Jason Powell - Church IT and Other Musings

2014 National Church IT & WebDev Conference Oct 22-24 - BE THERE!

What's the best way to learn IT & WebDev best practices as it relates to the Church/Ministry space?
Attend the National Church IT Roundtable this October in Peoria, IL!

Join 250+ Church staff and volunteers from across the country this Fall to learn from knowledge experts, connect/share with your peers, and get a big shot of encouragement!  Now in it's 8th year, this un-conference continues to grow in size and impact.

This will be our 2nd year combining forces with RefreshCache to cover all things Web/Dev. 
Wanna talk virutalization, VLAN routing, VoIP?  We got that!
Wanna talk jquery, .net, UX/UI?  We got that too!

Registration is ONLY $75 for all 3 days and includes most of your meals!  You won't find a conference with better ROI, PERIOD!

Registration is open so signup and spread the word.

LOTS more details HERE

Hope to see you all this Fall!

Addressing The Consumerization of IT aka GCC's Transition to Macs and Mobility - Part 4

Here in part 4 I'll talk about our initial test phase and staff rollout.

One of our big unknowns surrounded staff wanting to switch from Windows to Mac ... many having never touched a mac prior. What kind of intial training would they require? How long would it take the average user to be proficient on a mac?  Could we find other mac savvy staff that would be 1st level support for newbies so IT wasn't flooded with basic questions?

I personally had tried switching to mac only a few years prior and ended up back on a Dell, but I knew I had to dive back into it 100% so mid Feb 2010 I ordered our 1st 13" Air for myself and got a 15" macbookpro for Justin (he was using a dog old 1st gen intel macbookpro).  You learn a lot when you're forced to give up familiarity :-)

Our beta test group comprised of Tim Stevens (Exec Pastor, Windows power user, no mac experience), Kem Meyer (my boss and Comm Director, Windows power user, no mac experience), Jami Ruth (Comm Coordinator and long time mac user at her prior job and at home).  They all got their new macs right at the end of March giving them time to play over Spring Break (1st week of April).  Part of being in the test group was required feedback to the entire group about questions, fun findings, frustrations, etc.  Our Tech Director at the time was also invited to join the feedback loop since he was a very savvy OSX user.  As questions and frustrations surfaced, Justin and I would make notes into a make shift FAQ list.  By the end of June we felt we had address all the main issues and our newbie mac users were doing great!  Time to start the rollout to the rest of the staff!

Recall from Part 1, that for 3 years prior we had ZERO computer purchases or upgrades because the economy tanked.  This meant EVERYONE was running on old hardware and would LOVE to get something new.  Problem was I had a limited budget. This meant only about 1/3 of our staff would get upgraded in 2011 and it was my task to figure out who that would be (gulp!). 

I looked at many many variables, had lots of discussions, and ultimately ended up with a list that I shared with my boss and our Exec Pastor to get approval.  Next step was discussing upgrades with dept heads to get their input based on possible staffing role changes, needs, etc.  Then finally, we got to "surprise" selected staff with their upgrade news :-)  I was not surprised when everyone on the list chose a mac vs PC even after explaining there's a learning curve jumping platforms and some limitations with Outlook 2011 for Mac.  Of course some of them were already mac users, or had macs at home...and if so they were tagged as being part of our go-to team for the other Mac newbies around them.  Also recall from Part1 that we required anyone switching to mac to get supervisor signoff that they could do their job on a mac with mac software.  Publisher was the biggest hurdle a few switches had to workaround.  Most of them just ended up using Pages.

Finally, in August 2011 we made a large purchase of mostly 13" Airs and thus began GCC's transition to 'chose your platform' and mobility.

Naturally, before we got to August, Justin and I had been pondering how we were going to deploy and manage all these new macs.  We talked to other Church IT peers, researched enterprise and academic solutions, and looked at what had and had not been done over the years with the 30ish macs already on the GCC network that were not under the IT umbrella.  In Dec 2010 we dropped from a 3 man IT shop down to 2 and knew we'd remain at 2 for a long time to come.  What we couldn't afford to do was create a headache for ourselves OR our end users.  We decided on the KISS (keep-it-stupid-simple) approach.  We would NOT join the macs to Active Directory, instead they would be what I'd call "free range" devices...which is what the macs already on our network had been for years.

