Dear All,

There is a bumper crop of news this month, as I really did not have time to write anything for the last couple of months!

The good news is that the KB is enjoying record popularity! The last month has seen the number of page reads go up by 30,000! This is quite a lot. In fact it is 1/3 of all page hits ever since we started in one month. Looking at the other log files it looks genuine, although I am not sure who in Spain is looking at the KB but the single largest group of hits come from there! Anyway we will see. But good news!

Talking of records I have added a league table of contributers. At the moment Steve and myself rest on top by an embarrassingly large lead. However the Top Twelve are:

1. Kevin: (too many to make it fair)
2. Steve: (too many to make it fair)
3. Adelaartjes: (65 Edits on 9 pages)
4. Flyingkiwi: (44 Edits on 13 pages)
5. Cforbes: (22 Edits on 5 pages)
6. Belindaloo: (13 Edits on 9 pages)
7. Bob: (11 Edits on 3 pages)
8. Keever: (11 Edits on 7 pages)
9. Crashsystems: (11 Edits on 7 pages)
10. Groove1950: (9 Edits on 7 pages)
11. Neo: (9 Edits on 6 pages)
12. Robzilla: (9 Edits on 4 pages)

Congratulations to all on the Top Twelve. I will continue to publish the league table as a motivation for all! This also means I don’t have to remember your names and logins and can merely refer to you as No. 3 or No. 27! (You know who you are!)

We have also received a donation of a dot com domain! Thanks Mike. People can now put www.ywamkb.com in their browser and find us. New users can’t actually register like this - you can only register at ywamkb.net.

The KB is getting out and about. We were are the Western European Leaders Consultation last week and the word got out there. CRIT is happening just now. look out for Rodney Blevins (27) and Steve Keever (8) at CRIT. I hope they get the chance to present. Go for it you two! If anyone else reading this is there please meet up and take a photo of yourselves for us here.

If you get the chance to talk about the KB you might like to know there is a Presentation on the KB. Just to avoid the “Death by 1000 Powerpoints”, I made a Presentation on the KB and there is a little tour too. It is always best to tweak the presentation for yourself and check all the links work! Beware some joker in the audience changes your last slide before you get there! (The power of wiki’s!) Presentation is here.

One thing people often ask about when you chat about the KB is support for other languages. Internationalisation has not been forgotten - we are not an Anglophone mission! But if you have seen my written French you will know why I am not racing into writing French articles. The preferred solution for the KB is to do what Wikipedia does: It has parallel wiki’s with each article written independently. Inter-wiki links are added when there is a clear pairing of articles. But generally it grows organically like that. We are not ready to launch another wiki for a language. As a medium term proposal I would like to suggest that if you write an article in another language you make the article name like this:

DE/Meine Atikal
FR/Mon Prémiere Article
FR/Mon Deuxième Article etc.


Please put the language code in capitals followed by a forward slash. You can see that sometimes this technique elsewhere in the wiki like the notes from the WELC conference Steve put up.

That’s it for this month! Have fun.

Kevin

Next meting: Meeting 5th May 2008

If you are wondering what is all this Linux thing about then perhaps this little explanation will help!

Linux is the core of an operating system, like Windows or Mac OS X, and is a variant of Unix if you have ever heard of that. The Linux kernel is at the heart of the Gnu/Linux Operating system and was started off as a project of a young Finnish, Linus Torvalds, under-graduate in 1991 during his summer holiday break. He started the project just for fun yet the project has mushroomed into a multi-billion dollar software industry.

Where would you find Linux? Pretty much everywhere these days. Due to its open nature it can be taken and modified for many different applications. For example, whenever you watch Shrek, all the animation and rendering was done using computers running Linux. When you buy a book on Amazon (their entire business is built on Linux), when you search Google! Linux runs on nearly all of the fastest 500 supercomputers in the world. It also runs on mobile phones, TV set top boxes and all sorts of electronic gadgets. Where you might not see it is on Desktop computers as only about 1% or 2% of desktop computers run Linux but it is gaining more and more acceptance.

