Avast! Antivirus Software

In setting up the MacBook Pro, I purchased and loaded Avast! Antivirus Mac Edition, which has a really clean user interface and Avast! offers a 50% discount for nonprofits, charities, education, and government customers. The discount is great especially when you are buying multiple 3-year licenses! Check out Avast! at: http://www.avast.com/

MacBook Pro

I recently had the opportunity to purchase and set up an Apple MacBook Pro for one or our church worship leaders. The MacBook Pro and the OSX operating system are sweet! It’s easy to get hooked on the interface and the thin dimensions of the MacBook. We purchased the unit from Consistent Computer Bargains (http://www.ccbnonprofits.com) who gave a good price on both the MacBook Pro and the three-year AppleCare warranty. While I was impressed with the MacBook Pro, I could have purchased at least two nicely equipped Windows laptops for the same price.

Another source for Apple products for churches is the Willowcreek Association (WCA) (http://www.willowcreek.com/), they also offer a discount for Apple products and software for WCA members that appears to be as good as Consistent Computer Bargains or slightly better.

Washington DC IT Roundtable - Wrap Up

First Topic: IT involvement in strategic planning of the church

Regular involvement with the planning, the good-fast-cheap concept is a reality and is used to force requesters to think about what they really need and their requirements. Outsourcing to Fellowship One and the use of Google Applications has reduced the labor requirements. Good way of collaboration is with the use of Google documents, still supporting some MS Office (none in the school), admin uses Office and the church is still all Office. IT volunteer nights (idea by Jason Powell @ Granger). 100% Cisco shop due to two Cisco trained volunteers who support the equipment.

Challenge is to keep up with growth, very much stove piped like, IT is challenged to stay involved, no vetting process of ideas, business processes are very stove-piped focuses, IT happens with and without coordination with the IT group. Using Fellowship One CHMS. Operations Team sits down with each group to understand and determine which needs to address. 10-year plan for IT and AV teams. Challenge is meeting all the demands.

Pastor not focused on long-term plans, tough to schedule/plan

Meet as a leadership team that discusses strategic plans, lots of information sharing across all departments.

Yearly planning efforts around budget time

Discussions with different departments, sold leadership on a SAN based on consistent argument

Second Topic: Extranets:

Use of SHAREPOINT for project management and for Intranet. SHAREPOINT eliminates the for shared folders. Requires lots of time investment for customization. Microsoft did free SHAREPOINT training for nonprofits. SHAREPOINT designer is the replacement for FRONTPAGE. SHAREPOINT hosting provider is mailstreet and tagit. Google sites is a comparable SHAREPOINT product.

Third Topic: Wireless

Examples of manufacturers of wireless access points recommended by IT Roundtable members: Xirrus, Cisco Aironet, Proxim, Aruba, Openmesh (low end), 3Com system relabeled Trapeze Networks

Fourth Topic: Virtualization

Using VM Ware, Jumpbox http://www.jumpbox.com/supported-virtualization-software

Citrix Zen server, ESXi popular with IRC chat members

Fifth Topic: VM backups

Equillogic http://www.equallogic.com

Buffalo terrastation www.buffalotech.com

Proxmox – has lots of backup solutions free http://www.proxmox.com/

Crashplan http://www6.crashplan.com

Sixth Topic: Internal Issues

Blocking of email: AOL blacklists quickly and is tough to get off of, use other sources for bulk email, need to get added to their whitelist. Rob uses Fellowship One or Vertical Response. Make sure the SPF records and Reverse DNS are set up correctly. Vertical Response allows up to 10K emails/month free for churches.

Use of Tweeter for alerts for church closings (Tweeter alerts)

Google Calendar works for room scheduling

AV media stored separately usually without back ups

Seventh Topic: WebPages

All Facebook and Twitter accounts are set up by the church with them as the first administrator and then the user set up as a contributing editor. Need for common themes and logos in all communications products and messages.

Eighth Topic: Email

Forever email storage for achieve purposes; Google lets you have 15G. Video and other multimedia files are the largest storage problem, encourage users to store files as separate attachment.

Are there any legal requirements for churches that state how long email need to be retained?

Ninth Topic:

IT Roundtable at Saddleback Church in spring 2010

Utah Canyons

Here's some additional pictures from our recent Utah canyons trip.

