Podcast Episode 203: Episode 176: Behind the Scenes - RX24

Description

Join us as we go behind the scenes at RX24 to give you an exclusive preview of what to look forward to at our upcoming conference. Discover the exciting sessions, meet the speakers, and get insider tips on making the most of your experience. Whether you're a first-time attendee or a seasoned pro, our podcast will help you prepare for everything RX24 has to offer. Tune in for a candid look at the highlights of the conference. Don't miss out!

Transcribed Content

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 for the Rock community. We're gonna take you behind the scenes into what we're doing here at Spark Development Network to move forward the product, the community, and in this case, the conference. Thanks for joining me. I'm Emily Forman, and we have Nick Airdo and Jon Edmiston, and we are going to give you a little peek behind the scenes today on what we're doing around here. Nick, first of all, let's start off with where are we with the Rock platform and what version is happening where? Absolutely. We are hot on version sixteen six. So version sixteen six is in alpha testing, and our alpha testers have been on fire this week and last week. They're finding, in some cases, they're finding bugs that aren't even unique to version 16.6, or just bugs that were in Rock. So that's great. Love our alpha testing and beta testing team, but they've been giving us a lot to go run after and look at. So we've been patching. I think we have four little patches to the alpha to just address and make sure they're all really resolved. And then we're at the end of that. So probably by next week, this will be going to beta. And for sure this should be done well before the conference. , I don't think, I think it's scheduled to be done the week before or two weeks before the conference. It'll depend on what else we find during beta. Mhmm. But sixteen six has a lot of bug, , fixes and and some little micro features in there. Just don't update and then go right to the conference. No. Why would you wanna do No. It would ruin your conference experience. Yes. I mean, it could. Hopefully, wouldn't, but don't tempt fate. Yes. That's the key. Well, a huge thanks to our alpha testers. It sounds they have been incredibly helpful and productive. Yeah. Absolutely. , we we want you to pass along our thanks to your churches that are lending your time and energy. Because not only is it helping your church, you're helping all the churches that are using Rock. And it's just really helped the quality of Rock. I feel way better than I did two years ago with releases. We do as much testing as we can possibly do. Now we have a Rock Integrity specialist who does quality assurance. But even, , they that person doesn't have your data in in your environment. And so you guys have things that we don't have. And it's just a blessing. So thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Yes. And the and Rock is so flexible. There are so many ways to use the features in addition to the specificity of of individual datasets. It's just a an incredible blessing that we have so many people involved. It's been a little while, Nick, since we plugged how somebody can get involved as an alpha tester. Can you share that? Yeah. On the community site, there is a, I think it's slash get involved. There should be a tab on the left sidebar, and just go in there. You'll see some areas that you can sign up for. One of them is called be an alpha and beta tester. You can click on that, read through it. If that sounds something you can do, yes, by all means, do that. And again, you will be helping yourself and everyone else. Right, and that's not always the best fit for everyone. So definitely make sure it makes sense with your workflow, with your environment, with your availability. And don't worry if it doesn't, that same get involved page has probably seven other ways you can get involved no matter what your skill set is, no matter what your background is. There are plenty of ways that you can help move things forward. And everything else here at Rock, we could not do it without this incredible community. Have so many people involved in so many areas, but we can always use more. That is very true. So RX is coming up. Oh, yes. I was thinking about this today in preparation for the podcast. Rx really is the best investment your church can make in technology right now. And I think there definitely is cost, understandably. You have the cost to get into the event, you have the travel costs. They are significant. But despite those significant costs, really is one of the best investments you can make. And here's some reasons why. First of all, it's a cheat sheet. You come to this conference, you're gonna be able to look off other people's answers and homework. You're gonna find some things that, hey, that really works well for us. And it's gonna leverage you so much quicker to roll out those ideas. Literally that one point alone will make back all the money you spent on the conference. It probably had a magnitude of several factors. You're literally going to come watch other people what they've done, you're going to learn from their mistakes and you're going to get A lot of them have handouts, cheat sheets. You'll be able to go zero to 60 in no time on a lot of these projects. And how many how many different sessions do we have? We have 80 sessions. 