View from the 29th floor

I spoke today to 120 speech therapists from around the country, beside a movie-boardroom view looking out over the Thames from the 29th floor of Guy's Hospital at London Bridge. The topic of my 45-minute talk was “Cognitive Ageing and Executive Functioning” and it met with a warm reception. It was for me the first significant outing of Apple's Keynote software that I'd recently purchased ― Apple's alternative to the PowerPoint presentation software. I was using its nice rotating-cube transition effect, and when I changed from my title to the first slide there was a satisfyingly audible "Ohhh" from many in the crowd... Keynote is too well-written to distract from the content, but with drop shadows, anti-aliased text, layered graphics and nice transitions people know they're seeing something different. The conference had requested presenters submit their handouts a month in advance so I'd written my talk weeks ago ― ironically they'd had problems with mine and nobody had copies, but electronic distribution will take care of that in a few days... Overall one of the best-received talks I've done and I've even been asked to consider contributing to a training DVD being organised by one of the attendees!

In some ways last weekend felt like we were getting a view from the 29th floor too, when we went away with many of the people from our local church. It was a weekend where I felt there was a palpable sense that we were being given a glimpse of the future and that we were starting a process of being moved on, from past difficulties to a new thing God is doing. Personally I found the weekend a time of feeling God's presence and God's leading much more strongly than I have in the last few months and even perhaps years. I think the Spirit has things cooking!

Sunday night finally saw the re-launch of Worple Road Church's new website, which I've been working on for some months. The design has changed, but even more significantly the underlying code has been re-written from the ground up. While there are things to iron out, the site is now cross-platform compatible, more flexible, and future-proofed. It contains much that is re-deployed from the previous site. What you see now is a foundation for many developments. My vision for the church site is that it will be a vehicle for fostering community through building relationships.

From here on the 29th floor you can see a lot on the horizon ― it's going to take us some time to get there, but we're moving.