{"id":222,"date":"2012-04-23T12:17:50","date_gmt":"2012-04-23T19:17:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.pnwumc.org\/gc2012\/?p=222"},"modified":"2012-04-23T12:17:50","modified_gmt":"2012-04-23T19:17:50","slug":"gc2012","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.pnwumc.org\/news\/gc2012\/","title":{"rendered":"#gc2012"},"content":{"rendered":"

Twitter account, Check.<\/strong>
\n Facebook account, Check.<\/strong>
\n General Conference iPhone App, Check.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Looks like I am ready for General Conference 2012, or #gc2012 for all you Twitterers. This General Conference is going to be like no other before it if for no other reason than the dramatic changes in information technology.<\/p>\n

At the 2008 event I had the wonderful opportunity to be an alternate delegate. As an alternate I had volunteered to contribute to a blog about my experience. I was nervous about that as I do not consider myself to be a great writer and I know my grammar is not top notch. Yet, I was willing to send a word back home to the few folks I thought would be reading. Turns out it was more than a few.<\/p>\n

I was also one of the few delegates with a \u201csmart\u201d phone. At the time I had a Windows smart phone and I was able to access the internet and send texts, I thought I was on top of it. Then I talked with our young adults and realized they were all using Facebook, which had only recently been opened to the public at large. (Facebook began with a restriction to be used only by college students.)<\/em> The information sharing the young adults were able to do with Facebook and their natural affinity for texting kept them well on top of the information curve.<\/p>\n

Now all of us old people are using Facebook and some have even stretched into the world of Twitter and hashtags\u00a0(even a bishop or two!).<\/em> This is inevitably going to have an impact on the way General Conference information is shared. I anticipate more than one twitterer will bring us scintillating news such as:<\/p>\n