80 sessions. And that's not including the pre day. So we have another 12 on the pre day. We have almost a hundred sessions of quality content that will help move things forward. And having been to many of them myself, all of them myself, every single session is gonna have some form of nugget, gold nugget that you can take home. Some of them are gonna be large nuggets that could really move the needle for you and some of them are gonna be small nuggets. Even a couple small nuggets are easily gonna pay back the investment that it costs to travel and to get there. That's just one though. I mean, it's also training. The amount of training that you're going to get is well worth the money alone itself. On top of that, the networking, you're gonna meet people, you're gonna build relationships that are gonna last your career if you let them. many people who've been to all of them, they're great friends, they look forward to reconnecting at the conference and consistently connect on Rocket Chat. The networking alone is worth the money that you're about to pay. It is. Do you ever have one of those moments where you're , I know somebody has figured out how to do this in Rock, but you don't know who to ask? You will know by the end of this conference. Yeah. And these contacts are just good for so many different things. Sometimes you may not even know you need to know something, and by talking to them or by building that relationship, they'll share with you something that they're working on, then all of sudden you're , Oh my gosh, I didn't know I needed that. Thank you. It also helps you prep for the future. how do what to do in the future if you don't know what's coming in the future? By knowing and seeing what's being talked about, gives you the ability to understand that it exists and to start thinking about it even before it's released. And the last point is encouragement. I know there's a lot of people out there who are working really hard and in ministry that's difficult. And there's times when you just need encouragement. And we actually are gonna be talking a lot about these points at the conference in a way that we haven't really in the past. And networking is gonna be, for instance, we're gonna put a heavy emphasis on helping people connect and network. But it's also gonna be a big piece about that in terms of encouragement, to help refill your tanks. And so you can go home feeling encouraged. Every one of these points, I think in of itself, more than pays for the investment. And some of the investment is the money and some of it's the time. But all together, I mean, man, there really should be something that is keeping you other than any of that. And I would just really take that prayerfully into consideration and be , if I'm not coming, why am I not coming? And is there any way, even if it's just one person on your staff to get there to make it happen. That's a great list. And I would say even a component of the networking is the sponsors that come. So you have the opportunity to bring your list of things you either want to add to your services or something that you wanna understand what the opportunities and options are. And in one consolidated location and period of time, you can connect with and interview a number of sponsors in any given area that will help illuminate what you need to do as next steps when you get back home. So that can actually save you quite a bit of time. Yeah. So we are in the midst of all this Rx stuff. I mean, it's been that way for many months, but as we go into the final month, it gets a peak pretty insane of all the things. We thought it'd be fun just to kind of peel back the curtain, pull it back and maybe talk about some of the big things that we're working on and maybe a lot of the small things things that people wouldn't consider. I thought it would be kind of fun to talk about that. I'll throw out one real quick is, , we always try to It's called Rock Experience for a reason. We want people to experience Rock and that means the community, of course, but it also means even some of the newer things in Rock. We wanna actually put them to use cast vision, show them those things. So , in check-in. If you've been listening to the podcast, that we've been working on that our next gen check-in and it is our goal to be using next gen check-in at the conference. So not only would the kiosk check-in be the next gen check-in, but we'll also be using an express check-in. That's gonna be based on NFC. And so you can just tap and be checked in. So please tip, if you wanna use the express check-in, please come with the mobile app installed and updated and be logged in. Yes. And if you do, you'll be fun. If you don't, you're going over the kiosk, which is still gonna be great. Which is not a bad experience at And it's fast. But all of it is using the next gen tools, and there's some other things that I won't even mention about check-in that will be happening that we will explain during the keynote. So super fun. That's one thing that we've been kind of running and gunning getting new labels, all the stuff that we need for that. And NFC chips, oh my gosh. This is such a deep hole of NFC, how many different chip types there are and how much memory can each chip type hold and which one is the best one and then getting with the vendor to find the right puck that is what we want. There's all these different printing options. We've learned a lot. If a church wants to know about NFC and how to order NFC pucks and stickers and all that stuff, we're here