Washington DC IT Roundtable

An IT Roundtable Discussion is scheduled for Monday 26 October 2009 at the McLean Bible Church: 8925 Leesburg Pike (Route 7), Vienna, VA 22182, (703) 790-5590

Registration is 0800-0900.
More details are at: http://dccitrt.pbworks.com/

Highlights from the Leadership Summit

Here are some highlights from this year’s Willow Creek Association’s Leadership Summit held on August 6-7, 2009 that I thought were enlightening.

Bill Hybels:
• Jim Collins’ new book, check it out “How the Mighty have Fallen”
• Pastors rather work with souls rather than spreadsheets
• Golden rule of staff reductions: give lots of notice: months, be very clear what the reasons are for the reductions, and be generous with severances
• God works through people who yield to him; 2 Chronicles 16:9
• People are hungry for money management during economic downturn
• People will still give generously during a downturn if you ask them to

Henry Cloud, Carly Fiorina, David Ireland, Patrick Lencioni:
• Boards: Dysfunctional boards exist because they have no values. Boards need to decide what kind of tone they want to set, they need to have trust and build on that.
• People need to humble themselves when in a time of need
• Those who are not affected by the downturn need to step up in many ways
• There is nothing like the local church when it is working like the local church

Gary Hamel:
• Churches must innovate and adapt
• Internal change lags behind external change, in both nonprofit and for profit industries. Change brings opportunity. The problem in the church is not unique.

Jessica Jackley:
• The poor will always be with us
• A loan with a purpose
• Just do it, don’t just talk about it. Don’t be afraid to start small, focus on one thing, think of scale in terms of building on the success

Harvey Carey:
• Most leaders think too much, thus they are hindered from doing God’s work
• Detroit has the most churches than any other city in the world, yet it is the poorest
• Prayer meetings versus strategic meetings, which do you have more of…it should be more strategy

Dave Gibbons:
• Margins move the masses
• Look at the person’s story, not just their strength tests
• Obedience more than passion
• 4 acts of obedience
1. deeper collaboration
2. Communal living
3. Prayer & the power of the Holy Spirit
4. Radical sacrifice for the outsider

Andrew Rugasira:
• Trade not aid!
• No country in the world was developed on handouts, why is Africa different?
• Aid is conditional, the host country will then focus their own money somewhere else
• Farmer networks are the key to growth

Wess Stafford:
• Give up your right for revenge
• If there’s a person who has hurt you, forgive them…otherwise you will carry this burden the rest of your life, “you can not have tomorrow”

David Gergen:
• Leaders who confuse motion with progress, great leaders think carefully about how and what to do with feedback all along the way.
• Someone who can see further back is able to see further ahead
• If you want to go fast, go alone, if you want to go far, go together
• Coming to church provides an inner peace, learn something from the Pastor or from the readings, and building your moral compass, students are finding that church can nourish these qualities. Your ego needs to be kept in check. Anchor your life is your faith. Be the change you want to see in the world.

Tony Blair:
• How do you handle doubt; think through the decision, put aside the fear and be willing to take responsibility
• Strategic goals is based on principle, tactical goals is about give and take
• Leadership is a blessing and a gift that you can use to help others, it is valuable and it’s your duty to serve

Leadership Summit, Session 1

Here's some thoughts from Bill Hybel's session titled "Leading in a New Reality".

- Check out Jim Collins' new book titled "How the Mighty have Fallen"
- People need to humble themselves when in a time of need
- Those who are not affected by the economic downturn need to step up in many ways
- There is nothing like the local church when it is working like the local church
- Seminaries don’t teach pastors business survival skills

So far it's been a very enlightening session, Hybel's hasn't held anything back!

The Leadership Summit

I’ll be at the Willow Creek Leadership Summit on 6-7 August. Check out this years schedule out at: http://willowcreek.com/

A Mac for the Network

The new music director at my church has a Mac! So far in my nearly 10 years of providing IT support to my church, we have never had anyone request to use their Mac on the network, now we might have one… I'll have go back to my Ministry Tech notes for references to solutions on how to best integrate a Mac into the network domain (he's running Tiger 10.4). That was a common discussion point this past April at Ministry Tech in Colorado Springs (see my other posting on Ministry Tech).

The Next Milestone

After waiting four weeks for my committee to get back to me with their results, I am now working my way though hundreds of comments! My next milestone is to get all of the relevant comments incorporated into the proposal and sent the proposal back to the committee by 1 July. Dissertations are a challenge and not so much fun!

Milestone Achieved!

