When it comes to embracing new technologies, we youth workers (Christians? humans?) come in about five basic flavors: innovators, early adopters, early majority, late majority and laggards. (I'm indebted to Malcom Gladwell, author of The Tipping Point, p. 197, for these five categories; go out and buy his great little book about how little things can make a big difference.)

The innovators are those adventurous souls who are among the first to embrace (experiment with?) new technologies; laggards are...well...a little slow in recognizing the need for change. The remaining three flavors are obviously named for their positions on the willingness-to-embrace-new-technology continuum. (Here comes the inevitable segue…)

The topic of this edition of Tech Talk, firewire, is just the kind of digital technology well-suited to reveal which of the aforementioned (I've wanted to use that polysyllabic word for years) flavors of technology-embracer you may be at this particular moment. First, let's define firewire (the innovators and early adopters may skip ahead 119 words as they are, by definition, already using firewire technology in their lives and/or youth ministries) and the context in which we shall use or abuse it.

Without getting all engineer-like, the short story on firewire is that it was invented by Apple Computers (let's pause briefly to allow our Mac devotees/disciples to beam proudly) as a high-speed (up to 400 megabits per second), two-way, hot-swappable (no need to power down to connect/disconnect computer peripherals), digital data-transfer protocol…oops…standard. Also, as firewire technology (also know as IEEE1394 and iLink) has invaded several different personal computing peripherals such as printers, hard drives, DVD burners, CD-ROM drives/burners, video projectors, digital video camcorders and VCRs, we must establish the limited context (we Christians are big on establishing the "context" are we not?) for this article.

That, my techno-youth ministry friends, is simply this—digital video production in youth ministry.

The Right Time, the Right Technology

In our favorite book, the Bible, there's a phrase frequently used to describe when the right moment has come for something to happen; that phrase, familiar to 97.59 percent of you reading these words, is "the fullness of time." When it comes to you and me using firewire technology, especially for shooting, editing and projecting our own home-grown, youth ministry-based video productions, the fullness of time has definitely come.

Now, lest those of you who, as traditional members of the late majority or (gasp!) laggards, are hoping to upgrade your image/status to that of innovators or early adopters by going right out to buy a firewire device, just take a deep breath and stop jumping up and down on your pew. Regarding firewire technology, those positions already have been filled. Still, a few early majority positions remain with plenty of late majority spots vacant. Trust me on this: You don't want to sit with the laggards.