Across our diocese, God is raising up truly gifted individuals to serve in the various ministries of our churhes.  One such individual is The Rev’d Deacon James Gardner.  Deacon Gardner serves at the Cathedral of Christ the King and also helps in the Children’s Church ministry. 

In his work with the children, Deacon Gardner has developed several creative teaching tools to help communicate the Faith to his young listener.  According to Deacon Gardner, “The Lord gives me songs to use with the Children’s Church and other things like our Christmas play last year and drawings to copy and color for the kids.”

The drawing shown here is one such example of the creativity God has endowed Deacon Gardner with to bless the children.  Some other creative things God has blessed with  that the children have enjoyed is a special explanation of the Trinity and a song about the resurrection written to the tune, “Take Me Out To The Ballgame” titled, “Take Me Out To The Garden.” 

May the Lord continue to bless our diocese with such creative men and women as The Rev’d Deacon James Gardner.

I’ve been following the blogversation between James Gardner and Colin Henderson with some interest. 

In one post, Henderson quotes a recent Deloitte study:

“A period marked by high leverage and ever more complex financial products has come to an end. In its place, a new financial services marketplace that is now emerging will require different strategies and different business models.”

Both Gardner and Henderson are paying attention to the same trends, most notably:

• The erosion of an already iffy consumer trust in banks
• The poor fit between current banking products and the emerging marketplace

They disagree however on the outcome.  Henderson sees a future in which there are two groups of banks:

1. Financial Utilities – banks that continue to provide basic services
2. Innovators – niche players in a context of disaggregated financial services

Gardner’s projected future is one where banks:

• No longer hold a central position in consumers’ financial lives
• Would be just one of multiple resources consumers would draw from to create their own personal “mash-up” financial products

For banks, this is scary stuff—primarily because it’s all so plausible. 

Banks are in a very precarious position.  The decisions they make now will have a significant impact on the future of the industry.  When Deloitte says “different business model” it means a different profit structure—a different growth engine. 

And that’s something many banks don’t even want to contemplate right now.

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Incase you haven’t seen them on his blog, here is the videos of me and James in the Lake District. Enjoy!

Part One:

Part Two:

It has been a very busy few days. On Thursday I went up to visit James and we spent a lovely few days in the Lake District and I had so much fun. Pics can be found on this site, his Flickr or my Facebook.

Also, while I was there my Sister-in-Law gave birth to my new Nephew, Ryan, who looks absolutly gorgeous, though I haven’t had the pleasure of meeting him yet. Tomorrow will be the day!

Diário de uma Paixão (The Notebook). 2004. EUA. Direção: Nick Cassavetes. Elenco: Ryan Gosling, Rachel McAdams, James Gardner, Gena Rowlands, James Marsden, San Shepard, David Thornton, Joan Allen. Gênero: Drama, Romance. Duração: 115 minutos.

Após assistir esse filme fiquei com vontade de deixar uma impressão, mas mais por uma escolha que a protagonista fez – escolher entre dois amores – do que por toda a história. O filme conta uma história de amor (O título em português já evidencia isso.)! Como tantas outras. Traz até um contexto previsível, mas que não desmerece a quem se propõe assisti-lo. O diferencial nessa escolha foi que em ambos, um lado dela se completaria. Daí, ficando na escolha o peso de qual deles seria para ficarem juntos para sempre.

Quem nos conta essa história é um senhor. Ao ler, pacientemente, para uma senhora internada numa Clínica, por conta de estar com Alzheimer. Ela fica encantada, ouvindo, perguntando… Ele, segue as páginas daquele Diário. São 50 anos de história contidas naquelas páginas. Quer compartilhar com aquela mulher, essas memórias…

Aqueles que não gostam desse gênero de filme nem deve assisti-lo. Para quem gosta, além das lindas paisagens – uma logo ao iniciar o filme é deslumbrante: um solitário remador e um nascente – aliado a uma belíssima trilha sonora (Clássicos; Jazz…), terá uma boa companhia nas duas horas de filme.

É um filme citado em fóruns tipo: Filmes que te fazem chorar. Confesso que sou chorona; choro em filmes da Disney (Bambi; Dumbo…). Já chorei em muitos filmes onde retratam uma história de amor. Porém nesse não.

A escolha! Para mim, ela fez a escolha certa. Há uma frase que ele diz a ela nessa hora, que traduz isso. Melhor, que a traz para o real em um relacionamento a dois . Mesmo a história começando em 1940, é nessa decisão que a torna atemporal. Nessa hora, lembrei daquele “Ok!” dito pelo personagem do Jim Carrey no finalzinho do filme “Brilho eterno de uma mente sem lembranças” (Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind). É o amor, a relação sendo construída no dia-a-dia.

Enfim, não é um filme marcante. O classificaria como um bom sessão-da-tarde. Nota: 08.

Por: Valéria Miguez.

I went to an interesting event yesterday evening in Oxford – Oxford Geek Night 4. Oxford Geeks (and the event series) aim to pull together information and people from in and around Oxford, UK. The community is mainly aimed at geeks of computer science and/or Web development, but to be fair they’re a pretty diverse bunch…….Just as well, ‘cos I’m neither, but having worked at a fair few IT companies in my time, ‘Geek’ is a slightly inaccurate descriptive anyway.

In essence, last night’s event aimed to share ideas, techniques and technologies in areas such as web 2.0, the semantic web, online TV, social networking, web development tools and the best practices thereof.

The presentations were very varied. “Saving the World, One Perl Module at a Time” by Tom Steinberg, founder of mySociety showcased a great way that technology + ideas can positively change things. Next up James Gardner, showcased the web framework Pylons.

However, the informal ‘microslots’ of 5 minutes each were the most interesting part for me. These slots took the attendees on a whistle stop tour of the ‘Social Web and the Semantic Web’, Google Sightseeing (Google Earth Blog), Searunner (a new type of web framework founded by Ben Werdmeller), Web Security, and Myth TV (a homebrew PVR project).

Additionally Salmon consultant Rozario Chivers presented his own concepts and ideas on ‘Nanoformats’.

Being a marketer (albeit with a focus on high technology products, services and companies) can give you an instant negative reputation in circles like this, but what I liked most about the style of the event & the community in particular, was how unpretentious they all were, and it all was. This is a sharp contrast to the VC style events I have been to, and the other more formal networking events.

Two big takeaways for me were money might make the world go round, but (big) change is possible without money. And secondly (not that I needed reminding) that great marketing + great technology = the only way forward.

Presentations and Videos will be are available here soon I am sure.

If you are local to Oxford, with a good understanding of web development and web design, and a good level of understanding or interest in technology you might want to consider Geek Night 5, which one assumes will follow soon.