Jason Powell - Church IT and Other Musings

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.
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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

Revamping IT Volunteerism At GCC Part II - Building Community

Continuing from Part I ...

Building Community

Another focus point of our revamp was finding ways to build better community with our volunteers.
Not too many things speak louder than when we invest in our volunteers with time.
So we decided to hit the pause button on Tech Ops tasks the 1st Monday evening of each month and dedicate that time to just hang with our volunteers.

What's that look like?  For starters we're inviting all current and potential volunteers to dinner at an offsite location each month.  Usually it will be "pay your own way", but we'll occasionally hope to make it a free dinner.  The purpose is simply to create space for getting to know each other better ... and what better way to do that with a bunch of geeks than with food!  Occasionally we may use this dinner meeting to share big picture info with the team, but typically the agenda will be ... eat and talk.

We're initially calling this the GCC Geeks Gathering and our 1st event is already scheduled - see http://gcctechops.eventbrite.com
One challenge will be finding places to eat that can easily accomodate our group as we predict it will grow...hence the use of eventbrite and RSVP's to gauge needs.

Other future community time could be tackling a community service project as group, helping each other with home projects, etc.  And of course there's the spirtual aspects of building community.  Praying for each other when times are rough, celebrating when things are rockin', challenging each other to take our next steps towards Christ.

Ripple effects... What if this grew beyond just being an "GCC" IT volunteer thing.  What if our volunteers started inviting their geek friends and co-workers to these Monday nights?  What would it look like to have a community of geeks that gather together to do life together?  What amazing stories could come out of the collision between geeks for Jesus and geeks that don't yet know they need Him?  Oh baby, that makes my heart beat fast and my brain short circuit! :-)

What our you doing to build community in your volunteer teams?

Here's a snippet from our recent Tech Ops Volunteer Info night where I go over some of our new 'community' initiative (audio is weak so crank up the volume) 

 

More to follow in Part III...

Revamping IT Volunteerism At GCC Part I - The Big Picture

Over the past couple months, my team has spent considerable time and energy around revamping our IT volunteer ministry.  Volunteering in our area has gone through many phases in my 7yrs at GCC, but this is our most focused effort to date to find new ways to engage people of all skill levels and build community.  It was a challenging, but rewarding process that has given us a great foundation from which to build upon in the months to come.

As we brainstormed items like new volunteer opportunities, we also went back and refined, “What is Tech Ops?” The goal: give a quick big picture overview of our department from technical facts to team culture to “set the stage” for people interested in volunteering.  Here's the result:

TECH OPS | BIG PICTURE

What we do:

The Tech Ops Department exists to equip the staff and members of GCC to be efficient and effective in the fulfillment of the Great Commission by providing relevant and strategic information, technological tools, technical support, and training.  In our service to the body of Christ, we seek to be positive, humble, approachable, responsive, and solution-oriented.

We care for:

• Network of approximately 200 computers both Dell and Apple
• 30+ virtual servers running on 2 Dell R710 VMware VSphere hosts tied to an EqualLogic PS6000E SAN
• Heavy Microsoft server and applications shop. Gotta love that non-profit discount!
• Server 2008 R2, Exchange 2010, SQL 2008 R2, SharePoint 2010 Foundations
• Windows Vista, Windows 7, OSX
• HP Gigabit to the desktop switching infrastructure
• ATT MetroE 100Mbps down/10Mbps up with backup internet through Comcast Business 50Mbps down/10Mbps up
• Veeam and DPM2010 for backups including offsite replication to DR site downtown
• Full building public and private WiFi access

Who we are:

• Group of Network ninjas, cable-monkeys, CIOs and everything in between who lives to empower people with smart and hard-working technology while simultaneously protecting those same people from technological pitfalls and vulnerabilities (including themselves).
• Technology concierges who serve people—we whole-heartedly understand that how people “feel” about technology is more important than the functionality it has the potential to deliver. At the end of the day we’ve done our job if we deliver a peaceful, easy feeling for users on all every point of the skill continuum.
• A unique and inspiring culture full of sled dogs that are energized, demanding, encouraging and a little weird—we have a deep appreciation for a serious sense of humor when under pressure.
• On-call “IT” doctors with no office hours or geographic boundaries who understand that a good techie has less to do with degrees, certifications, and experience than being smart, passionate, and fearless.
• Team oriented. No matter how great the talent, this is a no-ego fly zone.
• At the end of the day— the why trumps the what—and we work as one every time.
• Dual platform with love for both mac and PC users. We are a bi-partisan team with no annoying fan boys.
• Super talented in a general way, each bringing our own unique blend of skills to the table to get a job done.
• Leaders of people or projects—working together to rally the troops or the tasks.
• Servants committed to supporting and fulfilling the mission, vision, values and goals of the church.

The above is now included our our volunteer interest webform (see http://gccwired.com/volunteer) under Technical and Skilled.

In future posts I’ll go over some of the new volunteer roles we created and other nifty aspects of our volunteerism revamp. If you were interested in volunteering in IT at GCC, what else could we include in our "big picture" to help you determine if this would be a good fit for you?

[update: Part II - Building Community now posted]