To "manage" our macs we landed on using LogMeIn Central ($300/yr) with the free LogMeIn client and Apple's Remote Desktop ($79).  LogMeInCentral with the free LMI client turned out to be such a big win that we started putting the free client on every machine ... and today it's part of our software build for both Mac and PC.  LMI Central creates a special client installer package for your org so install is super quick and easy.  If you're not using LMI Central with the free client you really should check it out...especially if you are multisite.  Apple's Remote Desktop app is a sweet solution

In Part 5 I'll list out how we config our macs for end users along with software we include.  I plan to then wrap everything up in Part 6 sharing what we've learned and changes we've made since rolling out this transition in 2011.

 

Addressing The Consumerization of IT aka GCC's Transition to Macs and Mobility - Part 3

Continuing from Part 1 and Part 2 ...

Well, this is really a continuation from part1 since part 2 went in a different direction than I planned :-)

To quickly refresh ... Part1 was the proposal I made to my boss and our Exec Pastor to A) go mobile and B) give OS platform choice.  For this blog series I asked Tim and Kem to think back about the proposal, why they said yes, and any quick thoughts 2 years later...

From Tim Stevens (Executive Pastor at Granger Community Church):

I'm a huge proponent of technology. I consider myself a technology champion. Maybe it's because I was one of the volunteer audio engineers at GCC for 11 years. Or maybe it's because I got my first home computer before MS-DOS or Windows or Mac were household names (yeah, it actually ran on the CP/M operating system). I've always been somewhat of a geek. And that's why, in my role as Executive Pastor, it's really easy to get behind technology.

But even more than that, I'm a huge champion of finding and resourcing the right leaders. When I have an impassioned, skilled and aligned leader who loves Jesus, loves the church and is the best in their field—I want nothing more than to equip them to be successful. And that's why it was so frustrating in the recession era when we weren't able to replace ailing equipment or invest in new technology. Not only could I not see us implement the best technology to serve the church—I also couldn't equip Jason and his team to soar with the right tools. Every month was just hanging on and riding out the storm. And yet I never heard one complaint or negative comment. Rather, I heard comments like "We'll make it work" and "We will figure it out" and "We'll get creative".

I never questioned Jason when, after the recession, he came with the proposal to A) go mostly mobile and B) provide a path for supported Mac OS machines. I didn't question it because of his long track record of well reasoned and researched decisions. And it turned out to be a huge win for the church. Yes, a bit more costly on the front end, but the tangible and intangible wins with higher productivity, greater employee satisfaction, and reduced operational costs more than made up for the higher price tag.

It was exactly the right decision.

From Kem Meyer (my boss and Communications Director at Granger Community Church)

Here's the thing—the question isn't about whether or not we are on a mac or PC environment. It's about whether or not we are stewarding our resources well and helping staff do what they want to do. I appreciate how our tech ops team elevates people as the value over technology and keeps learning about the various options available to us. Instead of reacting to the increasing questions about people wanting MACs with a "that's not what we do" posture, they sincerely investigated options. They worked through and had answers to these questions before they came to us with a proposal.

• How did we get here?
• What has changed?  What has stayed the same? (Both inside our environment as well as the overall technology industry.)
• Can we afford it?
• Can we support it?
• Can we grow with it?
• Is our environment secure with this solution?
• What will we gain? What will we lose?
• Will this make work harder or easier for our team?
• What are the pros of this approach? What are the cons of this approach?

With the answers to these questions before us, it made the decision pretty easy. We were "eyes wide open", as they say, and knew what we were getting into. It made the change easy to communicate. We were able to set expectations and get everyone on the same page with a shared definition of the win.

