Jason Powell - Church IT and Other Musings

2011 National Spring Church IT Roundtable Feb 24-25 - Near Orlando, FL - Be there!

If you haven't already seen the news on the CITRT twitter or facebook page >>> 

Spring 2011 National Church IT Roundtable - w00t! Spread the news! We're Florida bound for spring 2011!

Dates: Feb 24-25, 2011. There will also be pre and post event activities...most notably Wednesday. Calvary Chapel Melbourne is also not far from the Kennedy Space Center so add that to your possible extra things to do before/after the roundtable. More details and registration to follow shortly.  Huge thanks to Chris Kehayias for being our site host.  
Location: Calvary Chapel Melbourne 

Calvary Chapel of Melbourne
2955 Minton Road
West Melbourne, Florida 32904

Follow announcements at http://twitter.com/citrt and http://facebook.com/citrt

Our roundtables are for staff, volunteers and vendors who support the Church in the area of Information Technology without discrimination to the maturity of the technology they use or the size of the congregation they support.  Often we find ourselves with the skills and aptitudes to be successful but lacking in a critical piece of knowledge that may be found in a colleague within the Church IT community.  This is certainly true for those who are part-time staff or volunteers working in church IT.  We need information.  We need inspiration.  Above all, we need a community of like-minded peers.

I strongly encourage anyone and everyone involved in Church IT to make this a priority in 2011.  I've been to every roundtable since 2006 and I've found them to be absolutely invaluable.

Hope to see many of you in Florida this Feb!!

Recommended Church IT Vendor/Partner List Ideas?

There are more and more churches looking for reputable IT service and product vendors that are ministry focused or at least very friendly towards churches/ministries.  There are also great ministry focused vendors looking to provide a great service/solution to churches/ministries at a great price.  The challenge is how to get the 2 sides together for a win-win?

I know from my own experience that I give a LOT of weight to vendors/products that I know other Church IT peers are using successfully.  Case in point: we’re looking very closely at Ruckus Wireless from Mirazon because of strong recommendations from Daryl Hunter.  I’m not alone, when I asked other’s in the CITRT IRC channel they all had a similar reply:

“I would be more likely to investigate those products and vendors ... especially if i hadn't heard of them or thought of them” – ccnash-scott

So … what’s the best way to create a list of Church/Ministry friendly IT partners/vendors … how/who would submit the vendor/partner … how could others then comment pro/con on their experience with said vendor/partner … maybe give it a star rating? … maybe something similar to Amazon and eBay comments/ratings?  How and how much do you moderate?  Allow anonymous feedback?  etc etc etc!

Does something like this already exist we might want to leverage?  May we can somehow create something inside our upcoming CITRT getshadetree release?  Someone in IRC mentioned this Wordpress plugin http://www.wpreviewsite.com/ Certainly looks interesting.

Already got some good feedback/ideas from a few IRC peeps like “allow anyone to submit a vendor/solution to the list, but require 2 or 3 people to vote “yes” before it gets approved”

Now it’s your turn.  What would be helpful to you from an IT role or vendor role?  Dream big and let’s see what we end up with :-)

Video of Rick Warren Addressing the Church IT Roundtable Crowd

If you missed the recent Church IT Roundtable at Saddleback Church … well, you missed an AMAZING event! 

Just one part of what made it so incredible was having Rick Warren sit down (mostly unannounced) and spend 1.5hrs speaking to us, doing Q&A, and taking pictures if people wanted (and of course most everyone did!).

Rick’s talk was awesome…so much so that we’ve gotten TONS of people requesting copies of the live video we were streaming.  And thankfully the captured stream audio/video turned out great!  So hit the image above to hear Rick’s heart for the church and technology. 

Rick even tweeted about our CITRT event :-)
@RickWarren: We hosted 2 day #citrt nat'l roundtable for U.S. IT/Tech Pastors. Brilliant men & women! I love these guys! Pr.27:23

Pic of my wife and I hangin’ with Rick.

Did you know Rick’s a HUGE hot sauce fan? I did, so during the Q&A I asked him what his favorite was :-) ... I then followed up by asking how he kept/keeps his marriage strong.  He took several minutes to answer and did it in 3 parts: Divert Daily, Withdraw Weekly, Abandon Annually...I think many of us geeks really needed to hear that.  I sure did!

