jonathan stegall

For the next couple of days, at Visit Mix07, Microsoft is broadcasting the Mix conference from Vegas. They’re spending a lot of time demonstrating and talking about things in Silverlight, Expression Studio, Visual Studio Orcas, etc. I’ve been watching the news about these things for quite a while with a mixture of skepticism and excitement. After watching some of this stuff, most of my skepticism has gone away. That’s a big deal, for me.

At this point, I can’t wait to see how Adobe and Microsoft will compete over these similar programs and technologies. I’ve never experienced a season in web technology like this, where two companies are essentially vying for the attention of designers and developers.

I think often about the choice between .Net, PHP, Rails, ColdFusion, etc. as I try to figure out where my career will head, and I’m beginning to think that these next few months will help me decide. Adobe is going to do amazing things with Apollo, and with Flex, and of course Creative Suite 3, and I think they’ll also do some awesome things with ColdFusion in its next release. Microsoft, though, is showing that they’ll do awesome things with .Net, Silverlight, and the Expression Studio/Visual Studio combination.

So on that note, I hope to learn a lot about these various things in the next few months, and make an intelligent decision. It would be easier to make one based on emotions. “Microsoft sucks. Use Adobe.” “Adobe sucks. Use GIMP and Ajax and LAMP.” And so on. Everyone can make arguments based on emotions.

The struggle is in figuring out what the best decision is, and how it lines up with the core of who I am and what I want to accomplish.

At the risk of being cheesy and sounding overly spiritual, it was today in 1998 that I met Jesus, and I want to reflect on this milestone for a bit. In a story in the Old Testament, the Israelites, in the book of Joshua, have crossed over the Jordan river on dry land. So they could remember this event, God had them place twelve stones in the middle of the river. This is one of my stones.

On April 27, 1998, I was a freshman in high school. I had spent the first couple of years of my time as a teenager doing other things and looking for “something real.” “Something real” is often difficult to find in the church, and I didn’t think it existed there until April 27, 1998 at a small youth service at a relatively small church in the really small town of Salisbury, North Carolina.

I came to experience this through worship music. The idea that God would respond to people seeking him, and make himself known to them in a real way, was totally foreign to my mind at the time. I’m thankful that my relationship with him started in this way. I’ve become much more cynical toward worship music as a genre than I was then, but even in my cynicism I cannot write off the fact that God is able and willing to use it, regardless of the errors that exist in its marketing, or its theology (neither of which, of course, are bad in all worship music or worship artists), or whatever else there may be.

In any case, in the last nine years I’ve attempted to devote my life to experiencing, learning about, learning to love, and learning to be loved by the Jesus I met. That’s manifested itself in so many different ways that I would never have expected, but wouldn’t trade for anything. In addition to that, I’ve increasingly sought to learn how to love the people that Jesus loves; which means, of course, everyone (I know that’s not obvious, even though it should be). Not that I’ve done a wonderful job of it, but there’s a passion that exists in seeking it. In introducing people to the Jesus that I’ve met, rather than the Jesus that’s often pushed in Western society; in helping the poor, the outcast, the disconnected, and the hurting.

Seeking this Jesus has caused my life to be turned upside down several times, in several ways. Amazing ways. Weird ways. As I look back today, I’ve noticed the backward times and the forward times in this journey, and yet I’m unarguably an entirely different person than I was, or than I would have been otherwise. He and I are still on a journey.

From A List Apart:

People who make websites have been at it for more than a dozen years, yet almost nothing is known, statistically, about our profession. Let’s do something to change that. Presenting A List Apart’s first annual Web Design Survey.

Scientists in Dundee have announced plans to create a “robot village” in an effort to learn how different cultures emerge in society.

And Isaac Asimov rolls over in his grave. I’m not sure what to think about this. It raises several questions, at best. At worst, of course, it leads us in the direction of I, Robot. Which will it be?

As I’ve said before, I read a lot of blogs. At this time, I use Google Reader to aggregate my feeds, and thoroughly enjoy it. I typically mark the blogs I actually like to visit from an aesthetic perspective with a different tag, so that I can go and look at the site itself when time allows. In any case, the blogs I read are typically about faith/spirituality, art, business, or the web (anything from design to development to cool stuff and beyond). And I like that. But some of these blogs mix some or more of these categories.

As it is developing, my blog does and will probably increasingly mix the world of faith/spirituality/theology with the world of the web/design/development. It is a core belief of mine that the two worlds have much to say to each other, and much to learn from each other. This brings up some interesting thoughts and questions. Is it appropriate for me, as a web professional, to blog about, for example, theology? What if someone, from either world, doesn’t like the mixture? Does the mixture hurt me professionally? Can it help me professionally?

“Conventional wisdom,” as much of it as there can be with the relatively small age of blogging, says that professional bloggers should stay away from things that could be controversial, or too personal. Especially if they are freelancers, or searching for a job. Meaning, of course, religion and politics, among other things. I talk about both. I’m not freelancing at the moment, or searching for a job, but the idea still gives me pause. In searching the web, one finds people on both sides of this question. Many web professionals who blog are quite open about their personal lives (just to list a few), and for a more specific reference, the Godbit Project exists to merge theology and technology. Others have almost nothing to say about their personal lives, whether from lack of time or other reasons.

While I’m not sure what I think about this question, I intend to continue blogging about the things I want to blog about. I want to observe what effect, if any, it has on my professional life, specifically freelance as time allows.

The other day, I was part of a conversation, or a series of conversations. Among other things, one of the topics was workplace spirituality. Most of the other voices in this conversation are quite a bit more conservative than I am, which may or may not explain our differences of opinion on several of the issues.

In any case, one of the topics was prayer in the workplace. The observation was made that Muslims are allowed to take regular prayer breaks in order to comply with the pillar of Islam that states that one must pray five times daily. I’m fine with this. At my workplace, anyone can take prayer breaks, as far as I have heard. But in any case, I’ll give the benefit of the doubt, and assume that this might not be a stated thing at other workplaces, and that there might be workplaces where Christians, or Jews, or whoever, is not allowed to take prayer breaks.

The most obvious thing, here, is that if this kind of discrimination did occur and was reported to the right people (hey, maybe the ACLU isn’t that evil after all), it would be a huge public spectacle and would almost certainly be righted very quickly with a lot of financial gain. The ACLU has stood up for Christians and churches on several occasions when they were within their rights. So, where public life meets faith and spirituality, I cannot believe that this kind of discrimination would survive, apart from a victim mentality that didn’t bother reporting it.

But, I think there’s also a more private way to consider this. Many, and probably the vast majority of, American Muslims (who the conversation was concerning) are very faithful to the five pillars. More faithful than the majority of Christians are at anything. If Americans who claim the name of Jesus were given prayer breaks, what would they do on them? Talk on the phone… gossip with other coworkers… maybe talk about how spiritual they are… take an extra smoke break… eat… and any number of other things. I venture to guess that most would not actually pray. American Christianity is so separated from discipleship, and from everyday life, that I think it’s an assumption that Christians don’t need prayer breaks.