For me personally, I was uber productive on my PC for years and I'm just as productive on my MAC in different ways. If you forced me to choose, I would choose a MAC because it's just more fun to use. Our tech ops team is smart enough to recognize that a work force that is having fun with their technology is a happy work force. A happy work force makes the support load a little easier to carry.

Hopefully that's helpful to those that were wondering why leadership agreed to move forward with the proposal.  Naturally, there were clarifying discussions and I believe it went before our Board of Directors, each time being given a green light.

In Part 4, I'll share the process we went through and insight we gained from a small beta test team before annoucing to staff and starting the transition with our 1st batch of users.

There's been some great discussions about this blog series here. So I suggest reading/leaving comments there vs here on my blog.

Addressing The Consumerization of IT aka GCC's Transition to Macs and Mobility - Part 2

Continuing from Part 1 ...

One of the questions that arose from the Part 1 post was how we arrived at the $2100 figure.  It actually ended up being $2300.  This amount would cover the purchase of a 15" macbook pro with 4GB ram, 7200rpm 750GB drive, 3yr applecare, and extra power adapter (for home), which at the time totalled $2300.  While we would actually recommend the 13" air to end users, we knew some would want/need a larger screen so we made sure to accomodate a need for a 15" mac laptop.  Our 13" air config included 4GB ram, 256GB SSD, 3yr applecare, extra power adapter, external super drive (if needed) and rounded up to $1800...another reason we pushed the air over mbp :-)  Again, anything beyond $2300 and another dept would have to pick up the overage.  We had a few staff that went a little over due to job role needing the highest proc and additional ram (which we buy from OWC and install ourselves) or opting for the 17" macbookpro, but the majority of staff have went with the 13" air. 

Today we still recommend and default to the 13" air for our staff.  We've bumped the ram up to 8GB on the standard i5 model which is still under $1800 ($1720) with our config.  AND today we'd also recommend the 13" retina macbook pro ... with our config it comes to $1904.  I used a macbook air for about 2 years and even ran some Fusion win7 vm's on it.  With 4GB ram it was tight running VM's on it, the 8GB air I tested handled VM's much better.  I figured if an air worked great for me, it should work well for the majority of our staff :-)

I switched to a 13" retina macbookpro in Feburary for testing and have REALLY liked the increased screen real estate over the air.  It's a tad heavier and gets warmer, but I'll take that for the extra pixels.  I should also note that while at work I jack into a 27" apple display.  So yes, the air and 13" macbookpro can drive a 27" display with no problems.

Another thing we've discovered over the past 2 years ... spinning hard drives and macbooks don't do well together...even 7200rpm drives give way more spinning beach balls than they should and don't even bother with the 5400rpm drives.  We have had good success by upgrading 15" macbookpros with 750GB hybrid drives, but we strongly recommend going SSD on new mac purchases.

We usually buy our macs/apple gear from our local apple store where they match WCA's discounted Apple pricing which is roughly 10% on most items.  Having their store 1 mile from GCC is a VERY nice plus!  It took some work to create a good relationship with the local store business team, but today they really seem to go to bat for us.  We've also had success getting even better pricing on large volume purchases from ITSavvy, mostly due to their ability to heavily discount applecare.  Another option is buying refurb gear from Apple.  We've gotten several refurb 13" airs for $900-1200 and had no problems with them.  I know some churches get their Apple gear from CDW as well.

What do we do when a user wants a windows laptop?  So far it's been rare, but it has happened.  For instance one of our graphics arts designers is a windows power user and she had no interest in switching to a mac.  No problem!  Except we did have a problem ... what to recommend to her.  The Dell Latitude lineup at that time was franky quite ugly.  True, being ugly shouldn't dismiss a technology decision, but that goofy orange on the Latitudes was bleh!  After much looking around and stalling our recommendation, Dell introduced their "air" competitor in the XPS13.  It was sexy looking and had very similar specs to our 13" air config...except for a lamer rez screen.  Probably the biggest disappointment was that this Dell was MORE than our air config coming out to $1967+shipping!  Here's the invoice :-)  But, as you can see, we did purchase it and she's been very happy with the XPS13 and that's a win.