I have finally reached a major milestone; I finally got approval to send my dissertation proposal to my committee for their review! Hopefully within a week I’ll get some useful feedback to make my proposal even better and more focused so that I can move forward to actually conducting my research.

Ministry Tech

The Ministry Tech conference held in Colorado Springs on April 23-24 was very good and worth attending. The best part of the event was the tour of Compassion International, New Life Church, and Focus on the Family. Each place provided some interesting and useful information regarding IT management and where they are going strategically.

The actual conference at Woodmen Valley Chapel was good in terms of meeting other church IT people. This was especially important as I move forward on my research topic of IT management in churches. The IT Roundtable held on day two of the conference was the first Roundtable for me; I was surprised at the level of discussions and the various topics in addition to the solutions being offered. The solutions and open source tools are a key take-away from this event.

An added bonus to the trip was on Thursday night, we got to see the live satellite transmission of Dave Ramsey's broadcast "Town Hall for Hope". In this broadcast he reviewed the United States economy and how we got into this financial mess and what we need to do to get out of it. Spending billions is not the solution according to Ramsey; instead he recommends that we each take responsibility and that the failures will drive others to greater excellence and success.

I’m looking forward to attending another IT Roundtable this year. Hopefully there’s one in the Mid-Atlantic region soon!

The Lord blessed us with great weather while we were in Colorado and the ability to see and hike the Garden of the Gods and Castlewood Canyon.

Telephone Wiring

I recently had the opportunity to rewire the phone lines in a church office that is served by three PSTN lines that serve multiline phones with conferencing. Here’s the before and after pictures.

Before

After

Church IT Management Research

I recently reached a milestone in my research study on church IT management and the variables strategic planning and business processes. I have finished chapter 3 and am working with my Advisor/Committee Chair to get approval to release it to the whole committee. I’m hoping to have the research questionnaire posted by time Ministry Tech starts in April.

MinistryTECH: 23-24 April in Colorado Springs

Here’s a great conference to attend if you are involved in either computer networks or audio and visual technology for churches or nonprofits. I attended last year’s conference in Oklahoma City and found it worth my time and money. The most important part is the interaction with other technologist who shares a passion for utilizing technology to further advance their ministry. Check out MinistryTech's web page!

Secure Virtual Networks

I found an interesting article on virtual networks and security yesterday. The article by Joern Wettern, titled “How to design a virtual infrastructure with security in mind” offers some good thoughts on what needs to be looked at in terms of security and virtual machines. I got it as part of the Redmond Magazine Newsletter. The article can be at the Redmond Magazine web page.

Outlook PST Errors and File Corruption

I had two users complain about errors in Outlook 2003 running on XP-Pro recently that uses a POP3 account. Two of the errors were:

C:\DOCUME~1\lynda\LOCALS~1\Temp\WERcd7a.dir00\OUTLOOK.EXE.mdmp

C:\DOCUME~1\lynda\LOCALS~1\Temp\WERcd7a.dir00\appcompat.txt

In researching this, one of our IT Team members suggested the “scanpst.exe” tool that comes with Microsoft Office. I followed up with additional research on this and found a Microsoft Office link that provides detailed directions that are easy to follow.

I ran the “scanpst.exe” tool on both PST files, the tool identified over 80 errors in each PST file, and it then successfully corrected all of the errors or file corruption in Outlook. Both Outlook PST files functioned error-free after running this tool! What a great tool along with good documentation from Microsoft.

Enercient HVAC Monitoring

I attended the kickoff launch of a new start-up company Enercient Systems Technologies (www.enercient.com) tonight. Enercient is providing wireless sensors and a router with unique software for monitoring HVAC systems such as boilers, heat pumps, furnaces, and air conditioners. This might be an excellent opportunity for church IT people to talk to your facilities people to see what monitoring your HVAC systems have and if they are capable of being monitored over a network.

As the cost of energy (gas, electric, or oil) continue to fluctuate, this may be a way of improving the efficiency of existing systems without costly replacement.

Church Technology Management

I just read (actually I read it on 23 Dec, but only am now getting to posting this) David Drinnon’s blog posting on the relationship between IT, communications, and media. Great article that supports the view that these technology intensive areas should be led by one person and that one person should participate in the leadership of the church. So often, there is a lack of coordination between these parties and as David states, “Churches can't afford to operate inefficiently because of the high cost of technology”. Having a holistic strategy with IT, communications, and media has to improve the ability to reach your audience in addition to improving the overall efficiency of technology management.