Jason Powell - Church IT and Other Musings

Some Notes from Friday's GCC IT Roundtable

Big thanks to Craig Stein for sending me his notes from Friday's roundtable discussion to post here.  I also noticed that Jason Lee has his notes posted online as well here
As the facilitator I rely on everyone else to take notes for me :-)

CITRT “Best Effort”  notes regarding discussions

 

When is the right time to go to a SAN

o    Centralizing storage, virtualization, increasing need for space for applications such as video

o    Talked about costs, high availability and DR

 

Storage, touched on this on a number of other discussion topics 

 

Managing IM traffic, blocking policies

o    Open DNS is being used by a number of people

o    IP cop

o    Sonicwall CMS, Bing was being blocked, Bing created a subdomain to fix issue

o    Facetime is an app that will archive IM traffic but not block it

Content Filtering, SPAM

o    Good discussion on products and policies

o    Open DNS, safeeyes, ethershield

o    Legality and vulnerability

o    Netsweeper, daily reporting

o    Question about mobile support, safeeyes

o    Triple X Church offers some resources also

o    Untangle recommended also

o    Astaro was another to check out

 

DR planning, best practices, whitepaper or guide

o    MozyPro

o    CrashPlan, peer to peer backup, supports encryption, brings up some

o    CERT, DR, AUP, etc.  Jason wants to get wiki page on this as a shared resource

 

Virtualization

o    Many folks are embracing, group talked about benefits and some costs, Jason referred those looking for more info to talk to anyone else in the group for how to get started

 

Collaboration

o    Sharing information among pastor groups

o    Live Mesh

o    Skype Beta does desktop sharing

o    Adobe connect

 

Conference Call

o    Freeconferencecall.com

 

Email Filtering, SPAM

o    Postini, $1500 is min cost per year

o    MXLogic

o    Barracuda, several people using with mixed results

o    Exchange Defender

o    Using for inbound and outbound filtering

o    Education, many users are still sending CC info over email, etc

 

Internal network security, VLAN, Payment Card Industry (PCI) compliance

o    Cornell "spider" crawls network for SS numbers, CC info etc.

o    Good discussion on drive encryption

o    Have to determine level of acceptable risk

o    Network is never secure enough

o    Need to balance security with ease of use

 

Desktop System Lockdown

o    Discussed local admin rights for users,

o    Unauthorized use/installation of software

o    Need to keep in mind functionality

o    Support of non-official  software, most do best effort or sometimes move to bottom of support list

o    Approved software list is basis for determining support

o    Rights elevation tools were discussed, steelsonic.com,

o    Encrypted runas

 

Malicious Software Removal

o    Sys internals tool

o    Malware Bytes

 

OS deployment

o    Windows there are lot of choices

o    Clonezilla, reported as far from awesome

o    Fogproject.org, image system to check out

o    Caspersuite, mac only

 

VDI/TC

o    Vmware View

o    Windows Server 2008

 

Passwords, Security policies

o    Most are requiring complex passwords

o    Keeping Admin passwords, ewallet, passpack.com

o    Discussed policies on changing passwords

o    Discussed need to identifying all of the passwords and authorizations for all of IT

 

Technology /Social networking to promote the gospel

o    Discussed pitfalls of managing social media accounts and usage

o    Usage should tie into leadership's vision of church outreach

o    Many church leaders do not know of social media tools or potential

o    This is a wave of the future and allows communications and relationships

 

VOIP

o    Several people are using SIP trunks from bandwidth.com, adtran unit came to connect to phone switch

o    Some config for setting up reverse 911 for locations

o    Reported excellent support as well

o    Lenghty discussion on VOIP, QoS.  Serveral good resources in the group if more information is needed

 

Internal, Outsourcing, Colo

o    Most agreed hosting websites offsite was the way to go

 

Google Apps

o    Several people are using or piloting

o    Northpoint Church is using GA

 

Hosted Exchange

o    Cannot discount for non-profit, this rumored to change in Ex 2010

o    Sherweb is one hosting provider mentioned

 

Approachability, Friendly IT

o    Ticketing system, zendesk is a suggested application

o    Facilitytree

o    Good discussion on tracking time spent on tickets to determine resources needed to support

o    Also can help to predict downtime periods for scheduling  larger projects

GCC IT Roundtable June 26th .. still space for you to attend .. but hurry

Just a quick reminder that the IT Roundtable at GCC is approaching quickly!  But, there's still time for you to register :-)

I believe we're up to 20 attendees now We're pushing 30 now! ... and can take another 5-10  ... if you're riding the fence go sign up now to claim your spot!

