Spring 2010 National Church IT Roundtable - at Saddleback Church March 11/12. Budget NOW to make it to this "must attend" kickin' 2 day event! Details at http://citrt.org
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Friday marked the end of our 5th installment of Church Techie’s Biggest Loser contest. Check out the prior BL1 results and BL2 results and BL3 results and BL4 results
In this round 34 contestants plunked down $25 to join the fun which started October 16 and ended March 5th (4 months)
So who are the biggest losers?
1st – Glenn Kelley – Network Architect – Web Empowered Church – Glenn lost 69 lbs which equates to a 18.90% loss! Way to go dude … you are THE biggest loser :-)
2nd – Scott Reichling – IT Director – Sagemont Church – Scott lost 41lbs or 18.30%
3rd – Josh Jenkins – Communications – New Hope Fellowship Church – Josh lost 24lbs or 9.68%
The pot ended up at $850!! (less paypal fees) ... and will be divided up at 1st = 75%, 2nd = 20%, 3rd = 5%
Total weight lost across all participants = 361 lbs!
Thanks to all that participated in doing their part to make the earth a less massive place to live … we’ll fire up another biggest loser down the road if there’s interest.
| % Lost | TOP 10 Losers ;) |
| 18.90% | Glenn Kelley |
| 18.30% | Scott Reichling |
| 9.68% | Josh Jenkins |
| 8.30% | Jeremie Kilgore |
| 6.88% | Joel Wolfgang |
| 6.22% | Shawn Davis |
| 5.70% | Zach Montroy |
| 5.53% | Vivian Medlock |
| 4.76% | Chris Blair |
| 4.63% | Oscar Carmona |
I’m pretty excited to attend my first Dynamic Church Conference this year. GCC has been using the F1 solution 4(?) years now, but in the past it’s been under our Comm/Web team. Starting this January we’ve begun to shift that responsibility over to TechOps and thus I’m learning more about F1 than ever before :-)
And now our partners at Fellowship Tech are offering a special promo code to save you $50 off registration! w00t! Thanks to Curtis Simmons for the heads up...
the deets…
The Dynamic Church Conference (DC10) will be held May 12-14, 2010, at Prestonwood Baptist Church in Plano, Texas. DC10 is a three-day educational event focused on teaching users and developers how to effectively leverage Fellowship One. DC10 will educate and inspire churches to impact their ministries through complete utilization Fellowship One.
The goal for DC10 is to educate and inspire churches so they can impact their ministries through Fellowship One. Here are a few reasons you should attend DC10...
· Lower Cost… Register for just $249 -- that's less than half the cost of previous years! (Use the promo code IMPACT prior to March 31st to get $50 off the registration fee!)
· Education focused… DC10 will feature 60 education sessions across six tracks, 40 breakout sessions and a Consulting Lab staffed with computers and Fellowship One experts
· Dynamic Speakers… Check out featured presenters
· Developer Track... Geared specifically to application and web gurus wanting to extend the power of Fellowship One, register now for just $99
· Networking… DC10 Meet & Greet, Networking Lunch and panel discussions offer great opportunities to hear how other churches are utilizing Fellowship One to grow their ministries
Hope to see many of you in Plano this May. If enough of us IT peeps show up perhaps we can have a #citrt meetup :)
[update: just learned Steve Fogg is giving away a FREE registration to DC10]
I periodically get asked, “Can you get Apple non-profits discounts?” Short answer: Yes! Here are some options to save $ on your Apple purchases.
Willow Creek Association – If you/your church is a member of the WCA you have access to special Apple pricing via the WCA Apple store. Discount has been 10% across the board.
Apple Account Rep – If you do enough volume, Apple will assign an account rep to your organization. I don’t know what the volume level is, but it’s worth checking into. Sadly the Apple Worship Team was axed last year that catered to us churches … so it’s now harder to find out who your rep is if you don’t already know. These reps are able to offer some very aggressive pricing as well as financing options you won’t find elsewhere. To get hooked up with a rep at Apple contact Brian O'Neal boneal at apple dot com and he'll get you to the right person.
Your own Apple Store – If you have an Apple Account rep you can have them create an Apple store just for your organization. Nifty eh? Like the WCA store, we've been getting a 10% discount via our GCC Apple Store.
CDW – At times we’ve been able to get some good discounts from CDW when purchasing a quantity of Apple gear. I’m sure other vendors that sell Apple could do similar if you push them :-)
Apple Store Refurbs/Clearance – This is not really a “special discount”, but it’s certainly a good option to pursue. I know several churches that buy all their Apple gear off the refurb site with no regrets. http://store.apple.com/us/browse/home/specialdeals?mco=MTM3NDkyNzc
What options have you found to shave $ off your Apple purchases?