for you. And even having backup plans, if that one doesn't come in on time, here's our plan B and C. It's been hectic, but fun. So NFC is gonna play large into the check-in and hopefully maybe some other things. We're definitely partnering to bring NFC with some new features in Rock, which are gonna be exciting. We'll talk about the conference and being able to work even with other minded people who have a similar vision for NFC in this space, my well, working with them to align what we're thinking and kind of some of the ideas that they have. So we'll be talking more about that at the conference. But yeah, what are some of the stuff that you guys are working on? Well, the IT OneSource Pavilion last year had rave reviews. And if you weren't there, this was a large area in the center of our sponsor space and meal space where IT OneSource helped coordinate, I think it was maybe 10 or 15 different vendors that brought in and had little stands in this central area and brought things in different pieces of technology that you could get hands on with. And people loved it. So we're bringing that back again this year and we've been coordinating with them to help organize who's coming and they just finished their registrations of all of their , sub sponsors that are coming in for that. So we're very excited about that and that coming back. There's just quite a bit of coordination. But speaking of IT OneSource, they've just been so invaluable in helping us coordinate with the hotel itself regarding WiFi for the event. How is that important? Is WiFi important? Minimally, yes. I vaguely remember something last year about WiFi being kind of important for a new technology that we're trying to have people experience. Yep. And WiFi just Yep. The interactive experience. Thank you, Nick. That was appropriate. That was very appropriate. Unfortunately, the WiFi at the hotel is not something we can control. No. But it is really important for our Well actually, to peek a little bit further behind the curtain, that was one thing that we got so frustrated that we decided we were gonna do it. Remember? Yep. Actually, NewSpring was gonna donate some of their older gear, we're gonna actually put up our own WiFi. Yes. And then we realized that that had other It wouldn't solve the problem. That the hotel was causing. Yes. And so we couldn't do that. Right. So we've been working with the subcontracted services of the hotel, which is maybe four vendors deep. It's a little bit complicated. Trying to understand the configuration of what they have there, where their access points are, how their DHCP is configured, what their actual bandwidth is, and and it's Antenna types on the Wi Fi access points. Exactly. Omnidirectional. And IT OneSource has been invaluable. I mean, this is obviously in their lane and they're the experts, but they've visited the hotel on-site and they've tested live events to see what's possible and been syncing up in a series of video meetings with the hotel's vendors to try and help get some things put together. So there's still a lot up in the air on that front. Paul is a volunteer for us on our Unbelievable. I mean, an incredible amount of generosity and Why is that the hotel doesn't just drop everything and just go, IT one source, could you just can we pay you to fix this? I've I've suggested that. why wouldn't you? It's they have all the answers. Certainly they do. So that's a still a moving target to a degree, but we are, for this conference, looking to get a dedicated network for the presentation. I'm sure we're the only conference that needs WiFi. That's probably why. It's probably That's probably why. I can't imagine that anyone else needs So that was a small big topic. The WiFi is an ongoing discussion, but we're we're working on it and we'll be it will be better than last year. Yeah. And we're deep into the content creation too. In fact, we're probably a little behind on that, if I'm being honest from previous years. I know I'm working on eight hours of PowerPoints between all the different sessions, and I'm not doing all the work. Have a person on our team who's been invaluable in helping assist with that. But boy, he and I are knee deep, waist deep, hip deep, neck deep. John, have you ever calculated how much time it takes to create slides for an a one presentation? No. , minutes to minute ratio is crazy. It starts months and months earlier where you're just thinking. Oh, already have I I literally, in my Notion, have a RX 25 that I'm , okay, too late. Don't have time. Go. But I literally do. And so I I gather all that, especially for , I'm doing a session on digital strategy framework. And that's a amalgam of months and months and months. Mhmm. Actually, some stuff from even before RX 24 to put in there. I was just It's pretty much done that session is, but even this morning, was , Oh, here's some new ideas. I'm terrible at that. But anyways, all that content, think. And in the past, , when I've talked about that, one on one with people that , don't feel you have to go too far with that. , you could lower the bar a little bit, I think it'd be okay. I get it, appreciate that. But at the same time, especially with those keynotes, I feel a lot of times, our community, there are people in our community, this is the only time that they actually are seeing something from Spark. Maybe it's an executive pastor who normally does not deal with Rock at all, but yet they've come to the conference. I feel it's it's our