Why would I want to run Linux on my computer? Well, its cheap! Often free. It has a great reputation for being very secure compared to Windows. It has been designed from the start to work on the internet and with multiple users safely and securely. You will not need to run a virus checker as there are not really any serious viruses compared to the tens of thousands of viruses for Windows. It also runs very well on older hardware as it is efficient and fast. It is really stable too. It is very hard to lock up a Linux machine. Programs that break often do not take crash the whole machine along with it! It generally uses less memory than Windows making a struggling computer feel responsive and zippy again. It has tons of great software built in and installing new software and keeping it up to date is really simple and pain free. It is also often easy to install, as there are no license keys to remember and no endless searching for this and that driver you can’t find, plus hours spent in installing and rebooting that you need to add software to make it useful. Linux can be up and running in 20 minutes, and you can be doing useful work straight away. There are even a few powerful office suites right at your finger tips. Linux can save you hundreds of Euros on software and hardware.

Why is it called Free and Open source software? Linux belongs to a class of software called Free and Open source. This is free as in Freedom, and Linux is released under a special free software agreement. This does not always mean zero cost but it means that you will have several freedoms when using the software that you wont get elsewhere. These include the freedom to run the software, examine the code, modify it and improve it and also give those changes away to others (to help you neighbour). You really can share a great game or other program with friends without needing to pirate or pay large fees to do so. What this means is that there has grown a community of people who develop the software. Big business is involved (like IBM and SUN for example) just as much as ordinary people in their spare time. Very often the software is created for, and by the people who use it. That means that the users are the ones who get to dictate the direction of the software and not a corporation for its own profit. This can produce software that is more innovative, easy to use and productive. A good example of this is the Firefox web browser that has revolutionised innovation on the World Wide Web.

Is it hard? Well, yes and no! In many ways it is often very easy and a modern Linux distribution is no harder than Windows. There is much to learn and you can go as deep as you wish in exploring this fascinating system. There are some hard things and not all hardware works straight away. This is often because the manufacturers are unwilling to write the driver software or open up the specifications to allow the Linux community to write their own. However, when hardware works it often does so out of the box. There will be things that wont work but shopping wisely by researching your purchase is the best way to prevent disappointment. Help is often on hand too both on the internet and from enthusiasts who will willingly give you a helping hand.

What can’t it do? Well, it can’t do everything. Some weak areas are: video editing, there might not be a Linux version of your favourite software (games especially), some hardware is difficult including wireless internet cards and some video cards. But it can do everything else including making coffee.

How do I start? Get hold of a Live Linux CD (say Ubuntu, OpenSuse or Fedora) from a Linux Magazine, from a friend or even downloading a CD image and burning it onto a CD. Run that CD and see what happens! Live CD’s run a version of Linux directly from the CD, not touching your other data at all on your hard disk. It will be slower than normal but you will get a good idea if it is likely to work or not on your machine without having install it. Buying a cheap second hand machine and installing Linux on to it is a great learning tool.

What ever you do make sure you enjoy the freedom Linux brings, and spirit of Linux, which is to have a lot of fun!

Dear All,

Welcome to 2008 and I hope you are ready and raring to go! From the KB point of view we are waking up from the calm Christmas period. Perhaps not all of you took the cold, dark winters nights as a cue to start working on the KB! Perhaps you have a life!!!

The last three weeks have seen a flurry of activity with lots of new pages being added. We now have some useful tests to see how stressed you are and how to deal with it, a model for base leadership, where am I going on outreach and where have I been on outreach tools, a spiritual gifts questionnaire and an article on overcoming the Fear of Man!. If you have anytime left over from that you might like to start a business.

During January I was invited to a meeting and, of course as a YWAMer, I am drawn to meetings as a moth to a flame. I met with the EuroCom guys who are asking the question: how can we improve our internal and external communications in YWAM? What came out of that meeting were some concrete steps to help us all in YWAM Europe to evaluate and improve our existing communication. As part of that we talked about using the KB to help by hosting the EuroCom communications pack and toolkit.

