HomeCOVID-19Video: Coffee Talk on Faith and Technology

Video: Coffee Talk on Faith and Technology

Date:

June 5, 2021

Video: Coffee Talk on Faith and Technology

On Saturday SpokaneFāVS held its first in-person Coffee Talk since the pandemic. The topic was “The Effect of Technology in Faith Communities.”

Panelists were:

FāVS Board Member Ben Backstrom, who has a background in software development and has observed how technology has been a guide in people’s spiritual journeys, who wrote “How Technology Can Assist -and Hinder – our Spiritual Journeys.“
Ven. Thubten Chonyi of Sravasti Abbey, who will discuss how the Abbey embraced online programming during the pandemic
and Tracy Simmons, who filled in for Tara Robert, student media general manager at the University of Idaho, who will talk about how her church has adapted to technology, as well as the reporting she’s done on technology and the pandemic, who wrote “Going Back to Church In-person Worship is Getting Safer. It’s Time for People of Faith to Reconnect.”

Tracy Simmons

Tracy Simmons is an award-winning journalist specializing in religion reporting and digital entrepreneurship. In her approximate 20 years on the religion beat, Simmons has tucked a notepad in her pocket and found some of her favorite stories aboard cargo ships in New Jersey, on a police chase in Albuquerque, in dusty Texas church bell towers, on the streets of New York and in tent cities in Haiti. Simmons has worked as a multimedia journalist for newspapers across New Mexico, Texas, Connecticut and Washington. She is the executive director of FāVS.News, a digital journalism start-up covering religion news and commentary in Spokane, Washington. She also writes for The Spokesman-Review and national publications. She is a Scholarly Associate Professor of Journalism at Washington State University.

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