time to show them. And sometimes it has to be done through design and to cast the vision that this isn't just a church management system, or this isn't just what we've done in the past plus plus. This is something different. So to us, it is an investment to put all that in. But between the pre day, the rockstar event that we do, the pre night, that's very exciting. The two keynotes that we're doing, the sub events that we're doing. New tracks. And that's just me. Have other team members who are doing their own. Right. And it takes a lot of time and it's a good investment, but it's somewhat stressful. And you both mentioned two important topics. The schedule was just released online. So on our Rx site, if you haven't seen it yet, head over and look at that. But we do have two keynotes this year. So we've kind of divided up the keynote into two different days. Yeah. You'll see that on the schedule. We heard the feedback about a bio break. Yes. So we gave you we we listened. Absolutely. And we do have new tracks this year, which we've been talking about for a little while, we're very excited about Very. But if you head over to that schedule page, don't forget that you can favorite or or the sessions that you most want to attend to create your own personal track if you're logged in, and that makes it really easy to navigate the the conference itself. Yeah. You don't wanna wait until that day to decide that. Because some of those are really , you have to make hard decision. Am I going this class or that class? And you might wanna split up if you bring in someone with, , you send them there, you go here. Yeah. You definitely wanna come prepared. You don't wanna do that in the hallway right before the session. No. It's It's complicated. You will not make the best choice. it's just impossible. You would need to come prepared with that. And of course that schedule and the ability to create your own track is all powered by Rock. All of it. So there's been significant work this year on some of the behind the scenes elements of how we put all the things together to manage the speakers and the sessions and the tracks and the time slots. We could do a a whole session on that. Well, we are. No kidding. Jay is doing a on a pattern that we use, it's called the rigging pattern. If you do lava, you need to go to that session. It's really, really pretty cool. It's all based on persistent datasets, but we use it in a way that I don't think most people have ever thought to use it that way. And boy, is it amazing and a time saver. So go to Jay's pre session. Yes, on the pre day. So it'd be well worth your time if you're high-tech. Yes. Lava. Yes. Equal. That kind of A lot of interesting insights to learn there. But this year we kind of revamped all of that. So there was a significant investment from our team and just restructuring after the rearchitecture, right? There's a lot of thought work that went into it. And then quite a bit of hands on configuration that has had to happen. But RX25 should be way simpler to configure because we've made it the rigging pattern. Just go see the rigging Just go to the session, you don't wanna miss it on the pre day. Yeah, but then we have printing, we have a lot of printing that's going on right now. Have signage, we have some stuff for big flags to say, hey, this is where the expo area is. And our conference shirts, of course. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, to gain those designs in and working with our print vendors and finding new print vendors for We're always looking for new print vendors and stuff You guys do a church, obviously, if you're not on the communications team, you wouldn't believe what those guys go through trying to get all these things. Stickers, I don't think I've ordered more stickers than I did this week. Sticker mules, very happy with Spark Development Network for this week. I mean, literally, I think every day I've ordered a large quantity of stickers for something. And we also have to look at our stock of supply for the promo shop and make sure we have enough of everything that we will need to have with us that we can bring in. So there's some ordering that happens there too, which is usually a reorder, but a lot of counting and organizing and validating that what we have in stock is what our inventory says and quite a bit of The promo shop this year is gonna have something a little bit new. It's gonna have some collectibles. Yes. And they're actually numbered. I'm not gonna say what they are, but there's some numbered collectibles that I think some of the people in the community would to get in on. Some of them, there's quite a few of them, and there's a couple that aren't very many, so you're gonna want to get there fast to get those. Yeah, making predictions in my mind about which people are gonna go running to go buy those things. I have some ideas. Now don't worry, no one will know about it till after the keynote. So they won't be available on the pre day. You don't have to worry about that. Everybody have an equal opportunity at them. Bring your track shoes. I'm just kidding. And then what about little fun videos, promo videos and teaser videos during There's been a lot of that. Some of those little fun videos started literally Christmas break, but some of them have been done this week, even some new ideas on some fun videos just to keep you guys entertained as you wait for the keynote. And we have had some people ask, how long does it take you to