The Appian Way

We've moved

2008-07-29T11:59:00.001-05:00

Some of you still have your feed readers and aggregators pointed here. All of us Appian Way bloggers now have our own blogs and feeds.

I am now at clifguy.com. My feed is here. I have recently blogged about our trip to LifeChurch to benchmark their Internet Campus.

Brian Slezak is now at officecurmudgeon.com. His feed is here. He has recently done a series of posts about his mission trip to help Navajo people in New Mexico.

Chuck Russell is now at All But Love. His feed is here.

Leo Johns has many sites and blogs where he occasionally posts content. His main site is leojohns.com. He has lots of stuff there, but no menu to reach it. You'll just have to guess!

Ian Beyer was never an Appian Way blogger, but I would be remiss if I didn't tell you his blog is at ianbeyer.com. His feed is here.

Please reconfigure your feed readers and aggregators accordingly. Thanks for reading The Appian Way. We look forward to continuing the conversation from our new homes.

The Curmudgeon Goes Live

2008-06-11T15:45:00.002-05:00

I'm announcing today, keeping with the next evolution of our team blogging, I've released my own blog @ http://blog.theslezak.com/
You can read my release post.

Thanks all!

What's next for The Appian Way?

2008-06-09T01:35:00.001-05:00

Today is the third anniversary of this blog, The Appian Way. It began as an experiment. Web 2.0 was new to me and my team at Resurrection. We wanted to learn by doing. We wanted to find out if this tool would have ministry value. At first I mainly posted links to other things I read with a couple of sentences of commentary or questions. The other members of our team posted too, but we quickly noticed that I was writing about 80-85% of the posts; the other three contributors posted the remaining 15-20%.

Over time the blog grew and changed. It became less of a link blog and more personal. Brian asserted that the Church (big "C") was failing, from his own struggles with finding a life-giving faith community. Chuck shared his excitement at the launch of Resurrection West. I told you my wife lost her best friend to breast cancer.

I also began to speak about major IT projects and initiatives at Resurrection. For example, In a long series of posts I talked about our need for a better church management system and then I chronicled our project to select and implement one. I shared both successes and failures.

And then there were the RoundTables: first South Bend, then Houston, then Kansas City, and finally Oklahoma City.

Over the last few months it became clear that this group blog needed to give way to individual blogs. Chuck broke away with separate blogs for his trip to Israel and the Methodist General Conference. Ian had his own blog. Leo stopped posting long ago. And I was posting all kinds of stuff that had nothing to do with church IT or our team.

At the same time, Matt was pushing me hard to purchase clifguy.com. It has been available for years and he couldn't believe I hadn't snapped it up. Acceding to his pressure, I made the purchase, at which point the end of The Appian Way was only a matter of time.

The final piece was Ian setting up a WordPress MU server at our new data center. I had the domain. I had the software on a server we control. The anniversary of this blog seemed like the perfect milestone. (Brian and Ian are also in the process of setting up blogs on the new server.)

And so I give you my new blog, Clif Guy all the time at clifguy.com.

Subscribe here.

I'll post in both places for a little bit until I see that most of you have subscribed to the new feed.

I still love the slogan of The Appian Way: "The Web is the new 'Appian Way' - a technology for spreading the gospel throughout the world - and we get to be some of the builders. How cool is that?" At clifguy.com I will continue to talk about technology and the gospel. Please join me there for the next adventure.

Our new web home

2008-05-31T18:09:00.001-05:00

Our Resurrection web sites are currently hosted on a pair of dedicated servers at Vine Hosting in Philadelphia. (Vine Hosting is affiliated with Web Empowered Church, which has received major funding from the Methodist Foundation for Evangelism.) Vine Hosting's data center is colocated with XO Communications in a massive carrier hotel at 401 N. Broad. From there they have direct access to bandwidth from XO, Verizon, Level 3, and Internap. This is a true, world-class data center facility. I don't recall having a single outage or service interruption with Vine since they moved into the carrier hotel.

Through our time with Vine Hosting, Glenn Kelley, its founder and high-energy leader, has become a trusted friend and partner in ministry. No one is more passionate about sharing the gospel through the use of technology than Glenn.

So why are we moving?

Before I settled on Vine in 2005, I did an exhaustive search of hosting facilities in Kansas City. I found a couple of decent ones, but nothing at the level I was seeking. So we eventually hooked up with Vine and the ensuing partnership has been excellent as I mentioned.

Three years later, the situation has changed. Kansas City now has a world-class carrier hotel of its own. The 70 year-old, 26 story Bryant Building at 1102 Grand sits right on AFS's KC metro fiber ring. All of the major telecom companies in KC are connected to the metro fiber ring and all of them except Sprint have a presence in 1102 Grand. Fiber comes into the building via diverse underground vaults. The building gets power from two separate KCP&L substations, has a 2 MW diesel generator in the basement, and provides centralized UPS power for those tenants that want it. To keep everything cool, the building has 1100 tons of cooling. Physical security is provided by card and code access and monitored video surveillance.

Ian and I got a tour in March and knew right away we were seeing something special. Our wheels began turning. We immediately recognized the potential for 1102 Grand to be the hub of a regional network connecting all of our church facilities. We already have staff located in Leawood, Overland Park, and Olathe. Our next campus will be in downtown KC, just two blocks from 1102 Grand. We have land in Cass County for a retreat center. And we're beginning to dream about a campus several miles south of our Leawood location. Over the next few years we will need to come up with an elegant, cost-effective way to connect all of these locations.

Next, we thought about 1102 Grand as a potential disaster recovery site. Business interruption/disaster recovery planning has been on my radar since I joined the staff in 2003. Each year we have made incremental improvements in our DR posture. For example, we now use Iron Mountain for offsite backup tape storage. But I could never find an affordable, nearby DR site. Until now.

The more we thought about it, this opportunity was simply too compelling to pass up even though we are extremely happy with Vine Hosting.

Move in

Yesterday we moved in. Below is Ian setting up his web cam before starting the install. The cage behind him is part of the carrier-neutral Meet Me room operated by the building owner where tenants, including carriers, ISPs and end users like us, connect with each other. Our provider is KCNAP. They have a patch panel in the Meet Me room. From there it's just a short cat 5 cable drop into our cabinet. We have the bottom third of the cabinet in the background (they charge less for the bottom third and we're very price-sensitive!).

Below is the front of our cabinet. Note the broom in Ian's hand to sweep out the dust and debris from the floor before installing any equipment.

Below is the back of our cabinet. A 3U-tall power distribution/fan unit is at the top. Fully redundant power (two city power grids, diesel generator, and UPS) comes into the cabinet in the outlet box at the left.

Below is what it looked like after physically installing the four 1U servers, network switch, KVM switch, and a flat-panel monitor. The rack rails we got from Dell won't work in this cabinet, so we'll have to get the right ones in order to permanently install the Dells. You can see them temporarily sitting on top of an Appro server donated to us by Tradebot Systems. Note the jack hanging down in the upper right corner of the picture. That's the drop from KCNAP. They are multihomed to multiple tier 1 providers via BGP.

We have some high-quality Cat 6 patch cords that are too short for our data center on campus so we brought them along. Too short for our main data center and too long for this cabinet! So Ian did what all good techs do: he broke out the tie wraps!

Although the physical installation went very smoothly (except the Dell rack rails), we had to leave yesterday afternoon before we could establish network connectivity. Ian was having trouble with the pfSense firewall/router he configured.

We have until the end of June to move all of our existing sites and services from Vine into the new data center. We're very excited about the new capability this represents for us.

Technorati Tags: data center

Not keeping up with the price of gas

2008-05-29T10:45:00.001-05:00

I bought gas at the Phillips 66 station in Parkville last night. The van tank holds approximately 23 gallons and it was nearly empty. Price was $3.799, so that's an $85 fill up. Towards the end of the fill up, I noticed the flow slow and then stop exactly on $75. Apparently the pump had authorized my card for $75 and it wouldn't allow me to pump any more. I had to complete that transaction and then initiate a second one to pump the last $10.

At $2/gal, $75 would fill any tank except the largest commercial vehicles. At $3.799, $75 won't fill an ordinary Ford Freestar. You think they should change the pump software to authorize a higher amount?

Plan the celebration too

2008-05-23T21:46:00.002-05:00

The next time you have a large project that takes months to plan and execute, be sure to plan the celebration too. For the Arena implementation project we recently completed, we planned two celebration events.

First, we invited all staff to an ice cream social in the Student Center on the afternoon of go live. We took Shelby down starting at noon. At 2:30 pm we brought Shelby back up (now in a limited role), turned on Arena for all staff, and started the party. At the party we used the Internet cafe computers for staff to log in and try a few simple things in Arena. The timing turned out to be really cool. By having the party exactly as the system was going live, we weren't buried in help desk calls and it was too soon for anyone to have had a negative experience. Bonus!

For the two weeks immediately after go-live, we beefed up our help desk by increasing the hours of our contractors, Philip and Leo. This allowed us to have a "dispatcher" physically at the help desk at all times to take calls, e-mails, and work orders.

When this period was over, we had a second celebration. This time it was just the IT Department (Ian's daughters crashed the party). Six months ago Brian moved to a house just 3 miles from the church. We decided to seize the opportunity to invite ourselves over to sit on his back deck and just relax. We all brought something to put on the barbecue grill. God provided a spectacular spring day and a good time was had by all. Here are a few pictures.

Yours truly

Travis

Leo

Brian

Ian

Philip and Jeremy

Technorati Tags: Arena

Fall RoundTable, yeah baby!

2008-05-20T23:07:00.001-05:00

Attention all church IT people. The Fall 2008 Church IT RoundTable will be hosted by Trace Pupke at Seacoast Church in Mount Pleasant, South Carolina (Charleston area) October 8-10!

Seacoast is among the largest, fastest growing, and most innovative churches in the country. Don't miss the opportunity to see and learn about this awesome church while connecting with your fellow church IT people.

I will be there along with Brian and Jeremy from my team at Resurrection. I strongly urge you to join us in Charleston to meet a bunch of amazing people and find out if this for you. We learn a lot from each other and, more importantly, we draw inspiration from each other. To understand what I mean by that, read my posts after the Fall 2007 RoundTable and the Spring 2008 RoundTable.

Trace has set up a separate blog just for the Fall 2008 CITRT. Check it out here and subscribe to the feed in order to keep up to date with all the details as they come out.

I'm jazzed! Are you?

Technorati Tags: CITRT

IDF rewiring project

2008-05-19T20:08:00.001-05:00

We've been working with our Facilities Dept. since March on a new office suite for our pastors of caring ministries who handle the traditional "pastoral" functions such as sacraments, weddings, funerals, hospital visits, counseling, and worship leadership. Over the last 5 years this group outgrew one office and spilled over into two additional offices in separate parts of the building. We hired a contractor to come in and remodel a set of classrooms into an office suite large enough to consolidate all three groups of staff.

The part of the building where the new suite is located is served by IDF 2E. Like the other IDFs in the older East Bldg., 2E was originally wired by well-meaning volunteers who had no concept of professional cable installation. Everything was a tangled, unlabeled, undocumented mess. There was a wall-mounted half rack for the data patch panel and a traditional telecom mounting board with a 66 block for the voice. There was no way to expand the existing design to accommodate the additional 40+ voice/data pairs for the new suite. Plus, the long-term plan is to convert that entire wing of the building from classrooms into offices. So it made sense to completely rebuild the IDF to make it neat, well-documented, and expandable.

The electrical contractor for the new wing installed all the jacks and pulled the new cable to the IDF. They installed a standard 2-post rack and dropped the cable through the ceiling in a pair of large sleeves.

Unfortunately, I didn't think of taking pictures until halfway through the project. Here is a typical tangle of four different colors of existing voice wires in the ceiling above the IDF. This is actually much better than it started because by the time I took this we had already cleaned up all the data cables.

Here is Ian working on the new rack. All of the old data lines have been moved and he is almost finished with the new data lines. You can see the fiber tray at the top, a rack-mounted power strip, two HP 2650 switches, and four rows of patch panels. All the new cabling is Commscope UltraMedia Cat 6 - blue for data and white for voice. The unterminated bundle of white voice lines is at the right.

We used the beautiful (but expensive) Panduit Cat 6 RJ45 jacks and their companion patch panels. You can see how Ian had carefully labeled each wire with the new numbering scheme we will use throughout the wing served by this IDF.

The Panduit patch panel allows you to connect a jack to each wire separately and then snap the jacks into plastic brackets holding 4 jacks each.

This is the almost finished rack. All of the new voice lines have been terminated. We still need to move all of the old voice lines. Notice the really cool floor plan pinned to the wall showing every jack location and its number.

Technorati Tags: network cabling

Bill Hybels breakfast

2008-05-16T14:26:00.001-05:00

Yesterday was one of those days when I pinch myself to make sure I'm not dreaming that I'm on staff at Church of the Resurrection.

We had 300+ church leaders from 70 area churches in to hear Bill Hybels and to promote the upcoming Leadership Summit. After a delicious hot breakfast, our senior pastor, Adam Hamilton, introduced Bill who gave a great talk on the Reveal study and the implications for every church. Can't wait for Leadership Summit 2008!

My friend, Mark Baltzley, who earns his living taking pictures, brought his camera along and took more than 160 shots. Here are a few of my favorites. (All are copyright 2008, Mark Baltzley Photography and Design.)

Technorati Tags: Willow Creek Leadership Summit

Arena communications plan

2008-05-09T20:09:00.001-05:00

Subtitle: "Another lesson in how difficult it is to communicate effectively"

Regular readers of this blog know that Church of the Resurrection went live on the Arena church management system earlier this week. Travis (the project manager) and I knew that frequent and effective communication would be critical for the success of such a large project impacting all staff. We developed and executed what I think is a model plan not only for selecting and implementing a church management system, but also for keeping the staff informed throughout the process. The below outline shows the many ways, times, and occasions on which we communicated to large numbers of staff regarding the project and the status.