We've still not landed on what I'd call the perfect PC version of the air.  We thought the nicely priced $800 14" Vizio ultrabook would be a win, but the keyboard on it stinks. We had a couple staff test it and all of them turned it back in saying the keyboard was a deal breaker.  Rats!  We still have a couple more ultrabook options we'd like to try ... and we need hurry up as we have a couple users on the refresh list this year that have already requested to stay PC vs switch to mac.  We've also had a couple staff test windows8...so far nobody liked it, and my personal experience with it was pretty frustrating as well.  This stinks since many of the newest ultrabooks have no option for coming with win7 vs win8 installed.
[edit 4/16/13: Just ordered a refurb Dell 6430u. Hope it works well in testing]

I didn't mean this next blog post to be all about the hardware costs, but that's how it turned out.  Hope it was helpful :-)

I'll get back to the transition process in Part 3 ...

Addressing The Consumerization of IT aka GCC's Transition to Macs and Mobility - Part 1

Hard to believe it's been 2 years since the below email was written which put into motion perhaps the most significant IT transition at GCC to date.  Up to this point, TechOps didn't officially support macs.  Sure we'd help the few mac users on staff as best we could, but it was best effort only and you were not assigned a mac unless your job/software required it.

Fast forward two years later and we've watched the number of staff using the mac platform increase to almost 70% and our overall computer ratio shift to 52% macs (out of 150ish machines).  And we've not started any computer refreshes yet in 2013, so the above stats will shift soon to reflect even higher ratios of fruit :-)

As people have heard about our transition, I often get asked what started the wheel rolling?  Well, it's a culmination of many variables and discussions around how to address the consumerization of IT for our organization...which lead to the email you'll find below.  This email is thus the actual catalyst that got us to where we are today.

Keep in mind this is now a hair over 2 years old and what works in our environment may not work in yours...

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Date: Friday, March 25, 2011 2:54 PM
To: Tim Stevens, Kem Meyer
Subject: GCC laptop proposal draft

Tim/Kem  [For those that don't know. Tim Stevens is our Executive Pastor, Kem Meyer is my boss...both of them were long time windows power users with zero mac experience]

Here's my working draft for upcoming computer refreshes at GCC … it's a work in progress.  Kem suggested I get what I've got so far in front of you both to help field any questions that may pop up as new test computers get rolled out.
Also note I'm leaving out whatever macs that have been bought buy Arts, GSM, etc since those were not TechOps purchases.

As you probably are aware, we have not purchased any new desktop computers in 5+ years nor any new laptops in 3+ years.  This means everything is now outside of warranty support.  If there's a hardware issue, we have limited options for repair, which usually includes buying parts of ebay and doing surgery to attempt extended life for the device.  It works, but is not optimal :)

So taking the above into account, along with an emphasis on anywhere/anytime access from The New Normal project and our own CommWebTechOps 2011 vision and of course other variables, here's what I'm proposing over the next 2 years…

Transitioning to an all-mobile hardware platform for end users.  No more desktops unless it makes sense for a specific job role/function.

PROS:

• Laptops require far less power than desktops plus they'll be traveling home with users instead of being left on in the office overnight.  This saves GCC not only electrical costs, but also cooling. 
• Staff office moves will be no biggie if TechOps doesn't have to move everyone's computers around! w00t!
• Studies show increased worker productivity for mobile workers.  You guys already get this since I bet you'd rather die than give up your laptops for a desktop ;-)
• The lines between work and personal continue to blur. Staff keep buying personal laptops and bringing them to us asking to make them able to do basic office/email functions.  Might as well provide them with something that can serve their needs for work and personal while allowing TechOps to keep things standardized which helps everyone in the long run.

CONS:

• Laptops are more much more expensive to purchase than desktops
• Laptops require battery replacements over time
• Laptops are more prone to accidents
• Laptops see significantly more wear-n-tear

In my mind there's no doubt moving to laptops makes sense for the staff culture at GCC and the Pros far outweigh the cons.