plan this conference? We're we're already A year. Working on Rx 25. While you're doing normal work? Yes. You also have to, with the other hand, be doing Oh, sure. Yeah. There's no one on our staff who's dedicated to Rx. It's just Right. It's just what we it's an it's an addition to our normal jobs. That said, you probably will want to get to the keynote. You wanna get your seat, get in your seat, a little before the keynote. There's some fun things you don't wanna miss. Yep, there's your heads up. Otherwise, somebody's gonna be telling you, Oh, you missed it. Will they be able to catch it later? I don't know. Probably not gonna say. I wouldn't count on that. Maybe not. What about coordinating? Do you have to hunt people down for content for presenters? Yes. So when if we talked about having 96 sessions across three days, there's quite a bit of organizing and coordinating to find the speakers. And then what do we need from them? Right? Well, we have to populate the speaker page on our website. So we need bios and church names and pictures. And then we also need to be able to promote the schedule itself. So we really can't wait until the last minute to find out what the topic is. We have to organize those into tracks. So we have to early kind of source those topics and session ideas and work with some speakers to help refine things. And sometimes speakers will say, well, should I do this or should I do that? Where do you guys need some assistance? And so there's just a lot of behind the scenes coordination on that. Every session has to say what their technical level is, who their main audience is, and then all of that has to get plugged in. I think it's interesting too, because a lot of the sponsors, you mentioned the sponsors, there's some that are very, What can I do? What can we do more of? How can I help you make this event a success? And we love that. Then there's some that are more , What more do we need to give them? Need this. And I think you find that in any community, it's refreshing that some of the tone of the sponsors have been so How can we make this a success? I mean, shout out to Juan for the pre night. The pre night is very important. We really want people to be there. We're not going over product, you won't miss out in that way, but you'll miss out in some other ways that I think are gonna be very important. And that's always been a Dave and Buster's typically for but we wanna do something different and we wanted to make that a little bit more tangible and valuable. And we had a sponsor who literally caught that vision and said, I will help fund this. And so Powered by Text is our sponsor for the kickoff. And we've had several conversations with Mike over there and he's just really in in alignment with the mission of what we're doing. Loves the Rock community. In the past, has helped fund grants that we've given, step down grants to churches that haven't been able to to afford to use Rock without donating and just an incredible amount of generosity there. And so he did, he stepped up and has funded the kickoff night, which is incredible. It's just great when those sponsors that are always asking, how can I do more? And they don't want something out of it. In fact, actually doing quite the opposite. They're giving more to it. Yes. It's refreshing to have And in fact, I was speaking with Mike the first time, he said, well, what what do you need? How do you need help in putting this kickoff night together? And that was just so It was so refreshing. Yeah. So you have some that, they're just great, them, IT OneSource, how much they've with the pavilion, how much they've done with the WiFi. It's , thank you, Miwo. there's it's nice to have those who are there shoulder to shoulder with you trying to make the event a success. And that, , I have to say it, Proverbs eleven twenty five, He who refreshes others, we're being refreshed, right? Yes. Will himself be refreshed. That will return back to those people that are doing that. And I know God blesses people that way 100%. Yeah. It just certainly just helps us. Even when it gets kinda discouraging when something doesn't go right, it's , okay, well, that helps encourage. So we're working on some fun things. We always try to do have some kind of fun stuff going on and those projects take a lot more time. And you run into roadblocks. So roadblocks this week, for instance, needed to print a very small sticker and I needed 400 of them and sticker mule doesn't print that small. So in my opinion, your first go to for stickers is always sticker mule, but they couldn't do it. So trying to find a vendor who'd print something that small and then knowing how exactly small it should be, because you only get one shot at it, right? It takes a week to get these. So I had my exacto knife out trying to cut down a sample so I can perfectly make sure it aligns everything. It's funny because someone walked by my office , what were you doing? you had your glasses off and you're hacking an exacto knife, what the heck were you doing in there? I'm , oh, I was just working on a sticker right now. I shouldn't have been, but Your protractor, your ruler, your slide rule, your calculator. And I had a Canva open this week, making a series of maps of the event space with where all of our signs should go and when they should change over so that the whole team, , knows where and how to make that No. And several conversations regarding the the check-in flow. Last year, we had a few small