We also got to experience what a funny guy Rick is … he’s hilarious!! 
Thanks Rick for taking the time out of your busy schedule to pour into 80+ Church IT leaders.  You marked us all in a very positive way.  Geeks for Jesus!!!

50 Days Until the Spring National Church IT Roundtable March 11-12!

That’s right! Only 50 days until Church/Ministry IT staff and volunteers from across the country will descend upon Saddleback Church in warm sunny Lake Forest California to partake in 2 days of invaluable peer learning, networking and inspiration March 11-12.

If you can only attend one IT conf this year, this is the one I recommend without hesitation! Regardless of your church/org size, I guarantee you’ll leave with new knowledge, new friendships and loads of inspiration.  I’ve been to every National Church IT Roundtable since 2006 and I leave each one totally amazed at what I’ve gained.  Not to mention the incredible friendships I’ve built over the past few years are invaluable on both a person and professional level.  So in other words – make every effort possible to get to this event.  If you need me to write a note to your boss to help your plight let me know ;-)

We’re still firming up final costs, but it will be under $100…and that will include lunch and snacks both days…and if we get enough sponsors hopefully even dinner both nights.  Registration is open and cost is only $75 for both days including meals!

Sponsors?  Yes, we’re asking vendors to help offset the costs.  Please encourage your favorite vendors to contribute.  Even a small amount will be helpful.  See the sponsor page for more info.

Spouses?  Yes, a number of us have been informed by our spouses that they TOO will be coming to California :-)  Spouses are encouraged to join us during the evening gathering times.  Perhaps during the day they can form their own IT spouse support group and hang out together at the beach ;-)

Final details are still being nailed down, but here’s the schedule gist …
March 10 – optional pre-event informal gathering in the evening (possible dinner)
March 11 – Day 1 - 9am until late … Saddleback “behind the scenes” tour in late afternoon, group dinner, then a special worship service
March 12 – Day 2 – 9am until 5pm … then optional dinner for those flying out Sat/Sun

More details can be found at http://citrt.org … hope to see you there!  Questions? Leave a comment or email [email protected]

For the latest up to the minute Church IT Roundtable news follow CITRT on twitter and/or facebook

Less than 30 days 'til Fall 09 Regional CITRT events!

That's right ... less than 30 days until most of the fall 09 host sites hold their Church IT Roundtable events! I've got my team signed up ... how about you???

Fall 09 National Church IT Roundtable - This year instead of one location where everyone will meet we're going to have multiple locations across the country. Follow announcements at http://twitter.com/citrt and http://facebook.com/citrt

VIEW SITE LOCATIONS IN GOOGLE MAPS

- Church of the Resurrection in Leawood, KS on 10/27  info/register
- McLean Bible Church in Vienna, VA on 10/26 info/register
- North Point Community Church in Atlanta on 10/27 info/register
- Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, CA on 10/27 info/register
- Second Baptist Church in Houston, TX on 11/2 info/register
- The Chapel in Grayslake, IL (Chicago) on 10/27 info/register
- Woodland Baptist Church in Bradenton, FL on 10/27, info/register

AND don't forget ...

Spring 2010 National Church IT Roundtable - at Saddleback Church late Feb / Early March 2010.  Budget NOW to make it to this "must attend" kickin' 2 day event!

as always CITRT.org is the one stop shop for all 'official' info

Fall Church IT Roundtable Locations and Info

http://citrt.org site has just been updated with the 7 confirmed locations for this fall's Church IT Roundtable.  If you haven't already heard, this fall instead of 1 location we're having many locations across the country.  Why? To save people travel $$ and hopefully build stronger regional groups in the process.  It's going to be awesome!

3 locations are still pending, but these are the confirmed sites (and dates if known).

Church of the Resurrection in Leewood, KS

McLean Bible Church in Vienna, VA

North Point Community Church in Atlanta on 10/27

Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, CA

Second Baptist Church in Houston, TX on 11/2

Sojourn Community Church in Louisville, KY on 10/29

Woodland Baptist Church in Bradenton, FL on 10/27

To keep up to date with the latest Church IT Roundtable info check twitter.com/citrt or facebook.com/citrt

I'm excited to see what God does this fall with so many sites engaged ... more info coming ... Geeks for Jesus! :-)

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 :-)

ALSO ... here's a bunch of pics from the event courtesy of Jon Lambert

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..)