Sorry - to keep things manageable we've closed the registration.

All the juicy info is here http://citrt.pbworks.com/GCC-IT-Roundtable

Church IT Roundtable at GCC June 26th!

It's that time ... time for our annual GCC Church IT Roundtable!  If you've not been to a roundtable yet you are flat missing out!

What: 

A roundtable is a peer-learning event where the participants are both teachers and learners. A roundtable is:

• Small enough to emphasize interactive learning
• Led by a facilitator and peer
• Includes participants who have an affinity with each other
• Does not include a strong agenda beyond sharing knowledge

Where:

Granger Community Church, Granger, IN (South Bend area)

When:

June 25th - evening dinner meet-n-greet (dinner courtesty of SPONSOR SLOT STILL OPEN) ... perhaps some xbox gaming afterwards?

June 26th - roundtable 9am - 4pm

June 26th - post roundtable dinner and chat time (dinner courtesy of VR6 Systems - Dell EqualLogic Storage)

Who: 

Anyone responsible for Information Technology in a ministry setting ... Business Admins, IT Directors, Network Admins, Helpdesk, staff or volunteers ... regardless of church/organization size. 

Purpose

To meet other IT staff and volunteers

• Encouragement - "I am not alone." "Here I am understood."
• Confidence - "I'm not so crazy after all."
• Relationship - Develop on-going friendships

To advance the diffusion of innovation in a given topic area

• Sharing knowledge, lessons learned, and experiences
• Sorting out the big picture. How does it all fit? Where are we going?
• Synergy of new ideas, new perspectives, and new dreams

To facilitate collaboration

• Explore opportunities for teaming up to accomplish common goals
• "Network" - Learn who knows what and who is doing what

How much:

$99 (includes lunch, snacks and both dinners)

signup here (note WiredChurches calls this the IT Practicum)

Hurry up and sign up today!  You won't regret it.  Check out some info from last year's event

Can't Make it to MinistryTECH next week? Watch the live stream

I'm stealing this directly from Jason Lee's blog ... yup, I'm that lazy ...

Geeky but grounded? 
Plugged-in but cash-strapped? 
Interested but otherwise occupied?

If you can’t physically make it to MinistryTech for some end-of-the-world reason, you can still take in part of the excitement virtually. We’ll be streaming selected workshops and all keynote sessions during the conference, FREE!

So fire up your smartphone, laptop, or other cool gadget and keep it with you at all times. Nothing is more important than MinistryTech’09. Here are some things to think about:

• Wife having a baby? No problem, use headphones. Imagine what an awesome thing it will be for you to be able to say that your newborn’s first geek experience was at age 0.1!
• Don’t have enough money to travel? This is free. Mooch some wireless at Panera.
• Actually have a job you can’t get away from? This will help you enjoy that more.
• Don’t like Colorado? Whatever.
• Afraid someone will ask what you’re doing? Don’t worry. They know you’re a geek. Tell them you’re logged on with hundreds of other “smart people” discussing the next generation of Church Integration Networking Social Internet Directory Management Infrastructure Ministry — you know, the ChINSIDIMS — 2.0.
• Get lots of [throw in some acronyms here]!
• It’s better than trying to follow someone else’s blog that is actually a digest of their tweets which just goes to prove their not really paying attention anyway.

 
So how do you partake in this virtual goodness?  
Register Here so we can make plans to reserve your virtual seat (the soft comfy recliners will go first, oh wait, you choose your own seat..)

Church IT Events Coming ...

There's a number of Church IT events on the horizon you should take note of ...

Church IT Roundtable at Granger Community Church June 26 - We're moving the GCC roundtable from it's traditional fall timeslot to summer.  Perhaps we should call this the Midwest Roundtable?  Regardless, it's open to anyone from anywhere and registration is open now.

