I have been playing with Foursquare mostly, basically since it launched in 2009 and shortly thereafter I started using Gowalla too. Yes, there are a lot more out there and even Facebook jumped in the game, but these are the two really gaining traction. For a while there I was dinking around with Loopt and Google Latitude along with a lot of other people, but they never translated to real life.

The real question everyone has been asking is; “What does a location based service do for me?“

The short term answer has been; you get stuff from businesses you check in to. I haven’t gotten anything…have you? In fact I know people that got really into LBS for a season until the fun wore off and they had nothing tangible to show for it… so they quit.

Here’s what I think the future of location based services will be and why it will be a sustainable industry.

All of the interconnectivity happening via social media will hit the ground through location based services.

LBS will be the platform to which consumers will establish relationships with businesses. Currently you have little to no relationship with the people at your grocery store. Sure some of us have the benefit of a smaller local store where we can, but the reality is that the vast majority of us don’t. The businesses are too big and too many people come in and out every day.

With LBS you will be able to have a dialog with business owners and operators and because they can clearly see how loyal you are they can weigh your voice accordingly and reply in kind and even hook you up with ‘friend’ deals. The will be able to shape their business around their loyal customers in a more personal way.

It may be a few more years away, but hey, how many times did you have to visit and how much money did you you have to spend at that local shop before they considered you a loyal customer worthy of hooking up?

Time will tell.

I have mentioned in a few blog posts and tweets here and there that we are planning a road trip around The Intersection and on Wednesday we will be bringing some fresh content to The Intersection site and announcing the road trip.

I’m excited to let you know that my good friend Rich Kirkpatrick will be joining Justin Girdler and I as we head out of Austin in the early morning hours of September 2oth. Details to come on Wednesday; watch for Tweets and posts.

A little about The Intersection

When I first was tasked with formulating a vision and a strategy for the Internet Campus at Gateway Church one of the first realizations I had, and the others around me confirmed, was that an internet church experience was not something that a non Christian was going to be into as it doesn’t line up with what they are used to on the web. Internet culture is fast paced and sound bite oriented and not one that is geard toward sitting through an hour long church service online.

We have decided that offering a more sound bite based experience that works within the realities and limits of internet culture rather than serving up a normal church service on the internet could have a deeper impact in the internet culture and The Intersection is the first step in this strategy.

We are starting with a blog and using a lot of video content, some we’ve create, some repackaged and some pulled from around the web. As we start to develop a community we will begin more live experiences and looking to deploy even more websites that are even more targeted.

Yesterday I laid out the three main skills that leaders have leaned on since more or less the industrial revolution. I said that I think they are dying. So what replaces them?

Design
As we move to a global village culture and the world becomes more connected, it will become more class-less and it is already happening in the more technologically advanced countries.  This is especially true in intellectual space. The ‘expert class’ is not what it used to be, no longer can you simply contribute knowledge but you must also be a part of the design process of what ever it is your organization is looking to accomplish.

It’s no longer enough to have a great idea you must also be willing and able to put your boots on and get some things done and make something. The smallness of the world allows us all to see that anyone can have a great vision and even a strategy to accomplish it…but you have to be able to design it and craft it to be a leader.

Story
Can you take people on journey across multiplatforms and mediums and spark a movement? Not just the simple oration of a story over 30 minutes. Some stories take years to play out before the people on the journey come to the final climactic scene and take the action that the leader intended. Some stories are 140 characters long and last a few minutes…even a few seconds in the life of one individual.

Pure communication skills just don’t cut it, one must understand and relate to the reality of those you wish to communicate to and the various mediums by which the story is told. I don’t believe this can be faked; leaders must have a firm grasp of this because this ever shrinking global culture can spot a fake infinitely better than generations past.

Caring
You first need to truly care about those you wish to lead and those you wish to impact through your organization and then you must clearly communicate that you care.  Leaders who can put on a good show are a dime a dozen, but leaders who can truly and genuinely care…and prove it will create powerful movements.

