Wow ... I've not posted to this blog since last fall?
Anyways ... our big National Fall Church IT conference is about here!
Still time to register to join 300 of your church IT and web peers to talk tips, tools, best practices.
ALL THE DEETS AT http://churchITnetwork.com
Unlike our National Spring events where everyone meets in one location, in the fall we do regional events at multiple locations across the country to keep travel costs low as possible. Regional event registration is just $35.00!
Where are the regionals this year? See below or check out this map of regional locations http://goo.gl/maps/u1azY
What to expect? This is hard to answer, but each year more and more people attend these events! This video clip is 2 years old, but Mark did a nice job explaining why he feels these are must attend events for anyone in Church IT https://vimeo.com/18744075
Who should attend …
Anyone responsible for
Information Technology in a ministry setting … Business Admins, IT
Directors, Network Admins, Helpdesk, staff or volunteers … regardless of
church/organization size
A roundtable is a peer-learning event where the participants are both teachers and learners. A roundtable is:
Purpose …
To meet other IT staff and volunteers
To advance the diffusion of innovation in a given topic
To facilitate collaboration
QUICK OVERVIEW OF LOCATIONS AND DATES:
DETAILED INFORMATION >>>>
Monday, Oct. 29th
First Baptist Church of Hendersonville
www.firstbaptisthendersonville.com
106 Bluegrass Commons Blvd.
Hendersonville, TN 37075 [MAP]
615-447-1371
Ben Swaby: [email protected]
More Information: http://citrt.onthecity.org/groups/86252/events/1517425
Mon,
October 29: Registration at 8:15am, Roundtable from 9:00am-4:30pm.
Optional dinner & gathering after 5pm (not included in registration
cost)
Monday October 29, 2012
Lincoln Berean Church
6400 S. 70th St
Lincoln, NE 68516
402-483-6512
Contact: Mark Rock — [email protected]
Sun, Oct 28th: Optional Meet & Greet gathering (TBD based on interest and those coming in on Sunday night).
Mon, Oct 29th: Registration at 8:00am, Roundtable from 8:30am-4:30pm.
Optional dinner & gathering after 4:30pm (TBD whether dinner cost is
included in registration).
Monday October 29, 2012
Glad Tidings Assembly of God (GT Church)
1110 Snyder Road
West Lawn, PA 19609
610-603-5659 Direct contact
Contact: Bill Sheeler — [email protected]
Mon, Oct 29th: Registration at 8:30am, Roundtable from 9:00am – 5:00pm.
Continental breakfast and lunch served as well as drinks & snacks
through out the day. Vendors and door prizes too 
Tuesday October 30, 2012
Blackhawk Evangelical Free Church
9620 Brader Way
Middleton, WI 53562
608 828 4200
Contact: Fredric Gluck — fgluck [at] blackhawkchurch.org
Tuesday, October 30, 2012
Thomas Road Baptist Church
1 Mountain View Road
Lynchburg, VA 24502
434-239-9281
Contact: Cindi Pritchett [email protected] or @cpritchett17
Tuesday, October 30, 2012
Sunnyvale Presbyterian Church
728 W. Fremont Avenue
Sunnyvale, CA, 94087
408-739-1892
Contact: Suzanne Ungson
Facilitator: Jeff Caldwell (Director, Software Engineering at Dell SonicWall)
Monday, October 29: Option Meet & Greet gathering in the evening, details TBA.
Tuesday, October 30: Registration at 8:30 a.m. RoundTable from 9 a.m. –
5 p.m. includes morning goodies & lunch. Optional dinner afterwards
(TBD whether dinner cost is included in registration).
Tuesday, Oct. 30th
LifeChurch.tv
4600 E 2nd St
Edmond, OK 73034 [MAP]
405-396-6578 (OKRT)
Twitter Contact: http://twitter.com/mburleson
More Information: http://www.citrtok.org
Mon, October 29: Optional evening gathering, details TBA.
Tues, October 30: Registration at 8:15am, Roundtable from
9:00am-5:00pm. Optional dinner & gathering after 5pm (not included
in registration cost).
Tuesday, Oct. 30th
Clear Creek Community Church
999 N Egret Bay Blvd
League City, TX 77573
(281) 338-5433 x702
Angela Creason – [email protected]; @acreason
Optional Meet & Greet Monday, Oct. 29 and tour of facility.
Tuesday, Oct. 30th
Eastview Christian Church
1500 North Airport Road
Normal, IL 61761
309-451-5022
Dustin Cassady – [email protected]
Mon, Oct 29th: Optional Meet & Greet gathering (cost of dinner included in registration), location Biaggi’s, additional details TBA
Tues, Oct 30th: Registration at 8:15am, Roundtable from 9:00am-5:00pm.
Optional dinner & gathering after 5pm (TBD whether dinner cost is
included in registration).
Tuesday, Oct. 30th
Park Chapel Christian Church
1176 E McKenzie Rd
Greenfield, IN 46140
317-462-4513
Matt McConnell – [email protected]
Mon, Oct 29th: Optional Meet & Greet gathering (cost of dinner included in registration), details TBA
Tues, Oct 30th: Registration at 8:15am, Roundtable from 9:00am-5:00pm.
Optional dinner & gathering after 5pm (TBD whether dinner cost is
included in registration).
If you missed the news, we unveiled our new Church IT community platform at the recent Church IT Roundtable in Dallas. This is now THE online hub for connecting with your church IT peers. Ask questions, join in discussions, post job openings, list gear you're selling, stay on top of the lastest Church IT Network news and more!
