Jason Powell - Church IT and Other Musings

Want a FREE WiredChurches.com Workshop/Practicum?!

That's right! I've been authorized to give the following deal to one lucky person: buy one workshop/practicum get one free!

Give the free one away as a gift or come with a friend/teammate and split the cost. You can use the buy one/get one on any workshop or practicum (includes the IT Roundtable) that's being hosted on June 25 or 26.

You interested? You should be! Just leave a comment below and I'll pick a random winner from the comments left next Tuesday.

How I use Priceline to get great hotel deals

A number of people have asked how I use Priceline to get crazy good deals on hotels ... most recently 3.5 star Hyatt Regency for $34 ($45 after tax and fees). Well, here's a video of the process I use combining biddingfortravel.com and priceline.com ... happy bidding!  (thanks denon.cx for hosting the video)

Here's the video

Workshops Coming to GCC

 

Wondering about practical events where you get tools and training for your team? WiredChurches.com workshops are teacher-led, classroom-style, one-day events. Boring they are not. You'll hear from Granger leaders about what works and what doesn’t. Practicums are facilitator-led, round-table discussions. It’s the sit-down, roll-up-your-sleeves conversation you’re craving. Not quite a support group but an informal, safe place where you can share and gain ideas from others like you.

NEW! Events grouped into two-day chunks. Make the most of your travel...come for one day or stay for two. NEW! Everyone gathers together for a half hour of worship on both days before breaking into individual workshops and practicums.

Events happening Thursday and Friday, March 5-6, 2009

Thursday
• First Impressions [Keep guests coming back]
• Kids [Creating safe, fun space for kids]
• Less Clutter. Less Noise. [How to get the word out]
• Pop Goes The Church [Leveraging pop culture in your church]
• Student Ministry Practicum [Reaching students]
• Worship Leaders Practicum [Leading worship]

Friday
• NEW! Lasting Impressions [Keeping guests engaged & growing]
• Maximizing the Arts [Unleashing the arts]
• Simply Strategic Volunteers [Finding and keeping volunteers]
• Web Strategy [Strategies to build an effective Web site]
• Technical Arts Practicum [Using lighting, sound & media]

One-price: Pre-register to get $20 discount rate of $99 per person, per day. Includes materials and lunch. Where & When: Granger Community Church campus, 90 miles east of Chicago,
9 a.m.-4 p.m. Thursday and/or Friday, March 5-6, 2009.

A Little Cable Management Tip

Ever have a cable fall behind your desk? ... then you have crawl under and try to push it back into position without it falling back down?

Yup, I hate that too!!

So one day a few years back I came up with a very simple solution ... binder clips.

Attach the clip to the end of your cable (power, network, etc) and never worry about loosing it behind your desk again!

I'm sure this is not a jpowell original design, but I'd not seen it before.  I was reminded of this simple solution while giving my office a major purge last week and figured I'd share with the group :-)

Belated Welcome Justin Moore To The GCC Team

It's a week late, but here's the all staff email I sent out this morning ... a week after Justin joined our IT team ... better late than never right?  Last week was pretty crazy with Leadership Summit so I have a better-than-lame excuse :-)

Ladies and Gentlemen, boys and girls...

If you missed the introduction at SWAT last week … it’s my most excellent joy to welcome the newest member of the GCC IT Team ... Justin Moore!  Justin joins our merry band of geeks as our new IT Specialist.  That means once he gets settled in, he'll be your initial contact for tech support issues as well as working on all sorts of uber kewl IT projects so amazing your head would explode if we told you about ‘em.  So I will protect your cranium by refraining from further details.  Yes, I’m just that thoughtful.

Here’s a few insider tidbits about Justin (and his wife Bonnie) ...

· Was born and raised “in the sticks” – Polk County, NC. And no, there is no town name – it’s just “Polk County”

(If you want to sound like a native, say “poke county”)

· Loves sweet tea and Sun Drop (if you don’t know the joys of Sun Drop, think “Mountain Dew, but sweeter and with more caffeine”)

· Always thought he’d marry a Southern Belle.

o Bonnie’s last address before us getting married was Brevard, NC.

o However, she was born and lived the first 11 years of her life in Lincoln Park, NJ.

o That’s right – married a Yankee!

· Justin and Bonnie have been to Russia 3 times for missions work … see http://www.wantmoore.com/archives/archives/category/missions/

· Strength Finder Top 5

• Belief
• Strategic
• Connectedness
• Self-Assurance
• Ideation

· Big Dave Ramsey fans … Justin lead a Financial Peace University small group this past Spring at their prior church

· All their pets are named after techie stuff: Two cats, Apache and Pixel and female Chocolate Lab named Java.

o Yes, we’re “one of those couples” who call them our children.   See http://www.wantmoore.com/archives/2007/11/19/happy-birthday-java/

Like the rest of the IT team, Justin has a blog and twitter … you can learn more about him via:

Blog: http://wantmoore.com

Twitter: http://twitter.com/wantmoore

So please welcome Justin (and Bonnie) to the team ... we're so excited to have them!  …and please help convince them winter is a fun time in Indiana ;-)

Jason ... pondering a career in Men’s synchronized swimming … NOT! ... Powell

Jason Powell
IT Director
Granger Community Church

My Blogging Frequency Diminished Due to IRC, Twitter and Life

Ah life ... it's been one of those extended seasons in my life where it seems no matter what I try I can't keep up.  Basically I'm living in a mode of the most critical stuff gets dealt with while all else fades into the background.  It's not pretty or efficient, but it's working well enough for now.  A number of you have emailed me various questions over the past few months ... I got your email ... I will reply ... it just won't be anytime soon ... sorry :-(

I've even stopped reading blogs for the past several weeks unless I get a ping via my google alerts ... aren't you curious what alerts I have setup? ;-)

I'm bummed I don't have more time/energy to be blogging more frequently, but I've found 2 outlets that feed my need to be "connected" with others in the church IT world ... IRC and Twitter.

IRC: Typically a few times each day I poke my nose into our Church IT Roundtable IRC channel ... it's basically an online chat room where a number of church IT staff and volunteers hang out.  Here I can catch up on the latest news, ask questions, give answers, and just get to know better my fellow IT peers.  A contributing factor in my recent hiring of Justin Moore was from being able to interact with and watch him interact with others in the channel almost daily since last winter.  You can learn a lot about a person by hanging out in a crowd together, even if that crowd happens to be virtual.

So I'd strongly encourage anyone involved in IT (yup, we have non-church IT guys/gals joining us as well) to get involved in this virtual community.  Together we can accomplish so much more! Here's a link you can bookmark that will take you to the chatroom with a single mouse click...nothing to install...that's about as easy as I can make it for you.

TWITTER:  I know a number of you think Twitter is stupid and pointless...I did...then I started seeing it's potential value.  And I'm happy to report it's return has been greater than I expected ... even moreso if you tie Twitter to your Facebook status (I rarely visit facebook anymore so this was a big plus).

So, I don't have/make time to create blog posts to keep those interested up to date on what we're doing IT wise at GCC.  I DO have the time to blast out quick 140 character updates throughout the day.  I've also asked for help via Twitter and gotten almost instant feedback ... even from vendors!  Now that's service!  I'm diggin' that 2 way instant interactive aspect of Twitter.

You can easily get overwhelmed by the amount of "noise" flowing back and forth in Twitter.  You have to determine what your acceptable signal to noise ratio.  My suggestion is to add people you "follow" slowly and strategically.  And no, you don't have to follow everyone that follows you.  I'm VERY selective in who I follow right now.  No offense to anyone if I'm not following you (yet), but I've only got so much space right now :-)

So while you wait for future blogs posts ... you may want to follow my Twitter.

There ya go ... Twitter and IRC make me feel like I'm still able to contribute to the IT community even if time is scarce and their reach is not near as great as the number of people subscribed to this blog.  There are other neat social aspects to of each of these as well, but I'm out of time for now to tell ya ...

What A Week Full of Special Events!

Monday ... marked the 5 year anniversary of my employment at Granger Community Church! This past year has been the most challenging year on so many levels, but I wouldn't trade all the stuff I've learned/experienced. God, help me to grow as a leader.

Wednesday ... Justin Moore started work at GCC! We're are just so ridiculously excited to have Justin on the team. Fun and exciting days ahead for GCC IT! God, help me to grow more and stronger friendships.

Thursday/Today ... 15 years ago Kim and I were married in Auburn, IN! Kim, I LUV U!! God, help me grow as a husband.

*No Church IT Podcast tonight due to above anniversary :-)

GCC Cowmunications/IT/Web Team

A recent team outing for Comm/IT/Web staff ... cowabunga dude! :-)

front left to right: Kem, Lisa, Your's truly
rear left to right: Ed, Matt, Lindsay, Jami, Jeanna, Daryl

Long live the bovine!

Picture Dump

This is just a bunch of pictures that have been collecting on my camera phone I keep meaning to blog about ... so I'm just dumping them all together for your viewing pleasure with a simple blurb rather than separate blog posts.

That's how much I paid for gas Wednesday right here in Granger, IN ... $4.059!!  My first over $4/gal pump.  Sigh.

Ashlee's already starting to practice for the Indy 500

I was complaining about the lack of a nice graphical network monitoring tool the other day ... so while I was out of the office Ed hooked me up with this sweet-o graphical display.  Amazing it looks just like a piece of paper taped to my monitor ;-)

Jeff Hook giving his MinstryTECH presentation ... golly, what a sharp lookin' fella

My first drive with my Biggest Loser GPS ... on the way to the airport to head to MinstryTECH/Roundtable

This was a fun purchasing experience :-)

Our new wiring color codes

Our new IDF and wall/patch panel naming scheme

John D. and son from a recent Saturday IT Volunteer op ... doing some machine rebuilds

Out of the Loop!

Here's my Google Reader stats for the past 30 days.  Can you tell I've not been reading blogs?  Life has just been busy of late, but over the weekend I blocked out some time and plowed through almost 1200 posts ... there's still a boat load I've not read, but I at least knocked out my top feeds.  At least now I feel a little more back 'in da loop'