April 03, 2008

MinistryTECH: 10 reasons techies scare me

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. 

No comments: