Podcast Episode 206: Episode 179: RX24 Recap

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This episode of Rockcast is brought to you by Rock partner Triumph Tech, a full service specialist partner. Rock partners provide crucial support for Spark Development Network and important services for the Rock community. Connect with Triumph Tech today at rockrms.com/partners. Welcome to Rockcast. This is the podcast that takes you behind the scenes with Rock RMS and Spark Development Network, and we're here today to break down Rx twenty four, which happened last week as of this recording. I'm Emily Forman. And, course, have with me here today Jon Edmiston and Nick Airdo. Alright, guys. What do you think about the event last week? Wow. It was way more packed than I thought it was. I didn't realize we had so many people signed up. We had people walking in and registering at the check-in stations. We did. So it was pretty exciting. Yeah. I thought everything just went off without a hitch, which was good because we were a little behind, I think we talked about that a little bit. Mhmm. Really sliding in the home plate there, but all the big stuff went on without a hitch and anything that didn't was really teeny tiny and the team did a great job responding to and thinking on their feet and yeah, it's that And we had a lot of surprises, we had a lot of new things that literally Yeah, new building, new renovation in the building. Right. Yeah, but even the technologies, we rolled out the check-in that we were doing, I mean that was literally sliding into HomePlate because we had to get the app published. Yep. And and then we had some Apple, Google Things. Hiccups. Challenges. Yeah. the whole two weeks before was just the devil It was. Beating us with a stick back and sores and forwards and in so many ways. So many. Even to the point of losing air conditioning here at the offices as we're trying to pack. And luckily, this is the time of year that you don't really need air conditioning. Oh yeah, it's optional really in August. Balmy. But at the end everything just came out smooth and the check-in was great. It was incredible. So many good comments on that front. Yeah, and that it was actually key to us because it's called Rock Experience for a reason, it's obviously a community meet up, but it's also where we want people to experience Rock and some of the new stuff for themselves, hands on, because some things you just can't cast vision for until you see and do. And so being able to have that express check-in with an SC and just touching your tags are printing and how those tags get printed, oh. Yeah. I wanna do cloud print. Paint. Magic. I wanna paint a little bit more of a visual for the people that weren't there. You walk up with your phone, you touch it to the to the reader as if you're buying groceries and there's no computer in front of that. Mhmm. And then there's a printer sitting right next to it and out pops your check-in labels. Yeah. And really the reader wasn't a reader, it's literally an inert NFC tag that you just touch. Right. Boom, it's you're deep linked into the app and you're checked in and celebration and confetti and your tags print. It was a magical experience. I saw people going, Wait, wait, can I try that again? Yeah, and videoing, they come back around and say, Okay, can we video our team doing it? Nobody's going to believe it. We still have while that is all done and working obviously, we still have some polish to do on that and we're actively working on that. We'll be starting that next week, this week is kind of a clean up of some other projects but yeah, I mean there's just everything just went so smooth. And we often will open up check-in on our pre day part way through and usually have our check ins kind of split between the pre day and then the morning of the first official day. And we did that this year, we had it open at both times as well. And people were so excited by that check-in experience. We had 74% of all people checked in on the pre day. Yeah. And that's a good thing for us too because we can always try a few on the pre day and if it doesn't go well we can get another day to kinda , Oh yeah, we're checking in tomorrow and we can take another swing at it, but yeah everything went so smooth that we didn't need to do that. Right, and so actually there was a product huddle as well about NFC, it seemed to be quite a hot topic at the conference this year. It was and that was a very informal kind of thing, but it was really cool because there's so many ideas going back and forth down there and we actually had some international churches there too and it was really kind of fun to see how does payment adoption going in Australia versus United States because everything I read, we're a little slow on the adoption on that. So it was really cool to see that and there's this really good insight I think into why NFC over QR codes that I had not even considered too. I don't think there's one versus the other, , , they don't think they're at battle, but some of the insights, it was just really cool as a community to be back and forth and having just a conversation at a pretty large scale, was a pretty full room. And that collaboration that you just mentioned is the key differentiator in a attend the conference experience or hear about it later and get the content. And this year there was so much connection happening, it just blew me away. Yeah, definitely saw a lot more