8/23/07 - Project kick-off meeting. Key staff from every department present. All executive management present and supportive.
8/24 - 9/21/07 - Requirements gathering meetings held with each department.
9/6/07 - Project overview presentation at quarterly all staff lunch meeting.
11/15/07 - Selection of Arena announced in Staff Chapel and subsequent all staff e-mail.
1/10/08 - Implementation kick-off meeting. All staff invited. Arena demonstrated. Go live date of 5/6/08 announced.
1/29 - 2/14/08 - Arena functionality and design review meetings held with each department.
2/7/08 - Arena demo presentation at quarterly all staff lunch meeting. Go live date of 5/6/08 announced.
3/13/08 - Arena training plan announced at monthly senior staff meeting. 50 training classes to be held over a 5-week period immediately prior to go-live.
3/21/08 - All staff e-mail stating that all Shelby users need to take Arena training, with a link to review class schedules and sign up.
3/17 - 4/28/08 - Once per week all staff announcement promoting Arena with reminders about training classes and go live date.
4/10/08 - Staff Chapel and all staff e-mail announcement reminding people to sign up for training.
5/1/08 - Staff Chapel and all staff e-mail announcement about the scheduled Shelby outage, Arena go-live, and go-live party on 5/6/08.
5/6/08 - All staff e-mail announcement that Arena is live. First sentence of second paragraph: "Starting now, you will use Shelby only for Financials, Check-in, and Contributions (Check-in and Contributions will be moved to Arena later this year)."

Looks like a solid plan, huh? Help desk ticket received this afternoon:

I am not able to access ShelbyEZ. I don't know if I have forgotten my login name and password or what? I think it use to automatically connect..? Could you please let me know what my information is to access it? Thanks.

In response I sent the following e-mail to this person's supervisor:

Apparently after 9+ months of heavy communication about the Next Generation Church Management System and Arena, [this manager-level staff person] still isn’t aware that we aren’t using Shelby any more.

What lessons do you draw from this?

Technorati Tags: Arena,ChMS

Chris Randolph joins the BBQ tour

2008-05-08T17:26:00.001-05:00

Chris Randolph, lead support tech for Arena joined us yesterday and today for the immediate post go-live support period. In accordance with our Shelby-Resurrection tradition, we had to take him for barbecue. (We also had to memorialize it with the traditional bad cell phone picture taken by a well-meaning waitress with an unsteady hand!) This time it was the original Jack Stack in Martin City. Those of you who came to the Fall 2007 Church IT RoundTable will remember Jack Stack from our Wednesday night banquet. Good stuff, even for Memphis boy Chris.

This Arena thing has been cool. Every time we meet with one of their team, we eat meat. When we think about Arena, we start salivating. Pavlov's dog had nothing on us.

Technorati Tags: Arena,ChMS

Breakfast with Bill Hybels

2008-05-07T16:51:00.001-05:00

Calling all my KC-area church IT homies.

Bill Hybels, senior pastor of Willow Creek Community Church, will be here at Resurrection next Thursday morning, May 15, for a breakfast meeting to talk about leadership and promote the Willow Creek Leadership Summit coming up in August.

All church IT leaders are invited to come to the breakfast as my guest. Please drop me a comment, an e-mail to clif dot guy at cor dot org, or a tweet. I have to turn in a count for the breakfast by Tuesday morning, May 13. Help a brotha out - I am required to have at least one guest or I can't go myself!

Technorati Tags: Willow Creek Leadership Summit

Arena go-live party

2008-05-06T16:21:00.001-05:00

Jason Gant, Director of Student Ministries (youth pastor) picks his toppings

Brent Messick, Managing Executive Director of Operations (my boss)

Debi Nixon, Executive Director of Adult Discipleship is EXCITED!

Specially trained "Arena Facilitators" each received a fuzzy monkey to make it easy for their fellow staff to identify them

Andrew Conard, Congregational Care Pastor (aka "Nerd Pastor") gives Arena the thumbs up

Adam Hamilton, Senior Pastor, gets his first chance to use Arena

Technorati Tags: Arena,ChMS

Arena go-live

2008-05-06T12:04:00.001-05:00

Today is the day we go live on Arena. We've been planning and preparing for this day since August 2007, which is 9+ months. To track our progress, check out:

Clif: www.twitter.com/clifguy
Ian: www.twitter.com/cyberentomology
War room live: http://www.ustream.tv/channel/clif-guy-cam

Time line starting now:

Shelby V5 goes down
Backup V5 database
Change permissions in V5 to limit what users can do in V5 so they will be required to use Arena
Install 2-way triggers
Start Arena agents
Test
Shelby V5 comes back up
Arena is live
Ice cream party to celebrate Arena go-live

Technorati Tags: Arena,ChMS

Next stop on the Shelby-Resurrection BBQ Tour

2008-05-05T16:37:00.002-05:00

Ben Lane from Shelby is here for our Arena go-live tomorrow. Continuing our long-standing tradition, we had KC barbecue for lunch. Despite the crude and blurry cell phone pictures, I think you can get an idea of the experience. Yum!

L to R: Linda Ronsick (data quality), Ian Beyer (cyberentomology), Matt Bradshaw (bit shepherd), Ben Lane (disc golf connoisseur and Arena trainer), Leo Johns (consultant, pro keyboard player, amateur disc golfer), Travis Morgan (MBA and disc golfer), Doug Blackwood (uber volunteer), Jeremy Grabrian (a man confident enough to wear shorts), Brian Slezak (curmudgeon)

Ian and Matt are carrying boxes of leftovers. Yes, we had so much food that even with 10 people eating we couldn't finish it. God provided abundantly for us.

Go live is tomorrow. I hope we're ready!

Technorati Tags: Arena,ChMS

How to bring your powerful database server to its knees

2008-05-02T12:52:00.001-05:00

Don't let the mild-mannered appearance of this group fool you.

We're in our last day of Arena training before go live on Tuesday next week. Chuck is teaching the Report Builder in SQL Reporting Services. With these eager students, his first exercise was to simply select first and last name and then run the report. This resulted in 9 simultaneous attempts to report all 60,000 people in our database. It soon became clear we had a problem.

We're running SQL Server in an ESX guest VM. This has been our configuration for 9 months with no issues. The CPU on the host Dell 2950 server (total of 8 cores) spiked for a minute or two but then settled back down. Yet the server was still whimpering in the corner. No one could do anything. We had a class full of students trying to use a server that was dead for all practical purposes.

Turns out SQL Server itself was okay. IIS (running on the same ESX guest VM with SQL Server) was gulping enormous slurps of RAM to generate the multiple thousand-page reports. Windows responded by trying to expand its page file. Under ESX, this is not a good scenario. We had an unscheduled outage on our main database server in the middle of the work day. Clif not happy. The good thing is, you add RAM to a guest VM with just a few mouse clicks and a reboot, which Ian did. After a 20 minute delay, the class resumed. From then on, Chuck made sure to run the examples himself with everyone else just watching.

With the number of guest VMs we have running on that host, Ian thinks we need to add to the 16 GB of physical RAM we already have on that box. This is why IT is so FUN!

DeepShift, Everything Must Change Tour - Day 2

2008-04-27T19:05:00.002-05:00

In my previous post, I described my experience and opinions on day one of the Everything Must Change Tour that took place on Friday evening. Saturday morning, the conference began again at 7:29 am. I have to say that is really early to get postmoderns out of bed, but plenty were awake enough for good conversation. The morning started with break-outs, and we attended McLaren's session on church plants. It was essentially just a gathering of people involved in church plants, young churches, or those trying to do something new in established churches. We sat in a circle of chairs and people commiserated about the difficulty of those tasks.

My wife and I connected with trying to do something new in established churches. Most people talked about how the old guard would work against them, and in some extreme cases just kick them out of the church. McLaren led the discussion and would interject his experience where appropriate. The conversation followed natural peaks and ebbs, and everyone seemed comfortable to participate. My wife and I agreed later that this was by far the best part of the event.

We talked about what "church" meant and how that differed from traditional ideas and the difficulty in reaching the unchurched. Brian used a phrase that stuck in my mind, "Leadership By Anxiety," to describe using the natural energy around an idea to push through making a change. It reminded me of Adam Hamiton's "Decision by Nausea" concept, which he uses to discern which of many paths he should to choose. The path that God leads you down is often the most challenging, and frightening.

Over all it was good, but here is my constructive criticism: The buzzword "narrative" was used quite a bit through the discussion. I don't understand why we as people take simple things and make them complex in order to feel more enlightened. Other than that minor criticism, the only unsettling thing about the discussion was a strange quietness about what to call what they were doing. People used phrases like, "where we are", "what we are doing here," "how we were led to this." To be honest, it made me feel like I didn't really know what was going on, like I was sitting in some sort of cult-ish or secretive meeting. Kind of weird.

Other than the morning discussion we had a morning of worship. The songs were chanted, and very meditative. So much so we almost fell asleep. After we finished, we had to leave early to attend our nieces birthday party.

Overall, still just ok. Swag was good. :-/

DeepShift, Everything Must Change Tour - Day 1

2008-04-25T23:20:00.003-05:00

This evening I attended the Everything Must Change Tour, presented (I supposed), by Deep Shift. I live-tweeted the event, if that's what you call it, which was my first attempt at using Twitter. It was very one-directional, as I did it through my cell phone and didn't have device updates on. New guy - my bad.

I registered for the event late last year after hearing of it somehow. My wife and I had heard Brian McLaren speak at one other occasion, knew he was associated with this, so we signed up. It wasn't cheap - $75+ per person at early bird price, but if you got in on the early bird deal you got a copy of Everything Must Change, one of McLaren's books. Oh, and it ended up you got a compact fluorescent after showing up. "Yeah. Check out my totally enviro-friendly bling, yo. 1200 lumens for only 20 watts dawg." So you got swag for $75. Not all bad.

I had a creepy feeling about the event from the time I registered though because of some of the language surround the event. To be perfectly blunt, it felt very bleeding-heart, tree-hugger, all we need is love ... ish. Oh well, at the very least it'll be a good experience for my wife and I. This feeling was intensified after getting to our seats and thumbing through the handouts. Let me extend this feeling to you by way of quoting some of the material:

".... Therefore we will practice 'listening one another into free speech,' 'building bridges of empathy,' 'creating safe spaces,' and other strategies of revolutionary communication."

" When I see or hear ___ I feel ___, because my need for ___ is/is not being met. Would you be willing to ___."

"When you said ___, I felt ___. Can you understand why I would feel that way?"

A short commentary: Umm - Wow. 1. Revolutionary? Really? Seriously? 2. I'm building my bridge of empathy to solitude, and I don't care where your bridge goes. 3. If I "felt" that much all the time, I'd be in therapy, or I'd be a woman. (I do not mean any offense to women, I am just a guy that's all. But if that made you feel ___ because it was ___, I would suggest ___. No ___ intended.)

During one of the discussion times, I met Al. Al asked me what I thought of this so far. (Thus far we had experienced good music, a Sierra Club video, and some speaking by Linnea Nilsen Capshaw.) I admitted I had little expectation, not doing any research about it beforehand, but felt "like it was a bunch of liberal stuff." Al gave me a concerned look, a nod, and agreed.

Brian McLaren spoke. He's a good presenter, and a good speaker, so you can't go too wrong. One thing I like about Brian is that he loves circles. Two dimensional circles. The man can explain anything he needs using circles, usually three or four ... and maybe a box. I didn't agree with everything he said, but that was ok because I wasn't supposed to. He told us that before he started, and I happened to agree with him about that, and some other things too.

We broke into another discussion time to talk about our thoughts and feelings, and Al turns around to me and states, "Yeah, I'm afraid you were right. He is off base, and just wrong about ...." Unfortunately, Al and I were on the same page. This wasn't the McLaren we knew, and to my initial concern; McLaren was veering hard left toward the target audience.

Overall, the evening was OK. The music was great, McLaren wasn't at his best, and the evening was much like a sub-standard worship service. If I didn't get books and swag, I would have been very disappointed. My wife tolerated it. That is to say she didn't go postal on me, but sternly said I owe her something in return that is better than ice cream. She and I agreed that the time progressed much like a mainline worship service. Singing, greeting, prayer, shake some hands, singing, listen to preaching, prayer, singing, benediction. There was more discussion thrown in than usual. Oh - we did miss communion, but it wasn't the first weekend of the month. ;)

It may sound like I'm vehemently against the left, but I am really not. I have some liberal views that get me chastised, and I'm fine with that. I just take the extreme left less seriously. You kind of have to, because when they state in the materials that Brian will intentionally avoiding using male pronouns when referring to God because the bible reflects God in feminine images as well as masculine; you have to call that out. At what point were all those "He" references misleading? Did I miss it when Jesus pulled out, "whoops, I meant Mother, not Father. My bad."

Regardless, we're attending tomorrow's morning session as well, and Pania (that's my wife) is even going with me when I expected her to bail. If tomorrow is blog-worthy, I'll post about my experience.

Blogging General Conference

2008-04-24T09:44:00.002-05:00

Hey folks, I'm blogging General Conference at:
http://allbutlove.wordpress.com

I'm giving up on iTunes and QuickTime

2008-04-21T00:26:00.001-05:00

The continual new versions and annoying nags to upgrade took their toll. With every upgrade I got unwanted desktop, quick launch, and tray icons that I had to delete. The way Firefox interacted with iTunes to play MP3 files was way lame too. Then Apple's attempt to push out Safari via the iTunes updater was the last straw. My only use for iTunes was as a podcatcher. It's a very good podcatcher, no argument, but I just couldn't stand the constant fooling with it. So now I'm using Juice to download podcasts and the way cool K-Lite Codec Pack with Windows Media Player.

All of you with iPods and iPhones, I know this doesn't apply to you. But what about everyone else? Are you as tired of iTunes/QuickTime as I am?

Technorati Tags: iTunes,QuickTime,Apple

MinistryTECH/RoundTable wrap-up and reflections

2008-04-20T19:11:00.001-05:00

Hard to believe it's been two weeks since the end of MinistryTECH and the CITRT. I still haven't written the wrap-up post I intended to write the day I got back. Real life stuff has intruded on my blogging time!

The Church IT RoundTable is just, simply, the coolest thing. I always come away charged up for another season of ministry. Why was this week so special? Here are four main reasons:

1. The pace and variety of the week was terrific. I enjoyed the drive down on Tuesday afternoon with Ian and Matt. Our timing was perfect when we picked up Jason and Jeremie from the airport, followed by warm conversation over steak. Staying at the unofficial conference hotel enhanced the experience as the geekfest continued in various rooms each evening. We clobbered the poor WiFi, resorted to EVDO, and clobbered that too! We had the joy of greeting old friends throughout the day on Wednesday as people arrived in OKC and joined the church tours (which I loved - thanks Terrell!). I liked the combination of general sessions and breakouts Terrell planned for MinistryTECH on Thursday and Friday and met some new people there. The RoundTable itself was awesome, as always (see notes below). For dinner on Saturday we enjoyed Buffalo Wild Wings and an important strategic discussion about leading the CITRT, followed by the KU win in the NCAA tournament (sorry Justin). Sunday morning it was worship at LifeChurch Edmond and then a safe drive home. The totality of the experience from Tuesday through Sunday was [insert superlative here].

2. That much geek power concentrated in one place is huge fun. Ian's parrot-cam (mentioned here and here) is a great example. I'm old now and more of a manager-geek and leader-geek and less of a geek-geek. So being around all of the creative energy of the real geeks is reinvigorating for me. Let's make sure that we continue to push the boundaries of technology when we get together. It's a vital part of our culture.

3. My fellow church IT people inspire me. I said it at the end of my talk and I'll say it again here. Ask anyone on my team about the mood I was in when I got back to the office. I was glowing like Moses.

4. God has been working on me for a couple of months, pushing me to take my leadership up to the next level. The week of MinistryTECH and CITRT was a time when that next step came into clearer view. Many factors came together to make that possible, including some one-on-one time with a close peer. Thanks. You know who you are.

Day 5-6 notes:

1. Many, many thanks to Michael Foster for hosting the RoundTable at Crossings. Everything was excellent, including a spectacular fried chicken lunch and conversation with Sunny and others about the challenges of Internet Campus in the Methodist system.

2. At Crossings I got 4424 kb/s down, 484 kb/s up, which is good, but when 50+ IT people descend with their laptops on your network, things get hairy in a hurry. It gets even crazier when you throw video into the mix. I am volunteering to lead a network design team for the Fall 2008 RoundTable at Seacoast Church. It will be made up of network people from each of the churches that have hosted the RoundTable so far. I figure we owe Trace our experience because none of us has the ability to simulate the load and test it in advance.

3. Enjoyed the Sunday 8:30 AM service at LifeChurch Edmond before driving back to KC. Particularly awesome was the band's offering of Charlie Hall's The Solid Rock. That will get you pumped up in the morning!

4. As promised, I finally uploaded the PowerPoint slides of my talk, "Users or Customers?"

5. Speaking of promises, did Tony Morgan ever make good on his hullabaloo promise?

Technorati Tags: CITRT,MinistryTECH

Free upgrade to Turbo

2008-04-18T14:55:00.001-05:00

Those of you following me on Twitter know that my wife got a call at home Wednesday afternoon from Time Warner with the news that we were getting a free upgrade to Road Runner Turbo service, which is nominally 15 Mb/s down and 1 Mb/s up. Most of you are thinking, "sweet!" Very shortly after they called Laura, she called me to say that our Internet service was down. My first thought was, "idiots!"

You see, we still had our very first cable modem. I can't remember exactly when we got it, but 10 years ago is a pretty good bet. It's the classic 3Com "Shark Fin" modem.

This surprise call on a Wednesday afternoon, while not entirely unwelcome, necessitated an unplanned trip to the Time Warner store to get a new modem. They issued me this shiny Scientific Atlanta (division of Cisco) model.

Upon installation, I was disappointed in the speed: 5,262 down/975 up - doubling the upload speed but only 20% faster down than I got on my Shark Fin pre-Turbo. I tried a number of things that didn't have any effect. Then it occurred to me: my equally classic, also 10 year-old, Linksys BEFSR41 router (also a division of Cisco - heh) might not be able to go any faster than 5 Mb/s.

Sure enough, when I plugged my laptop directly into the new cable modem, I got a smokin' 14,299 down/979 up.

So what to do? I have a very recent model D-Link DIR-655 Wi-Fi router that I've been running in access point mode because my cable modem and home network patch panel is in the basement and I wanted my access point in my office on the 2nd floor.

Last night I decided, despite it not being optimal to have my Wi-Fi AP in the basement, to replace the classic Linksys with the new D-Link. Sure enough, it handled Turbo speed, no problem: 14,423 down/982 up - hard wired, that is. When wireless, even with the laptop right next to the router, I got 5-10 Mb/s down.

Here are the takeaways:

Though I'm grateful for the faster speed at no extra charge, an interruption like this can take you off down a rabbit trail.
Unintended consequences: Time Warner changes their service bundling and decides to upgrade me at no extra charge (good), taking my service down (bad), resulting in a trip to the cable store (bad), installation and troubleshooting (bad), network reconfiguration (bad), and ultimately a 3-4 times faster download speed and 2 times faster upload speed for all users at my house (good).
I've upgraded my computers 3-4 times in the last 10 years, while my basic Internet connection infrastructure stayed the same. No more. With the advent of these very high speed circuits to homes and businesses, your router and/or wireless connection can now be the limiting factor in download speed.
At least for download, WAN speed is now approaching LAN speed in many common applications. We've already seen the leading edge of the disruption this will cause.

Apple II nostalgia

2008-04-17T00:44:00.001-05:00

Justin Moore writes:

Clif,

Wasn't it you in one night at a restaurant in Kansas City last fall telling those at your table about how you used to create graphics in assembly on old Apple's? For some reason I'm thinking it was, so I immediately thought of you when I saw this video.

Even if that wasn't you, I think you'll appreciate the geekiness of the clip...

Yes, Justin, that was me. Here's the story.

The Apple II did nothing out of the box except flash that lonely cursor. It was 1979 and we had one computer in a high school of 1,800 students (Abraham Lincoln High School in Des Moines, IA). There wasn't a single teacher who knew anything about it so it represented a great challenge and opportunity for discovery. There was one other guy, Mark, geeky enough to stay after school every day with me and play with the computer until the teacher kicked us out of the room so he could lock up and go home.

Our first idea for something to do with the graphics mode was to draw our school logo. That took some doing because the pixels were not mapped into memory sequentially from top left to bottom right. Steve Wozniak had simplified his graphics chip design by laying out the memory to follow the interlace scheme of NTSC video. Steve was famous for building ingenious, brilliantly simple hardware that made the software more complex. So, with a lot of trial and error and many re-reads of the Apple manual, we eventually were able to turn on the right pixels to form the ALHS logo.

Our next idea was to print the logo. We had a 4-pin dot-matrix printer. Consulting the printer manual, we wrote a BASIC program that would print whatever was on the screen, with each pixel on the screen becoming a dot on the page. Again this was tricky because we had to convert from the video interlace pattern in memory to four vertical dots for each pass of the print head. We eventually got it work but it took more than 30 minutes to print one screen because it would print a pass and then think a long time before printing the next pass, doing just four rows of pixels on each pass.

To speed it up, Mark and I taught ourselves 6502 machine language. With nothing more than a 6502 programming card, paper, pencil, and a well-used eraser, we wrote a program that would print the screen and then we hand assembled it into a series of 8-bit codes like the program you saw loading at the start of the video. (We didn't even have an assembler, for crying out loud!) That program would print the screen as fast as the printer would go, finishing a page in under a minute.

Looking back, it's hard to believe how creative, resourceful, and self-motivated we were to do things like that as high school students with no one there to teach us. Good times. Thanks for taking me back, Justin.

Arena end user training

2008-04-14T16:25:00.001-05:00

We began end user training on Arena today as we hurtle towards go live on May 6. Since we need to train 130 people and our class size is limited to 8 students, we'll be training all day Monday through Friday for the next thee weeks. Jeremy and Leo are sharing the teaching load. Here are some pictures from the 2nd class of the day today. That's Leo in the front, just as he's wrapping up the class.

Leo and Jeremy are trying to build excitement about Arena and have some fun with the end of Shelby V5. To that end, Leo made the following (awful) trophy that's sitting on a table in the training room. Note the Arena gorilla choking the Shelby chicken and the slogan at the bottom: "Chicken chokin' fast!!"

Not sure what that means. Maybe Leo can explain it?

Adam Hamilton: Hero

2008-04-10T13:45:00.002-05:00

I knew Adam was special but it wasn't until I read one of the chapters in his new book that I realized he had been truly heroic. During the 2000 General Conference debate over homosexuality a woman Jumped up onto the balcony of the arena and started crying and shouting at the delegates. A friend of mine was down in the Texas Delegation as one of the people who were trying to figure out how to catch her if she Jumped, Up Top people kind of looked at each other and finally some people took action and went and pulled her down before she jumped or fell. I was probably two sections over from where she stood and all of us were just stunned. Turns out Adam was one of the few people who actually took action rather than just looking around dumbfounded. Here is a picture of Adam in action. Its weird to know I was in the same place as Adam long before I even knew of the Church of the Resurrection or Adam's ministry.

Chuck

CITRT: Internet Campus - Terry Storch

2008-04-05T11:44:00.001-05:00

Terry Storch, LifeChurch.tv

Volunteers: Vols are involved in every aspect of Internet Campus: technology, greeting, communications, counseling, missions, etc.

Giving: They have a way to permit people to donate without having an online account. Done via PayPal. They're working on better UIs for online giving. Difficult to design a system that works equally well for physical campuses and online campuses. Made a change that increased physical campus giving 20% but decreased online giving 60%. That was a bad day for Terry.

Sacraments: They taught on sacraments in a sermon series and lead IC congregants through the process of communion.

CITRT: Laptops, laptops, everwhere!

2008-04-05T09:59:00.001-05:00

The Church IT RoundTable Spring 2008 is underway. One of the really cool things at every RoundTable is the sea of laptops. Thanks to Michael Foster of Crossings for hosting and providing the power and bandwidth. We know we KILL the WAN link when we get together.

MinistryTECH/RoundTable Day 4

2008-04-05T03:17:00.001-05:00

Quick notes:

1. Tony's session this afternoon raised the bar. He was funny and engaging. My mind was too cluttered to live blog it, so I just listened. Good talk. IT does present a lot of paradoxes. Tony thinks success involves holding a lot of things together that seem to be opposite or contradictory. Sounds a bit like Seeing Gray.

2. Paul Braoudakis: God chose a craftsman. Ex. 31:1-5. We're the craftspeople of our era.

"The people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do." - Apple "Think Different" ad

MinistryTECH: Users or Customers?

2008-04-05T02:33:00.001-05:00

I presented a break out session at MinistryTECH this afternoon. Jim blogged it. So did Jason.

Ian started playing around with his webcam and realized he could live stream my talk through Ustream. Cool! Brian back at the office got in on the act.

Why do we need advance planning and real-world testing when we can just make this crap up on the fly? Actually, if you watch the video below you'll notice a problem with this attitude. The mic in the webcam went wonky, resulting in continuous, loud white noise for a bit. Ian realized it was happening and switched to the laptop's internal mic, but there's a definite disruption in the viewer experience around the 7:30 mark. You'll need to skip ahead to where the counter reads approximately 22:00.

If you haven't seen any of the Nick Burns sketches, here's one on CNet.

I'll put up the PPT slides when I get home.

Let The Debating Begin (And the Communion Cups Fly)

2008-04-04T16:16:00.002-05:00

The Legislation Tracking System just went live on the www.umc.org website. This online database tracks all of the legislation submitted to the General Conference of the United Methodist Church through committee, to final resolution on the floor. Find the ones you love or hate and watch the streaming video during the second week as the fists fly (Not literally - though I did witness a communion cup flung across the room and shattered in protest last time around).

You Can Not Stop Nerds

2008-04-04T14:52:00.006-05:00

Ok, I had to do it. Our fearless leader Clif is at MinistryTECH in Oklahoma City as I type this blog post. My cohort in this was Ian, who is there with Clif. Ian was able to set up a webcam in short order and stream Clif to U-Stream:
http://www.ustream.tv/channel/ministrytech

To the upper right is a shot from my camera phone. This is a projected image on a wall in our training room back in Leawood, KS. Clif is larger than life!

So to sum up - yeah I posted on Clif's presentation in Oklahoma City before he was even finished, watching from Leawood, KS. :)

Given even simple technology - you can't stop nerds from getting creative and participating, even if we don't get to be there in person.

MinistryTECH: Be an Idiot

2008-04-04T10:28:00.001-05:00

Presenter: Terry Storch, Digerati Pastor at LifeChurch.tv here in Oklahoma City.

Are we idiots for making the transition from secular work to low-paying church work? He was labeled an idiot in 1991 when he became the preschool pastor at Fellowship Church (at that time Fellowship of Las Colinas). Jesus was (and is) looking for idiots.

Jeff Hook is an idiot.

Idiots are comfortably uncomfortable. Processes sometimes drive toward designs intended to make us more comfortable, stable, etc. rather than more effective. Make my life easier. Don't worship the process.

Now Discover Your Strengths. Your strength is your weakness.

Life balance - seems like a myth. Has failed over and over. Gives Jesus, family, work all 100%. What are your boundaries?

Accountability. Lived the lie of accountability. The last 10% of our stuff is the hardest to share because it's the stuff that will seriously jack you up.

Idiots are changing the world.

We are at a unique time in history. Technology is influencing our culture. Over 1 billion people connected to the net out of 6 billion in the world.

What faith risk are you avoiding because you're scared?

MinistryTECH/RoundTable Day 3

2008-04-03T20:49:00.001-05:00

Quick notes:

1. This is the first time I've ever connected to an access point at N speed. I've had this laptop for two months and supposedly have N access points at home and the office, but I've never actually connected at N speed. Too many other things on my plate to try to troubleshoot why. Intel PROSet reports a data rate of 144 Mb/s. I just now got 4868 kb/s down and 3629 kb/s up. Cool! I'm stylin'.

2. Matt says I wasn't merely to use the word "hullabaloo" but I was to find some way to use it creatively. Just linking to the dictionary.com entry hardly qualifies. The problem with this assignment is that it assumes I am gifted in such creativity. Turns out I'm not. ;-) I can only appeal to Tony's theological understanding of mercy and grace.

3. Met Barry Thomason, VP of Business Development for Daxko at lunch. He's exploring the ChMS marketplace. I hope I didn't scare him too much!

4. Jeff Hook: "Brand" is your promise to deliver. IT should avoid brand confusion - don't promise one experience and deliver another. He said lots of other interesting stuff too. Check out his full presentation here.

MinistryTECH: The I in IT

2008-04-03T15:31:00.001-05:00

Presenter: Jon Edmiston, Director of IT and Communications at Christ's Church of the Valley.

