My blog, Notes from the Trenches, has moved to a new location, please update your bookmarks and feed readers.
The new location is
http://experience.fellowshipone.com/blogs/technicallyspeaking/default.aspxMy latest blog entry,
Don’t Pay Too Much for Your Software, is available at the new location. Come check it out!
- jventry
Computer networking is something that is great when it works and is not so great when it is not working. Many churches outsource their computer networking to a consultant. I think that this is a very good idea especially since it is cheaper than having a full-time staff person. However, even if you have your computer network managed by a consultant, it is still important for the church to retain critical information for the equipment. Critical information would include the administrative account name and password for all network devices. The church may not be logging into these devices, but you still need to have this information. I encourage you to be sure you have this critical information and keep it in a safe place. It is always good for the church to keep that information, especially if a change in network vendors is necessary.
Whenever we receive a call about slow application
performance, we ask our customers to run what is called a trace route. A
traceroute is a tool that is used to determine the route taken by packets
across an IP network (basically it shows the path that data takes from your
network to our network). When tracking down a slow application
performance issue, we have to look at many different things. We first
have to determine exactly where the issue originates. There
are three general areas that we are trying to examine as far as potential
problem spots. There is the client network, there is our network and
there is the Internet in general. The trace route is a tool that can
quickly show where the issue is located, and that is why we run this test
first. We then examine the traceroute to see if we can diagnose the
issue, and we proceed from there. Unfortunately, we are not always able
to diagnose the problem from the traceroute, but it is an effective first step
that helps us troubleshoot any issues more effectively.
Vista and Office 2007 upgrades are starting to gain momentum. I think that the number of people upgrading has been slower than Microsoft had hoped to this point, but the number of upgrades are starting to grow. Typically, upgrades to Office were not a very big deal. You just upgrade to the newer version of office and you were up and running. The hardware requirements typically were not much more than the previous version of Office either. However, that does not apply to upgrading to 2007. Be aware that 2007 requires a lot of RAM. Be sure to test the upgrade on some computers to be sure that you have enough hardware horse power before rolling this out network wide. Also keep in mind that there will be a learning curve with 2007, so be sure to provide the necessary resources and training for your staff as you implement this solution. When I first started using Office 2007, I found it frustrating because I could not find my way around. It is different and it does take some getting used to.
Windows Vista to me has not been as hard to learn as Office 2007 is. However, the hardware requirements for Vista are much different than XP. Do your homework in advance to be sure that there is enough RAM on your machines for Vista (you will need it). Also, resources and training may be needed for your staff here as well. It is just different enough to create many questions. Depending on your network setup will determine which version of Vista you will need. There are many different versions of Vista being offered, so be sure to familiarize yourself with that prior to purchasing. You can research the different versions of Vista here.
As with most upgrades, advanced preparation will save you many issues in the future and these upgrades are not exception to that.
I encountered a unique issue yesterday where we had a user whose Contributions application would not update. The Contributions application would start and just sit at the updating screen. Thanks to DRez for troubleshooting this. We discovered that the Background Intelligent Transfer Service was not started on the computer. This service must be running in order for the Contributions application to update. We tried to start this service and It would not start. DRez googled an article about how to create a bat file to get this service to start.
To get the Background Intelligent Transfere Service service to start (if it fails to do so), copy and paste the following entry into a bat file:
regsvr32
oleaut32.dll
regsvr32 jscript.dll
regsvr32 vbscript.dll
regsvr32 msxml.dll
regsvr32 softpub.dll
regsvr32 wintrust.dll
regsvr32 initpki.dll
regsvr32 cryptdlg.dll
Save this as a bat file and then run it. A pop up box will confirm that the file has completed. Then go back and start the Background Intelligent Transfer Service. The service should now start and the Contributions application should now run.
I watched the You Tube Debates on Monday night and the format was rather intriguing. I also thought that this type of a format could open up a whole new method of communicating within our churches. What if we were to incorporate some You Tube videos into things? We could use a You Tube ad to encourage small group attendance. The best part about this ad is that it would be created by church attenders. It allows those who attend to be involved in getting the word out about different areas of the church. I know that a lot of churches have Q&A services where the Pastor addresses various questions that people have. What if those questions were created in You Tube and you use a similiar format to Monday night? To me this format gives a more personal feel to the questions. You could identify the feeling and manner in which the question was asked. You Tube can be another tool that we utilize and there are really countless possibilities.
In January of every year, the talk always turns to resolutions and goals for the new year. In the last couple of years, I have fallen away from goal setting. My thinking was, why do it? The perfectionist in me was frustrated because I did not always accomplish my stated goals. I had the option to do one of two things, throttle back my goals or avoid setting them at all. I have been using the avoidance approach. However, the realization has come to me that I may not always reach my goals, but I will have made more progress than if I had never set a goal in the first place. Hence, this has led me to set a very aggressive personal goal of running a marathon in January 2008.
What does this have to do with processes and organizations? We as organizations should set goals. Ironically, organizations experience the same fear as people do in regards to goal setting. Organizations tend to ask these questions: "Are our goals too aggressive?" "Can we realistically meet this goal?" Organizations, like ourselves, will only progress and grow if we take the time for goal setting. Without them we will remain in the same situation with every intention of moving forward without actually taking any steps to do so.
The process of selecting a solution can be tedious, but the actual implementation can be even more daunting when the reality of change becomes aware to the organization. One of the steps in selection and implementation that I have overlooked (and I have seen overlooked) is that of leadership buy-in. In my opinion, the biggest factor in the success or failure of an implementation is not necessarily the implementation process, but rather the buy-in of leadership within your organization. At some point in the implementation time line, a crucial issue will arise typically related to the change in processes among staff. If your leadership does not have your back at this point, the whole process is in trouble.
Leadership buy-in is more than just having a signed contract. It is leadership that is solely committed to implementing a particular solution. I cannot tell you how many times I have seen an implementation be interrupted and torn out before it is ever put in place simply due to political issues.
How do we achieve leadership buy-in? In both the selection and implementation processes it is important to meet with your leadership team. Stress the importance of their attendance at demos. Ask them about what they like and dislike about particular solutions. Encourage them to meet with key members of their staff and include them in the process as well. Look at their processes and see how the implementation will alter and improve these processes. These sound like simple things, but they take a lot of time and effort that will pay off in the long run.
If major leadership changes are occurring or are about to occur, you may want to hold off on the selection and implementation processes until the new leadership is in place. This can help to save everyone time and energy in the long run.
We are all looking for that “perfect” item. We want the “perfect” fit, “perfect” car, “perfect”
house, and the list goes on. That is
true when it comes to technology as well; we are looking for the “perfect”
solution. The truth is that there are no
“perfect” solutions. Technology is
developed by humans and no human is perfect so therefore no technology solution
is perfect.
This reality changes the way that we evaluate technology solutions. Really, we are seeking the best solution
for our situation. Every solution has
drawbacks. Microsoft is a great example
of this. Microsoft is dominant in its
market, but yet there are numerous drawbacks to its solutions (i.e.: loading security patches all of the
time). However, there are a large majority of
organizations that have decided that the Microsoft solutions are the best fit
for them.
This is no different in the Church Management Solution
arena. When I was a Church Technology
Director, I went seeking the best solution for my church at the time. I did not like the fact that my current Church
Management Solution was dictating the upgrade path of my network infrastructure. The solution that we were using at the time
was not keeping up fast enough with current network infrastructure technology
(example: it did not run on Windows 2003
at that time and I was looking at upgrading our network to Windows 2003). From a network support standpoint, I also found
our current solution inefficient. I had
to make all of my users local administrators on their local computers in order
for updates to be installed without any interaction on my part. Otherwise, I would have had to visit every
desktop and install the updates when they were released on the client desktop
side. This is not a big deal if I have 5-10 users,
but when you are supporting close to 100 users in 3 different buildings, it
becomes a bit more tedious. Once again,
my vendor was driving my network setup.
In addition, I wanted our church staff to be able to access
the church information wherever they had an internet connection. If
some of our staff wanted to meet at a local coffee shop instead of a conference
room, they would still be able to access pertinent church information. To me it really allowed our staff to be out
in the community and still stay connected with the information that they
needed.
Another goal that I had was to improve some of our
processes. Our processes for managing
contacts were very interesting. A communication
card would be filled out during the weekend service and typically placed in the
offering basket. After the weekend
services, all of the communication cards were given to one Ministry Assistant
who sorted through them. This person
would then photocopy the cards and place the copy in the internal mailbox of the
proper ministry for follow-up. The
Ministry Assistant would then take the original cards and put them into an
Excel spreadsheet where the contacts could be tracked. However, that Ministry Assistant had a lot on
their plate so they did not always have the time to follow up to see if
contacts were completed. No other Pastor
had access to the spreadsheet so no one was able to keep track of how many
communication cards were turned in or what the status was as in the communication
process. I am sure that we had a lot of
people “fall through the cracks” as a result of this process.
The final priority for me in a solution was usability. I wanted something that was intuitive and
relatively easy to use. I have seen
solutions where I looked at the screen and I had no idea how to use the product. I wanted something that users could sit down
with and at least be able to figure out how to do the simplest of tasks on
their own.
The solution that I chose was Fellowship One. In my opinion, it was the best solution to meet the needs of my church at that time. As Technology Directors we have to each look at our own situation and see what the best solution to fit our needs is. Our goal is to implement technology to be used as a ministry tool. I still hold true that Fellowship One is the best solution on the market today. I believe that so strongly that I am now an employee of the company.