connection than usual. And some of it, we tried to cast vision for that in the pre night, that was one part of the pre night that we were trying to cast vision for. But I just think people were just in the spirit of just trying to meet as many people as they could and a lot of our lunches were kind of us forcing that a little bit, trying to break up larger churches that came together and mixing people up so you could have a little bit more connections. It gives them a great excuse. If you are feeling a little bit nervous, you have no excuse. we took it away, you just gotta go follow the rules. Makes it easy to meet people. It does. It takes some of that nerve. I'm happy we do that. Yep. And then of course, had the evening and mixer events and Ran out of seating and space. Yeah. We need more chairs and more bigger rooms. That was surprising how many people were at the birds of the feathers and the consults. Yeah. And the number of people that came to the pre day this year was the vast majority of of everyone that came to the conference. So that seems to be something that's trending in the direction of, , everyone coming. Yeah. Just to touch on that, some people said, hey, it's it's a third day. Why don't you just call the three day event? I'm , listen, then we'd have to have the production company arrive at the date before that and we have to set up. So no. Right. It's just kind of bonus content. They do though already. They do for three rooms. I mean I walked in the night before the pre day and the main room was almost done. Those guys are just crazy how good they are. They are so good. The number of details, wish people could actually see backstage. Oh yeah. The backstage is pretty cool, they put up all this LED lighting on the floor and it's all orange and themed and it's really nice back there. And they do that partly for safety but also just to create an experience backstage too. We should have done a quick video We should have. Back there. They took it next level this year too, they put our logo really big right before the step out point to the stage and right before the green room entrance. I was hoping to get that, that was really cool. Maybe they did some video that they did. Oh maybe they do. Yeah. They probably do. They have a little viewing area. How many computers are back there? Oh my gosh. Yeah. There's six people back there and one guy has 12 monitors. It's Yeah. I don't know how he even knows what's going on where he had a mouse for each of those machines too. I I couldn't even They weren't all wired. Was , which mouse goes with which of these computers? And you're used to seeing that in your worship house. Mhmm. Yeah. Right? We've all seen that. But to see it set up and torn down for a three day event, those guys They're absolute professionals. We are so thankful for them because they just handle that whole aspect of our conference. They know us. They've been with us for a number of years now, right? Yeah. Nine? Yeah. The name of the company is Mosaic and we were talking with them this year. It is. It's nine years we've been doing a conference together and and they said, , it feels we've we've grown up together For sure. As organizations. Yeah. We've had and we've connect we've known them for even longer than that, from previous work experience at CCV. Yeah, they're amazing. And they really do add a lot to the event. They take a lot of stress off us. The first event we were going around trying to figure out , oh no, we need the longer HDMI cable. It's nice not to have to worry about that. Yep, they have it all under control. Yeah. So, yeah, I think the new technology rolled out well. IT OneSource of course, the pavilion, number of vendors, increased number of items to look at. I was actually looking at some of the photos and I didn't realize some of the technology that was there, I'm , should have gone, I really want to see that studio stuff, Maxwell studio stuff. So I kind of feel there's just too much stuff sometimes going to Disneyland, you can't get it all done in a day. That's true. And , just throughout the year, IT One is just one of those organizations that comes to us and asks how they can help and what they can do and it's really incredible They were sharing everything they contribute. Sharing tips at lunch at the table with people about, hey, you get half half dip, , half off if you go with this vendor if you tell them you're a nonprofit or a church. , they're just super valuable. Well, and I've even had them tell me, what, right now you can get that monitor you want cheaper on Amazon. Yes. And they're , we'll order it for you from Amazon, but you probably could do it yourself and so that's what I love, they're not about trying to get the most sales, they're about trying to help you out as much as they can and if that means sometimes pointing at Amazon and saying, , honestly it's probably cheaper, easier for you to order it from there, they'll do it. And , we talked about it in our preparation podcast as well, but they were so instrumental in helping with the WiFi situation this year. It was better than in past years but it was not without its fail points. But the reason it was better was purely because of their involvement. Yeah. I wish the hotel would just hire them. They'd probably save a lot of money from their current person and have a WiFi that actually worked. I did give them that explicit recommendation before we left. Are we gonna be talking about the pre