More time on solutions, less on infrastructure.
Unlike corporate IT, we can focus just on the customer (congregants). Few mission-critical applications.
Membership system is the core application.
Member data must drive the website.
Single platforms trump disparate but integrated solutions (best in class)
Your membership system is only as good as the data quality
Skills you should have: reporting, scripting, statistics, graphical design
Key technologies: geographical information systems, data analysis tools, data visualization tools, unified messaging, social networking, mobile technologies
Strategic prioritization: plan ahead, start with solutions not infrastructure
Don't seek staff approval - it limits our impact to the ministry. Staff service is critical but not at the expense of impacting the congregation through technology.
Infrastructure should be simple. Don't overkill the reliability. Stay away from the bleeding edge of infrastructure unless it directly provides the solution (e.g. Asterisk). New technologies that save $ rarely do.
Be aware of opportunity cost.
Let big ideas stew. (This is Jon's variation of my "discernment stew" idea. Can't believe I've never posted on that.)
MapPoint is incredible.

Books mentioned:

My counterpoint:

Integrating multiple, best-in-class systems vs. a single, integrated solution is a classic IT tradeoff that's been around for at least 15 years. I didn't see any special insight in Jon's view on that.
Of course, our default answer is "yes". Enough said.

MinistryTECH: 10 reasons techies scare me

2008-04-03T10:02:00.001-05:00

EVDO is 704 kb/s down, 197 kb/s up. Ian says the WiFi is 8 Mb/s down and 4 Mb/s up. That actually might be enough for all these laptop-bearing nerds! CORRECTION: Ian says it's starting to suck wind. We know about that from the Fall 2007 RoundTable!

Presenter is Tony Morgan, Chief Strategic Officer from New Spring Church, and formerly Jason Powell's boss at Granger. The secret code word for bloggers and tweeters is "hullabaloo." Tony said to check dictionary.com for the spelling. Heh.

Assume everyone thinks like a techie.
Don't bend on standardization.
Hire the best geek rather than the best leader.
Always want more staff.
Always want more stuff.
Don't document processes.
Implement technology without considering strategy.
Don't communicate their solutions with the team.
Focus on implementation without creating systems for training and support.
Let technology drive the ministry rather than vice versa.

Tony says we need to get three things right: technology, people, and strategy. True, but he got it in the wrong order. If you have the right people, they will determine the right strategy, buy the right technology, communicate with all the stakeholders, and get everything else right in the above list.

Aside: Jason Lee said we should give an award to the first person here who jumps up to go handle a tech support emergency. Great idea. I seriously wonder how many of the people here have already this morning faced a technical issue they need to resolve back home. Even sitting here listening to Tony, some of us are getting e-mails, pages, or other alarms. Ian just now got alarmed on a wireless access point going down. Of course it's the one serving our senior pastor's office.

MinistryTECH/RoundTable Day 2

2008-04-03T00:16:00.001-05:00

Quick notes:

1. Jason Lee posted a bunch of pictures from the church tours today. I'm featured prominently in a few. ;-)

2. Jim Walton put up a Picasa set. This image features Ian gesturing expansively.

3. Driving from Henderson Hills to lunch we were in the van for around 15 minutes. During that time Jeremie, Matt, and Ian were on the WiFi from their laptops. Jason Lee was on his cell phone. They were answering tech support issues, getting e-mail, etc. These guys are so nerdy, they make me seem almost normal by comparison. The RoundTable is a serious geek-in. Also, it begs the question: Are we too connected?

4. Great to reconnect with Terry Storch today.

5. Equally great to meet Brad Coats, IT Director of LifeChurch.tv, Michael Foster, IT Director of Crossings Community Church, and Heather DeShazo of Church of the Servant.

6. There is something very special about the CITRT. I've been involved in secular trade organizations where people come together to network with their peers. Of course the CITRT is similar to countless trade associations, yet it is much more. We aren't ignorant of the differences in our histories, traditions, styles, and even theologies, yet we choose to overlook those differences to see the essential unity of the Body of Christ and the commonality of our mission. I believe God is bringing us together. We truly are on the same team. This group lives that out in a way that is unique in my experience.

7. Ian and Matt agreed with me that the trip down here would have been worth it just for what we experienced today. It's awesome that we have four more days ahead. Bring it on!

MinistryTECH/RoundTable Day 1

2008-04-02T00:20:00.001-05:00

Quick notes:

1. Good drive down. Great weather in Oklahoma - clear skies, temps in the low 60s.

2. Ian's cell phone as a mobile WiFi hotspot was a fun, nerdy experiment. Turns out, when doing EVDO and WiFi, the phone consumes more power than can be supplied by Ian's car charger. After two hours of more-or-less continuous connectivity, the battery died despite being plugged in to the charger the entire time.

3. The WiFi in the Crown Plaza is bad. B-mode only. I got 184 kb/s down and 122 kb/s up. Jason Lee had the same experience. EVDO is 1229 down and 274 up. How sick is it when EVDO is WAY faster than WiFi?

4. Although we are 15 miles from Henderson Hills in Edmond, this hotel will be a mini conference-central. A bunch of us are staying here.

5. I'm rebuilding my Vista laptop. Long story, but when the hard drive failed (yes, it was less than a month old when it started acting up) and there was no good way to recover and move to the new hard drive, I had no choice but to rebuild. It's an XP laptop now. Heavy sigh.

6. I still need to put the finishing touches on my presentation.

Losers in my future

2008-04-01T08:34:00.001-05:00

I'm expecting to see a bunch of losers in Oklahoma City this week at MinistryTECH and the RoundTable! (Click the link if you don't get the reference.) Ian, Matt, and I are getting in the van and making the short, five-hour drive this afternoon. We're picking up Jason Lee's crew at the OKC airport, whereupon some as yet unplanned mischief will ensue. It should hardly be surprising that Ian has rigged a rolling hotspot for the drive. If anyone needs us, you can catch him on the CITRT IRC channel or call my cell, 913-642-1875. I'm SOOOO jazzed!

Check In system integration

2008-03-25T22:34:00.001-05:00

Ian posted today about the work he has done over the last few months to select and integrate hardware and software for Arena check in, preserving a lot of the hardware we bought for Shelby V5 check in. It's partly shiny and cool, and partly ghetto-tastic!

If you would like to get an overview of the technology that needs to come together in a working check in system, or if you are interested in real-world applications of thin clients, Ian's post is a good read.

Jealous

2008-03-17T21:54:00.001-05:00

I'm pretty sure jealousy is a sin. God, forgive me, but I want to have what Andrew has.

Testing candidates before hiring

2008-03-10T12:01:00.001-05:00

In our conversation last week, Jim Edwards mentioned that KCBT had recently changed their hiring process for all staff going forward. They now require candidates to take a test to verify their computer skills prior to the final hiring decision. Computer proficiency isn't the only consideration and IT doesn't have a veto in the hiring process. The test results are just one factor that the hiring manager weighs in the decision.

I thought this was a very interesting idea to add to the ongoing conversation, frequently revisited by Tony Dye, regarding computer skills and training. I suggested to Jim the he should blog it. Read his post here. He's already drawn a comment from someone with a different perspective.

What do you think? Is this an idea other church IT departments should consider?

Adam Hamilton is blogging

2008-03-08T22:37:00.001-06:00

Resurrection's senior pastor, Adam Hamilton, started blogging in December in connection with his sermon series on faith and politics. I'm excited to say that although the series ended several weeks ago, Adam has continued blogging.

He brings a unique theological perspective to his ministry and now to his blogging. He is as concerned about the kids at one of the poorest performing schools in Missouri as he is about leading people to Christ. (Which is saying a lot since he has led thousands of people into a deeper relationship with Christ.) He is as passionate about sharing the gospel as he is about building a new Methodist church in Honduras. I think you'll find what he has to say to be both challenging and inspiring. He's an amazing man that I'm proud to work for and with. You can add him to your feed reader here.

Chuck in Israel

2008-03-08T21:36:00.001-06:00

Chuck Russell, our fellow Resurrection staff member and Appian Way blogger, is in the Holy Land right now with a tour group lead by a couple of our pastors. He created a separate blog for his daily travel posts. Check it out here.

Microsoft is in trouble on the client

2008-03-07T18:08:00.001-06:00

I'm coming to the conclusion that Vista sucks. I've played with it on a second computer since the release candidate days, but haven't relied it as my main machine, so I withheld judgment. Until now.

Some of you IT professionals are like me. Your laptop is so integral to your work and life that you have it with you nearly all the time. You use it for normal office stuff, specialized network management functions, line-of-business software like Shelby or ACS, web browsing, instant messaging, VOIP, hobbies, worship graphics, editing audio, photos, and video, syncing with your PDA ... the list is nearly endless.

Five weeks ago today I took delivery of a shiny, new Dell D830 laptop with Vista Ultimate pre-installed. I applied SP1 as soon as Ian could get his hands on it. When I get a new laptop, I don't just grab it, log on, and start using it. I move on to it. It's practically like moving to a new home. In the past five weeks I've installed and configured more than 30 software packages and moved many gigabytes of data. I've explored and decided on dozens of operating system preferences. I've installed drivers for a digital still camera, digital video camera, outboard sound device, Windows Mobile cell phone, and various printers. Let me tell you, I've put this thing through its paces.

I'm shocked at some of the decisions made by the product managers. Example: why would they downgrade the defrag and backup programs? Seriously, how could I have Vista Ultimate and have less capability than I had in XP Pro in any area?

How could they break compatibility with so many routine applications from PDF generators to downloaders to photo editing software, forcing you to run in compatibility mode, set up an XP virtual machine, or upgrade the software? (I cut them slack on low-level things like anti-virus, but not routine applications.)

How could they think it makes sense that can't in certain circumstances delete a file I created on my desktop without running the delete operation in an escalated privilege mode? (To an unsophisticated user it appears that the OS won't let you delete a file you just created.) Or, for another example, how can it be possible that I could create a file on the laptop under Vista, move it across the network to a Vista desktop, and yet not be able to pull it back to the laptop due to some kind of obtuse security issue? It's me on the laptop, it's me on the desktop, but I can't routinely move files back and forth? Come on, Microsoft. That's ridiculous.

I'm also shocked after five years between desktop OS releases, and now more than a year later with the debut of SP1, that I'm having annoying instability with certain features. By now you'd think they would have dock/undock, sleep/wake, and hibernate/unhibernate working correctly. You'd think that they would have Sync Center/Active Sync perfected. You'd think that they would have switching between wired and wireless networking down pat. You would be wrong.

Having been through all of this, I can officially say Vista sucks. Am I going back to XP? No. That would be WAY to painful at this point. So I go forward. Since I'm not going back to XP, why the rant? Unlike most end users, I look at software not only for myself but on behalf of the user community I serve. The bottom line is I have decided we will be a late adopter of Vista for our end users.

There are things I definitely like. Some things are slicker and/or more stable. Since this is a rant, I'll save those compliments for later.

And then there's Office 2007. Why did they think it made sense to have a document close button in Excel but not in Word? Why did they think it made sense for me to have to customize my button bar just to get the quick print button back? And how could Outlook 2007's UI not match the rest of the suite? Amazingly bad stuff. I mean, did Bill G ever personally use Office 2007 on Vista? I can't imagine he would let this happen if he did. But I digress.

What happened to Microsoft? Where did they lose their way???

Discussing this with Ian, he reminded me that at the same time they have lost their way on the client side, Microsoft has been doing some incredibly good stuff on the server side. I have to say he's right on that.

And then, before I could even press Publish on this post, word comes from Mix that Microsoft is on the verge of some major advances in the web area. Maybe Microsoft as a whole hasn't lost its way. Even so, why can't Vista and Office 2007 just make sense and work? Is that too much to ask in the year 2008 with brand new, high-end hardware?

End rant. Feel free to comment and disagree.

Lunch with Jim Edwards

2008-03-07T00:53:00.001-06:00

Brian, Travis, and I had lunch with Jim Edwards today. We wanted to heard about his experiences with Arena over the last year. He was a very early adopter of Arena at Kansas City Baptist Temple. Their implementation strategy was quite different from ours. They continued to run Shelby V5 for months as they systematically converted ministry teams to Arena one-by-one. This is possible with Arena by taking advantage of the available two-way database triggers that keep Arena in sync with V5 and vice-versa. By contrast, we're planning a more traditional "big bang" cut over where we will be running on V5 one day and Arena the next. It was very interesting to learn how Jim made his approach work. I'm sure there are lessons in there for us and other churches implementing Arena.

Jim filled us in on a few specific Arena "gotchas" that we need to manage. That alone made the lunch worthwhile. Jim was also quite complimentary of the Arena tech support team. Very good to hear.

Finally, Jim told us about a new strategy they have to improve the quality of new hires at KCBT. I encouraged him to blog it. I'll link to his post when he does.

Thanks, Jim for a very helpful conversation today. We're already rethinking some important things.

24: The Unaired 1994 Pilot

2008-03-05T11:27:00.001-06:00

Remember 1994 before widespread cell phone use? Remember when you used dial-up services such as Compuserve, Prodigy, and AOL? Remember what happened if someone in the house picked up a phone while you were online? Remember a time before digital cameras? If so, you'll love this fun parody of what 24 would have been like if it had been created in 1994.

MinistryTECH and RoundTable

2008-02-29T18:07:00.001-06:00

If you're like me, you're planning to go to MinistryTECH and the Spring Church IT RoundTable in Oklahoma City the first week of April. Again if you're like me, you haven't registered yet. :-( You probably have to figure out all of the travel and event costs, get the expenditure approved, make travel reservations, and actually register for the events. Despite your best intentions to do all of that, you haven't made time for it in your busy schedule. You have a good reason. I, on the other hand, have the incredibly capable assistance of Amy Facemire for such matters. The only reason all of the above isn't done is that I didn't ask her to do it until a couple of days ago. Doh! (I just need Jason Lee to help Amy figure out Priceline!)

So, whatever your situation or excuse might be, this is your reminder that you need to go here to register for MinistryTECH and here to register for the RoundTable. See you in April!

Lunar Eclipse Sponsored Links

2008-02-20T21:55:00.003-06:00

Ok, a quick follow-up to my last post. Not only was it ridiculous to find the previous one, but I came back and refreshed the search and there are even more companies that found the genius in this strategy. (See image below.)

Great! Now, the first sponsored link looks quite reasonable. There technically is a Mitsubishi Eclipse vehicle. But the link provided takes you to a 2008 Lancer, and "eclipse" is found nowhere on the page. Bad, bad, bad.

Lunar Eclipses ... and Taxes

2008-02-20T21:31:00.004-06:00

Yeah, so I'm sitting here watching the lunar eclipse, and I decide to jump online to find how long the moon is eclipsed. I hit google and type "lunar eclipse." The first couple of hits, nasa and space.com, seem to be down as they time out. Ha! Then my eye catches something about taxes. Wait huh? (See image below.)