Go signup, add a headshot pic so people can put a face with a name, then you'll need to subscribe to the IT Discussions and Web/Dev Discussions groups .. oh and the marketplace too! Select the Daily Digest email option if you like to keep your inbox tidy and you'll get 1 email each day listing all the activity in the groups you're subscribed to. What are you waiting for? There's already great discussions going on that you should be a part of :-)
It's finally time to open registration for the 2012 National Church IT Roundtable April 18-20 in Dallas, TX! w00t w00t and a yeeeehawwww (Texas style)!
I'm soooooo pumped about this event … I can hardly stand it! This year we've added an optional 3rd day of training opportunities and other activities that we feel most won't want to miss. AND … get this, the 3rd day is no extra charge! All 3 days for only $75…thanks to our awesome sponsors/partners!
How about some tasty VMware and Network infrastructure design and best practices? Or Exchange2010 setup/migration/tuning? Or VoIP and Unified Communications? That's just a tease of what we're working on :-)
ALSO new this year, we're making a focused effort to involve Church Web/ChMS developers! In the past our events have focused more on the Network Admin/Help Desk side of IT … now we want our web/dev peeps to benefit from an event like this as much as we do. They'll have their own breakout sessions to geek out about code, APIs, ChMS integrations, tools and best practices as it pertains to their job roles. These breakouts will be lead by web/dev heads David Drinnon (Second Baptist Houston) and Chris Kehayias (Calvary Chapel Melbourne). So go now and invite your web/dev peeps on staff (assuming that's not your role too) to join you this spring.
SERIOUSLY - this is THE MUST ATTEND EVENT of 2012 for all church IT staff and volunteers! If you can only afford one event this year - this is THE ONE! I've been to every National CITRT event since 2006, helps that I started the 1st one heehee, and each year I continue to be amazed at how God uses this event to bring church IT folks together to sharpen one another and push the Kingdom forward. I guarantee if you come your brain will be filled to max capacity, you'll be throughly encouraged, and your spirit will be lifted towards almighty God. Tell me what other IT conference does all that! They don't :-)
Last year we had over 180 in attendance, this year we expect to surpass that easily! Training slots on Wednesday will be limited so register early! AND don't forget to spread the word. Reach out to churches near you and invite them too … oh, and don't forget your web/dev peeps as well!
Get details and register at http://churchITnetwork.com/spring2012/
While there’s great value in mission projects that build homes and such, many IT folks would rather use their IT skills in the mission field. For a few years, several of us in the Church IT Roundtable community have discussed how cool it would be to have IT-focused missions projects for IT people. Well, my buddy Clif Guy is turning this into a reality.
Next Friday (April 29th) I’ll be joining Clif and 2 other IT peers to head to Petit Goave, Haiti for 10 days to continue an IT project Clif’s been working on over there for the past year.
The Methodist Church of Haiti (Église Méthodiste d'Haïti or EMH) has a number of facilities in the town of Petit Goave (“petty gwahve”) within 1.5 miles of each other that include a church, school, offices, a medical clinic, a guest house, residences, conference facilities, etc. Our project is to light up 5 buildings with Wi-Fi via building-to-building wireless Ethernet bridges (Ubiquity Nanostation Loco M900 and Ubiquity AirRouter) and connecting the network to two Internet circuits with failover capability. One of these buildings is a school where we are also installing a computer lab as part of another IT project. Here's a Google Earth view of the target buildings with red lines indicating building to building links to be established.
We're also hoping to have installed and working 2 new sattelite ISP links as the local ISP is very unreliable and has massive packet loss. On his third trip to Haiti in March, Clif took a small IT team to start this wifi project and got perhaps 25-30% done. After our upcoming trip, He expects one more trip will be required in late July to complete this particular project. When finished, more IT teams will be needed in the coming years to assist the EMH with IT needs in the disaster area and throughout Haiti. Clif is also in the process of procuring grants to fund these future projects.
Why am I going?
1- Clif sweet talked me into going. He has a very sultry seductive voice! ;-)’
2- Gain in the field 1st hand knowledge and experience setting up reliable building to building wLAN connectivity in about the worst possible conditions for success. Power issues, ISP issues, satellite issues, environmental issues, lack of IT equipment local (you can’t just run to Best Buy and purchase something you need), etc.
3- Recon to see if this IT-focused missions work is something we could piggy back/reproduce for Granger’s mission efforts in India and elsewhere.
Cool eh? There are over 600 people that are in some way directly connected to our Church IT Roundtable community. Imagine what could be accomplished if small teams took on various IT projects across the globe to further God’s Kingdom!!
Interested in being part of a future IT Project? Next trip to Haiti is tentatively planned for July 22-31 and no you don’t have to be affiliated with the United Methodist Church. Leave a comment below or email Clif for more info.
Haiti tidbits I didn’t realize: Port Au Prince, Haiti is only a 2hr flight from Miami, FL. Haiti stays on Eastern Standard Time year ‘round just like Indiana used to :)
I’m very curious (and I know Clif is too) to hear your thoughts pro/con about these IT-Focused mission projects. Why would or wouldn’t you want to join a future IT project? Are there other IT-focused mission opportunities that you know of?
** Also, wanna help support my upcoming trip? I'm trying to raise another $500 by next Thursday. Just 50 peeps at $10 would do it so any support would be appreciated. Hit this paypal link. [$345 raised as of 4/24 6pm EDT]
[edit: We spent a huge chunk of Episode60 of the Church IT Podcast talking about IT Missions opportunities. Check it out http://www.talkshoe.com/talkshoe/web/talkCast.jsp?masterId=6983&cmd=tc CHOOSE Episode 60]
[edit: Here are a bunch of pics I took on my Haiti Trip http://www.flickr.com/photos/99228274@N00/sets/72157626668565029/ and here are Clif's pics http://www.flickr.com/photos/11029892@N08/sets/72157626691818798/ ]
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