night some more? I wanted to touch on Yeah. That. I mean, it was cool. We had a comedian. Yeah. And so everyone was laughing. What's his name? Mike Goodwin. Mike. Mike Goodwin. He was really funny. Then followed by a really impactful session that you gave John. I don't know what the title of it was, but I call it the Warrior Vision Casting. Yeah, I didn't really have a title, was just there was more just what we wanted to talk about. And we purposely didn't communicate what was going to happen in the pre night because we didn't want people to read about it and go and decide. We really feel you had to be there. You did. And that's what I wanted to say. , what a treat. For people who were the warriors or the apathetic warrior or the, , all the different types you talked about, It was just really it was really timely to hear that. I think a lot of people, know, myself included, people came up to me and said, I'm really glad, , he gave that session. And then I was thinking, yeah, it's too bad not everybody was at that session. Yeah. It is on on video on the On the content subscription. I did not know that. Okay. Good. Good to know. And I believe that one's , you can freely watch it. Don't think you have to pay for it even. Watch it at night after you watch a session from Mike Goodwin. Mike Goodwin is on YouTube, that's where I found him. He is funny. If you ever watch Drybar, it's a clean comedy channel and he was on, he's one of their bigger people. So Yeah, that was one of my favorites, so I'm going to mark that one off my list of favorites that we're going to talk about today. But , I think that brings up another topic too that I wanted to throw out, I know it's trite probably to say it but it was really God's conference. Yes. So many of the ideas, so many of the connections and how things all got linked together, I feel really came from God and we were kind of going, I don't know, are people really going to think he's funny? Yeah. Are people really going to be in the mood for this? How is the lead going to be from this really comedy, , session to then going to talking about this really serious kind of challenging topic? Is that going to be too much fire and ice? And so we felt this is kind of what we feel led that we need to do and honestly that session was not when I was I'd much rather talk about the technology. Leave the challenge to the other pastors and such, but I really feel that's what God put on our team's needs to talk about. But when it all comes off and people are , It's really great how they all work together, it's , Okay, cool, that wasn't us. But to see even through the whole conference, think there's so many ideas that we were , Yeah, we really feel this is what God's brought to us and what we should do, but the fact that he was the conductor of the orchestra and we were just playing the music that we're called to. I think a lot of times if you're in the orchestra, don't really know how the full music's gonna be. You can hear your part, you can see your part, but when it all comes together It's beautiful. Yeah. And we don't take credit for that. Yeah. And it was this year we brought in a whole new section of the orchestra, we brought in strings and it was the non Rock admins. The fact that there were non Rock admins, there was a pastor who taught an amazing session. There were finance people who taught amazing sessions and had talked to and networked with other finance people from churches. I thought that was profound. And communications teams, whole teams of communications people came this year. Yeah, there's a lot of communications people. We want to keep building that out, we want to keep improving that. I mean, I think there's some good feedback on how we can even make it better and give more space to people who aren't typically see themselves as the Rock administrator. we want Rock Yes. Rx to be about for everybody. But we need to provide content and space for that. And I think that was validated in the feedback that we got from some people in those areas. One, they were pretty enthusiastic about the fact that we had that space available this year in some regard, more than in previous conferences. Two, they suggested more of it for the future. And three, many of them said, and I'd to help be a part of that. I have some ideas I'd be happy to present. And I love that. That's the spirit of the Rock community. They got it. Because for the most part, those people were also at their first Rock event ever. And they just wanted to find out how to contribute so that they could make it better in their areas for next year. Yeah and I think there's always a desire to have all these niche conferences and I think if we can have a little bit more of a generic one, first of all, it's way more efficient to have those conferences. Second, it allows you to have salt and pepper, you can have a little bit of everything, you can create your own, and if it can all be centered around a technology that empowers so many different types of content then Bingo. Because I think there's the magic is, if you take communications by itself, yeah, there's some magic there. If you take technology by itself, maybe there's some magic there but when they work together, I always love that saying from Pixar, Art plus technology equals magic. And so at CCV our team was called Creative Technologies because we didn't want to be just creative we just didn't want to be technology, but marry those two, art plus technology equals magic, and I think that's much the same that we could do at Rx. And if you've ever struggled to try and recast the vision that you get at Rx up to your leadership team, how awesome was it that I had people come and tell me they brought part of their leadership team, the director of finance, and then that person came up to me and said, Oh, now I get it. Now I understand why they are asking for more people to come. I want to bring the whole staff next year. Oh, that's cool. So it's a great tool for everybody to help cast that vision back at the church. Right. And hopefully build connections across churches. I know at CCV there were people who had a lot of connections across churches, right? But there's a ton more staff who had zero connections to other churches. And I feel everybody who works at church had better know five, ten, 15, 20 other people at other churches. In your role at that Right, and cross pollinate and encourage because you're always gonna have a down day. Those are the roots of Rock too, if you think about it. Yeah. We really came out of that. , it started very local but then it even through the refresh cache, it was small. Well, I was thinking of the communication network that you had set up. Yeah. Everything with Rock was done out of , out of the spirit of community and that was open source and community that was kind of what was built on. From the beginning. And it's changed a lot, but in good ways. And it's the community that really powers us all. Don't hear the thing that we used to hear all the time is , Woah, I don't believe in Rock because there's no paid support. Excuse, I rarely if ever hear that because it's pretty evident to see it now. But yeah, in the beginning that was , Oh, this will never work. Could you believe the number of people with a badge on their name tag that said it was their first conference ever, the first Rock conference? Do we know what was the breakdown? I don't know what the breakdown was but it was very Alex was telling me the number, it was very high. It's very high. Which is really encouraging but at the same time, we all need to be consistently there I think because I think it could have been even better if those first timers had more veterans around them and I think the veterans would have got a lot more out of it too because it's encouraging to see them and them coming with unique problems but also things, it's sometimes refreshing when someone has had a problem that the answer to. you've been there, it almost feels good to help them out because It does. It's almost an easy question on rocket chat. Those are always great. , oh, that's an easy one. The answer is yes. It just reminds you of how far you've come yourself too. That's true. And we all have to ask questions sometimes. But we need, as humans, we need to be able to help other people. And so putting yourself in the places where you can help on something doesn't mean you have to help on everything. It's just really valuable. Yeah. And we're trying to find ways to make the conference even more accessible to even more people. And we don't have major plans that we can announce yet because we're still working on them. We're lucky to have this one in the rearview mirror now for just a few days. Right. But we are actively moving on the next one. RX25. Yeah. So no big announcements yet but it's definitely in the works. Yeah. And 're trying to do some new stuff so that's why it takes a little bit longer and it's not it'd be easy for us to just go, okay copy paste, but we just don't do that. I wonder if you should try that someday though. It might be a lot easier. What were some of your other favorite things? I thought the amount of community led discussion was just , I know we've talked about it but this is Yeah. It's so great to see people in whiteboard sessions in the whole rooms engaged and moving forward on topics and to realize , we had nothing to do with that. Sometimes this is trying and we've worked on this from day one, try to get out of the way to help point the community and then get out of the way and not limit its growth or its capabilities. Truly, right? I mean, we we really just are facilitating. Right. Rx 25, all the Rxs are pretty much just us facilitating. Yes. Getting us all together. Yeah. And providing just a little bit of direction, maybe just Yeah. Trying to spark. Sure. Yeah. And then and then quickly getting out of the way before the explosion. one thing that I found really funny, the hotel staff came to me on Thursday and said, our food and beverage crew is shocked by your crowd. And I thought shocked was a really strong word. I'm , why? What have we done? And she let us know that in the course of just Wednesday and Thursday, our crowd consumed 300 gallons of coffee, which was dispersed through four five gallon coffee urns spread around throughout the center. So they had people whose whole job was just running back and forth constantly refilling that coffee. John, as a coffee lover yourself, what do you think about that? Honestly? John's team tea. That's his. It's not wrong. But it ain't right. That is Michael Good. There's something wrong guys. Yeah. We need to we need to have a little talk. It's half a gallon per per person. That's a lot more than that because there's a lot of tea drinkers over here in the Right. John, what you're not gonna do is rip on all the coffee drinkers just because you're not one. That's true. I don't know. Sometimes there