To piggy-back on my recent post about VMware academic pricing now available to non-profits … here are the requirements, per VMware, on who’s eligible for academic pricing. If you need VMware pricing you should contact Tom Templin at Ciber: ttemplin at ciber dot com.
Tom's one of our long time uber IT volunteers at GCC and has gotten us amazing pricing on all sorts of software and hardware over the years. Document courtesy of Tom.
Download VMware Non Profit Customer Definitions Jan 2010 FINAL
Continuing from my prior blog post on Jungle Disk Server Edition / Amazon S3 testing …
TEST #2 … see what Jungle Disk does with 67GB of user files.
I found this folder on our shared drive with mainly graphics files and pointed Jungle Disk at it to see how it would compress/dedup the data. As you can see the bulk of the files are graphics related
Above screenshot is from TreeSizePro
RESULT:
Pretty sweet compression! 40.83GB of files but only 23.70GB pushed up to Amazon S3 storage. For comparison I used 7zip on its maximum compression setting to see what it could do with the same files. It didn’t do as well compressing down to 25.3GB vs 23.7GB. So Jungle Disk is doing a great job with it’s compression engine.
So what about a folder with a mix of audio, video, and graphics files?
RESULT:
Not nearly as good of compression, but I didn’t assume MP3 and .mov files would compress any so not really a bummer result wise. Of course you could set file exclusions so Jungle Disk would skip those A/V files you don’t want/need to push them to S3.
You may wonder what the duration column is all about. This shows how long a backup job has ran and thus how long it took to upload your backup to S3. For my testing I’ve limited upload speeds to 7Mbps in the Jungle Disk configuration. And yes, Jungle Disk will use whatever bandwidth you give it. Amazon S3 is amazingly fast.
So here’s the result after a week of testing. Jungle Disk is monitoring 113GB of files and has uploaded only 80GB of data to S3 for a 38% compression ratio. Not bad at all! Heck, even a 25% compression would enough to get excited about :-)
In Test #3 I’ll test restore functions, add a bunch more files to backup, and look at some of the reporting capabilities you get with Jungle Disk.
I’ve been pondering recently ways to fill the gap in our current backup strategy. In our current setup, if a disaster hit with the worst possible timing we could loose up to 4 weeks of data based on when tapes are taken offsite. Yes, that would bite!
We do have a few measures in place to help fill in that possible 4 week window:
1) Postini archives all our incoming/outgoing emails in their datacenter offsite.
2) We’ve been pushing our critical SQL backups offsite via MozyPro. However, this has recently stopped working reliably so I cancelled this service. And THUS my recent searching for a better replacement.
In a great luck of timing Chris Kehayias happened to tweet this week about his experiences with Jungle Disk as their online backup solution. (side note: if you’re not following #citrt in twitter you’re missing some great Church IT info!)
I’ve not looked at Jungle Disk in over a year, so I was surprised to see how much it’s matured. Basically Jungle Disk Server Edition is a backup application you install locally, but pushes your data to several cloud storage options like Amazon’s S3 service.
A 30day free trial of Jungle Disk and 10GB of free S3 storage and no transfer fees were enough to make me bite :-)
I installed the Jungle Disk server edition client on my virtual test server (Server2008R2) followed by the Jungle Disk Mangement console. During the setup of the client it shoots you over to Amazon to setup an S3 account. Configuring a backup is pretty similar to every other online backup tool I’ve tried (Mozy Home, Mozy Pro, Carbonite, Crashplan, etc). Do note that Jungle Disk has no SQL or Exchange plug-ins … feed it files.
TEST #1 … give it our SQL.bak backup file we run nightly and see what happens. It’s 2.54GB in size so I was curious to see how well it would compress/dedup before sending data out to S3. The result:
Of 2.54GB it only sent 363MB up to S3 to store. Nice! Then I waited overnight to see how well it would handle the overall changes to the SQL.bak file. The result:
Jungle Disk claims they track block level file changes and I concur. Overnight the SQL.bak file was overwritten, but Jungle Disk was able to track and then upload to S3 only the block level changes … in this case only 20MB of changes. That simple test was enough to sell me on using JungleDisk/S3 for our new offsite SQL solution. So now to calc how much this should cost.
Normal pricing is $5/server for Jungle Disk and then $.15/GB/month for S3 storage space and upload transfer costs of $.10/GB/month … of course right now you get 10GB S3 space for free and no upload charges until June 30, 2010 … w00t!
In Test #2 I’ll go over my results from experimenting with about 75GB of various file types to see what we might expect if we pushed all our files up to S3.
If you’re an EqualLogic storage customer, like GCC, you really should try to make it to the first ever national EqualLogic User Conference March 1-3 in Dallas. We purchased our 1st EqualLogic array back in July ‘06 and we’ve been a big cheerleader for the product ever since.
