BibleTech 2010 General Review

BibleTech, a conference sponsored and organized by Logos Bible Software, brings together all kinds of people interested in the intersection between the Bible and technology -- from Bible publishers, to Bible software developers, to interested users. I came to BibleTech with two goals: to meet a lot of people, and to learn about what everyone is doing around this intersection, which is the public square at the corner of Bible way and digital avenue. Both of my aims were amply satisfied by the rich content of the sessions and by the beginning of good relationships with a number of people.

Sessions, Day 1

A typical conference begins, and perhaps ends, with a keynote session, giving a vision and inspiring attenders. But BibleTech is not a typical conference: There are no keynotes. Instead, Bob Pritchard likes to open these conferences with a simple time of introductions, going around the room and hearing who is present, so that we can begin to make connections with each other.

I admit, I like keynotes, and I was disappointed not to have one to kick off the conference. I like being inspired and challenged, I like having the vision for the conference laid out at the beginning, setting the direction for the rest of the experience. But I will also admit that, for this particular conference, I really appreciated having the opportunity to find out who else is present. By the end of the session, I knew which other Bible publishers were present (Zondervan, Crossway, B&H, and Tyndale), and some people that I would really be interested in talking further with. My primary purpose at this conference was to connect with people and to find out what they're interested in and doing. The introductions session gave me a very good jump on doing that, so I'm grateful.

I did end up receiving an inspiring message the first day of the conference, but it came at the end of the day during the demo session, when Aaron Linne was talking about BibleNavigatorX on the Xbox360. More on that later.

Here are the sessions I attended on Day 1 -- more about each of them later:

• Automatic Concordancing for Scripture in Any Language, Neil Rees
• Using Computer Technologies in the Making of the New Bulgarian Translation of the Bible, Dony Donev
• People of the Facebook?: Biblical Conversation, Community, and Social Media, Elizabeth Drescher
• The Hulu Effect: A Call to Bible Publishers for Collaboration in Innovation, Paul Mikos
• Innovations in Mobile Bible Software, Drew Haninger
• DATR: Linguistic Description of Greek and Other Languages with Pedagogical Applications, Josh Cason
• Open Scriptures API: Unified Web Service for Scriptural Linked Data, Weston Ruter
• Demo night

Sessions, Day 2

Day 2 of BibleTech was, for me, quite a bit more focused and technical than Day 1. I didn't spend as much time meeting and talking with people, and it was a shorter day, since we had to leave the conference at 2:45 (2 hours before the end) in order to return our rental car on time to National Car Rental (whose service I recommend -- our inexpensive-to-rent Toyota Yaris was a great little car, a lot of fun to drive, effortless at, ahem, 90 mph, and very efficient with fuel).

Here are the sessions I attended on Day 2:

• Annotating Linguistic Reference in the New Testament, Sean Boisen
• Going Between Two Horns of the Dilemma: A Systematic, Incremental Approach to Fleshing Out Higher Discourse Connections in the Greek New Testament, Randall Tan
• Greek Syntax Databases: Retrospect and Prospect, Michael Aubrey
• Using Pinax and Django For Collaborative Corpus Linguistics, James Tauber

I will be posting about each of these sessions over the coming days -- stay tuned for more!

General Reflections

BibleTech 2010 was a well-organized and well-run conference. Jayson Bradley of Logos organized it, and he did a great job of lining up interesting speakers and of dealing with last-minute cancellations. He also did a nice job of providing excellent meals and good coffee, and of being an all-around great guy.

Most of what I learned this year was focused around specific people and their projects. In addition to the sessions that I attended, which resulted in a non-personal connection with each of the presenters and their projects, I made personal connections with quite a number of other people and the things that they're doing. Those connections are, I believe, even more valuable than the sessions I attended. They say that conferences are better for the connections you make than for the sessions you attend. For me, BibleTech 2010 was definitely that way. As I am able, and with the permission of those with whom I spoke, I hope to write about many of these people over the coming days.

I began writing this post while sitting at San Francisco airport on Saturday, Mar. 27 after two full days of conferencing and enjoying the California sunshine. Now it's Monday afternoon, Mar. 29, inside my office in the Chicago area. As the experience of BibleTech begins to meld into memories, I am hopeful that the relationships that were born there, and the experiences that I had, will benefit both my employer and many others. So I am grateful to Logos for hosting this conference, and I'm looking forward to next year.

How about you? Were you at BibleTech? Please let us know your thoughts in the comments and in links to your own blogs.