After much thinking/praying, I've decided to not schedule a roundtable this spring and instead just focus on the September date already in place.
So bust out your calendar, grab a dope writing utensil, and scribe Sept 20, 2006 as the first Church IT Roundtable at GCC. What's an IT Roundtable you ask? Readeth here my friend.
Once open, registration will be limited to 20 participants. Over 20 and it's very difficult to operate as a roundtable. As of now, the only publicity for this event is what you see here. Later down the road there may be information posted on our WiredChurches site. I say that in order to give those of you reading this "first dibs" on registration. If you want to be on the short list send me an email and you'll be notified as to when and how to register as it becomes available. Already 10 people have expressed some interest back when I first started kicking around this idea...so I'm assuming this will fill up quickly. We'll keep roundtable registration costs very low ... as close to free as possible this time 'round. There are 5 other workshops happening that same day, so tell your co-workers and make it a road trip!
Question for those of you that are interested in attending - should vendors be allowed to attend? I've already gotten an inquiry for one vendor. My initial thought is that this should only be open to church IT staff/volunteers. Your thoughts??
Now, here are a few things to consider when pondering if you should attend the roundtable...
- This will be geared towards pretty straight IT stuff ... so don't expect discussion about Audio/Video stuff. We have other workshops geared for Tech Arts.
- We're very much a Microsoft shop. We currently have 5 Macs on site and neither Ed nor I know much about them. Although OS platform bashing will not be allowed during the roundtable as it's pointless, I'm just not sure if you're a Mac shop how beneficial most of the discussion will be.
- I do not oversee our church's web strategy/web presence. I can certainly talk about some of the tools and guidelines they use, but I can't get much past surface level info. However, Andy deals with our web stuff a bit and he'll be present. To best learn about our Communications/Web strategies you should check out Kem's workshop.
Hopefully that's helpful. We certainly don't want to exclude anyone, but I also don't want anyone to leave having expected something else. Obviously, if you still have questions please email me.
If demand is there, I'd love to see this become a twice a year event...with an early spring meeting that is hosted elsewhere (preferably somewhere warm!) so we all get to check out each others churches that we might not get to visit otherwise.
More info in the coming months. Geeks for Jesus!!!
(please post any comments here)
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