This is a question that every church is asked. Our CEO, Jeff Hook, talked in his keynote at
The Dynamic Church Conference about redefining who a first time visitor
is. Is a first time visitor someone who
walks through our doors or someone who clicks on our church web site for the
first time? Maybe our viewpoint needs to
change.
That dialogue started me thinking about church web sites in
general. Basically church web sites are
on-line billboards. There is not a lot
of interaction taking place. We advertise service times, service opportunities,
directions, staff, etc. However, if I
attend your church, what is my draw to ever go back to the web site. I have served on church staffs and rarely
went to my own church web site. I didn’t
need to. I was aware what was going on
from the Sunday publication and I knew the church location and service times.
Should there be more to our church sites? Interaction and customization seem to be the
name of the game with web sites. What if
we allow visitors to our site to customize what they see or even how they see
it? They could choose their own color
scheme and control their own content. We
can encourage use of our church web site with features like on-line
registration and on-line giving. So many
times I see a Pastor’s blog separate from the church web site. Locating that blog on the church web site
would be another way to encourage people to visit your church web site.
If we start thinking outside of the box, there are countless
ways to change our church web sites from on-line billboards to on-line tools
that allow our church to interact with people on-line as well as in person.
“… but what does it cost?”
In my days as Technology Director, I remember this question
vividly. This is always one of the first
questions asked (and rightfully so). There is a temptation to try to meet our
technology needs with the lowest priced solution. The low cost solution method can lead to more
issues in the future if we are not careful.
There is the old saying that you get what you pay for. Don’t get me wrong, I have implemented low
cost solutions in the past and in some cases it has worked out fine. However, in many cases this solution had to
be upgraded or completely redone in a very short period of time.
I understand that we have to maximize our limited resources. However, the long term cost of an inexpensive
solution can be more expensive than just purchasing the higher priced solution
in the first place. This cost is not
just measured in terms of the purchase price, but is reflected in the cost of
support and downtime.
We now live in an age that allows for us to be creative in
our purchasing solutions. E-bay is an
excellent starting point. I have found
many reasonably priced quality solutions here.
That is not applicable in all cases, and you always to consider the
source selling the item. Another option
is manufacturer outlets. Dell, for
example, has a site where we can purchase off-lease and returned equipment for
a discount. I have utilized this before
and saved a lot of money.
Balance is the key in weighing cost and solution. Sometimes this means making tough decisions
like delaying an implementation until the necessary funds are there. Another strategy is to stall until the pain
threshold gets to a certain point, and the funds needed magically appear (this
is rare, but it does occur). Another
strategy is to implement a low-cost solution on a “temporary” basis and to
budget for it to be upgraded in the near future. These are the tough decisions that we have to
make and we are the ones tasked with making these decisions.
The first thing that we look at when rolling out new software is the why. Why do I need it and what will it offer me. The second thing to look at is the cost. Can I afford it? Once we have gone through the reasoning of a software upgrade, we then develop the timeline. The first thing that has to be done is to make sure that your current software will work with the new operating system. It costs money to buy a computer to user for testing, but it will save you head aches later on. Test, test and continue to test. Most companies that I have worked for would not even consider implementing new technology for at least 6 months or until the first service pack has come out. Typically it was 6 months to a year before we started implementation of a new operating system. In getting ready to install, be sure to set a realistic timeline for installation. Give yourself time to troubleshoot the new installations before changing over your entire environment. i would always pick some people to beta test the new OS for me for a couple of weeks. It is a challenge to upgrade, but it can pay dividends for your organization.
Microsoft has a new software release out. As always there are things to like about it and things that make you a little scared. The bottom line for alot of us is what do we do with this? When should we implement this and what will it cost? I have worked in technology in many different industries over the past 10 years and I want to pass along some of the things that I have learned. The first thing I have learned is to take your time. Don't get caught up in the technology leaderboard trap. So many times we want to be the first to implement so we can say that we have the latest and greatest. This is NOT a reason to implement a new operating system. I know of companies that take that approach and it usually makes life pretty hard for them initially. What timeline should I have? I will cover that in my blog tomorrow.
Does how we handle our church business really matter? The answer is definitely yes. You would be surprised how many of your church vendors form a first impression of the church by the way that you conduct business with them. This means simple things like paying your bills on time and handling yourself in a professional way. It is the little things that will cause you to have a "reputation" amongst the local business market. If a church is always late in paying their bills, they become quickly known amongst your local business community. I just encourage you to remember that little things mean alot and that it does not take alot to make a positive impression in your community.
Streaming media is a big thing now. Finding the right solution,
especially for a church, can be very hard. I came across a great
solution this week called
LightCast Media.
Light Cast is a brand new company and they are already working with
several great churches on solutions. If you are looking for a solution
for streaming media be sure to check them out.