Umm ... isn't this almost a black-hat strategy? Maybe Google was on to this pretty quickly, as when I clicked on the link it wouldn't pull up the site but only refresh the page. :(

Sad web site story

2008-02-20T09:40:00.001-06:00

I recently received an e-mail from a pastor who resigned from his congregation. The last straw for him was conflict over the design of the congregation's web site. (That's right, a well established congregation in a major denomination is just now building its first site in 2008.)

He wrote:

We had a large disagreement about the purpose of a web site. They wanted it for upkeep of our calendar and shut-in lists, etc. I wanted it to be an evangelism and educational tool- sermons, blogs, mp3 and video. When I tried to convince them that it could be all of the above they really didn’t want to hear it. It was a small example of the big picture problem I’ve had with them for 7 years.

The pastor was working with Vine Hosting to build a Web Empowered Church site using the WEC Starter Package and pre-built templates. Presumably the project will be abandoned now that the pastor has left.

Even though I've lived in the dysfunctional, dying part of the US Protestant church for my entire life, this kind of thing still upsets and saddens me. Congregations like this one seem determined to continue their overall decline, missional inattention, and kingdom irrelevance.

I'm proud of the part we play in the work of Web Empowered Church. WEC's greatest obstacle is the all-to-common attitude displayed by this congregation.

Trying again on the Wireless LAN bridge

2008-02-18T16:09:00.001-06:00

It's been quite some time since I gave an update on our experience with the wireless LAN bridge that connects our staff offices at Southcreek (SC) with our Central Campus (CC), 1.7 miles away. After putting the pair of 80 GHz radios from Bridgewave into service, I posted about how we were suffering from link outages due to rain fade. This is a problem because the bridge is the only connection to our 40 staff at SC, carrying voice, LAN access to our data center, and Internet access.

The signal budget takes into account the clear-air RSL (received signal level), an allowance for rain fade according to weather models, and a small margin before link drop. The link will definitely drop at -72 dBm, but link quality gets very poor with high Ethernet frame errors at around -69 dBm.

Here's the timeline:

Apr. 10, 2007: Link is live just before staff move-in. RSL is -45 dBm on both ends, giving a fade margin of 24 dBm. Link down for 1 minute in a brief, heavy rain.

Apr. 16, 2007: Based on some rain events during the test period, we decide to move the CC radio to a more favorable location. We also replace both radios after observing link drop at -66 dBm, which was 3 dB higher than the specification. RSL is -41 dBm CC and -44 dBm SC. For the first time we notice a significant difference in RSL on the two ends.

Apr. 25, 2007: Afternoon storms result in 23 minutes of outages. Staff at SC are inconvenienced, but understanding.

May 6, 2007: A large storm brings flooding rains to much of Kansas. Link is down for a total of 76 minutes. It's a Sunday when staff are not in the office, so no impact.

May-July 2007: Link drops every time there is a decent rain. Some of these are during office hours, causing user impact. Staff at SC are getting restless. We continue to document each incident, providing our vendor RSL data captured by What's Up Gold and rain gauge data from the official city gauge near SC.

Aug. 2007: We continue to experience outages during relatively routine rains. Our vendor begins to discuss the possibility of putting high-gain (2' dish) antennas on one or both ends of the link. They cost around $2,000 a piece and are designed to increase signal strength by approximately 6 dB each. We press our vendor to help us with this since the link isn't meeting our availability requirement.

Sept. 20, 2007: SC end RSL drops from -44 dBm to -54 dBm. What's Up Gold records the drop, but the link stays up so we don't notice.

Nov. 20, 2007: Issues are resolved with the vendor. Bridgewave provides the high-gain antenna at cost. Our vendor installs it on CC end. When looking at RSL values post installation, we discover the 10 dB drop that happened two months earlier. RSL increases from -42 to -36 dBm CC, and from -54 to -48 dBm SC. Winters in Kansas City are relatively dry, so outages are rare and we still have plenty of time to resolve the issues.

Feb. 15, 2008: After further discussion with Bridgewave, they agree something is wrong with our SC radio and ship us a replacement along with a high-gain antenna. RSL increases from -36 to -31 dBm CC, and from -48 to -32 dBm SC. So the SC end got the 10 dB back, plus the additional 6 dB from the high-gain antenna. Photos of the installation are below. You can see how much larger the high-gain antenna is.

Old radio being uninstalled

New radio with 2', high-gain antenna being installed

Clear air signal strength of -32 dBm means we now have 37 dB of fade margin. With that much margin, we estimate that the link will stay up during rain rates up to around 1.5 inch/hour. According to the weather data model used by our vendor, that should give 4 nines of availability in an average Kansas City year (56 min. total down time). Of course, no year is actually average, so we'll just have to wait and see what happens.

Over the weekend we had a storm that started as moderate to heavy rain and ended as warm, wet snow. During the heaviest period of rain, the signal dropped briefly to as low as -59 dBm. That's encouraging because we still had more than 10 dB of fade margin at that rain rate. That event would have caused a link drop if it happened before the high-gain antennas were installed. Big improvement.

When it started snowing yesterday, the signal dropped steadily from -37 to -67 dBm over a period of five hours. Turns out the wind direction was directly into the the CC radio's face, causing the wet snow to accumulate on the antenna. When Ian got up on the roof and cleared the snow, the signal immediately came back up to -37 dBm. Yeah - a 30 dB signal drop from snow on the antenna. Yikes! Ian has full details, including pictures, on his blog.

My Visit to Life-Church Online

2008-02-18T09:39:00.003-06:00

I finally carved out some time on Sunday Morning to attend Church online at Lifechurch's online campus. As a part of our ongoing discussion about Internet Church I wanted to share my experience and then relate it a bit to the way we do worship here at Resurrection.

The interface is very clean and easy to use. It is clear to me that there was some serious interaction design thought process here, and that the "Cool Factor" was considered at least as seriously as the functionality factor. That being said, there were no technical glitches that I could discern and the technology seemed to hold up very well. While there was no way to gauge how many people were in Attendance - you could see how many people were utilizing the Interactive elements - that number seemed to hover around 300.

The First thing you do as you enter the experience is choose the worship venue you want to attend. You are then presented with an interactive interface. Here it is, during the presenation.

There are five major sections. The video section displays the live (Or i'm guessing semi-live) video feed from the location you choose - interspersed with introductions and commentary from the Internet Campus Pastor. It seems to me that the campus pastor talked at any point during the service when they might have been doing something on site that was not contextually relevant to people not attending locally. For example - they did an offering online by simply saying - now is the time for the offering - if you are on the website you can give by clicking the online giving tab, or if you are in Second Life there are places at the back of the room to give.

The Personal Notes section was pre-populated with the sermon notes and allowed you to enter and format your notes, email them, and/or print them. I found that to stay engaged in my home amidst the distractions of the television, animals, and the smell of food being cooked - I had to actively take notes.

The Friends in your row area I had some trouble with - i'm not sure how the friends system works so it was just me, and me (I started another session on a different computer so i could have a friend). I would guess that a live chat would be very cool - and obviously not something you can do in a RW church, but talking to yourself is just crazy so i didn't.

The most interesting element to me was the Interactive section - Its the box just to the right of the video player and it changed regularly in response to what was happening in the service. If the pastor asked people to raise there hands for any reason, the raise hand button would pop up and you could click it and see the number of responses. I guess thats the best way to do it - i'm always tempted to violate the heads bowed eyes closed admonision when a call to commitment is being made - mostly to see if the pastor is effective - this allows that without actually seeing the folk!! Anyway they managed to do a lot of interactive stuff that kept you clicking and engaged which I think is important for this medium.

Another cool thing is that near the end of the service they did a push that popped up a connection card (Their version of the attendance notebook). They asked you to fill it out, and if you were making a first time commitment the send you a bible and a "Getting started" package....great idea!

My impression is that, like their overall approach, they do a great job of doing things in a simple and excellent way.

Should you ever cancel church due to weather?

2008-02-17T22:58:00.001-06:00

We never have before and probably never will again at Living Water, but today was the exception that proves the rule.

The storm began around 6:00 am. The snow came down in huge, wet flakes and accumulated rapidly. By 9:00 am the roads were a mess. My mom couldn't get up the hill out of her subdivision. Regardless, we NEVER cancel church.

Upon arriving at church, we discovered that the company we have contracted to plow our parking lot hadn't been there. All that white stuff on this side of the sign? That's snow where our driveway should be.

The driveway is steep and narrow. Even with our front-wheel drive van with traction control I couldn't get up the driveway into the parking lot. This was only an hour before the service was to begin. So, we really had no choice but to cancel.

With a second effort of aggressive winter driving learned as a youth in Des Moines, I did finally get up the driveway. Laura posted a notice on our web site and started calling as many people as we could to let them know. Laura was still planning to preach to the empty room for the sermon podcast. While we were getting ready, I snapped this picture of the still raging storm out the back window of the church.

And then two cars made it up the driveway and stopped in the parking lot. The first car was one of our families coming for worship. It was one of the girls' birthday and she invited her grandparents, who arrived in the second car. Cool! So we canceled, but still had the service with Laura, me, and two carloads of people who didn't know we canceled. So I guess we really will never cancel church. Even if it's canceled, we still have it!

If you're curious, read Laura's recap of the service and check out the podcast here.

Spiritual Health in Relation to The Dying Church

2008-02-15T09:15:00.004-06:00

Yesterday in Resurrection's staff chapel, the message was given by a congregant who detailed how he and his wife visited Resurrection, got connected, and started an amazing God-inspired journey. Without going into the detail of his entire story; it was quite good; one thing he said stuck me and got me thinking. When describing his first visit to Resurrection he stated, " ... and they seemed like they actually cared that we were there [that day]."

What struck me about that statement was the simplicity. Somebody cared that they were there. I immediately thought back through my journey of visiting churches. .... He's right. At most churches my wife and I would visit, the people other than the "assigned greeter" and the staff did not care if we were visiting. By a very high majority, the other people of the church had come to church only for themselves, and were not interested, maybe even scared, of making us feel welcomed.

And I don't let myself the hook so easy either. I'm a confessed computer geek and introvert. I'd rather develop a web application than walk up to strangers and strike up a conversation. ;-( But sometimes when I walk into church, I need to forget myself, remember my assignment, and follow Christ.

So now I'm thinking the root problem with The Church is an epidemic spiritual decline. Too many churches are developing immature Christians who never grow into a state of following Christ. Primarily people start going to church to satisfy themselves, and it should be the job of that church to stimulate growth from that stage to the next - going to church for someone else. It seems ironic that a religion rooted in a truth that the life of Christ was not lived for himself but for everyone else, that we have such a hard time teaching Christians to live not only for themselves.

Although I have not read a word of Reveal, I have heard many Resurrection staff talking about its message. Time for me to do some reading perhaps.

TSA say "Lithium Batteries - Bad!"

2008-02-11T18:29:00.000-06:00

So I'm sitting at home this evening and my wife is ranting about travel limitations. Her parents are traveling internationally, and they just discovered that the brand new luggage we bought for them is over the size limit. Great. We're returning that to the store. :-(

She also tells me they don't like lithium batteries now. ??? I quickly pull up tsa.gov and sure enough this is a change as of January 1, effective on checked baggage only. So make sure you put your "spare" lithium batteries in your carry-on. Gotta keep you on your toes right?

BTW, something I didn't know previously was TSA sets the rules for carry-on, and the airline sets the rules for checked luggage. Be sure you check the right place for the right restriction.

Republican Caucuses must be Boring

2008-02-11T09:06:00.000-06:00

I was not there, but it appears that the event was utterly boring other than Huckabee and Paul supporters.

I'm sure Clif is just lost in thoughtful prayer and not really sawing logs, right? ... Right?

Identity and interoperable social networking

2008-02-09T22:51:00.000-06:00

Social networking and social media have been near the top of my mind since our senior pastor first announced our Internet campus initiative. I see social networking as the primary method of reaching our target audience - tech-savvy people who "live" online. The Internet campus will grow as participants share church-generated content with friends through social networking technologies and as participants create their own content in response.

Since I first began posting on this topic, I have repeatedly mentioned the issue of online identity because I think the lack of an open, portable identity system is already putting a drag on the adoption rate of social networking and social media sites. There are simply too many sites, too many accounts, and too much maintenance required. User fatigue is setting in.

Recently, there have been a number of encouraging technological developments. This week came the announcement that Google, IBM, Microsoft, VeriSign and Yahoo! have joined the OpenID Foundation. OpenID is gathering steam. This is most welcome.

The second major technological issue is the lack of an open, portable way to exchange social graph data. (Of course, identity data and social graph data are closely related.) OpenSocial got some buzz when it was first announced in November. Unfortunately, our hope was short lived when we realized that Facebook wouldn't allow us to access its data and pull that data into applications outside of Facebook.

This week Brad Fitzpatrick of Google announced the Google Social Graph API. As part of its normal search indexing, Google is now crawling the Web for XFN and FOAF markup and provides whatever it has found to calling applications via their API. Matt Bradshaw of our team and Web Empowered Church has already built a simple application using the API. As soon as he has a web UI for it, I'll post it here so you can play around with it. I can't overstate how cool this stuff is. When you see it in action, you'll immediately grok the significance. This is a major step along the path of interoperability and portability.

Kansas Republican caucus

2008-02-09T13:17:00.001-06:00

This morning I participated in the Kansas Republican presidential caucus. This is the first time in my 22 years of living here that Kansas has had a presidential primary or caucus. Even though John McCain already has an insurmountable lead in delegates, my fellow Republicans turned out in large numbers to vote for their preferred nominee. My caucus site was prepared for 250 people. It appeared to me that more than 1,000 came out.

People began lining up outside the community center on this chilly morning more than an hour before the caucus started.

The cool thing about a caucus is that "electioneering" (openly displaying support for a candidate near or within the polling place) is not only permitted, it is actually encouraged. In line I saw a young Huckabee supporter with a hand-made sign.

She was still holding up her sign when we got into the meeting room.

Ron Paul supporters also made themselves known.

Because the room would hold only 250, the caucus chairperson decided to allow people to cast their ballots and not stay for the meeting. That was the right decision. As you might imagine, there was a lot of talk about making sure the Kansas legislature approves a primary in 2012. I'm pretty sure Republicans and Democrats will agree on that next time!

If you're curious, I voted for Huckabee although I harbor no illusions that he will be the nominee or that he would be electable this cycle if he did win the nomination.

