We are also going to try something new that I am calling Vendor Flavor. Rolls off the tongue doesn’t it? VENDOR FLAVOR. Here is the bottom line of that part of the event:

6 vendors each demo their product in 7 minutes and then have 3 minutes to answer questions and get off the stage.

I’m really excited to be able to host this event at our church and to get to know all these very capable IT people in other churches. If you know anyone working in IT or Web in a Florida church or ministry, please be sure to let them know about the upcoming event.

This blog post is to gauge interest in a Florida Regional Church IT Roundtable event. We seem to have a group in the Tampa area and others along the East coast of Florida from Orlando to Miami. Redundancy could be a good thing, so let’s talk it out in the comments below about what everyone is looking for, if people are willing to drive, and what the focus could possibly be for the event. Whether we land on two gatherings or one, I think it would be good for Florida churches to represent better through some networking, fellowship, and knowledge-sharing.

A Couple Options

I have tentative approval from Christ Fellowship leadership to host a regional event in January on our main campus. If you are unfamiliar with this type of an event and this loose coalition of geeks, here are the topics of discussion they meet on periodically in regional and national meet-ups. Since next year appears to be a tight year financially for many of us, I thought a low-cost training opportunity (typically $50 per person including 2 meals) might be of interest across the many disciplines of Church IT (Websites, Network, Information Systems). We could decide to include vendors in this gathering or not. I tend to want to hold it to just a few sponsor companies ($500+ donation in cash or hardware for give-aways?) so the focus stays on the community of churches. Then again, many of us use contract labor to augment our full-time staff, and they probably should be equally as welcome.

Large Potential Participation

There are roughly 500 churches of size in Florida that might be interested in such an event, including 11 of the largest 100 churches in America. I feel that if we can get participation confirmation from a few influential churches in Florida, many of the other churches interest will rise and our event marketing will go that much easier. For this type of unconference event, you need a broad perspective and so the more participation the better. I think the maximum number of participants my church could reasonably host would be 200 people. Most other regional IT Roundtables call 15-30 people a huge success so I am not that worried about having more people than we can all connect with.

My Thoughts on Focus

In thinking about this since the Fall ‘07 Roundtable at COR, I have been feeling a strong desire for the focus of this first gathering to be on Disaster Preparation/Recovery/Response, Storage and Backups, and Network/System Monitoring/Reporting. Agenda is driven by the participants, but these items seem to have a uniquely Florida focus to them that we may not cover as in depth at a national roundtable event.

Kevin McCord of Oasis church shared with me his thoughts by email:

I would propose having that topic with a fairly broad scope. In a world with hurricanes, arson, and terrorism the following could well become just as important to the disaster response and recovery:

• Internet Campuses (for when the church building is unavailable)
• 3rd Party Hosting to Supporting Web Applications (through disasters)
• Moving to Gmail/Google Aps (they have your data)
• IT support in a multi-site environment (some disasters are campus specific)

But When?

I am thinking Monday January 19th or the 26th might work great since it is after the weekend and pastoral staff take off Mondays at many of the churches. This might also give those who want to drive in on Sunday an opportunity to worship together and then go tour some of the larger churches along the east coast to see what they have going on.

Ok, So Now What?

If you are at a Florida church working in IT or Web, please let us all know what you think about the idea. If you have connections with other churches with IT leaders, feel free to check-in with them to see if the event seems like it would be of value for their staffs. I hope we’ll narrow down a day/date quickly and start preparing. If someone else wants to head this up and drive it, I am happy for that to happen as well. Just want to see it happen! So, everyone jump in here and let us know if you want to participate, when works best, and how many people you might bring.

For those of you following the IT Roundtable going on at COR this mid-week, listen to the linked file below to see what cool worship you missed out on last evening. This is totally bootleg I admit. Grabbed it with two clicks on my Mac during the song. I would give attribution for their work, but I frankly couldn’t remember anything else after a great day of fantastic discussion. Someone else help me out with their name and summary/link of the church where they play. Was a neat vibe. Church IT Roundtable Worship mp3.

National Church IT Association

Also, we will be talking at some point in the day Thursday about the prospects of a national IT association. Since I won’t be able to stay the whole afternoon and could miss the discussion, I thought I would link back to a post I did on the subject a long while ago title What Ministry Technology, Church IT, and Web Ministry People Have in Common. My feelings haven’t changed too too much, but let me summarize my main points:

• “Church IT” overlaps with Web Ministry. This becomes particularly true with open protocol APIs, web-based applications, intranet/extranets, and integrations of ChMS and CMS. Media and Communications are also both converging with web and traditional IT.
• The Ministry Technology cloud is huge and it is just beginning to coalesce. We should focus on the identification and discovery of the network nodes rather than the formation of another walled garden. We know technology so lets do technology. Leave group formation and organization to the denominations who do it so well.
• We need more glue and less groups. We already have:
  • Established Organizations, Meetups, & Conferences
    International Christian Technologists Association
    National Religious Broadcasters
    ICCM
    Christian Management Association
    NACBA
    ECFA
    Campus Crusade for Christ
    MinistryCom
    Nonprofit Technology Network
  • Group Blogs, Forums, & Listservs
    BetterMinistry.com
    United Methodist Church
    IT-Roundtable
    GodBit
    Church Marketing Sucks
    eMinistry Notes
    ChurchBit Google Group
    TechSoup
    ChMS Discussion
    IT discuss
    Church Tech Blogs
• What we need for glue is an unconference template for regionally-based meetups (at a frequency the local participants desire) all over the world with no significant, centralized overhead. No formation costs. No risk assessments. No insurance. The meetups should be open to traditional IT and Web people in churches and para-church ministries.
• What we need is an approach similar to bitshepherd.com for opening up, syndicating, and aggregating the ministry technology discussions. We need more discovery than this to be able to reach deep into the community that is forming.

In that old post I go into much more detail about what I am saying and not saying, but this is believe it or not the overview of my dissent.

I am more broad than deep in my knowledge of Information Systems and Web. While those in my sidebar geek out at levels I will never attain to, I prefer to live high in the clouds of staff productivity, budgeting, IT governance, strategic planning, social engineering, user experience, staff culture, enterprise integration, internet marketing, Web 2.0, social networking, etc. Sure, I come down from the 50,000+ level to manage my team, but someone needs to be dreaming about what is up next and where we are going. I believe God has wired me and prepared me for that. Staying grounded and in the day to day is of course critical for my knowing enough to prepare the way for the folks who really do the hard work. Thankfully I have landed at a place where I can do all of what I love and just a little of what I don’t.

I pray what I externalize on this blog for my own use will be beneficial to others as well. Things are moving so fast in my new role and I know I will want to look back on it and see from where I have come. I also hope that others will begin to ask me questions and challenge my conclusions more. For over a year on this blog I have been talking mostly with myself. So consider this an open invite to engage me, become a part of what I am doing, and let me be a part of what you are doing. If I can help in any way, let me know.