In February 2004, just two months after Urbana 03 ended, Facebook, an online social networking tool, was launched. A year later, YouTube showed up on the internet. Today, a mere three years later, Facebook is the seventh most trafficked site on the internet, and YouTube is the 23rd.
Social networking sites such as YouTube and Facebook express the interests of an increasingly experiential, technological, web-oriented generation. It’s no surprise then that students, who typically spend a lot of time on the internet, have used these websites after Urbana 06 to engage a global audience by creating networks of people who also attended the convention.
The internet has opened doors to reach and communicate with a worldwide audience. The first night of Urbana 06, Jim Tebbe asked everyone in the Edward Jones Dome to hold up their cell phone and the Bible they received in their registration packet. The darkened stadium was filled with fluorescent screens raised above the heads of most people in the dome. Together the attendees and Tebbe prayed that God would reveal to them what the Bible has to say about their world as represented by the versatility of a cell phone. We live in a technological age, and as Tebbe pointed out, we can make phone calls, conduct business, take pictures, send email, surf the web, journal on a blog, listen to music, and watch videos all on our cell phones.
Clearly, Urbana has become part of the average InterVarsity student’s everyday life. On the internet they are able to keep the feelings they had at Urbana alive because they can connect with people online. An abundance of videos were posted on YouTube after Urbana ended. Many of them are amateur, fuzzy, 30–second clips taken with a cell phone. But it doesn’t matter that the videos are staticy because the point is more about sending a positive message about Urbana than about worship music that a cell phone picks up as white noise. The postscript under a lot of the videos reads: Come to Urbana 09!
And while more videos taken with a cell phone exist than with a video camera, there are some good summary videos posted on YouTube as well. Perhaps they’re not the professional quality that Twentyonehundred, InterVarsity’s multi-media department, produces to promote Urbana, but of the 70 million YouTube videos viewed per day, many people will stumble across these short glimpses into Urbana and may be prompted to think about what missions are, or possibly moved to attend Urbana in the future. The target audience is bigger than imaginable.
Urbana has also appeared on Facebook. Groups, which people create around different topics of interest (political, religious, just for fun, etc.), about Urbana were created just days after the convention ended. Since Facebook has over 40,000 regional, work, college, and high school networks and more than 14 million registered users, students have been able to unite easily with others who went to the convention. At least nine Facebook groups are dedicated to some facet of Urbana.
Some of the Facebook groups are simply for amusement. A humorous group entitled I slept on the floor of the America’s Center has just over 100 members. But the fastest growing group after Urbana ended is a group entitled: Greg Jao is the Best Urbana Announcer Ever! As of January 23, this group had 2,022 members, including Greg himself. Obviously, no one spends much time having serious conversations on the discussion board; the longest thread is dedicated to quoting Greg’s humorous quips made from the platform at Urbana; but some groups were created for significant dialogue.
One group exists called: Worldwide Urbana 06 accountability. The description of the group is as a place for “all attendees who committed or recommitted their lives to the Lord in a new way [at Urbana 06]. This…is a place to honor those commitments.” Members of the group have taken the time to post prayer requests as well as share with one another the commitments they made.
We live during an age in which people express themselves, share ideas, create, and communicate with one another through the medium of the internet. Websites like YouTube and Facebook have broad appeal with college students, which make it easier than before to continue relating, communicating, and making connections with other Urbana attendees long after the convention is over. Because of the vast and varied audiences of Facebook and YouTube, InterVarsity students have the ability to reach the internet community right at their fingertips and are doing so by creating places for community and discussion.