I Like Mike

2008-02-09T07:00:00.000-06:00

Here are some Pictures Andrew Connard took at a local Mick Huckabee Ralley. I really Like Mike, he is probably the most personable of all the candidates. The first one is in front of Huck's motorcade.

Jon has already helped

2008-02-08T16:21:00.001-06:00

We're now in the middle of our Arena implementation. A couple of days ago we became concerned about certain aspects of our Arena performance. The thought occurred to me to contact Jon Edmiston to ask about his experience of Arena performance since he has a very large Arena installation. We found the main number for CCV, called, and asked for Jon. In a few moments his friendly voice answered - no appointment, no warning. In fact, Jon and I have never met except through reading blogs. And yet there he was on the phone.

In 15 minutes he answered our concerns. Turns out if you have a large number of tags (we do) certain infrequently accessed pages can take a long time to display. We need to take care to prevent unnecessary tags from proliferating.

As we hung up he offered to help any time. Thanks, Jon for being so accessible to us. I hope we can return the favor sometime.

Seems inevitable that Asterisk is in our future

2008-02-08T14:03:00.001-06:00

It started with success stories from Andrew Mitry and Justin Moore. Now comes the announcement from Jon Edmiston that CCV has cut over to Asterisk. This morning I read an article in Network World about Asterisk. You know when Network World starts talking about it that it has emerged into the mainstream. So now I must concede that Asterisk will be in our future. Most likely the first opportunity to deploy it will be in our new downtown campus now in the planning stages. Asterisk has simply become too cool to ignore. Thanks Andrew, Justin, and Jon for paving the way. We'll be calling on you for advice when the time comes.

Off-site meeting 2008

2008-02-06T14:59:00.001-06:00

Yesterday was our IT Department 2nd annual off-site meeting. I decided not to call it a "retreat" because that term implies down time for spiritual nourishment. I do hope this meeting is spiritually nourishing, but that isn't its primary purpose. We leave one help desk person behind to man the fort. The rest of us go away to spend a day together reflecting on the prior year and looking forward to the coming year.

I invite each person to bring something to share. It could be anything from a strategic technology to a prayer list, from a scripture to a cool web site. Bringing something is purely optional.

I go into the day with some ideas of things I would like to discuss, but I very intentionally do not have an agenda. In that sense it's more like a roundtable than a structured business meeting.

Yesterday we began with a discussion of our vision for serving users, following the words and example of Jesus. It was an early alpha release of my talk coming up at MinistryTECH. I asked everyone in the team to share "if I were in charge for a day, I would ..." We then had a time of individual prayer to reflect on the discussion and listen for a word from God. After a break we had a chance to share what we prayed about and what we heard. I then responded to the ideas offered.

Next we did a very informal survey to evaluate ourselves and our department. Each of us rated from 1-10 how we think we are doing in the areas of efficiency, work quality, reputation, infrastructure availability, servanthood, internal teamwork, external teamwork, annual goal achievement, and leadership. This was a nice exercise. It wasn't anonymous. We openly discussed the ratings we each gave and why. This turned out to be really cool so I plan to repeat the same self evaluation at next year's meeting and compare it to this year.

We finished by having technical discussions about three important projects for 2008: Sharepoint implementation, Arena implementation, and Internet Campus.

I highly recommend all church IT teams of more than a couple of people to do this at least annually. Good stuff.

Spring RoundTable registration is open

2008-02-04T20:14:00.001-06:00

JP has the deets. I hope to see you in Oklahoma City on Saturday, April 5! Come early and check out Terrell Sanders' MinistryTECH.

Church IT in Davos

2008-01-29T23:07:00.001-06:00

Did you see the interview of Rick Warren by Robert Scoble at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland? Now that's some church IT!

I am a huge Rick Warren fan. This video shows how amazingly tech-savvy he is. Definitely worth 9 minutes to watch it.

Tim Berners-Lee and the "Giant Global Graph"

2008-01-29T13:33:00.001-06:00

Tim Berners-Lee (the REAL inventor of the Web) recently posted on his blog about the idea of a "Giant Global Graph" - a name intentionally chosen to suggest parallels with the "World Wide Web."

People have recently begun using the term "social graph" in reference to one's network of family, friends, and acquaintances along with the data about those individuals and relationships. The word "graph" here is used in the mathematical sense of a set of points together with lines representing relationships among the points. For this purpose "graph" and "network" are essentially equivalent terms. The Internet is a graph (a set of computers and the communications circuits that interconnect them). So is the Web (a set of documents and the links that interconnect them).

Tim points out that the Internet is an abstraction that hides all of the complexity of the physical communications links. It's computer-centric in that any computer can talk to any other computer on the Internet without having to know the details of the communications links connecting them.

Similarly, the Web is an abstraction that hides all of the complexity of computers, folders (directories), and the documents in those folders. It's document-centric in the sense that any document can link to any other document and users can navigate from document to document without having to know the details of the computers and folder structures that hold them. The Web sits on top of the Internet and simplifies the process of accessing information in documents. While the Internet links computers, the Web links documents.

Now, Tim says, along comes another layer in the abstraction hierarchy. The Semantic Web asserts that it isn't necessarily the documents that are important but the subject matter they cover, the information they convey. The Semantic Web is object-orientation for the WWW. It presents information in such a way that software can reuse it, combine it, and mash it up in ways perhaps never envisioned by the original publisher of the information. It's a programmable web that hides the complexity of which information is in which document. It's information-centric in that users can navigate related information without concern for which document holds it.

Tim suggests that when it comes to one's social graph, what we really need is a way to create, store, publish, and reuse information about ourselves and our social network such that it no longer matters which document (or service or platform) holds which information. Such a structure would constitute a Giant Global Graph - an abstraction that sits on top of the WWW and aggregates all of the interesting data about ourselves and our relationships into a database usable by computers.

This powerful idea shows the flaw in Chuck Russell's (my fellow Appian Way blogger) analysis of Facebook. (Yes, we're having the argument here in the blogosphere for everyone to read! As a political science graduate, Chuck LOVES to argue in public. Who am I to deprive him of such joy?) The walled garden may persist for a time, but eventually it gets replaced by a system with radical interoperability. "Small pieces, loosely joined" (as Dave Winer would say) results in a richly diverse ecosystem that over time benefits everyone involved.

For example, AOL used to be an online service - a 1980s era computer bulletin board updated with a graphical interface. Once the Internet and Web became popular, AOL connected to them under the hood but still presented users with a proprietary user interface and search system (remember AOL keywords?). So the question for Chuck is, do you want to bet on Facebook (a walled garden like the AOL of old) or the entire rest of the Internet? Short term, no question Facebook is popular as was AOL in its day. Long term, I'm betting on the Giant Global Graph.

None of this is to say that we shouldn't work with Facebook for right now since it's popular. Nor am I saying that Facebook won't eventually open up and become part of a highly interoperable GGG. I'm just saying that their current model is flawed and our investment in Facebook-specific strategies should be modulated accordingly.

By the way, Tim Bray agrees with me.

MinistryTECH and Spring CITRT

2008-01-28T12:08:00.001-06:00

This year Terrell Sanders of MinistryCOM fame is starting a new conference for ministry A/V and IT called MinistryTECH. The inaugural event will be in Oklahoma City, April 3-4. The next day, April 5, we will have the Spring Church IT RoundTable (CITRT) at Crossings Community Church, also in Oklahoma City. See details on Tony's blog.

I am planning to take a couple of people from my team to MinistryTECH and the RoundTable. I will be presenting a breakout session at MinistryTECH about how church IT teams can provide excellent customer service. Here's my breakout description:

Users or Customers?

Do you struggle with getting users to follow your policies and procedures? Do your users make unreasonable demands? Do you find it difficult to know how and when to say “no?” Frustrations with the users we serve are nearly universal across church IT teams of every size and situation. Learn how you can think of users as customers, earn high marks from your customers, and reduce tensions between IT and customers through a default answer of “yes.” Hear how Church of the Resurrection has built a customer-focused IT organization without creating a monster of unmanageable expectations. This session will challenge some of your most basic assumptions about how you manage your IT infrastructure and serve your customers.

I hope to see you there!

How far to Antarctica?

2008-01-27T21:31:00.001-06:00

Tony posted a comment, asking how far south I was at Cape Point. He question was prompted by my wise crack that there was "nothing to spoil the view but Antarctica."

My head getting sunburned at Cape Point

The southernmost tip of the Cape of Good Hope is called Cape Point, which is the southwestern corner of the continent of Africa. (The southernmost point in Africa is actually Cape Agulhas, 90 miles SE of Cape Point.). As you can see, the sign says it's at 34° 21' 24" South latitude. Amazingly, that's only a little further south of the equator than Atlanta is north of the equator. (Atlanta is at 33° 46' North latitude.) It's mind boggling to imagine Atlanta as the northernmost point of North America.

According to the sign at the Cape Point lighthouse, it is 6248 km (approx. 3900 miles) to the South Pole. A bit of web research tells me it's approx. 2600 miles from Cape Point to the nearest coast of Antarctica. So no, you can't really see it from there. It's just cool when you're standing there looking south and realizing the only land mass in that direction is Antarctica. Glad to clear that up. ;-)

The beauty of Cape Town

2008-01-25T23:22:00.001-06:00

Belatedly, but as promised, here are some pictures showing the beauty of the Cape Town landscape.

Above the University of Cape Town, looking NE

Cape Town waterfront

High School in District 6 with cloud-covered Table Mountain in background

Hout Bay, looking W - the most beautiful ocean drive I've ever seen

Cape Point, looking N into False Bay

Cape Point, looking S (nothing to spoil the view but Antarctica)

Cape Town Wrap-up

2008-01-23T13:27:00.001-06:00

What lingers the most with me is the contrasts, perhaps even contradictions of Cape Town. The city is beautiful with mountains and ocean views in every direction. The weather was perfect (except for the wind). The people were hopeful about their young democracy (less than 14 years old). The economy seems dynamic and entrepreneurial. Yet, unemployment is very high - we were told as high as 40% in some areas. HIV infection rates are in the 30% range. People are living in near 3rd-world conditions just blocks away from areas you could easily mistake for a beautiful ocean-side city in the US such as San Diego. It's a complex story, difficult to articulate or put into easily-digestible sound bites. Maybe I'll have more to say later upon further reflection.

I will also remember the people, particularly:

Peter, the retired New Testament scholar from Minnesota who owns the B&B. His eyes sparkle as he talks about South Africa, his adopted home.
Raymond, the native Capetonian who taught us about Cape Town and South Africa with grace, charm, humility, and humor as he took us where we needed to go.
Dan, the elderly black man who was forcibly removed from his home in District 6 during apartheid and then was among the first to return there years later. He has a picture in his living room of Nelson Mandela handing him the keys to the new place. Today he glows when he talks about his life.
Charlotte, the vibrant resident of Masiphumelele who was our tour guide there. She arranged for the marimba band that entertained us royally followed by afternoon tea at Zukie's bed and breakfast. It was among the most memorable experiences of the trip, yet very difficult to describe in words.
Tembo, the founder of SHADE who speaks with such passion about her life and work that you leave inspired to come along side and do anything it takes to help SHADE's vision become reality. She is a powerful woman. Look out world.
Otto, the Lutheran pastor from Germany who serves the people of Philippi with grace, love, an entrepreneurial spirit, and impressive attention to detail.

Notes:

1. Consequences of load shedding as reported in an e-mail yesterday morning from our B&B host, Peter Kjeseth:

Today, the day after your departure the headline story in the Cape Times: BLACKOUT STRANDS CABEL CAR. Load shedding hit while the Table Mountain cable car was half way up leaving 37 people dangling in the car in a heavy wind. When the electricity went back on, the cable car malfunctioned so it could not land properly. Rescue teams got the 37 off to safety. The 500, yes 500, stranded on top of Table Mountain were not so lucky. They spent a chilly night up there. Their rescue began only in the early morning hours.

Several people from our group took that cable car up to the top of Table Mountain on Saturday, our free day.

2. Diarrhea isn't fun, especially on a day when you're on four flight segments over a 33 hour period. Imodium helped, but didn't fix it. We were assured that it's safe for Americans to drink the tap water in Cape Town. I'm not saying I have any evidence tap water was the cause of my distress, but ... (Was that too much information?)

3. You can't bring biltong into the US, even if it is sealed in the original package. See US Customs FAQ here. That's 30 rand we'll never get back.

4. I'm still picking grains of sand out of my hair, blown there by the constant wind.

4. Did anything happen here in the US while we were away?

Cape Town Day 6

2008-01-22T12:53:00.001-06:00

This is my first chance to report on our last day in Cape Town, having been in transit for the last 33 hours.

Day 6 for us was Sunday, now a continent away. We went to worship at JL Zwane church in Guguletu township. Guguletu is also in Cape Flats, right next to Philippi where iThemba Labantu is located. (Guguletu and Philippi are essentially adjacent suburbs, if it's proper to call them that).

The entire service except for a couple of songs was in Xhosa, a cool African language that uses click consonants. The music was all a cappella with a little bit of hand percussion. It was classic African style: simple, repetitive chord structures with luscious but straightforward melodies and harmonies. I'll post a bit of recorded audio when I have the opportunity. Occasionally an English word would pop out such as a number or Bible book. Otherwise, we have no idea what the sermon was about or any of the song lyrics.

JL Zwane is a thriving place where worshippers come in their finest clothing each Sunday and enjoy passionate preaching, singable and danceable music, and rich community life. It is an open and accepting community that deals head-on with AIDS, unlike many African churches where the subject is taboo.

South Africa is so westernized that it's almost possible to forget you're in Africa until you worship at JL Zwane. Cool stuff.

Notes:

1. We finally saw and photographed the penguins at Boulder's Beach. Penguins are quirky and compelling creatures. It was a special opportunity to see them outside captivity. The wind was blowing so hard when we were there, it almost knocked us down.

2. We went to Cape Point (the extreme southern tip of the Cape of Good Hope which forms the western side of False Bay). There is an argument over whether Cape Point is properly designated as the place where the Indian Ocean meets the Atlantic Ocean. While there, we ate at the Two Oceans Restaurant, so at the very least it's clear where the restaurant management comes down on that question. ;-)

3. We saw a number of baboons in the wild at Cape Point and along the road leading to it. Through a bit of cunning and aggression, one of them was able to abscond with an ice cream cone that the human who purchased it did not wish to surrender. Very impressive.

4. Did I mention that the almost 19-hour plane ride from Joburg to DC is a butt buster? We left Joburg at 6:15 pm local time. This gave us late evening sun and twilight for the first 90 minutes, or so. After that, since we were going west, we stayed in darkness for the entire remainder of the flight, arriving in DC before sunrise. Our night lasted 17+ hours. Very disorienting.