From the conf website:
The main conference on March 1-3 is packed with educational sessions where distinguished technical staff, EqualLogic product managers, tech support gurus, peer users and Dell executives will deliver:
I’m also excited to hang out with several other church IT EqualLogic users from Watermark Church and Churches in Covenant just to name a few. And this post wouldn’t be complete without the obligatory plug for VR6 Systems whom we all, and many other churches, have purchased EqualLogic gear from ;-)
I’m also hoping to get some tasty TX BBQ … I have found memories of Hard 8 BBQ from the Texas CITRT event last Feb … Mmmmm!
This was easily the biggest Church Tech news of the day Thursday. ProPresenter v4 will break from it’s 10 year tradition of Mac only support and now offer a Windows version!
Here’s the pertinent info from their webpage…
ProPresenter for Windows... Seriously...
For 10 years, we've developed ProPresenter for Mac only, and have been asked repeatedly if there was going to be a version for Windows. Our answers were always the same:
- The tools that enable us to do what we do on the Mac aren't as robust on the Windows platform.
- We have nothing against Windows, but felt we could make a more powerful and reliable product on the Mac.
- We'd rather focus on making the best software for any platform, rather than divide our efforts by supporting two platforms.
All of these answers were valid, and as the marketshare of the Mac has increased over the last several years, the question has become a lot less frequent. At the same time, however, we've been troubled by some things:
- There are a lot of churches that don't have Macs, particularly overseas
- There is a great variety of Windows-based machines on the market that are seemingly very capable.
- A new computer purchase is often difficult in today's economy.
- Many PC users get excited about our product only to be let down when learning it's Mac only.
- Some organizations will not purchase a Mac just to run ProPresenter.
- If we can improve the worship experience on the Mac, why not use our expertise to do the same for Windows?
Through the years, a lot has changed. Computers have become far more powerful and technologies have evolved. We've kept our eye on Windows technologies that would enable us to create a quality ProPresenter experience for Windows users, and we now believe we have found the right tool set, and assembled the right team of people to make ProPresenter for Windows a reality!
So, the cat's out of the bag. We'll be keeping you updated via our website as this story unfolds.
But wait! There’s MORE!! A site license is cross platform!
Site License: $799 (Concurrent use) … $399 for Site License Upgrade
Our Site License allows you to run it in multiple environments on one campus simultaneously (each campus requires it's own license). This license works on both Mac and Windows versions.
At lunch our Tech Arts Director was eager to make the purchase for v4 :-) Our main auditorium uses ProPresenter on Macs, but all our classroom’s use Media Shout on PC’s. The ability to standardize down to one software application is huge from a training and troubleshooting standpoint. To date there’s not been enough ROI to justify replacing all the Media Shout PC’s with Macs running ProPresenter … and this would mean we won’t have to :-)
Of course this all HINGES on the windows version of ProPresenter4 being a solid app. It WILL BE a 1.0 windows release which makes me slightly nervous coming from a company not experienced in writing windows code. The upside is that I already know many churches that are eager to try out this windows version. So if there are bugs they’ll be found quickly and hopefully addressed in similar fashion. Start crossing your fingers now ;-)
So who else out there will be testing this windows version with us?
That’s right! Only 50 days until Church/Ministry IT staff and volunteers from across the country will descend upon Saddleback Church in warm sunny Lake Forest California to partake in 2 days of invaluable peer learning, networking and inspiration March 11-12.
If you can only attend one IT conf this year, this is the one I recommend without hesitation! Regardless of your church/org size, I guarantee you’ll leave with new knowledge, new friendships and loads of inspiration. I’ve been to every National Church IT Roundtable since 2006 and I leave each one totally amazed at what I’ve gained. Not to mention the incredible friendships I’ve built over the past few years are invaluable on both a person and professional level. So in other words – make every effort possible to get to this event. If you need me to write a note to your boss to help your plight let me know ;-)
We’re still firming up final costs, but it will be under $100…and that will include lunch and snacks both days…and if we get enough sponsors hopefully even dinner both nights. Registration is open and cost is only $75 for both days including meals!
Sponsors? Yes, we’re asking vendors to help offset the costs. Please encourage your favorite vendors to contribute. Even a small amount will be helpful. See the sponsor page for more info.
Spouses? Yes, a number of us have been informed by our spouses that they TOO will be coming to California :-) Spouses are encouraged to join us during the evening gathering times. Perhaps during the day they can form their own IT spouse support group and hang out together at the beach ;-)
Final details are still being nailed down, but here’s the schedule gist …
March 10 – optional pre-event informal gathering in the evening (possible dinner)
March 11 – Day 1 - 9am until late … Saddleback “behind the scenes” tour in late afternoon, group dinner, then a special worship service
March 12 – Day 2 – 9am until 5pm … then optional dinner for those flying out Sat/Sun
More details can be found at http://citrt.org … hope to see you there! Questions? Leave a comment or email info@citrt.org
For the latest up to the minute Church IT Roundtable news follow CITRT on twitter and/or facebook
While it’s still a work in progress, I’ve recently dumped all our incoming support request stats into excel for a quick-n-dirty 3yr overview. The result is thus …
My next task is to sift through the requests to determine what things caused spikes in the data. For instance – end of August through Sept 2009 we did global password changes and Dec 2009 we did 42 staff office relocations – and hence the spikes for those months.