I was very pleased that I could offer the KB in this way and also that the KB has the potential to be used by YWAMers all over to help with the projects like this. I think it is important to say that the KB is not my thing - it can be all of our things. If it helps you to pool knowledge over your special area, or collaborate together with others and might have a wider use than for you then you really should see what it can offer you. Those of us currently shepherding the project would really like you make the most of this tool. We don’t want to become a bottleneck. Please get in touch if you want to explore some more.

On the theme of making the KB more widely known there are business cards available to help pass on the word. These have been made for the moment when a subject arises and you say “Aha, yes, there is something helpful about that on the Knowledge Base, here have this card, you will find it at this web address”. You can print your own cards using business cards templates with micro-perforations and the downloadable files on the KB. So print your own or send an email with your postal address to office@ywambrussels.be and we will send you 50 by post! Perhaps someone would like to take up the task of giving a card to each member of the GLT? I will supply cards!

We try to meet each month via a Skype chat and the next meeting will be a 15h00 (GMT+1) on Meeting 4th February. And, if you can’t make that then please come and hang out with us at the café during the WELC in Holland at the end of March.

Regards,

Kevin

Dear All,

What a month! We hit the 10,000 page views barrier. That means someone is reading a page every 4 minutes. (It is probably Google and other indexing robots but I think the statistic sounds good!) What is more important is that it is yet another month of continued growth for the KB.

Some interesting pages

• Steve has added a resource people page. The idea is we should write about what we are good at so others can call on us for help. Make sure you allow people to email you from your preferences or you might not be as much help! (STEVE!!!!) [http://www.ywamkb.net/kb/index.php/Resource_People]
• The Main Page has had a make-over. Do you like it? I hope it is more professional looking. Suggestions for continued improvements welcome.
• The Genesis section tells much more about this important way of keeping connected. It answers a number of questions you may have had about this tool. [http://www.ywamkb.net/kb/index.php/GENESIS]

And lots more!

Thanks for all the response last time to the request to set time aside to write for the KB. Thanks all the edits that resulted! Some folks have made their first contributions. Thank you!

Breaking the barrier
I was writing to someone the other day about writing for the KB. There is a psychological barrier I keep hearing. That is some people really don’t feel qualified to contribute. I really want to re-assure all of you that the only qualification is willingness! If you have ever thought “I should remember this thing so that could others learn from this” then that is the only qualification you need! This KB is a meritocracy, that means the authority comes from the quality of the contribution not from an external source. You gain the authority to write from writing! Just be willing to allow others to improve your work. You will learn a lot. I have! If you disagree (we should at times disagree) do so politely; make an edit that combines your view and another’s together.

Another way to get involved is to join us in our monthly meeting (Monday 3rd December @ 15h00 GMT). We welcome you all. Please add your points to the agenda and join with us! [http://www.ywamkb.net/kb/index.php/YWAMKnowledgeBase:Meeting_20071203]

Till next month!

Kevin

Dear All,

Things here in YWAMKB central have been hectic over the last few weeks as I have been out of Belgium for two different meetings. It was fun to meet with the leaders of Western Europe in Harpenden and to see a number of them really “get” the idea of the KB. It helped of course that Steve Goode was editing at the time so they could see another leader getting on and making a contribution.

Of course making a contribution is the hardest thing! There may be a number of reasons why…

1. The wiki is a bit complex and there is lots to learn
2. We don’t have enough time
3. We don’t feel we have a voice or anything to say!

My response to this would be:

1. Persevere! It does get easier. Please read the many pages or help and watch the videos we have made. I have also taken the opportunity given by a recent upgrade to the wiki to install a trial of some WYSIWYG editing facility to the wiki. I hope you like it. It has a great way facility for making links. I actually have turned mine off (preference menu) as I find the wikitext code straight forward.  But I hope it helps you!
2. I never have enough time! However, this project for me is important because I really want to see my peers and those up-and-coming YWAMers equipped and knowledgeable. Perhaps we all ought to give a small proportion of our time to training others around us?
3. Finding your voice and having confidence to use it is not easy for all in YWAM. But I want to welcome EVERYONE, whether, experienced or new to YWAM to contribute whatever is on their mind to these pages. Please express your opinion here. Don’t fear offending anyone!