Being a a captivating personality will only get you so far, you must care and you must be able to scale your caring to an ever growing movement if you wish to grow your organization.

If you read part one you may be thinking that these three skills are basically the same…maybe, maybe not?

Am I hitting something here or am I way off?

Leadership skills matter. I don’t think the personality of a what makes a great leader has changed much in the last 50 years, but I think the core skill set has.

In the past the core three skills have been:

Vision
The ability to articulate with passion and conviction a plan to move your organization from point A to point B.

It’s dying because: We think more globally and collectively so our culture has it’s mind (and heart) on much bigger things than your little organization.

Communication
Stand in front of a room full of people or a camera and captivate them with your chops. Just the ability to talk went a long way in the past.

It’s dying because: Content creation has become so easy that your mom and the 11 year old kid in their room can publish ‘movies’ and other content for the entire world to see. Your platform doesn’t matter anymore.

Charisma
A powerful person can own an entire room full of people. It’s that simple. I’m not talking about your core personality, but your learned interaction skills.

It’s dying because: The majority of the people you are communicating too rarely, if ever, are in the same room with you.

A great leader in the past had this three skills wired and could combine them to accomplish great things with their organizations.

So what are these three skills being replaced with? I’ll take a stab at it tomorrow, but in until then…what do you think?

Read Part 2

I was speaking at Echo Conference and during Q & A I was asked; what do you guys do to to contextualize to all the different cultures around the world?

To be honest, I never really thought about that and the answer I gave come quickly and naturally:

Nothing. We don’t do anything to contextualize to all the cultures around the world. We are what we are and the people that dig it…show up.

Ok, it was the viral video of last week.

We are starting to create and prep some content like this for various web sites that will be rocking the internets in the coming months. If you are a part of Gateway Church then you get to check some of the content out during the 8B4. Here’s a little taste:

check out Double Rainbow and Autotune Double Rainbow

I loved Echo last year and I expect it to be even better this year. As cool as the breakout sessions and keynotes are, the best thing I expect to take away from Echo are the conversations that I will get to have with leaders who are right in the middle of the same things I am in the middle of.

Internet ministry leaders usually have to settle for a few sideshow breakouts at most conferences since we don’t have our own national gathering…I would say that Echo has become THE gathering for internet ministry.

I’ll be leading a conversation on Internet Ministry

Church in Two Minutes: Delivering a Complete Story on Internet Time
The internet and social media are fantastic platforms for spiritual content, but we have to redefine what a ‘church’ experience is for the internet. We can’t simply serve up the same content that we deliver in a real life experience. This is an amazing opportunity to redefine how we communicate the Gospel to our culture and I think we haven’t quite nailed it.

This will not be a presentation, but an open conversation, so come prepared to ask questions and help us come up with some answers. After all, even the veterans of ministry on the web have only been at it a few years.

Music is a big part of my life. My wife is a serious music fan with really good taste. My kids are way into some good music like the Fleet Foxes, Monsters of Folk, Gorillaz and Spoon. I often find my daughter dancing around the house with her iPod singer here latest favorite.

As my kids come into their own in terms of music taste and start figuring out what they really like without mom and dad pushing music on them, I was thinking back at the music the I first got into when it was up to me to hit play.

Theses are the tapes that I wore out in my Walk Man when I was a kid in the early to mid eighties:

Pink Floyd | the wall
I’m pretty sure that I snaked this from my brother Mike when he wasn’t looking, or maybe he wisely slipped it into my Walk Man knowing he was mentoring the taste of a future Floyd fan.  Either way, to this day, this is one of my favorite albums and rarely does a week go by that I don’t listen to a few tracks.

Bon Jovi | slippery when wet
Don’t hate, this album rocked your world too. What can you say about it other than it is loaded with hits that were are catchy and easy to listen to.

Dire Straits | brothers in arms
Not sure how I got my hands on this, I think it was my dad’s. This album was an early seed being planted that would make me want to play guitar.

What were some of the first albums you got a hold of as a kid?