needs to be a rational voice. A rational voice. Speaking alone in the desert saying, prepare your way. Well, the hotel staff thought the same thing you did because they were shocked and came to find me to tell me, your people really their coffee, Now consider this, these people do nothing but this. Yes. So when we are the it's not , oh yeah, we thought that was funny, this was our first conference and we didn't expect that much coffee. These are people who do it all day. Every day, every week. When you set the blip on that We did. There was definitely something going on there. I think we needed that to get through the sixteen hour days. Yeah, , sometimes I use Maybe that's it. I use my I use Jesus for that. Oh. But if you need to use coffee, that's I guess He just burned us. Yeah. I guess Yeah. You're right. I want Christ within me to not let the chaos, , come in. Are you saying Christ and coffee are incompatible? Substitute sometime, perhaps. I don't know. We need a new topic, Nick. Come on, help us out. Might be alienating a large part of our audience. Yeah. Yeah. John doesn't mean it. Sure. John the Baptist had that same prompt too. Just kidding. Are we recording this? Unfortunately. That's an obscene amount of coffee though. Come on. It is an obscene amount of coffee. We can all agree that that's bizarre. Yeah. Yeah. There were some people not drinking any coffee. So that half pound is Yes. There were technically six sixty two people who officially checked in to Rx24. Who drank 300 gallons of coffee in two days. Plus Mosaic. And I know some friends and even some family that were there and then drank nothing. And that's not the water or the sodas or the tea, that's just I can tell you tea drinking there was at a minimum because the tea drinkers leave behind the tea bags. Oh sure, evidence. You can see, and the wrappers, so you can kind of see and it was always very minimal. Maybe we should have RX25 in London, I think you'd have a significant increase in tea consumption. Yeah, Perhaps. I'm not sure it's a I mean, I'd love to have it in London, but I'm not sure our accessibility would be super high there. Travel costs might go up a bit. Yeah. Okay. Well, we're still working on that one. Yeah. It would be nice to have at least a couple team tea people in the office here. It's a lonely bunch. There's some tea , Oh, I tea, but I prefer coffee. So that That's me. I drink tea in the afternoon if I need something. Mhmm. But coffee is my get going in the morning. Yeah. Okay. Well enough about coffee, I didn't mean to derail the entire conversation, but we introduced something new Just a coffee drinker, if I'm being honest. Oh my. And this episode is brought to you by Folgers. We needed we needed a coffee sponsor. We did need a coffee sponsor. We'll get on that. Alright. Well, don't look at the tea guy for that. So John, this year we introduced something by popular demand, which was feedback on speaker sessions and rolled that out this year so that speakers could get some of the information back from those who attended their sessions to continue to refine for their audience what they were saying. And get it back fast. within ten minutes in some cases, you're looking at the feedback, which was really cool. Yeah. That the technology powering that. Mean, it's all powered by Rock, right? Of It's not rocket science even to wire that all up, it's effort. And everything takes time and everything that takes time is funded by money and you get to play your chips and you can't do it all. But there was a lot of feedback about wanting feedback. Yes. So we gave them feedback. And now we have feedback on feedback. Unplays for us. Think it's helpful because, , I think a lot of people in the feedback said, some of the speakers were this was game changing for them, that they could level up, that they could improve and that's exactly right, yeah. And there is a lot there. There's a little feedback though that they didn't the feedback. Know, feedback's difficult because I think we're not trained on how to deal with feedback. And you have to realize that the majority of the feedback is helpful and some of it's not. Some of the super positive stuff honestly isn't super helpful. It's good for our ego, but , there's some people say something nice about anything and our friends, , much more. And that's good, , don't change that. But just sometimes you have to realize, okay, probably 10% of this feedback is good for the spirit but not really good for helping move forward. And then on the opposite side, there's feedback that's just not helpful. Or it feels very not helpful or it's not almost on the borderline of being unkind, right? And not valid. True. And I think there's two types of that. I take that kind of slant and I cut it in half. Some of it I would read and go, Okay, is there truth to this? And sometimes you'd say, No, this is not true. Or It's not valid. For example, someone said on the second keynote, It felt a sales meeting, I didn't it. And my first reaction was , Well that's what it was, because this community is the sales So it's kind of , Okay, well that's wrong. But the deeper level is no, what I probably didn't do a good job of was messaging that part out , Hey guys, we're not a corporation, we're not a vendor, we're a community and one of our roles as a community is to help churches onboard onto Rock. And so I think the feedback there, could have been easily dismissed as being , No, that's not, that's what