GCC IT Roundtable Wrapup

Before commenting further on the COR IT Roundtable last week, I need to mention some stuff from the recent IT Roundtable here at GCC...

A big thanks to Dave Mast for coming early Tuesday to setup the audio gear to record the roundtable chat.

A big thanks to uber volunteer Tom Templin who worked many many hours over several days before the roundtable and Innovate conf to add 6 wifi access points to our infrastructure.

Tuesday evening a small group of us met for the pre-RT meet-n-greet-n-eat ... Dean Lisenby even brought his sweet-o Fluke network analyzer for us to play with.  My family then surprised me with a cake for my b-day when we all arrived to eat dinner at Moe's.  Rats, I didn't get any pics.  At least Dean did get a pic before we left to eat.

Even with a few last minute cancellations, we still had 21 folks at the tables (a couple were Business Admins) for the GCC IT Roundtable Sept 26th.  Audio of the day's discussions can be downloaded here.  Unlike past RT's, I decided to let vendors speak freely ... they did a great job of not doing any sales pitches and added good value to the discussions.  As always the discussion was great and it was fun to reconnect with past attendees and first timers alike.

The room we were in this time was great acoustically and can hold lots more bodies for future RT's.  I also quickly learned Weds morning that capping wifi users to 256k is way too restrictive ... so we lifted the cap to 1Meg and that seemed to satisfy everyone without killing our 3Meg pipe. 

Attendees ...

Group Photo ...

front row left to right...
David Szpunar - Lakeview Church - Indianapolis, IN
Jeremy Good - The Chapel - Libertyville, IL
Kevin Marsh - Kalamazoo Community Church, Kalamazoo, MI
Dee Rollins - Living Word Family Church - Raleigh, NC
Jason Lee - Northwoods Community Church - Dunlap, IL
Dustin Hannifin - GCC IT Volunteer - South Bend, IN
Jason Powell - Granger Community Church - Granger, IN

back row left to right...
Travis Kensil - New Community Church - Allendale, MI
Alfred Johnson - Shelby Systems
Nick Nicholaou - MBS, Inc & Minstry Tech Institute
Stan Piercefield - Hoosier Harvest Church - Martinsville, IN
Brett Anderson - Christian Life Center - Dayton, OH
Jeremie Kilgore - Northwoods Community Church - Dunlap, IL
Mario Patrick - Living Word Family Church - Raleigh, NC
Kyle Sagarsee - Granger Community Church - Granger, IN
Matt McConnell - Park Chapel Christian Church - Greenfield, IN
Austin Spooner - New Covenant Bible Church - Cedar Rapids, IA
Dave Mast - NewPointe Community Church - Dover, OH
Dean Lisenby - ACS Technologies

not pictured: 
Mike Canny - Park Chapel Christian Church - Greenfield, IN
Ed Buford - Granger Community Church - Ed was working on a bookstore issue at the time :-(

Discussion Topics ...

We did a tour and chowed on pizza after the RT Weds and again my family was able to eat with us ... little did I know this would be last I'd see of them until Friday evening due to a meltdown of our bookstore point-of-sales system.  Most of us hung out until about 9pm then I went to my office to do more prep for Thursday's IT Best Practices breakout.  Thanks to Kyle and Michelle for getting the foodage organized.

Links about the GCC 2007 CITRT (let me know if I've missed your's) ...

http://acstechnologies.blogspot.com/2007/09/geeks-for-jesus-jason-powell-calls-it.html

http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/DustinsTechNotes/~3/162296279/

http://davemast.net/2007/10/06/roundtable-afterthoughts-a-week-later/

http://davemast.net/2007/09/29/recap-of-the-week/

http://davemast.net/2007/09/26/gcc-it-roundtable-the-day-before/

http://www.jkilgore.net/?p=3

http://www.ksagarsee.com/2007/09/26/rare-moment-of-silence/

http://ministry-it.blogspot.com/2007/09/local-admin-or-not.html

http://brettlive.com/2007/09/26/church-it-roundtable-notes-pt-3/

http://brettlive.com/2007/09/26/church-it-roundtable-notes-pt-2/

http://brettlive.com/2007/09/26/church-it-roundtable-notes-pt-1/

http://traviskensil.wordpress.com/2007/10/04/granger-roundtable/

Thanks to everyone who came ... I hope it was as encouraging for you as it was for me.  We'll do it again next fall ... Sept 17th, 2008.

* If you participated please provide feedback below so we can continue to improve these events :-)

Comments

[Brett Anderson]

Jason, I thought the RT was great. Following the Innovate workshop schedule worked well - multiple breaks, ending mid afternoon, etc. I only wish there were more people there to share insights & experiences. And of course it wasn't nearly long enough - another day at least. I felt like we were just getting started when it was over.
Just a suggestion, but I think it would be helpful to structure the topics a little more - say we have 15 minutes for this topic, 20 for that, etc. instead of waiting until we've completely exhausted a topic. People tend to get off on tangents pretty easily. I know that can be good too, but if there was more of a balance maybe we could fit in more topics.
Thanks again for organizing the whole thing - it was great!
(by the way, in the RT pic, it's Brett not Brent - happens all the time.)

[Dean Lisenby]

Jason,
As always, the atmosphere was relaxed yet focused. great job. Thanks for allowing me to speak. I have a certain quota of words each day to meet. You allowed me to meet that!

On a personal note, Thanks for bringing the family by to meet everyone!

Dean

[Micah Webner]

Jason,

Thanks so much for posting the CITRT audio online. It took a few days, but I finally got through all four hunks during my drive time. You may have only put six check marks on the list, but the food for thought provided turned out to be quite a feast!

The discussions gave me a lot of things to consider for both my tech arts (and IT) volunteering, along with some things I can use in my IT day job in higher education.

A lot of things that were said transcend IT and really can apply to all areas of ministry. We tech arts guys deal with a lot of the same issues as far as planning, interaction, budgeting, and credibility issues go.

I really enjoyed the discussion on content filtering. Our filter (DansGuardian running on Linux) is pretty restrictive, as it's primarily there to filter students in the Internet cafe. There are those on staff who constantly trigger false positives, so they've been allowed to bypass the filter. Then there are others who will occasionally call or email me at work and ask if I can whitelist a site for them, because they'd rather have the filter in place.

I laughed out loud at the part about iTunes and My Documents redirection. Our network admin had just enabled My Documents redirection (or synchronization - I'm not sure which) a few days before, and had not only encountered iTunes, but several GB of data from the workstation where we record and edit for our radio broadcast. I'll be sending him the links to the audio, as I know he's been dealing with a lot of these issues lately.

So thanks again! This was some really good stuff!

Micah Webner
Tech Arts Volunteer
Cornerstone Church of Highland, MI
IT Staff
Henry Ford Community College
Dearborn, MI

[Nick Nicholaou]

The GCC Roundtable was a GREAT event, Jason! Kudos to you and all involved in making it so effective.