Archdiocese of Boston

Last week,I wrote about an experiment in new media we were working on at the Archdicoese of Boston. My colleague, George Martell, a photojournalist, traveled to Washington, DC, with a group of Boston pilgrims for the 37th March for Life. He took along his usual panoply of gear, plus two new bits: an Eye-fi card for his camera that transmits photos to the Internet as they are taken and a MiFi, a portable wireless modem that connects to the Internet over mobile phone networks.

So how did it go? You can see for yourself at www.facebook.com/BostonCatholic or www.flickr.com/BostonCatholic. We got lots of photos of the three-day journey and, for the most part, they wereo nline and available for friends and family back home to follow along within a minute or two of the shutter closing.

I say, “for the most part” because we did have one glitch at the worst possible time. We only got a relative handful photos of the actual March for Life because the particular Eye-Fi card we’re using isn’t compatible with RAW format photos. (Tangent: RAW photos are the complete image files recorded by the camera’s sensor. Most point-and-shoot cameras do a lot of image-processing and compressing to make your photos look nice and make them small as they go, but serious photographers like RAW files because it lets them do all the manipulating and processing after the fact. The trade-off is that the files can be huge; an a professional SLR, they can be 25MB each or more.)

Unfortunately, during the Prayer Vigil for Life at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception the night before the March, George accidentally switched the camera to RAW mode while adjusting his white balance. The next day, he spent most of the March trying to figure out why the camera wasn’t transmitting his photos. By the time he realized his error, there wasn’t a lot of March left for him to photograph.

But no matter. We got lots of great photos of the pilgrims throughout the three-day trip and the many, many people who followed along were very happy with the results. Rest assured, we’re hoping to do a lot more of this type of thing and since we learn by doing, it will only get better.

(Photo credit: George Martell/The Catholic Foundation) May not be reproduced without permission. All rights reserved.

Over the next few days, if you go to www.facebook.com/BostonCatholic or www.flickr.com/BostonCatholic or www.twitter.com/BostonCatholic, you can follow along in real-time with the pilgrimage from the Archdiocese of Boston of the Office for the New Evangelization of Youth and Young Adults (ONE) to the March for Life in Washington, DC. The pilgrims left by bus this morning at 6am and will return on Saturday, and will take part in tomorrow’s march.

Tagging along is my colleague, George Martell, a photographer who will be documenting the pilgrimage the whole time. The best part is that he and I have put together some technology that allows him to have the photos available online within one minute of taking them. This allows those of us who couldn’t go—as well as the families of those who are taking part—to travel along virtually, seeing everything they see almost instantaneously. This is unprecedented, I think. I don’t know of any media organization, never mind diocese, that is

How did we do this? We put together two pieces of technology that allow us to take the photos from George’s camera and transmit them wirelessly over the Internet from any location that has a cellphone signal.

The first piece of tech we’re using is the Eye-Fi memory card. This is just the standard SD memory storage card that’s probably in your own digital camera except that these geniuses at Eye-Fi have figured out a way to cram a WiFi wireless access card in there too! (That’s what allows your laptop computer to connect to the Internet without a network cable.) The Eye-Fi card also has the smarts to upload certain photos that you choose whenever it’s near an Internet wireless hotspot and to upload them to whatever service you want: email, Facebook, Flickr, Twitter, YouTube (if you’re taking video), and more.

That’s great if you know you’re going to be near a publicly accessible wireless hotspot, like a cafe or library, but that won’t give us the near real-time photos we’re looking for. You never know when you’re going to find a hotspot.

That where the second piece of tech comes in: the Verizon MiFi. This nifty gadget is about the size of an iPod nano and can fit in your shirt pocket. What it does is acts like a mobile wireless hotspot. Up to five computers or other Wifi devices can connect through it to the Internet using Verizon’s data network, the same network that allows smartphone like the Motorola Droid to be little Internet-connected computers.