I was trying to do so therefore that's not valid feedback. But the deeper level was, No, there's an I didn't sell the vision for new people on that, right? So sometimes you have to kind of take the feedback and bend it a little bit to figure out what was what were they trying to really communicate and what was really the problem. But then to , know, Nick, what you said, there's this feedback that's just unkind and not Sometimes. Or you have to understand the motivation and once you understand the motivation you can be , Okay, that's not a valid thing. Want something different that I can't provide. Yes. And I think you just need to take that feedback and just almost just throw it away. You got to throw it out of your heart. If that leads you to not want to present again, then that's not good. Now I had wished you had never seen that, first off, if I could talk to that person, I wish you had never seen that, because there's just some, in a group of anybody's, even a great community ours, there's going to be some toxic, something that just seeps out from some people more than others, but honestly it comes out of all of us. We're all fallen, , humans. So I wish you had never seen that. I mean, I get it too. Yes. I I had someone literally come up to me in person and literally say that they wish that I, me, it was very pointed, it was me, spent more time considering what's best for the community. Gosh. And I was , okay, well we can argue about a lot of things but the effort you can't argue about. No. I'm not trying to pat myself on the back, but effort is not a problem I have, right? We can maybe say, , am I successful at it? Or do I have all the right points in the right priorities? Are my priorities correct? we can argue those things, but you can't argue effort. No, because you work two shifts, not many people realize this, but you work from 6AM. Yeah, but that's, I mean, that's to some point that's not the point, don't want But they can't talk into the effort because they don't see the effort, some of us do. Right, so what do I have to do with that? I have to understand the motivations that, okay, this was a sponsor of the event, so it wasn't a community member. So I have to say, okay, well obviously my motivations of how I think the community needs to be helped and how he thinks I should help in relation to what his motivation is, which obviously is going to be about their product, are two different things. And yeah, I don't think what I should come away with was , I don't work hard enough. It's , Okay, I understand, our motivations are different, they're not always going to align and that's probably okay, . I can't help everybody, especially if it's relying on one other, one specific product. Okay. And I and so you have to dismiss that a bit and not let it hurt your heart or cause you to want to work less, because a lot people get , Well, darn it, , I'm not going to work hard, I'll show you. I'll just go back to work in regular hours. And I don't think that's what God wants and I don't think that's what the community wants. So, I would just say if felt hurt by some of the feedback, put it through those two lenses, some is truth, but slightly off angle and try to realign it to what they probably meant and or maybe what you could do to do better and then some of it you just gotta throw away. Toss it out. Yeah, you can't store that up in your heart because it will just get pretty bitter. Yeah. And , sometimes as humans we can have 10 people say they something and one person say they didn't and what do we What do we remember? Yep. It's so true. And the other thing to keep in mind is, Nick, you mentioned how fast that feedback comes in and that's great. But at the same time, something that you do as a first draft really fast isn't always a polished thought. And so it can be easy for something where you meant something constructive to really come off as actually just criticism. And it might be that there's just a lack of time for polished drafting potentially in some of that feedback. So just realize too, people are moving fast. And I have personally found that often what's in writing versus when I talk to somebody face to face, that person may come off very, very differently. And sometimes the writing feedback just has what feels a little bit more pokiness to it and that person may not even mean that. Yeah and I think I saw a lot of feedback that maybe the session wasn't exactly what the person it was supposed to be. Yes. And some of that feedback you might have to say, well that's not my know, look at your session title. Yes. Was it accurate and good? Because sometimes we try to get too clever and that helps get people to your session, but sometimes it confuses them too. But honestly, some of that might be on us too, we need to do a better job of, in the app, making sure people know what they're getting. So some of the feedback that you got might have been more the feedback we needed to see. So don't accept that into your heart either if it's not on you. But don't let it not make you want to do it again. I got feedback a year or two ago that said, I wish you would just speak only about technology and not try to motivate people. And what I thought, yeah me too. I wish I only talked about those things too, but sometimes I feel God lays it on your heart to say, what, this community could do, could literally change the world. Yeah. If we could all move forward and fight the spiritual battle. So what do you do with that? , no, God, don't think so. In fact, I got feedback last year saying don't do that. I'm just talking about Zebra printers. From one person. Maybe it says you can do better job at that. But I don't think you can turn away from what it was and Right. Because I honestly didn't want to do that pre night conversation at all. But Right. But I felt that's so many things had just kind of landed and I'm , okay, well, this is I really feel this was what's on the heart that I'm supposed to do. And so don't don't let it stop you from doing it again. And here's something I might say as a quick antidote, , obviously you've shared some things, John, that you've heard in feedback a long time ago. I've had really similar experiences with some things that you never forget what's said. You just have to learn to detach the emotion from it. One recommendation I have if something still feels really fresh is think about the sessions you attended and somebody who just really knocked it out of the park and write them a note or send them a rocket chat message and just tell them how much their session impacted you and the things that you thought went so well with it. That kind of thing is really just healing and you can take the time to polish your message, which someone may not have had time to do there. And maybe they're going through the same thing for something that they received as well. It's just a really healing exercise I think. That's a really good point too. I mentioned that I had feedback once that said don't only talk about technology, don't try to motivate I had someone rocket chat me after the pre night that said, Hey, that was probably the best thing I've ever heard you say. the best way you did it, the best delivery. And so that that cancels out a lot of that self doubt that you should never talk about that. And so someone took what, I don't know, thirty seconds a minute? Yeah. But how valuable is that to somebody? It's worth its weight in gold, right? But our efforts are so small and but value to the other person is so huge. It is. And also realize that it doesn't always naturally cancel out one to one. Right? So people, , you can't over You can't give people who deserve it too much positive feedback. Because they're probably this self critical kind and and everyone, , takes about 10 positive things to really neutralize it. Yeah. But a but a quick rocket chat It's a great idea. So easy, so fast, but it will mean so much to the person. And it makes you feel better too. Yeah. Yeah. It does. Best thing to do if you're depressed is serve somebody. So, , I'd probably just kind of want to close that out, just a reminder from the pre night, because I honestly believe it's true, even though it's a big, big thing to say. If the people who are just at the conference were to just engage fully in the spiritual battle, see themselves as the warrior, level up their skill sets, double down on their efforts, even if that means having to work a few extra hours a week, or hours a month, we're not talking work double time, but if you spent twenty minutes extra a day, or a half hour a day, we could literally change the world. Now you might say, why wasn't that the conference? Well if anybody, if just the people listening to the podcast would do that, would literally change the world. And if the whole community did it, we would definitely 100% change the world because 1% of Americans are actively attending a Rock church. So if we can impact that 1% and that will grow because they'll reach out to other people if we do it right, Other churches will continue to come to Rock and they'll come even more faster if we're having that impact, just proof there. 9% of all Americans are in a Rock database. Contact information is in a Rock database. If we can reengage them again, have such an opportunity because we have a skill set that can magnify and amplify the vision and strategy of our leaders. We have technologies that are just amazing. Multiplier. And we have a platform that runs it all. Is it perfect? No. We're making it more better? Yes. Are we adding features every day? Yes. Are we fixing bugs every day? Yes. Definitely. So it's not perfect, but it is a pretty amazing tool that we've all built together. Yes. And if we just continually daily make ourselves better, 1% better every day, we're unstoppable. And God's there right with us going, Let's go! And unfortunately there's some push back from the other side that discourages us, but we just have to say, turn that discouragement into the motivation to move forward. And distractions. Discouragement and distractions. And I would say, maybe on some podcasts there will be more time to talk about it, that is the discouragements of the last year that has basically fueled me in different new ways. Yeah. Even that whole pre night came out of discouragement. It was a % created out of discouragement. It's , okay, we'll show you up, Mr. Devil here. If you're gonna come at me this way, I'm just gonna double down. Because the goal is for you to go silent. Yeah. You can rain on my parade, you can tell me all the things that See, that's not fair, is it? Yeah. Isn't that terrible that that happened? Yeah. Boy. Or it's gonna be , okay, well maybe you messed with the wrong person too. And not that you go out fighting on your own, you have to fight under God's protection you don't want do crazy stuff, but it doubles down and say, Hey, no, I'm not going to let that discourage me. In fact, I'm going to be more encouraged. So I would just say the same for you, if you're weary, if you feel nothing's going right, just double down because this community will change the world, could change the world. I'm not sure it will because that's up to us. We have to God's given us all the tools, we have to pick them up and go. But I don't think there's ever been a better time or a better need right And you used the phrase of an army of allies during that presentation as well and that's what I really think can correlate so strongly to this community. If many of us rise up with the same attitude, that's exactly what we have here. I think it was kind of funny as I was putting together that list, was just kind of rolling over a couple weeks, when I got to Army of Allies, I'm that's certainly the case, every warrior, you can't fight alone. Right. You have to write shoulder to shoulder. I'm , but look what God provided. Yeah. He's built this community. Amazing. It's , check that box if we want it, it's super easy now, but we have to engage with that community and lock arms. It just seems he's created the perfect weapons, the perfect soldiers and now we have to pick up those weapons and do our thing. Yeah. So and I do believe that the community could change the world if we let it, if we do our part. So take the momentum from last week, don't be discouraged because that discouragement is meant to stop you. Take the momentum and push it forward. Use it to move the things inside your space where you are that will move ministry forward. And there are opportunities in front of you. So take a minute and consider what are those and who might I partner with and what messaging needs to be had and what strategies in front of me. And watch the sessions you didn't get a chance to while you were there. Or if you weren't there, tune in. The content subscription is live. And the cool thing about that content subscription is you buy it once and everyone at your organization has access to it. As long as they have a Rock account and they're connected to your organization, they can watch all of the sessions. Had, I think we had 101 sessions, I believe, that people left feedback on. So 101 sessions there. Your whole organization has access to it and you get access to every previous conference and all of that content as well. So talk about the training and the tools needed to be able to level up, it's available there. And you can watch it on your Apple TV, which is the best way to watch Yeah. But you have to set aside the time. I would Do it. Literally go, what's my goal here? How many hours am I going to spend doing this? And you might say, oh, twenty. But I would probably say, let's start lower, . Well, we have, I think at least two people that have already put in about twelve hours of content watching so far. But set it I would say, set a goal of , start with six and book it on your calendar and don't miss it. Yep. Yeah. That's smart. You'll probably be much more successful if you start with a smaller goal, say I am guaranteeing myself in the next two weeks of doing six hours and I'm booking it on my calendar and I'm not missing it. I'm going treat this as importantly as a meeting with a senior pastor. And then when you're done, you can then pick another goal of another six hours. But if you don't, I know I have a bar that I'm gonna I'm gonna watch them half the sessions by, , before Christmas. And I watch some, but do I ever get to half? No. But I I need to do a better job. Just start small and be consistent. And put it on the calendar. Yeah. Yep. And one other thing we haven't mentioned, just wanna give a quick plug for. We finally rolled out the LAVA class at the conference this year. So don't forget about that and the excitement of all the other things we talked about and did. That class is available with two different registrations open, one for November of this year, one for January of next. If you didn't attend Rx you might have missed that in all of the other many things that we've been putting out. So make sure that if that's something you've been looking forward to, you pick the time slot that's going to work for you and get that scheduled. Because I imagine we're probably going to fill up. Yeah, and if you were at the conference today as recording of the podcast, all of our AI videos are going out. Our AI music videos, so you might wanna check those out. Those are so fun. Some of them will probably resonate with you. Yes. Yep. Well thanks for tuning in and allowing us to share some of our thoughts and recap about the event last year. We're already looking forward to next year and just realize that we pay attention to all of the feedback we get, whether it's through the survey processes or the things that you tell us and share with us and our own observations. We look to level up every year and move the conference in a direction that really benefits the community. So thanks for your support in that. And thank you for tuning in for this podcast. Be sure to subscribe if you haven't already so you don't miss the next one. Do a church that loves the idea of using Rock but hasn't taken that leap yet? With managed hosting, churches of any size can get access to Rock's amazing technology, hassle free. With just one click, Rock's managed hosting removes the roadblocks that might stop a church from switching to Rock by making the process simple. 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