Fall 09 National Church IT Roundtable is still TBD - we've not talked much yet about plans for our big national fall event.  My vote is somewhere on the West coast since we've not held anything West yet. Who's interested in hosting? :-)

I'm hearing from a number of people that this year's budget constraints are really limiting where and what they can attend.  I think this is one reason why we're seeing increased interest in regional events that don't require big travel expenses.

Florida Church IT Roundtable Jan 26

Man I wish I could find the $$ to attend this event where it's nice a warm :-)

From our pal Jason Reynolds ...

The Florida CITRT will gather IT professionals from across Florida’s diverse churches and ministries together to interact and participate in big ideas, new dreams and new perspectives. I would like to personally invite you to this unique opportunity to meet with large Florida churches and ministries this coming January 26th. You may be familiar with the National Church IT Roundtable events, but this will be a regional IT Roundtable event specifically for Florida ministries and the challenges we face. It will be a relaxed, unconference event with heavy focus on getting to know other IT Leaders and what they are doing.

You can find out as much detail as we know right now by clicking through the wiki page links to the right of this box, or just go ahead and register now. Make plans to come play for a day. We are serving a great breakfast and lunch that you won't want to miss. Also, Christ Fellowship West Palm needs to test out our new guest wireless system and what better way than to put geeks in some rooms to hammer it?

Florida Regional Church IT Roundtable taking shape for January?

Jason Reynolds is seeking input on getting folks in FL together for a regional CITRT event in January.  If you live in or near the sunshine state you'll def want to check this out!  Florida in January?  Hmm, wonder if they'll let a Hoosier guy attend too ;-)

From Jason's Blog:

This blog post is to gauge interest in a Florida Regional Church IT Roundtable event. We seem to have a group in the Tampa area and others along the East coast of Florida from Orlando to Miami. Redundancy could be a good thing, so let’s talk it out in the comments below about what everyone is looking for, if people are willing to drive, and what the focus could possibly be for the event. Whether we land on two gatherings or one, I think it would be good for Florida churches to represent better through some networking, fellowship, and knowledge-sharing.  [more]

Church IT Resource List

In thinking about next week's Church IT Roundtable, I started to list all the various resources us church IT folks are using to stay informed and connected ... and wow the list kept going and going!  This is both great and challenging :-)

It's great in that our grassroots movement is growing rapidly and jumping on any technology that could benefit the greater good.  The challenge is that these resources are scattered ALL over the place making them often hard to find and easy to forget about.  So I'm making this list mainly for myself at this point, but assume it will be helpful for some of you as well.

AND I've recommitted myself to help lead the charge in creating an easy to use one-stop-shop portal for all our resources.  So far google apps and ning.com would be great possible tools to make this happen.  Let me know if you're interested in helping.

So here's the list I've compiled so far in the order they popped into my head ... what have I forgotten?

CITRT.org - We're planning to continue to make this THE FUNNEL for all things Church IT related (see CITRT Summary and Vision).  A place to capture everything from events to resources to prayer requests to stuff to buy/sell.  As mentioned above, an extreme site makeover is coming in the near future. [site hosted/maintained by Jeffrey Thompson]

Church IT Podcast - www.churchITpodcast.com  Twice a month CITRT folks "meet" online and via phone to discuss all manner of IT topics.  The call is recorded and then made available as a podcast.  We even have transcriptions of each call to aid in searching for something in particular.  [maintained by Jason Powell]

Twitter - There are a number of Church IT peeps on Twitter.  We have a twitter group page setup at http://twittgroups.com/group/citrt - scroll to bottom to see group members.

Facebook - We have over 200 people in our CITRT group on facebook. It's a place to find other facebook CITRT peeps and get occasional CITRT news updates.  [maintained by Jason Powell]

Linkedin - We have almost 200 people in our Linkedin CITRT group. Recommend you join it to find other CITRT peeps. Linkedin now has discussion threads which could be useful to gather feedback.  [Created by Ian Beyer]

Blog Aggregator - We have aggregated a number of church IT related blogs.  Here's how to add yours to the list.  [maintained by Jeffrey Thompson?]

Blog Search Engine - Andrew Mitry made a handy google search that searches through the blogs listed in the above blog aggregator.  It's found at the top of the CITRT.org main page or hit Andrew's link above to use the code on your own site.

