pub·li·ca·tion /ˌpəbləˈkāSHən/
- the preparation and issuing of a book, journal, piece of music, or other work for public sale. “The publication of her first novel”
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a book or journal issued for public sale.
- A website or other online document made available to the public
Just as movable type radically changed the publication of books, John has always recognized the power and reach of the World Wide Web from its very inception. In 1993, when the NCSA “Mosaic” web browser made the web accessible to non-programmers, John immediately acted to get permission to create one of the early official websites. The hand-coded site http://www.moravian.org went live in 1994. It was one of only 2,700 sites worldwide at the time. This was actually before the creation of the Internet Archive, so we can’t show you a sample of that early site!
As chair of the Moravian Church Board of Publications, he worked to make sure that resources were made available over the Web, even before most people were even aware of its possibility. In more recent years, as chair of the Southern Province Archives Commission, he has worked to make the extensive holdings of the Archives available online.
Over the years, in addition to traditional print publishing, John has created a number of influential websites.
In 1997, John lauched an informational website about the DV® video format and production issues related to using the all-digital format. This site became a “go to” authoritative resource for the production community at large. PC Magazine referred to it as “the Swiss Army knife of DV websites.” Adobe made some changes in the operation of their editing program Premiere based on feedback from GreatDV.com. The site was active until 2008, when production shifted to memory chips using newer formats. The domain is now owned by a Chinese company.
As a philosopher, John often sees real-world examples of the use of logical fallacies to deceive — from politicians, advertisers, large corporations – and yes, even preachers! Over time, he has captured a number of examples, identified the fallacy, and explained how people can see through the deceit on deceptivewords.com.
During the 2012-2018 period when the Moravian Church, Southern Province was discussing LGBTQ+ issues, John realized that there was not an accessible publication that had collected official positions on the issue or theological statements. He recruited a number of pastors, lay leaders, and medical professionals to write articles, share their experiences, and help create In All Things Love, which remains a rich resource on the topic.