So, as George walks down the streets of Washington, DC, with the MiFi in his pocket and Eye-Fi in his camera, his photos will upload to the Internet automatically and be posted to www.flickr.com/BostonCatholic within a minute. Once it’s there, I will put on proper titles and a caption, tag it, and drop it in a set. Over at www.facebook.com/BostonCatholic, that page is automatically grabbing the photos, butI will also be sending out manual updates to fans, alerting them of new, interesting photos. And we’ll also use Twitter as a means of providing even more updates.

Like I said, I don’t think anyone is doing anything like this and I’m very excited to be part of this. I’m also looking forward to other applications of this technology in the future.

Ten years ago, my brother John lead a pilgrimage from Boston to World Youth Day 2000 in Rome and on that trip we were also on the cutting edge of technology, taking photos each day, rushing back to the hotel at night, creating web pages by hand and uploading photos so the families back home could follow along. This is the natural extension of that project, except now there are tools in place to take a lot of the extra work and hassle out of it, while also making the whole enterprise nearly instantaneous. I love living in the future.

Caption: Pilgrims waiting for their buses this morning to take them to the March for Life.
Photo copyright by George Martell, The Catholic Foundation. Used with permission. flic.kr/p/7xhED2

Cardinal O’Malley has given a direct and unambiguous statement regarding the controversy over Caritas Christi on his blog this past Friday:

To be perfectly clear, Caritas Christi will never do anything to promote abortions, to direct any patients to providers of abortion or in any way to participate in actions that are contrary to Catholic moral teaching and anyone who suggests otherwise is doing a great disservice to the Catholic Church. We are committed to the Gospel of Life and no arrangement will be entered into unless it is completely in accord with Church teaching.

Recognizing the complexity of the proposed arrangement, I will ask the National Catholic Bioethics Center to review the arrangement and to provide me their opinion.

I can say no more on this matter, considering my job, but I wanted to highlight this so others could spread the word and dispel any lingering doubts.

I don’t blog about my job much for obvious reasons. (At least I think they’re obvious.) But I think it’s worthwhile for me to point out the news that came out today from the office I work in: the archdiocese’s annual Catholic Appeal surpassed it’s fundraising goal of $15 million in 2008. This is very good news considering the economic environment and the scandal.

The Archdiocese of Boston, continuing its long, slow effort to rebuild an annual fund drive decimated by the sex abuse crisis, today is announcing that it raised $15.1 million in its 2008 Annual Catholic Appeal, up from $14.6 million the previous year.

The successful campaign is particularly noteworthy because it took place during a recession, although the bulk of the fundraising was last spring, before the stock market really tanked and job losses multiplied.

The campaign is the most important annual fund drive of the archdiocese, and supports the central offices now located in Braintree, which provide services to Catholic schools and parishes. Formerly called the Cardinal’s Appeal, the campaign had peaked at $17.2 million in 2000, but plunged to $8.8 million in 2002, at the height of the abuse crisis. Cardinal Sean P. O’Malley, not a big fan of his own celebrity, renamed the campaign to reduce its association with the personage of the cardinal, and set an unstated goal of rebuilding the campaign by $1 million per year. But that may end this year; the archdiocese won’t announce its 2009 goal for another few weeks, but it seems likely that church officials will choose a more modest goal this year — archdiocesan spokesman Terrence C. Donilon would say only that the goal will be no lower than $15 million.

I spoke briefly today with Patrick Gipson, the Catholic Appeal manager, who was, obviously, relieved to conclude the campaign successfully. “Considering the economic circumstances that have come upon us in the last few months, it’s pretty impressive, and we certainly feel very blessed by the generosity of our parishioners and the support the appeal received from our pastors,” he said.

I hate to say it but any comments that I think are out of bounds, i.e. might get me in trouble at work, will not be passed through for posting. Sorry. My job isn’t worth someone else venting his spleen. It costs nothing for someone to set up his own blog. Hope you all understand.