kinks and lines and things, and we really wanna avoid that. So there's been quite a bit of discussion and and mapping and re envisioning how things can flow in traffic patterns that help cut down lines and keep people moving, , because it's gonna be a six or 700 people event. How do you make people moving feel really simple? That's true. It's not This will be our largest event. It will. Mhmm. With the number of people who have registered already. That's And I don't think there's any, , one sins worse than another, but in church, lines are probably one of those sins that we just never want to have. We coming from the church world, every time we see a line, we're , that Heartbreaking, Especially when they're easy to fix. So I think we have some really good ways to reduce lines at check-in. A lot of it last year was because we tried to push check-in into a single moment on the first official day, because we wanted everybody to see the check-in celebrations. And this year we're kind of going back to , no, we're gonna have a broader window. We started having check-in celebration. It just to us, I think we realized it's not super important that people see their check-in being celebrated. They just need to see check ins being celebrated to cast a vision of what could be. So we will have that back. Also too, the mobile app is getting a lot of work. It's not done yet, so don't go looking, but it will be. So you're gonna wanna have that app. That's your guide to the conference. And your favorited sessions for your track will be available in the app. And you'll be able to set them there too. And I'm guessing we coordinate communications that are gonna go out to tell people about downloading the app. Absolutely. In fact, we were just yesterday talking about from the communications perspective, planning things, who are all our audiences, what all messages need to happen. , there's a rockstar audience there. We have our hall of fame audience. We have certain people who've never been to a Rock conference before and just a lot of different angles of things to try and help the right people get the right information in hand ahead of time, so they're prepared for the event. And the mobile app will be using of course the new Maui framework. So we eat all the dog We're not one to try not to use Rock. We actually push and push and push to use Rock for almost everything we do. So that's exciting to get the new app and it's the RX part of it will have a refreshed user experience, which is pretty nice. Of course, when it comes to the stuff that we do, I feel we never have the time to do it the way we ultimately want to. I feel we're always having to rush a little bit too much. So it's gonna be good, right? But I think all the team was , I wish we could have If we had more time, we could even go even more. That's what I love about our team. we're never happy. We do good work, but we're not we always go next year we gotta do this. We were just talking earlier today about this sign in our wall that says, this is my best work. And what a challenge it is to all of us all the time. When you walk past that, you're , oh, I better take another crack at that. I don't know if I can pass that off as my best work. Yeah. I telling one of our our new team members that I was talking about that, the concept that we talk a lot about internally is punting. Mhmm. most people just punt crazy. I love the analogy, think of Disneyland versus Knott's Berry Farm. Knott's Berry Farm is a professional punting team. Right? When in doubt punt. I know it's only second down, but we're just gonna punt anyways, ? Now, a better strategy is to say, hey, listen, we're gonna set our bar so high that occasionally we will have to punt something it's unrealistic. If never punt, you're not setting your bar high enough. But you just have to make sure that when you punt, is it the right punt? Why are you punting? Is it out of laziness or is it out of no, surely we're gonna kill ourselves if we do that or it's not gonna actually work. So occasionally, when you get to this point, we do punt a few things, but we have to make sure that we introspectively look and say, why are we punting? Mhmm. And at this point, you mean that this timeline in in Right. As opposed to when the conference is and where we are today, we can't do everything. We continue to have ideas all the time, so we'd love to do it all. Well, there's one project I'm thinking in terms of the one I was cutting the sticker for. I think on the weekend, last weekend, I was , we're gonna we're gonna have to punt. This isn't gonna work. But the more I thought about it, the more I looked at it, it just made me so happy to think that if we could do this, it'd be so cool. And we're gonna pull it off. And it's gonna be so cool. Yeah, and we're having a volunteer team. We have our own volunteers coming in to help with it, because we have to make 400 of something, and it's quite tricky to make. So having all of Our families are coming in to volunteer to do this just a church. Really think people would be surprised, Spark runs just a church. Oh, what we forgot to mention, which is always a huge effort is the registration bags. So when our attendees come, they always get a bag that has some really high quality content from our sponsors, and so we order those bags. They are coming in, I think, next week, and then we receive all the shipments of brochures from all of our sponsors, and then we'll have to stuff 700 bags. They don't just