One of our goals in 2009 was to do a better job of recording support requests. It’s easy to get stopped in the hallway or get a call and fix an issue and never go back and record that info. If a fix takes more the 5mins it’s worth recording that info. Many 5min fixes over a year can add up to a LOT of unaccounted for time. And isn’t that part of why you use a help desk solution? I was able to hire both IT staff additions at GCC based in part on help desk stats. Tracking where your time goes is important … probably more than many geeks realize.
What is our help desk solution? We’ve been using ServiceDesk Plus from ManageEngine since Feb ‘07. Prior to that we had used TrackIT … you can read about why we made the switch here. ServiceDesk isn’t perfect, but it’s worked well for us and a number of other churches. If you’re in the market, I’d definitely put them on your list to investigate.
NOTE: Recently Kayako has begun offering their flagship help desk products FREE to non-profits … Kayako is a big name in the industry and FREE is well … FREE! Hopefully in the very near future we can give Kayako a thorough evaluation.
[update: Got a couple people reminding me that SpiceWorks is another good FREE option. Honestly, I've not looked at them in 4+ yrs, but I hear recent product is way better. I've added it to my "check 'em out" list :-) ]
What do we track in ServiceDesk? We track all IT and FellowshipOne support requests. Maintenance requests go through our CMMS (which is free!).
What to look for in a help desk solution? Check out this list of questions to ask I compiled several years ago. You need to know your objectives before you start looking for solutions :-)
Regardless of your opinion about Microsoft – they give us non-profits some PHENOMINAL price breaks! How about Office2007 Enterprise Edition with Software Assurance at around $100!
Recently MS dropped their Office Home Use Program price down to $9.95! That means if you have an active software assurance license for your organization, your staff can purchase Office2007Enterprise or Office2008 for Mac for $10 for home use! What an amazing deal. Another benefit of Software Assurance is that your staff has access to some pretty slick online Office training via Microsoft.
And don’t forget that Software Assurance also gives you upgrade rights .. so for GCC when Office2010 is released we’ll get it at no charge .. sweetness!
So next time you purchase Microsoft Office for you organization I’d strongly encourage you to check out adding Software Assurance .. and FWIW, we get our software through Dell.
Info on Microsoft Charity Licensing and here’s the Charity MSRP price list
Info on Microsoft Software Assurance
That's right ... firing up another church techie biggest loser contest!
Here are our guidelines/rules based off our prior BL1 , BL2 , BL3 and BL4 contests ...
Eligibility
Any church IT, Web, AV, Tech/Production Arts staff (full, part-time, or volunteer role). Church ChMS peeps and other Church tech consultants are encouraged to join as well.
Don't fit the above roles, but want to join too? Shoot me an email and we can discuss.
$25 to register ... no refunds … period!
Dates
- Starts Friday Oct 16... but you can join at ANY TIME. Just means you have less time to burn off the flab.
- Ends March 5th (~4 months) … this date may change slightly to coincide with the Spring Church IT Roundtable date.
- Winners get a split of the total registration pot less paypal transaction fees (~2.5%) ... breakdown of 75%, 20%, 5% ... hopefully we'll also get vendors to kick in prizes too and those well be in the mix to choose from as well.
Weigh Ins
- Weigh ins must occur each Friday at the same time of day. You can only miss a weigh in or 2 before you'll start getting nasty emails from me!
- Missing 2 weigh ins in a row IS BAD!! and will most likely get you booted from the contest (no refund). It's not fair to others who are keeping their stats updated, especially once the contest is getting down the wire.
- Participants will record their weekly weigh each Friday in our online Zoho Spreadsheet (you'll get an email after you register).
- The same scale must be used for each weigh in.
- The same clothes or lack thereof must be worn at each weigh in.
- Weigh ins will be recorded in whole pounds. If your scale reports partial pounds just drop the fraction.
- In the final 2 weeks there will be a cap on how much weight you can drop in a given week period ... to keep away from large dehydration techniques ;-)
Winning
It's not very fancy, but whoever has the largest weight loss % wins. (max weight - min weight) / max weight
Honor System
The contest assumes that all participants will follow the teachings of the Bible ... you know ... don't lie, don't cheat! If you are dishonest God will deal with you justly.
If you're in ... hit this link to register. If you prefer to send $ another way just shoot me an email (gccjason at gmail) and we'll discuss.
prior BL1 results and BL2 results and BL3 results and BL4 results
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