5. As the official trip photographer, I took more than 1,100 still pictures. Laura took another 150 or so. On the butt buster flight we reviewed all the pictures and deleted those with technical problems - motion blur, subject out of focus, bad exposure, etc. We also picked the best shot where there was redundancy. That left 800ish usable images. After that, I went back through and picked 131 favorites that tell the story. Completing the multimedia projects about the trip are going to take more time than the trip itself. Eeek!

6. Weather at CPT when we left: 79 F and sunny. Weather at MCI upon arrival: 10 F (also sunny, if that matters!).

7. Besides a mild sunburn on my balding scalp, what did I come back with that I didn't have when I left? Stay tuned for a future post on that.

8. We're home. Dilemma: take a nap now or try to wait until this evening and then try to sleep through the night? Everyone has their own theory on that.

Out of Africa

2008-01-22T07:25:00.001-06:00

I'm writing from the floor of Dulles airport at 8:23 am Eastern, having left Cape Town at 7:00 am Eastern yesterday. Let me say, for the record, that 19 hours on a single aircraft (Johannesburg to DC) is inhumane.

They just now called our flight. I'm KC-bound. Will post more later.

Penguins!

2008-01-20T20:14:00.001-06:00

As promised ...

How to make your electrical stuff work in South Africa

2008-01-20T19:53:00.001-06:00

The is a dual South African outlet. (Each outlet has a switch above it, which seems to be common here.) Before leaving, I went online and bought a cable with a "universal" 2-pin connector on one end and a South African plug on the other.

The South African plug looks like something you'd use to plug in a 40-amp, 220 V clothes dryer, but it's just their every day plug. A power strip with 3 of these is the same length as a power strip with 7 or 8 standard US outlets and a good bit wider. Heh.

One would assume that the Dell power supply would take the universal 2 pin connector. I mean, that's the point of a universal power supply - you just change the power cord to the local standard and viola. Right???

A standard 2-pin almost fits into those 2 pins on the right, but not quite. What was Dell thinking?

So now I'm in trouble. I have my laptop, but I've used up the batteries on the flight. Without a way to plug in and recharge, all the computer stuff I brought is just dead weight.

I have another, similar problem too. I bought an external charger for my camcorder batteries but it came with a 2-pin North America plug and no interchangeable power cord.

It's has a universal internal power supply, but a non-interchangeable plug.

As it turns out, this is a very common problem with an equally common solution. In my short time here I've seen many outlets with adapters such as the one below plugged in to them. This adapter plugs into the SA 3-pin outlet and provides a SA 3-pin and two European 2-pin outlets. (There are lots of things sold around here that have European plugs on them.)

So what I need is something like this but with a North American outlet on it (into which I must take care to plug only universal power supplies). A small, local computer shop had just the thing.

This plugs in to the SA outlet and provides an SA outlet on the front and two multi-country outlets on the sides - a 2-pin and a 3-pin. Although it looks a bit odd, it does accept NA plugs. Eureka!

As a side benefit, this adapter also solves the problem of my camcorder battery charger. Here is the SA outlet with the NA adapter, a European adapter, my Dell power supply plug, and my camcorder charger all stacked up. It's ridiculous, but it works!

Moral of the story, instead of buying universal power cords for the country you're visiting, find out if it's easier to use an adapter. I did have a use for the one power cord I bought, though. It readily fits the camcorder power supply.

Why couldn't Dell have made it this easy?

Cape Town Day 5

2008-01-19T13:47:00.001-06:00

Saturday was our one and only "down day" of the trip. What a refreshing break! Laura and I took the commuter train two stops south to Simon's Town, home port of the South African Navy and the famous Boulder's Beach penguin colony. We saw the ships; we didn't see the penguins. Maybe tomorrow? (I did see a penguin on Robben Island, but I wasn't in a position to take a picture of it.)

Notes:

1. Every day since we arrived we've had a couple of hours without electricity. This is due to a planned program of "load shedding." In other words, there isn't enough power being generated to meet the needs of everyone at once. So at any given time, some people don't have it. As I've said, this is a mostly 1st world metropolitan area, and then you're reminded by lack of electricity for a certain part of each day that you're not in Kansas any more.

2. Laura ordered springbok for dinner today. It was quite tasty.

3. We're going to worship in a church in Guguletu township tomorrow. We've been told to expect an amazing experience.

Cape Town Day 4

2008-01-19T08:55:00.001-06:00

On Friday we drove along the coast of False Bay from our B&B in Fish Hoek to Philippi, a very large township in the Cape Flats area. We saw a mixture of affordable, middle class starter homes close to the beach. Further inland there is a sea of small, concrete block houses. Our guide, Raymond, explained that most families in the area have taken in relatives who build shacks like we saw in Masiphumelele in the tiny back yards.

Laura posted about the Lutheran mission we visited there, iThemba Labantu, where they do everything from serve food to take care of AIDS patients. It is a great example of practical, person-to-person ministry where everything, large and small, is done with excellence. This ministry is very deserving of your support.

In the afternoon we had a chance to meet Keith Vermeulen, who is the director of the South African Council of Churches Parliamentary Office.

Notes:

1. Finally had an opportunity to try some local seafood. The fish and chips is very good here, as you would expect.

2. Kansas City vs. Cape Town:

Some locals say it's always windy. Others say the southeaster is unusual for this time of year. My hat has been blown off my head at least 5 times. I almost lost it twice.

I need the hat to protect my balding head from the sun. When they say you need sunscreen here, they aren't just a kiddin'.

3. Our hosts are Peter and Solveig Kjeseth. Both are Lutherans originally from Minnesota. Peter is a retired seminary professor of New Testament who at one time was a colleague of Shannon Jung, the Saint Paul professor leading our trip, at Dubuque University seminary. How did Peter and Solveig come to spend their retirement in Cape Town? Part of the answer becomes clear in this excerpt featuring them from the book No Easy Victories: African Liberation and American Activists over a Half Century, 1950-2000. Better hosts we could never hope for, but I wish their WiFi was better. ;-)

4. Yes, water going down a drain rotates counter-clockwise. Can I get some video demonstrating it? I think I would need food coloring or something. Hmmm ...

5. On Tuesday, our first day here, I noticed the sun near mid-day was to our north. In all my 45 years of life, I've never seen the sun to my north.

6. I will post separately about the electrical plugs for any of you considering a trip here. It was challenging as I expected. Now that I've finally figured it out, it's almost time to leave. Heh.

7. The drive along the Hout Bay coast road is the most spectacular I've seen anywhere in the world, including Maui, California, Cape Cod, and Puerto Rico. The Cape Town area is simply beautiful.

8. Several days we have enjoyed the hospitality of Raymond, who I mentioned in a previous post. If you ever come to Cape Town with a group, get on Raymond's calendar months in advance. His knowledge of the city is invaluable for a group of first-time visitors.

Cape Town Days 2 and 3

2008-01-17T17:13:00.001-06:00

I didn't post yesterday because I couldn't keep my eyes open after we got back from a long day. Turns out when you combine motion sickness medicine with a long day, short sleep, and delayed jet lag you have an overwhelming need to sleep! To understand why I needed motion sickness medicine, read Laura's post. ;-) As before, I spent time helping her select, crop, and down-rez pictures instead of working on my own posts. So look at hers. My own pics will have to wait.

Yesterday notes:

1. The commuter train was fun. I met a 25ish guy on the train who asked about my HD video camera. It became clear quickly that he knew a lot about the subject. Turns out he works for a local TV station. Very bright and well educated. Asked me about the US presidential election: was I for Clinton or Obama? Thought it was significant that our next president will be either black or a woman. His question and comment were telling.

2. Cape Town is WINDY. I figured it was just a weather system moving through the first couple of days we were here. When I commented on it to the locals, they said, "You think THIS is windy? It's like this all the time. You haven't experienced wind until you've been here during a storm."

3. Robben Island is a special place, but the tour itself wasn't wonderful. Regardless, the forgiveness and healing represented there are quite profound. Read Laura's post for details.

4. Our tour guide for the first part of the Robben Island tour told us a bit of his own story. He has a college degree in electrical engineering but hasn't been able to find work in that field in South Africa. When the tour was over I told him I'm an electrical engineer too. He asked if I could get him a job. I said, "maybe, if you are willing to come to the US." He asked for my e-mail address.

5. Had bobotie yesterday for lunch. The "national dish" of SA. Comfort food, basically, with a kind of Indian curry twist. Very tasty, although I kind of regretted my lunch choice when on the rough boat ride to Robben Island (again, see Laura's post).

Today notes:

1. SHADE rocks! See Laura's post for today for details.

2. Raymond, our driver and tour guide for the day, is an amazing person. He's an independent contractor for the US Consulate here. His job is to host visitors, mostly from the US, who come in for business with the Consulate - USAID, interns, FBI, etc. He picks them up from the airport, drives them around, tells them about the city, points out landmarks, etc. He told me about the turning point in his life. As a youth he was always in trouble, got into drugs, sailed the world on cargo ships, and was a complete mess. Then he met Jesus in a Pentecostal church and was instantly healed of his addictions and turned his life in a new and productive direction. He's now a father and grandfather, not to mention a warm host for visitors from the US.

3. Cape Town is a beautiful city. I'll post some pictures soon. I promise.

4. The contrast between the upscale areas of downtown Cape Town and the townships gives one pause. It may take me some time before I can explain what I mean by that.

Cape Town Day 1 - Masiphumelele

2008-01-15T16:37:00.001-06:00

Instead of blogging myself this evening I helped Laura prepare a pictorial post of our trip to Masiphumelele today. Check it out.

No time tonight for me to add much except the following quick notes:

1. Although it's a shantytown, Masiphumelele is 1st world in a number of ways. Most/all of the homes and businesses have electricity and running water. I saw shops selling cell phones and cell service. One of the homes we visited had a land-line telephone, two computers, and a TV. Some of them also had cars and makeshift garages.

2. Masiphumelele is only a 10 minute drive from the seaside town of Fish Hoek where we're staying. Today in Fish Hoek we saw a real estate office where I took note that the price of a home up on the mountainside overlooking False Bay is upwards of $1 million. The Cape Town area is a very strange place: 1st world and 2nd world (if there is such a thing) within 10 minutes of each other.

3. Masiphumelele has 20,000+ people living in a very small "neighborhood". That density makes the place charmingly vibrant. It's teeming with activity of every sort. The people we met were happy and hopeful.

4. HIV/AIDS is an unbelievably-horrible problem in Masiphumelele. More on that later.

Tomorrow we take the commuter train to downtown Cape Town and on to Robben Island where Nelson Mandela was imprisoned. Our host described it as a holy shrine to the end of apartheid and the people who brought it about. I expect this will be one of the most profound experiences of the trip.

It's 12:30 am here. I'm going to bed!

Online Mentoring

2008-01-15T08:55:00.000-06:00

Over at the Life Church Blog They are talking about a new tool called Imantri which matches mentors with mentees around core competencies, skills, and goals. I woke up this morning thinking bout an idea to bring people together for spiritual guidance/mentoring that would employ web 2.0 social networking etc. Then I went to our men's bible study with Jeff Kirby and we were all talking about the need to do more daily bible reading etc. I wonder if this might be the killer app of an internet campus.

In my time in campus ministry, we focused on the Worship event and Small groups - certainly. But the real impact came in an intense focus on one to one discipleship. One of my mentors - Gregg Taylor at the University of Arkansas was fond of saying you can influence people from a distance but you can only impact them from up close. He wasn't talking about physical up closeness, i don't think, rather the intensity of a one on one relationship that guides and develops people along their spiritual journeys.

Clearly we would have to have a heavy focus on training people to be spiritual guides/mentors , but a tool like this could be developed to facilitate the matching and interaction..

Chuck

Aerial photos of South Africa

2008-01-14T23:16:00.001-06:00

Downtown Johannesburg.

False Bay just seconds before landing in Cape Town.

The buzz around social networking becoming more open

2008-01-14T14:14:00.001-06:00

In my continuing series about interoperability and openness in social networking systems and sites, I direct your attention to

Robert Scoble - Can we get a first step in social networking portability?

Dave Winer - Bebo running Facebook apps

Aaron Linne - On the Data Portability Initiative

Joe Suh - Social Network Platform Wars

Into Africa

2008-01-14T14:09:00.001-06:00

I write this from 33,000 feet above the central Atlantic Ocean, bound for Johannesburg and then on to Cape Town, South Africa. While there we will be meeting a number of ministry leaders, visiting AIDS clinics and orphanages, learning about South African history and apartheid, visiting Robben Island where Nelson Mandela was imprisoned, taking pictures of penguins, etc.

Before we left Kansas City this afternoon, Shannon Jung, the Saint Paul professor who is leading our trip, asked each of us in the group to share our expectations for the trip. I said I'm open to the experience - whatever comes will be just what God has in mind. I hope to be able to post several times during the trip to keep all of you updated. I appreciate your prayers for myself and all of those on the trip:

Lia Mcintosh
Morgan Whitaker
Andrew Smith
Carmen Williams
Sue Barham
Kyle Butler
Laura Guy
Tina Harris
Dixie & Robert Junk
Michael Dunlap
Dr. Shannon Jung

The BBQ tour continues

2008-01-11T11:47:00.001-06:00

Does this look from the outside like a place where you're likely to get great barbecue?

Turns out the food is fantastic. Oklahoma Joe's in Kansas City is in a gas station/ convenience store. (And yes, that's Travis pretending to pump gas.)

The staff person in the restaurant we asked to take this picture cut our heads off, making our post-dinner full bellies even more prominent than they otherwise would have been! My only regret is that Mark White missed the fun due to a sudden bout of the queasies. Alfred would have loved it too.

Nerds learning Arena

2008-01-10T18:20:00.001-06:00

This morning was our Arena implementation kick-off meeting where we invited all Resurrection staff to a demo by Ben Lane, our designated Arena trainer. After lunch we began training for the IT Department to get an in-depth understanding of how it's all put together and how it works.

l to r: Leo Johns, Ian Beyer, Chuck Russell, Jeremy Grabrian, Ben Lane of Shelby, Travis Morgan, and Linda Ronsick (just the top of her head)

Campaign Websites Using Technolog to GOTV

2008-01-08T12:21:00.000-06:00

Saw something interesting on almost all of the campaign websites today. You can login register and start making phone calls on behalf of candidates in New Hampshire - from the comfort of your own home. They give you a script, and instructions on how to record the result of the conversation.