come pre stuffed No. Altogether with So that's a huge effort, and we're really thankful for our interns and volunteers every year that can help make that happen. We'll set up a series of tables in a room kind of out of sight and just work really hard on that. And what's funny about that? Because if you've never had to do that, you you might think be thinking right now, oh, that can't be that hard. I had to do 30 or 40 bags for a small event. Did, It took us hours and hours. It was just unreal. You need to work on your process. Well, I'm sure. It was my first one. Definitely the organization helps You need to talk to Emily's daughter. She could have done it in fifteen minutes probably. Nice. I mean, it's true. once you get the process and You start going. Yeah. The other thing that is another organization thing, these all seem small details, but they make or break things. How do you distribute 700 shirts to people per size in a way that they can get what they need and everybody's not all bunched up and nobody gets the wrong size? And there's a lot of coordination that goes along with that, all the way from check-in, right, and the labels that come out through the fulfillment of it and how that looks. And we've we've changed that up a little bit this year too. Yeah. Well, made a little note on that too, just realize we're giving you the size that was you registered for. Some people get registered by other people and that person guesses your size. Sorry. Yeah, sorry. We're gonna give you the shirt that you registered for. If there's leftovers at the end, we'll exchange them. But I know last year, I think there was a little bit of confusion over that. Well, that's not my size. It's , Well, that's the size that we were told and that we planned for. And we always get a couple extra, but realize too, we had to order those t shirts weeks ago. Oh, sure. Registrations are still coming in. And so we have to make a little bit of a An educated guess. Lick your finger, put it in the wind. I think this is about right. We don't want to over order because those are T shirts aren't cheap. Right. So there's a lot that goes to that. This year, I think it's a little bit easier because this shirt is somewhat reusable. It's it's not specifically it doesn't say RX, it's not dated. So we had a little bit of flex there. It's , not sure why I didn't think of that earlier. T shirt orders have to be six to eight weeks before an event. So Yeah. That's another interesting one. Well, here's what our registration count is now. What how many shirts do we order? And designing even before that. Oh, yeah. The design was done many months before. In fact, was done so many months before that we actually changed our minds because we had a different idea. And so we actually twice. We'll use the other design that probably next year or something. But we have a specific theme this year that you will know if you are not late to the keynote. Don't be late. Don't. Do not do it. Yes. And from a headcount perspective, understanding meals and getting those ordered and locking that in with the hotel and coordinating that, that's always a big effort. We do our best to accommodate a medically required diet if we can. If you have a really complex diet, we may not be able to accommodate that, so do make plans. If it's medically required, please reach out to us ASAP and we'll we'll see what we can do. We we try. There's a number of restaurants Complicated. In the area. There are. And speaking of restaurants too, this year we did have to make We kept the price the same as last year, but obviously costs have gone up a lot. Significantly. And even last year, I mean, did not make any money on the conference. In fact, we made a slight loss. So we had to make some changes. So this year we do not have dinners on-site. But there are a lot of great restaurants that are much cheaper food than what we would have to pay to feed everybody. We will have lunch, a good lunch. And then there'll be tons of restaurants within walking distance. And we're actually gonna have the ability if you come alone or in a small group, we're gonna try to help if you'd , we'll help pair people up so that you can meet even more people. Going back to that community, that's so important. While you're there too, last year, you'll be able to follow people by scanning their QR code on their badge. We're gonna continue to do that this year. You'll also be able to go into your profile page in Rock and see all your follows, who you're following. Very cool. Let you follow people last year, but then ironically, we didn't let you see that list. Surprised no one said anything. But anyways, you will be see that help you do the connections. One other change though, when scan to follow somebody, it's automatically gonna set a follow-up of them back to you. So you don't have to scan each other's That's nice. Saw that everybody was doing it back and forth, which makes sense. if someone says, Hey, can I follow you? And then you don't offer to do it back. Seems kind of There's social awkward moment. So we just remove the awkward. We Thanks. By you scanning theirs, they're also following you now. And you can go in and unfollow them later if you don't. If you really don't want to, but , I didn't. And no notification goes out to them and says, You have been officially unfollowed. No, we push notification right there. Perfect, that's perfect. Nick Airdo just unfollowed As you're walking away? I would never do that. Awkward. No. In