Where next?
Steve updated the Goals on the front page again. We are aiming for 500 articles and 250 members by Christmas! What about it? What can you offer? What can you edit? Who can you invite? (Please try to shake more leaders into action to write their wisdom to these pages!) Lets see what we can achieve by Christmas!

cheers,

Kevin

I recently read a nice thin book (I prefer nice thin ones) called “And now let’s move into a time of nonsense. Why Songs are failing the Church” by Nick Page ISBN 1-85078-584-8.

It was funny and fascinating plea for those involved in song writing in churches to think sensibly and clearly about the lyrics of what they write! He pointed out that in the Victorian period of Evangelicalism there were HUNDREDS of THOUSANDS of hymns of which the best 200-400 remain today! His point is that writing lyrics for songs is very hard indeed and actually need not be by the writer of the music! He makes a strong critique of Worship leader as Singer/Songwriter, that draws directly from Pop culture and brings many of the weaknesses of that culture’s lyrics with it.

Some books are often negative and critical and Nick Page manages to avoid a heavy negativity in order to bring much needed constructive criticism! I found myself thinking “Aha! This is what I have been feeling deep down without being able to put a name to it!”.

He also suggests that we need not be afraid of using contemporary language to speak about God; and in fact on of my favourite songs just now “Indescribable” does just that (If we skip on the word “Majesty”!)

As I said I had been feeling deep down that all was not well in the state of Denmark and here are the two biggest targets worthy of Nick’s criticism. I should add I love the tunes very much for both these songs but the lyrics… Well see for yourself:

Kevin Prosch’s “Where is the Lord God of Elijah?”

Victory is the Lord’s
Victory is the Lord’s
We’ve just begun to fight
We’ve just begun to fight

And when I get discouraged
Having done all then I stand
He gave me weapons to fight and the spirit of might
I feel the power of the Word of the Lord

Where is the Lord, God of Elijah
Elohim my redeemer and my friend
Any weapon formed against me will not prosper
His eyes are a flame of fire
Can you work out what that refers to? And here is Robin Mark’s song “Days Of Elijah”.

These are the days of Elijah,
Declaring the word of the Lord:
And these are the days of Your servant Moses,
Righteousness being restored.
And though these are days of great trial,
Of famine and darkness and sword,
Still, we are the voice in the desert crying
‘Prepare ye the way of the Lord!’

Behold He comes riding on the clouds,
Shining like the sun at the trumpet call;
Lift your voice, it’s the year of jubilee,
And out of Zion’s hill salvation comes.

These are the days of Ezekiel,
The dry bones becoming as flesh;
And these are the days of Your servant David,
Rebuilding a temple of praise.
These are the days of the harvest,
The fields are as white in Your world,
And we are the labourers in Your vineyard,
Declaring the word of the Lord!
There’s no God like Jehovah.
There’s no God like Jehovah!

Can anybody make out from this what the song is all about???

Anyway so I am not needlessly critical I will try to write a Hymn as part of a quiet time one day soon!

Kevin

Dear friends,

September has been so intense for me here in Brussels I have not had time to send out a little newsletter for the KB. Anyway here we are!

The Wiki has been experiencing strong growth recently, partly as a result of me announcing it via ywam-base-announce newsletter. It was great to see people signing in daily! We now have over 100 users - that means just over 0.5% of all YWAMers are subscribed! What does it feel like to be a part of an elite club?

I have also started http://www.planetywam.net news site too which I hope will result in cross-pollination of the two projects. Planet YWAM is a good way of keeping up with latest YWAM news from those sites plus the latest changes to YWAMKB! I will also be posting this newsletter on my blog too to see if we can get a wider readership. Please keep doing what you can to encourage people to use the KB.