Blogroll - Clif Guy maintains a large blogroll of church technology related blogs

Roundtable Guidelines - Thinking about starting your own local roundtable meetings?  You should!  Here's the basic guidelines we work from for each roundtable.

Discussion Topics - Here's a large list of all the different topics that have been discussed at our prior events.

IT Discuss Forum - Ministry IT focused forum that's been around several years.  [site hosted/maintained by Jeffrey Thompson]

IT Discuss Email List - Ministry IT focused email list that's been around several years with fully searchable archives.  [site hosted/maintained by Jeffrey Thompson]

Church IT Survey - Ever wonder what churches similar to you are doing IT wise?  How many computers do they support?  What's their IT staff size? Do they support multi-site, etc?  Or what about those churches several steps ahead of you - what's their IT makeup look like?  How should you plan now to be at that size in the future?  What about trying to find churches around you with experience in VoIP, Virtualization, etc?  Wouldn't it be sweet to have a resource that helped shed some light on these questions?  That's what this is for. (note to self to get more current data into the survey and find a better way to manage end user updates)  [created/maintained by Jason Powell]

Church IT Survey Google Map - Derek Berg made a nice mashup between the above survey data and google maps.  See where other churches that have survey data are in relationship to you. (Derek's working on a newer mashup version)

ChMS Google Group - Discussion of needs and ideas for Church Management Systems.  [maintained by Tony Dye]

Flickr Group - We even have a group on Flickr where you can browse Church IT related photos and pics from our actual Roundtable events.  [created/maintained by Justin Moore]

IRC / Chat Room - If you hadn't heard ... we have a 24/7 Church IT chat room you're invited to  join.   You'll find IT geeks hangin' out in there all hours of the day and into the midnight hours.  It's a place to ask questions, blow off some steam, and get to know other IT peers  [created by Jeffrey Thompson]

Instant IRC / Chat Room - This link takes you directly into the Church IT chat room ... nothing but a web browser required.

Webcam Aggregator - Every so often some of us will fire up our webcams for your voyeuristic pleasure :-)  [created/maintained by Justin Moore]

MinistryIT Yahoo Group - Another Church IT discussion group that's relatively new.  [created/maintained by Nick Nicholaou]

Texas Ministry Tech - From the site: Texas Ministry Tech is dedicated to creating and growing relationships and cooperation between ministry-minded IT folks in Texas.  [created by Scott Miller]

Ministry Tech - From the site: MinistryTECH is a new national conference dedicated to church information technology professionals. Come join some of the leading church tech professionals to learn how they are using technology in their ministries.

I'm sure there's more ... as you think of other church IT related resources please leave a comment and I'll add it to the list.

Ministry Technology Institute - Ministry Technology Institute’s mission is to train and equip tomorrow’s ministry technology leaders.  It helps answer the question many ministries ask, “What should we look for when hiring an IT person?”.

Florida Church IT Roundtable - Florida IT peeps have started hosting regional events ...w00t!

Twitter - There are a number of Church IT peeps on Twitter.  We have a twitter group page setup at http://twittgroups.com/group/citrt - scroll to bottom to see group members.

6 days 'til Fall 2008 Church IT Roundtable!

I'm SOOO looking forward to this next week!  Hard to believe our little un-conference will celebrate it's 2yr anniv next week!  It all began on Sept 20, 2006

Here are some highlights for next weeks event at Seacoast Church in lovely South Carolina:

Attendees

We are up to 60+ attendees now!
Here are some of the churches and companies represented:

12Stone Church
ACS Technologies
Blackhawk Church
Calvary Chapel Fort Lauderdale
Calvary Chapel Melbourne
Cedar Springs Presbyterian Church
Christian Fellowship Church
Christian Life Center
Crossroads Community Church
Crossroads Fellowship
Grace Covenant Church
Granger Community Church
Heritage Christian Center
Johnson Ferry Baptist Church
Kingsway Christian Church
Lakeview Church
LCBC
LifeChurch.tv
Lincoln Berean Church
Margaret Salyers Transcription
MBS, Inc.
NewPointe Community Church
NewSpring Church
Northwoods Community Church
Perimeter Church
Savannah Christian Church
Second Baptist Church
ServiceU Corporation
Shades Mountain Baptist Church
Solerant
St Andrews Church
UMC of the Resurrection
Victory Family Church
Vineyard Columbus
VR6 Systems
Windsor Crossing Community Church
Woodmen Valley Chapel

Bandwidth

We are setup with high-density WiFi!