fact, the the the hard part is remembering some notes that we have, , okay, I followed that person because I'm gonna get back to them this one thing, and if I don't write it down, I need to get back to them and give them this information. That can be a problem. Ironically, there's a really cool feature coming to Rock Mobile that would do that, but would not be in time for the conference, but would be perfect for that. Next year. , one other note about our meals out and ticket prices and things. Sometimes we'll have people ask us , well, if I just wanna bring somebody with me, family or something, and that wants a meal, what's that gonna cost? And it's always shocking to them to know that the majority, 80% plus of the ticket price is actually the meal cost. Because in a contract with a hotel this, they don't charge you for the event space. They give you food and beverage charges. And so if you want a gallon of lemonade, you're gonna pay $80 a gallon plus plus. And those pluses are Plus plus. Yeah. The plus plus is the hidden pain point. It's your taxes, gratuities, and then additional fees that the hotel has. So each plus can represent another 15 to 20%. So you pay $80 for a gallon of lemonade, plus an additional 20%, plus an additional 20% of that Of that. Extra. That's right. Yeah. so It's crazy how much it costs. And it's Honestly, it's brilliant because if you did the facility payment, it would be a fixed Right. No matter what, right? Right. So in a sense, they're basically being able to hide all the costs That's it. And it's not this hotel, so please don't No, that's just the way it is. It's an industry. Yeah, We need to have our our fasting conference at the Well, know, I tried to pitch that last year. Didn't I say Bread and water. Yeah. Well, it was locust and Oh, yeah. Wild and honey? Locust and honey? Yeah. Yeah. And someone shot that down. No names. Okay. Before we end, I just wanted to clarify something. I've been thinking , as you're talking, why did it take me two hours? Well, I had to print the brochures, had to bind them. Are you still on that? We're back to the stocking. I'm stuck in fifteen minutes, yeah. If everything was ready, had to put, we put the t shirts in there for the right person, the right size. It was a little more Okay, okay. You've redeemed yourself. A little bit. So Katie could have done it in thirty minutes. Probably. Katie is wicked fast. She is. She's awesome. Well, and special thanks to our a lot of our staff, , our interns, Cassidy. Cassidy has been absolutely come in clutch with the conference prep this year. We have some new people joining the team. Yep. And boy, talk about it's always when you come to our team, it's always drinking out the fire hose, but when it's right before conference Yeah. Significant. Yeah. It's crazy. They've It's a lot of effort by a lot of people. A lot of extra time put into things. A lot of extra care. , there's different ways to approach a task. , let's get it done and check it off. And then , how do I make this better? How do I make sure it's a great experience for everyone no matter who they are? And and we just have a team that puts in the extra care. Yeah. Ponya on the PowerPoints. Yes. Drank out of fire hoses. That's right. And survived and thrived. So it's it's too bad. There's there's no more time to register. Wrong. There is definitely time to register. We'll take your registration of the day. Yes. We have had a couple people show up and register there. Don't recommend. We don't recommend that. We got a plan. Yeah. And you're gonna get whatever t shirts left, to be honest. Yeah. Yeah. But definitely, there is still time to register. We know a couple things. Right? Sometimes people have a budget that changes over. Maybe it just changed two weeks ago. And so you didn't know if you would have a budget to be able to come and and there's a lot of other things going on. So maybe that registration hasn't been the most important thing to do on July 1. Don't forget, we're getting pretty down to the wire. Also, you might be struggling with how to communicate to your leadership about why this conference is important because it does represent an investment. So I think back to the very beginning of this episode, there's some a great list of reasons that this is an actually very valuable thing for your organization to invest in. So there's your cheat sheet for your conversation with your leadership. It's the best investment you can make. If you're running Rock, this is the best investment. Other than the donation, keep us, keep the product moving. Other than that, this is the best investment you can make. It will pay dividends for the entire rest of the twelve month cycle until the next conference. Yeah. So please do register if you haven't already. And if you have any questions, just reach out to us at our info inbox and we'll be happy to answer them for you and straighten out anything that you need on that front. Well, thanks for joining us for that seriously behind the scenes. This is how and why we do the things we do related to Rx. We are so looking forward to seeing each of you in person. This is a a quite represents quite a bit of work, but it is seriously our favorite time of year, and that's because of the connection opportunities. We're looking forward to seeing you there. Thanks so much for joining us for this episode of Rockcast. 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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