openness in today's internet culture:

    • the transparency that is created sometimes intentionally (for example in Wiki projects) sometimes unwittingly (as users hand over their personal data to companies and online behaviour is analysed by states and commercial players)
    • the collaborative potential and the emphasis on community and resource sharing of the open source movement and projects like Wikipedia
    • the exchange with people from other cultures and countries, which puts Christians into direct contact with brothers and sisters from other traditions and makes the diversity among Christians (as well as the need to work together and find common ground) more visible.

Details are subject to change.

  Monday, 2  June
 15:00 Registration, coffee and networking at the Ecumenical Institute in Bossey
 16:30 Opening service (Chapel)
 17:30 Welcome and introductions (Hexagone)
 18:00 Opening Keynote: Open internet, open church? New community structures in the global church - Roger Schmidt, Digital Encounters (Hexagone)
 19:30 Dinner

 

  Tuesday, 3 June (open to local 1-day participants)
 8:00  Breakfast
 9:00  Morning prayer (Chapel)
   
 9:30 Keynote: Free Software: the idea, the values and where it's going - Karsten Gerloff, Free Software Foundation Europe (Hexagone)
 10:45  Morning coffee
 11:15  Workshops* (rooms see below)
 12:30  Lunch
 14:00 "Tell your story" session* (rooms see below)
 15:15  Coffee break
 15:45  "Tell your story" session* (rooms see below)
 18:00 Keynote: Open Internet? signs of the times - Julia Maria Koszewska (Hexagone)
 19:30  Dinner

 

  Wednesday, 4 June (excursion)
 8:00  Breakfast
 8:30  Bus transfer to Ecumenical Centre (WCC & LWF offices in Geneva)
 The bus picks us up in the courtyard in front of the Chateau de Bossey.
 9:15  Welcome and Morning Prayer
 9:30 Guided tour of Ecumenical Centre
 10:00  Morning coffee
 10:45 Panel with representatives of ecumenical organisations: Sharing resources and forging a common identity via the web (Main Hall)
 12:00  Annual meeting
 13:00  Lunch (Cafeteria of WCC)
 14:00

Walking tour of Geneva (followed by free time in town)

 18:15

Bus transfer back to Bossey

The bus picks us up at Place de Neuve.

 19:30 Festive dinner and fellowship

 

  Thursday, 5 June
 8:00  Breakfast
 9:00  Morning prayer (Chapel)
 9:30 Keynote: Developing mobile services with the global community - perspectives on cooperation between church and university - Eveliina Ojala and Markku Tukiainen, University of Eastern Finland (Hexagone)
 10:30  Morning coffee
 11:00 Conference review and outlook. Panel discussion. (Hexagone)
 12:00  Journey blessing (Chapel)
 12:30  Lunch

Workshops

For this session you will be able to choose between three workshops that will look at one aspect of the conference theme in a more concrete way:

- How to conceptualize a virtual seminar (Salon Jaune) , led by Roger Schmidt, Digital Encounters:
The internet is increasingly becoming a space for training, encounter and joint learning. The workshop explores basic principles for using the Internet programmatically and works on concrete examples - ideally cases from participants. 

- Church web sites for parishioners (Hexagone): user-centered design in software development and content strategy, led by Titti Kallio and Marjukka Laiho, Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland:

Titti Kallio and Marjukka Laiho will describe the steps how the Finnish parish site (to be used by all the Finnish 430 parishes eventually) was designed and developed. We'll talk about e.g. parishioner segmentation, user-centered design, usability testing and the creating of user personas. The group work part will focus on user personas.

- Open Source software in a church context (Salon Vert) , led by Julien Mabillard, World Council of Churches:
Based on the experience of the full website refactoring of the WCC, Julien will explain why and how the WCC moved to a new technology and a new partner that follow the opensource development model. A real-world usage case study that shows the benefits of the open source model, including an overview of the design and features of the Plone project. Time reserved for questions and experience-sharing. 

 

Tell-your-story sessions

These sessions comprise a series of presentations from ECIC members detailing innovations, developments and web strategies. This year there will be 30 minutes for each presentation including discussion. 

  Hexagone Salon Vert Salon Jaune
14.00 - 14.30 "The Retreat on the Net and Mobile Apps easily and fast"
Juha Kinanen
"Alone. Now – Pastoral care with the divorced through social media, web & user fellowship " Chistian Grund Sorensen "Daily Lectionary -Readings for every day online" Mika Aspinen
14.30 - 14.45   break
14.45 - 15.15 "Church Web Project - better web sites for parishioners by co-operation"  Marjukka Laiho "Towards on Online Congregation" Peter Reimann and “Successful blogging” Claus Grue & Anna-Karin Olsson "DEON.pl - a community of the Church, in the World"  Krzysztof Nowak
15.15 - 15.45   coffee break
15.45 - 16.15 "Presens with Pictures - how we in the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Sweden use Instagram and Pinterest"  Martin Garlöv "Jesuits; Helping Souls in a Digital World" Ruth Morris "KirkeWeb: How to Digitalize the Church“ Nikolai Lengefeldt
16.15 - 16.30   break
16.30 - 17.00 "Oikoumene GPS: Find Out Your Priorities - The application that can help you locate where you stand on a multitude of issues related to ethics and spirituality" Tiziana Conti "Online Counseling in The Evangelical Lutheran Church in Denmark" Poul Sorensen

 

"Digital theology-GlobeTheoLib" Stephen Brown

 

Evenings

The evenings will allow opportunities to continue networking – Swiss style!