I've been thinking about moving this direction for more than a year. Just haven't had any $ to do so until this year. I've also talked with other churches that have made the transition toward all mobile…most notably my pals over at LifeChurch.tv so this isn't really a new idea for me.  It's been simmering for a long while :)

Perhaps the more radical shift is giving users the option of mac or windows.  We're finally in a place where we have necessary tools and know-how to adequately support mac users, helped in huge part by the latest mac Outlook2011 client.  It's still not as good as Outlook2010 for windows, but it's finally a viable solution.  We also now have software (CrashplanProE), which will allow enterprise class backups for macs – another huge stumbling block for us supporting macs in the past, as timemachine is NOT an enterprise solution.

PROS:

• In talking with other churches supporting dual platform most indicate a far lower % of support needs from their mac users.  For sure many variables are hidden in that data as to why, but data still shows that macs typically require less load on IT staff.  Of course we don't see a lot of support needs from our windows users either.
• Over 40 of our staff have iPhones and thus use iTunes and apps.  iTunes works much better on the mac OS (I'm sure by design).  Keeping all devices under one 'ecosystem' simplifies life for the end user as well as IT.
• Apple is 'sexy' and I think our younger staff gravitates toward that.  Plus I guess it could be seen as lending some credibility to our staff being in tune with the culture? 
• More freedom/flexibility with OSX operation system fueled further by the recent addition of the app store for macs. 
• So far mac OS isn't a big enough target for virus/malware writers.

CONS:

• All the fanatic apple users making cracks about "oh, you finally seen the light?" and other such fanboi comments that make me wanna hurl then PUNCH them with my fist.
• Macs are more expensive than similar equipped Dell…it's gotten closer over the past few years, but still there's a gap.
• Apple has no "real" enterprise class support nor accidental damage coverage.  I am looking at 3rd party options for accidental coverage.
• Troubleshooting issues on mac is much harder. 
• When it becomes financially beneficial, virus writers will go after macs.  When that happens we'll have to find ways to best protect macs.

Transition plan of attack
Current laptop users would be first in line to get replacements.  Then their current hardware would be trickled down to staff currently w/o laptops with hopefully enough spares to take care of break-fix needs until next year when they'd get option of something new.

I have $X earmarked in my budget for laptops.  Currently proposing each staff be "earmarked" up to $2100 for purchase of a new Dell Latitude E series or Macbook when their time for refresh comes due.  Anything additional they'd like (higher rez screen, faster/bigger hard drive, accessories, etc) above $2100 would be charged to their dept.  The plan is also that this will be their laptop for at least 3 years and more likely 5 depending on role.

Staff interested in switching to a mac would need their supervisor to sign off that their job role doesn't require windows specific software.  We will not allow nor support the loading of bootcamp, parallels, or vmware on a mac so user can run a virtual windows session.  If you need windows to do your job then you need a Dell.  Again, thanks to my friends at other churches I have copies of the paperwork they have staff/supervisors sign that spells all this out :)

My guess is that, given the choice, most staff will opt for a mac and that in 2 years GCC will be mostly mac laptops.  Windows servers and such will still be at the core of the server infrastructure, but clients will be predominately mac. 

I've spent a lot of brain cycles over the past year trying to navigate this "consumerization of IT" trend that continues to grow and I strongly feel the above proposal will help our staff be more productive and happy in the long run.  Because this is such a radical shift for us I'm planning to do a big blog post to point people to that have questions.

And Tim, although your laptop isn't super old, I'd be more than happy to put you in our coming mac Guinea Pig testing group if that would help you.  I think you're very much like me in that I very much dislike being labeled as a "mac user" just because of all the baggage/crap it carries.

So there ya have draft proposal version 1.
Look forward to your feedback and questions.
Jason
=======================================

Stay tuned for Part 2 ... Guinea Pig testing begins

I've also started a discussion thread for this blog series here over on the Church IT Network forum

=======================================

update: Part 2 added

update: Part 3 added

update: Part 4 added

update: Part 5 added

update: Part 6 added

Church IT Network 2013 Schedule = 2 National Events in Feb and Oct

2013 SCHEDULE Unveiled! 

In efforts to move our big National event from Spring to Fall (get away from Easter and Spring break and unpleasant weather in Northern States) we’re having 2 National events next year!