We will have 50+Mbps of internet bandwidth!

Food

Tuesday’s early arrivals dinner will be at WildWing Café(http://www.wildwingcafe.com/)

Wednesday’s lunch will be a box lunch

Wednesday’s dinner will be catered BBQ

Thursday’s lunch will be a catered Italian meal

Thursday’s dinner will be offsite at A.W. Shucks in downtown Charleston (http://www.a-w-shucks.com/)

Friday’s lunch will be catered at Blackbaud

Fun Events

Tuesday night offisite dinner

Wednesday night Worship Service

Wednesday night gaming (Wii,Xbox,PS,LAN,Pool,Foozeball,AirHockey,N64,GameCube, etc. – bring your games if you want!)

Thursday night offsite dinner

Thursday night walking tour of downtown Charleston

Friday tour of Blackbaud

Vendors

ACS
Apple
Blackbaud
CCBI
Christian Archives
DataDomain/CommVault - VR6 Systems
EqualLogic - VR6 Systems
FellowshipOne
Intel Storage
ServiceU
Shelby/Arena
Solerant
SonicWall
Sophos
SpiritTelecom
Xirrus

MORE INFO AT www.CITRT2008.com

Fall 08 GCC IT Roundtable Recap

The 08 GCC IT Roundtable is now a week past ... what a great time hangin' out and learning from each other.  We had a number of familiar faces present and a couple folks joining us for the first time.

I meant to get a group photo and failed ... rats! In fact the whole even went by so fast that I only grabbed a few photos.  Hopefully others in attendance will send me pics they took.

 
Dave Mast, Dean Lisenby, Sheldon Strauss showed up Tuesday afternoon to hang with us. Dave actually did some cabling work for us while he waited!  Thanks Dave!

Welcome to Moe's!  Roundtable peeps and some spouses (and my kids) enjoy some tasty foodage courtesy ACS Technologies.  Thanks Dean!

 
This year we met in the "Under the Sea" room ... complete with giant whale that serves as the exit to the upper level slide :-)

Dave Mast and Justin Moore brought in some morning food for everyone.

Attendees (starting with guy in red shirt and going counter-clockwise)
Emory Mixon - Asst Tech Director - Church of the Cross
Dean Lisenby - Exec Dir of IT - ACS Technologies
Nick Nicholaou - IT Consultant - MBS, Inc.
Robert Brasier - Senior Pastor - FBC Silver City
David Szpunar - Network and Sys Mgr - Lakeview Church
Bill Green - IT Volunteer - Faircreek Church
Jon Potter - Sys Mgr - Warsaw Community Church
Blake Long - IT Intern - Christian Life Church
Troy Lindle - IT/Media Volunteer - Cross Pointe Christian Church
Bruce Allen - IT Support - Crossroads Church and Ministries
Dave Mast - IT Director - New Pointe Community Church
Jeremy Good - Network Admin - The Chapel
Sheldon Strause - IT Mgr - LCBC Church
Paula Novak - Computer Support - Faith Church
Frank Leber - IT Director - Moody Bible College
John De Souza - IT/Media Volunteer - Southlawn UMC
Jason Powell - IT Director - Granger Community Church (not pictured)
Ed Buford - Network Admin - Granger Community Church (far back)
Justin Moore - IT Specialist - Granger Community Church (far back)
Dustin Hannifin - IT Uber Volunteer - Granger Community Church (far back)

 
This was our on the fly generated discussion list.  Would you believe we actually covered almost every single item and a few that didn't make the list!  I think that's an IT roundtable first!

Afterwards those that could stay headed over to WingsETC for dinner ... again covered by Dean and ACS Technologies.

We even got some sweet CITRT T-shirts from the Arena folks right as we were packing up for dinner ... Thank you Alfred and team. I'll have to get a good pic of the shirt.

And finally thanks to everyone that came.  Hope to see many of you at the Seacoast Roundtable in just a week and half.