The Wiki is a powerful tool. I spotted this news story recently http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/7015024.stm about the New Zealand police force using a wiki to compose new laws. This is powerful stuff; I wonder what the result will be. I am hopeful this experiment will bear fruit.

New Articles

There have been some interesting new articles this month notably from Steve Goode (thanks):

• http://wiki.ywambrussels.be/kb/index.php/Manila_Covenant - We corrected the spelling to no longer rhyme with “Vanilla”!
• http://wiki.ywambrussels.be/kb/index.php/YWAM_Licensing_MOU‎ - advice on not loosing our right to use the YWAM logo and name YWAM!
• http://wiki.ywambrussels.be/kb/index.php/Jomtien_Statement - YWAM’s important statement on Mercy Ministries
• http://wiki.ywambrussels.be/kb/index.php/Backup_Data - Some ideas on how to protect your data and never loose your important documents and details.
• http://wiki.ywambrussels.be/kb/index.php/Windows_Computer_setup_guide - A helpful list of Free and Open source software that you can install free of charge on a Windows computer to make it a productive tool for your staff. You can click each link to download the latest and greatest versions of software.
• http://wiki.ywambrussels.be/kb/index.php/Why_Leaders_Fail - a very interesting article for leaders!
• http://wiki.ywambrussels.be/kb/index.php/Depression - an article I wrote to help YWAMers support each other and those struggling with depression
• http://wiki.ywambrussels.be/kb/index.php/Category:Business_As_Missions - a whole bunch of documents from the Business as Missions website

I hope you enjoy browsing the KB and seeing what is new!

Every now and then people request articles. Recently Sergio, from Italy asked me if there were any application forms for DTS that embodied the best principles for Data protection/privacy. In the EU the data protection law is very strict and applies to all countries in the EU - thus it makes sense to share the data. YWAM England has a lot of good practice in this area. So can we help Sergio out by writing about what Good Practice is in Application Forms and also giving him source documents that he can adapt for his own use?

Lastly, I recently got a change to present the KB to the National Leaders in Western Europe. I may have bored then to death (not really) but I think it went very well. The proof is in getting people to contribute their knowledge to the heap! I get a lot of positive feeling that this is important to them. I also noticed signs that there is a danger of information overload for some as the mushrooming number of YWAM websites is overwhelming (Have you seen http://wiki.ywambrussels.be/kb/index.php/YWAM Web pages recently? Any ideas on how we can help?

Till next month,

Kevin Colyer

PS For those wanting help to get their documents into the Wikitext used on the site help is coming soon we hope! Until then note that the very latest version of OpenOffice (FREE!) has an export Document as Mediawiki option that converts any document you load (Word .doc’s for example) into wikitext format! See here: (http://wiki.ywambrussels.be/kb/index.php/Help:Converting the Heathen#The Best Conversion Tool)

Sixteen  years ago Linus Tovalds wrote this little email as he launched a little project he had spent most of the summer  working on…


 From: torvalds@klaava.Helsinki.FI (Linus Benedict Torvalds)

Newsgroups: comp.os.minix

Subject: What would you like to see most in minix?

Summary: small poll for my new operating system

Message-ID: <1991Aug25.205708.9541@klaava.Helsinki.FI>

Date: 25 Aug 91 20:57:08 GMT

Organization: University of Helsinki

Hello everybody out there using minix -

I'm doing a (free) operating system (just a hobby, won't be big and

professional like gnu) for 386(486) AT clones.

Sixteen years later his little “Linux” project is rather big and professional! And his software has made it into MILLIONS of devices for the Top Supercomputers in the world to Mobile Phones! (And in virtually every set top box on millions of TV’s)

It is amazing how a little idea can grow and grow and grow like that!

PS Thank Linux and all the GNU crowd!

We have been thrilled to be given a wonderful VW Passat from our dear friends in Germany. Being sans voiture has been OK but a little tiresome. It is amazing how many times for work and for pleasure a car makes things so much easier. We have no base car in YWAM Brussels at the moment which is a bit of a shame and has made things a tad more complicated.