National Spring 2013 event >> 2/27-3/1 in Phoenix, AZ at Christ’s Church of the Valley http://www.ccvonline.com/Arena/default.aspx  Schedule will be a mix of training, workshops, presentations and peer roundtable discussion spread over 3 full days.  And like we started last Spring in Dallas, we’ll have a separate Web/Dev track again so be sure to invite your web/dev peeps!

National Fall 2013 event >> 10/21-10/23 in Kansas City, KS at Church of the Resurrection http://cor.org/  This event will also be a 3 full days of a mix of training, workshops, presentations and peer roundtable discussion.  This event will also kick our web/dev track through the roof by hosting Refresh Cache along side our Church IT Rountable event!  RefreshCache mirrors the DNA of our community so it was a no-brainer to host our 2 events together in 2013.

From the RefreshCache website …
The RefreshCache community is a group of connected web developers and designers from churches, businesses, and non-profits that leverage the power of Church Management Systems. Our purpose is to create an environment driven by innovation, collaboration, sharing, and openness. We seek to empower each other; to share ideas and code, and to shatter the traditional business dependencies on silos and secrecy that plague many ministry organizations today.

We believe that through our God-given talents in design and software engineering, we are in control of our own destinies. With innovation and collaboration, we can give birth to far greater things than a single church IT staff can alone.

More details to follow, but we wanted you all to get this on your calendars NOW!  You’ll want to be at BOTH events if at all possible, so get it in the budget and start convincing your boss now.  We had almost 300 in attendance at our Spring event in Dallas!  Wonder what will happen in 2013? :-)

Starting 2014 our schedule will be a Spring Regional Event (date will change each year based on Easter) followed by a big National Fall Event (late October timeframe).

We’re EXTREMELY pumped to have 2 events next year AND have the location and dates ready for peeps to put on calendars :-)

Fall 2013 info here http://citrt.onthecity.org/plaza/events/31f191abbdc5a211e5bef29603ecec996f06ace2

He-Man and an IT All Staff Email

Do most staff simply delete the IT emails you send out?  Certainly your emails are important or you'd not be sending them out right?  Perhaps you just need to make them a little more entertaining...something people look forward to because there's always something fun inside to find.  If you can just get them to open your email the battle is almost won.  I started long ago making funny/goofy sign offs in my all staff emails...usually tying it somehow into the main content of the email.  Staff continue to tell me they look forward to them.  Some even say they skip to the bottom of the email first then go back and read the content! :-)

Now, keep your emailz short and to the point.  Be clear, be honest, make it fun, make it understandable and make it conversational.  And of course send as few all staff emails as possible.  Don't spam your co-workers 'cause your important emails will stop being important!

Here's the email I sent out this morning ... I think this is the 1st time I've used a He-Man reference in an all staff email LOL!  Already getting lots of postive replies back ;-)

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TODAY at 2pm - possible network outage

Electrician's are doing nifty electricity stuff to a main building feed today starting around 2pm.

Their work will kill power to our key network gear (along with large chunks of the building) in the lower level which is THE CORE of the network here at The Granger Commons*.  While we do have battery backup for our gear it is limited to approx 30mins. 
The electricians hope to be done with our circuits before our batteries deplete, but if they encounter a snag we will have to manually power down our gear (IT gear does NOT like to be shut down cold!) before the batts die. 
If we have to power our key network gear down it will kill all network traffic > internet, shared drives, printing, the full monty!

How will you know if we have to power down? Stay up to date with late breaking GCC TechOps updates by following @gcctechops on twitter … don't use twitter?  No problem!  Just text FOLLOW GCCTECHOPS to 40404. Now, you’ll start receiving our very infrequent twitter updates via text message. Nifty!
Don't have text messaging?  Uh, really??!  You need help!  Your option is to goto our twitter webpage at http://twitter.com/gcctechops … and seriously, it's 2012 … get a text messaging plan already!!!

