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.