However the process of importing a car is quite intriguing. And I thought I would start a little series documenting my progress here. I know someone will find it helpful someday!

The Theory

So here is how to import a second hand VW car from Germany to Belgium

1. Make sure you have a bill of sales to prove you bought it
2. Make sure you have all the German car documents
3. You WILL need a Certificate or Conformity (COC orEWG in German). The seller or VW garages should provide you with one. If not you can order them on-line at http://coc.vw-transport.de
4. Go to the Customs and Excise house in Brussels (Rue de l’éntrepôt, 1120 - in the port area. It is number 11 under the concrete bridge. Parking out side. It is not easy to find!). Room 0.3 on the right, ground floor.
5. You will need 3 cents to pay for the stamp (Vignette)! Yes 3 cents and they don’t take credit cards either. Beware the office hours are 8am-11am and 1pm-3.30pm.
6. You will get your pink slip for the Matriculation (road licence)
7. You will need to get insurance cover.
8. With the insurance cover and your certificate and your pink slip you can go to the Contrôle Technique station for the annual safety check
9. Then you can go and wait for a very long time at the Véhicule Immatriculation Centre near Rogier Metro. There you will get one license plate. You can cut another nearby.
10. Put your plates on your car. (official plate MUST be on the back - you will get stopped otherwise)
11. You might like breakdown cover from Touring or somewhere else
12. You might need a parking permit (like I do) to park near your house. The commune can provide this but watch for the opening hours. You need you final plates for this to work so it is the last step!

It seems easy enough eh? But I can’t find instructions anyway on how to do it so I will write up my own for the future.

The Practice

11/9

Arrived back in Brussels with the car from Germany. Tired but pleased! 550 Km on 1/2 a tank of Diesel!
12/9

Off to the Custom’s house via Fortislease to pick up some donated computers. Tried to find the Customs house. I found the street (they are hard to hide) but the customs place is off the road under a concrete apron next to the long line of loading bays on the left-handside of the road. Arrived at 16:00 at Customs house but the desks had all shut at 15:30!
13/9

I have spent the morning going around Brussels trying to get my car registered. Firstly I went to customs. Then I realised I needed 3 cents to import my car. Having no cash on me I went to look for cash… On returning the lady was surprisingly helpful and quickly polished off all the paper work. I asked what was the next process and she said I needed my Certificate of Conformité or COC (it declares that the car is legal for Belgian Roads, provided by VW.) So off I went to the VW garage (I need a spare key anyway) and to the Service d’Agréation on the 3rd floor. (or Service d’Aggravation as I will call it now).

The men there rudely told me I could not get it from them but had to get it from the VW re-seller in Germany. I asked for an address for the re-seller. No chance of that. In fact no-one in the entire VW garage could work out who to call or even had a number for VW Germany.

So I ordered a key. Went to the Contrôle Technique to see if I could do it before having all the paper work (short answer no!) and so I went home!

It took me 5 minutes to solve my problem on the internet when I got home and I found a free-phone number for VW Germany. The man on the phone pointed me to a website (http://coc.vw-transport.de), which once I registered and entered the chassis number, promised (I think - it was all in German) to send me a COC for 0 Euro’s at 19% VAT plus 5 euros postage (it weighs about 10 g!)

My Belgian Insurance broker is much better and responded to an email and phone call this morning.

Reflection: Belgian VW dealers really don’t care. German VW dealers are GREAT! Friendly, knowledgeable, and one even called me back with out me leaving a message! WOWSo now I wait for the COC to arrive. Then, just Contrôle Technique, a long wait picking up my plaques, Touring Assurance and then Parking Permit for here in Etterbeek! Phew!

Tonight at our church, The Link we had a baptism. Neil wanted to get baptised and so he and his family came to the church and took part in tonight’s service. Sean interviewed him first and the interview and baptism are on the Link’s website here.

I hope this inspires you as much as it touched me tonight…

Kevin