Jason … by the power of Grayskull! … Powell 

* http://www.leadingsmart.com/2012/07/what-kind-of-church-would-change-the-name-of-its-property.html

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Here's an old blog post with some other sign-offs I've used over the years :-) http://jpowell.blogs.com/jason_powell_church_it/2007/03/king_of_tagline.html

 

Join The New Church IT Community Platform!

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 :-)

Surprise IT Volunteer Award for Tom Templin

Every 2 years or so Granger Community Church takes a weekend to celebrate and recognize some of our outstanding volunteers. Men and women who get the mission, vision, and values of GCC and over the years have made a ginormous impact for the Kingdom through their efforts. We call them "Giant Killers" and surprise them Smooth Stone Awards … 5 Smooth Stone awards are presented at each service so this year that means 30 people across both campuses got an awesome surprise during the service :-)

The fun part is that this is all done in secrecy. We don't make any announcements that the Smooth Stone award weekend is coming and the folks getting the awards are clueless … muhwahahaha.

Couple years ago we (IT) got to recognize Dustin Hannifin for his contributions. Click that link for the old blog post on it. When I was asked this year if we had any IT volunteers that should be considered I immediately nominated Tom Templin. Tom started volunteering at GCC shortly after I came on staff in 2003. Hard to believe it's been that long & I can't imagine doing IT at GCC without him!

Here's a short blurb I wrote about Tom of which some made it into the actual weekend service:

________________

This person started volunteering on the IT team in the Fall of 2003. Back then we had no automated systems so we needed many dedicated volunteers to physically run around to computers and install updates, run checks, and troubleshoot issues. It soon became apparent that this individual was not only dependable and willing to handle small tasks, but had immense capacity and knowledge to tackle large complex projects.  For Example:

 

In early 2004 he was tasked to lead the research, design and implementation of a cutting edge campus wide private and public wireless system for GCC.  Allowing any wireless user to pull up granger notes on their portable device and take electronic notes.  News about this got out and received mention in the Saturday Evening Post and Network World Magazine.  Then again in 2010 he again lead the charge to replace our by then antiquated wifi solution with the secure, robust, high density solution over 400 of you (our weekend guests) use each weekend! He is now using the knowledge he gained from our implementation to install the same, albeit considerably larger, wifi solution for the entire PHM School district during his day job.

 

Starting in 2005 this person became our goto guy for IT projects at MC3. He worked alongside program instructors to implement and maintain the network, wifi, and computer lab the students and teachers use daily.

 

We also leverage this person as our purchasing agent for all things IT. He loves to go to bat for GCC and find THE rock bottom price for our technology needs. We estimate he’s saved GCC in excess of $100,000 over the past years!

 

This person plays a key role in our decision making process throughout all levels of IT from switching infrastructure, to servers, to applications. We leverage his knowledge and skills for all our strategic planning and initiatives.

 

AND just last Sunday he spent over 8 hours helping GCC IT staff move all our production servers and storage from GCC to our new colocation space at Union Station in downtown South Bend.

 

Honestly, I can’t imagine what we’d do without Tom … his value to our team is impossible to measure … not only is he a volunteer superhero but I also count him as a close friend and brother in Christ.
-----------------------------

Here's the video of the 7pm service where Tom was given his Smooth Stone award. Tom's part starts around the 12 minute mark.

Smooth Stones 2012 | 7 p.m. from Granger Community Church on Vimeo.

Not only has Tom helped GCC, his impact on Church IT has continued to expand as a more and more of our Church IT peers contact Tom to get quotes on IT gear.

It's so fun to recognize and surprise people like Tom. They are truly Giant Slayers.

Jan 28th - Mark Beeson (Founding Pastor) and Tom Templin

Justin Moore - Tom Templin - Jason Powell

Registration Open for 2012 National Church IT Roundtable!

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/