Facebook

2008-01-04T14:04:00.000-06:00

Weather or not the likes of Scoble are satisfied with facebooks business model or their direction. The only question I ask is, who has won the hearts and minds of users. And clearly on this front it is and will be facebook. They completely dominate the genre and, frankly I cant see how that changes in the future. I think any attempt to replicate or replace facebook is going to face an enourmous uphill battle. Users don't care about things like data portability, what they care about is the network and in this regard Facebook wins - Game over. Just like the Beta VHS debates of an age gone buy, we can argue Geek stuff all day long about what technology or platform is best... but ultimately to do ministry we must go where the people are....and the people are on Facebook.

I basically agree with Don Dodge - This is one of those things that programmers and techno-geeks are all fired up about, but that your normal every day user couldn't care less about. What matters is where are my friends....if that shifts and no doubt it will some day, then we go where the people go. Until then 50 million facebook users cant be wrong.
Chuck

Facebook cautionary tale

2008-01-03T22:07:00.001-06:00

If you read Robert Scoble's blog you know about his problems with Facebook today. He ran a script on Plaxo to import his Facebook friends. Facebook's system detected the script and blocked his account on the basis that it violated the Facebook terms of service. When he explained what happened they reinstated his account and asked him not to run such scripts in the future.

Bottom line: Facebook locks up user data. Not only do they not provide an API, they get really testy about outside software that reads the data. With this attitude, I have serious doubts about whether Facebook can have a central role in our Internet Campus.

Nogales

2008-01-01T16:32:00.001-06:00

I'm in Tucson for a family gathering to ring in the new year. (High today in Kansas City - 22 F. High today in Tucson - 65 F. Yeah, we made the right decision.)

Yesterday we made the short trip down I-19 to the Mexican border to experience the culture of Nogales. Just inside the border we were welcomed with this sign:

One of the first things I noticed - the Mexicans have different standards of esthetics and safety in their electrical wiring.

We had lunch at an upscale restaurant called LaRoca, complete with strolling musicians.

l to r: niece, Hannah; nephew, Ian; son, Rob; daughter, Beth

Before returning the USA, we took a couple of pictures of the border wall itself. This wall is the dividing line between nations, languages, cultures, currency, economies, and much more.

USA-Mexico border at Nogales taken from the Mexican side

Cars waiting in line to get into USA

Office Live demo

2007-12-26T22:41:00.001-06:00

I mentioned Office Live Workspace last week. Robert Scoble posted a video interview/demo that shows the possibilities. I signed up on the wait list tonight. I'm eager to check it out.

Open ID

2007-12-26T12:00:00.001-06:00

I've posted previously about social networking and the church, focusing particularly on the issue of identity because I believe it's among the first technical issues to be addressed to make these efforts successful. Every social networking site in the world (and many other sites) require you to create an account to use the site. As Internet users create more and more online accounts, at some point fatigue sets in. I believe some users have already hit their limit. Clearly, this model isn't scalable. In the previous post I referred to Dave Winer's idea that Twitter might become a de facto identity system.

Now I call your attention to OpenID, an open source identity system which aims to become the standard. You can watch a brief demo of OpenID here. (Thanks to Matt for directing me to the demo.)

I made the mistake of going to OpenID.com and creating an ID there. When I tried to use that ID to log in to Plaxo, it errored out. I have no idea what OpenID.com is, but don't use it to create an ID. Next I tried MyOpenID.com. See my ID here. It works, but I can't say it's ready for prime time. The Personna feature seems like a great idea, but at this point isn't simple and intuitive enough for a noob like me.

Of course, one of the selling points of OpenID is that you don't need to go to a provider like MyOpenID at all. People with a tiny bit of HTML ability can make their own. Also, I understand everyone on LiveJournal.com already has an OpenID automatically as part of that service. Google's Blogger service is also now accepting OpenID authentication.

Bottom line: this technology is very early in the maturity/adoption curve, but it has definite possibilities. Keep an eye on it.

He preached all six services

2007-12-26T11:39:00.000-06:00

On Monday I blogged about our Christmas Eve services and mentioned that Adam had the flu. Today, Adam posted the full story. He explained that he was up all night and only napped a couple of hours Monday morning. With help from the medical team, he was able to preach all six services, finishing up around 12:45 am Tuesday. God intervened in a big way. Total attendance at both campuses for all services was 22,000+.

My own Christmas Eve was, thankfully, quite uneventful by comparison. Did some work in the morning, bought one last gift, ran sound and graphics for Living Water's service, went out for some uvula-burning India food, went back to Living Water to set up graphics for this coming Sunday service when I'll be out of town, returned home, cleaned house a bit, wrapped some presents, and went to bed at 1:00 am, before the annual replay of the papal Christmas mass was even over. I hope your Christmas Eve was equally calm.

That's a lotta services!

2007-12-24T13:24:00.001-06:00

Every year Resurrection has to adjust its Christmas Eve service plans as the day of the week changes. Several years ago we started having services the night before Christmas Eve ("Christmas Eve Eve"). Our senior pastor encouraged church members to attend Eve Eve to leave more seats available at prime times on Eve.

This year, since Eve Eve landed on a Sunday night when we normally have a regular weekend service at 5:00, plans were adjusted accordingly. We decided to add a Sunday night service and make our regular Saturday night service a Christmas Eve service too. Plus we added a service on Eve. So this year we have one service on Saturday night (Eve Eve Eve), two on Sunday night (Eve Eve), and six today (Eve). Our service times today are 1:00, 3:00, 5:00, 7:00, 9:00, and 11:00. And yes, Adam Hamilton is preaching all nine services! Of course, we also have two services at Rez West, but those are by video so Adam doesn't have any extra work for them. ;-)

UPDATE: I just heard Adam has a flu bug and received IV fluids this morning. If that's the case, he's in no condition to preach six times today. Things are getting interesting. I wonder if Adam has an understudy ...

As for me, things are very quiet in IT. We tend to use this time to catch up on e-mail, blogging, inventorying our desktops and laptops - lots of stuff that tends to slide toward the bottom of our priority list. I'll be leaving soon to go be the A/V tech for Living Water at our one and only Christmas Eve service at 5:00. Life is much simpler when you're averaging 40 in worship!

To all of you who have church responsibilities tonight, be sure you don't miss Christmas yourself. Merry Christmas!

Colossians 3:15-17 (New International Version)

Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, since as members of one body you were called to peace. And be thankful. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly as you teach and admonish one another with all wisdom, and as you sing psalms, hymns and spiritual songs with gratitude in your hearts to God. And whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.

Will I see penguins?

2007-12-24T11:47:00.001-06:00

Yes. On our upcoming trip to South Africa I'm told we will see the famous colony of "Jackass" penguins in the Cape Town area at Boulder's Beach. Maybe I'll take some pictures.

Office Live Workspace

2007-12-22T23:57:00.001-06:00

We've used Google Docs to collaborate on our Internet Campus project. The ease of creating a document and having multiple, simultaneous users editing is quite impressive. However, maybe it's just me, but I have found it difficult to precisely control the formatting (this isn't unique to Google Docs, it's true of every HTML editor I've used including Outlook).

So now Microsoft has announced Office Live Workspace. If it has the same ease of use as Google Docs but allows precise formatting using Word, it could be the best of both worlds.

The Golden Compass - Last Statement

2007-12-07T10:30:00.000-06:00

Thanks to those for their comments on my previous and related post.

Well, I posted on the topic for two reasons. 1. There is much disagreement about it, and 2. I hope readers will do their own research and reach their own decision. :)

I read Kim's post that Bob referred to, and I'll say that Kim is very well written.

In my heart, I still believe that paying money to see the movie is making a donation to the cause of an atheist who targets children in attempt to sway them away from God. If you pay your money to see the movie, keep in mind this may be exactly what your doing.

I think this world would be better served, if rather than seeing this movie, people donated $10 and one and three quarter hours to a local mission. Spend quality time with someone who desperately needs it.

I also think using an inherently atheist tool to teach anyone about who God is or is not seems a dangerous method. Go battle the materialistic idolatry of the world, not an image of God that represents those things. Let G-o-d be as he always is.

Lastly, I'll say that my position on this was formed from the references I mentioned, and other additional resources. I hope you read the posts and their comments, do your own research, and feel better informed to make your own decision. ;)

Hannah Montana

2007-12-06T22:04:00.001-06:00

Last month Blaine Barry, an intern on our Student Ministry staff, died of brain cancer. His small group includes Chuck Russell and Traci Bazzelle of our staff. They helped organize a group of volunteers to work at Kansas City's new downtown arena, selling merchandise at the Hannah Montana concert on Monday night, to benefit Blaine's family, which is left with a lot of medical and funeral expenses.

After waffling a week or two, I finally stepped up and volunteered, not having any idea what sort of adventure awaited. My kids are too old for Hannah Montana to be on my radar. (Before Monday night the only thing I knew about her stemmed from the national news media's coverage of the the controversy surrounding ticket sales for her concerts.) I knew nothing of the TV show, her music, or anything. For example, did you know that Hannah Montana and Miley Cyrus are the same person? I could go on and on telling you the things I learned Monday night, but I'll spare you that!

I was assigned to selling programs and other little stuff at a cash only station. I personally grossed approximately $2,300 for the night. At one point I had $2,000 in cash on me, which kind of freaked me out because it's the most cash I've ever had in my possession at one time. The retail manager of the arena said he expected to gross $400,000 on merchandise. From the experience of our group, we'd guess he beat that number. Add in ticket sales and concessions and you're up to something in the neighborhood of $1.4 million gross for the entire event. Does that seem a bit out of control to you?

The people I interacted with were well behaved, excited to be there, and seemed to be having a great time. In a small way, I was part of the Hannah phenomenon while serving the community and benefiting Blaine's family. Not bad for a night's work.

Good idea, Nick

2007-12-06T13:11:00.001-06:00

After seeing my post about dinner at Rendezvous last night, Nick Nicholaou said we should go to The Commissary. Alfred saw Nick's comment and took us there for lunch! We thought we were coming to Memphis for a very important meeting with Shelby, but really it was for a barbeque tour. The meeting has been almost incidental. ;-)

l to r: Mark White, Brian, me, Travis, Alfred, Jeff Maddox of Shelby, and Steve Pruitt of Shelby

David Drinnon also commented that we should go to Corky's. That's a good idea too, but since I've been there several times before, I'm glad we did something different this time.

I only hope I'll still fit in an airline seat for the flight home tonight!

Arena implementation planning

2007-12-06T00:15:00.001-06:00

Brian, Travis, and I are in Memphis to meet with the Arena team to begin planning our implementation. We are going to begin the process of detailed gap analysis tomorrow. We're also hoping to go home with the first draft of our implementation timeline, including a target "go live" date.

Before getting down to serious business, we started with dinner tonight at Memphis' landmark rib joint, Rendezvous. The ribs are prepared with a dry rub. Sauce - regular or spicy - is added at the table. It was a great way to kick off our work on Arena. Thanks, Alfred!

l to r: Mark White of Shelby, Travis, Brian, and Alfred Johnson of Shelby

IE7 woes

2007-12-05T23:34:00.000-06:00

Seems I'm not the only one who has abandoned IE7 after initially being a supporter. I switched to Firefox and Google Reader over the summer when my IE7 feeds stopped updating and I couldn't figure out why. Now that I've been using Firefox for several months, I can say I've become a total convert. It's faster, more stable, and easier to use. As for Google Reader, it's fine but I can think of a lot of ways it could be better. In any case, I think it says a lot that I tried Firefox several times but always stuck with IE until a few months ago. Now that I've switched, it will be a long time before I switch back.

The Golden Compass

2007-11-27T10:59:00.001-06:00

I'm assuming most of you have heard of movie 'The Golden Compass' by now, since it has made the morning news, at least here in Kansas City. My thanks go to Phillip Pullman for giving me something to blog about. :)

I first heard about this movie through a chain e-mail referencing snopes.com. Earlier this week my wife saw the trailer on television and said, "Ooo. We have to go see that!" I messed up and in a knee jerk reaction said, "No, we're not." Doh! Yeah ... that doesn't work with my wife. So I get the look, we "discuss," and I try to explain how the writer is a devoted atheist who purportedly targets children in attempt to "kill God" in their minds. She argued that it was just a fantasy movie, and no worse than The Devinci Code, which we did watch. It's just a movie. Hmm. I still disagree on some levels, but she has a point in whether or not we go watch the movie.

So after this morning's newscast mentioning it, I was pushed to learn why an Archbishop would support the movie, which has been touted as "anti-Catholic." Williams even goes so far as to say the book should be taught in schools! I found this online article. Wow. What a world we live in where educators are trying to throw religion out of schools, and Archbishops are trying to get atheism in them.

Now, little of this seems to be hearsay, if you believe the sources and the source's sources. So why on earth would you condone and support a movie "watered down ... so as not to offend faithful moviegoers in the United Kingdom and United States" thats center is in an anti-religious theme written by a professed atheist whos purpose in life is to convince children that God is false?!?!? All for the sake of keeping an open mind? Wha ... bu ... huh?

Ultimately, no one is going to affect whether or not people go see the movie. For the first time though, I find myself with pretty strong convictions to boycott this movie. It is just a movie, but I can't rationalize away the guilt I'd feel by supporting it.

Why it's difficult for IT to love Apple

2007-11-22T15:14:00.000-06:00

I've posted before regarding the difficulty we've faced when needing service, tech support, or parts for our Macs. With time and experience I think we're learning to cope better, but Apple's service still isn't remotely comparable to Dell's. We pay hundreds for AppleCare, yet it doesn't include on-site service like we get bundled at no extra charge with our Dells. This is definitely a reason it's hard for us to love Apple, but I think it's not the biggest reason.

Given that Apple is such a strong company in design, engineering, and innovation, why are my main emotions toward them disappointment, irritation, and frustration?

Earlier this week Robert Scoble gave a great answer to this question: Apple over-promises and under-delivers. In reality, I think Apple probably delivers as well or nearly as well as any top-tier computer company. The problem is that it promises so much more. The arrogance is what sticks in my craw. If they were to compete humbly, recognizing their shortcomings and working hard to overcome them, they would earn my respect and I'd be likely to cut them some slack. As it is, every time we have a Mac issue, I'm freshly irritated by Apple's consistent, brazen promise that their stuff never breaks. Thank you Scoble for articulating so well this nagging sense I've had for a long time. Now I know I'm not alone in that.