Podcast Episode 182: Episode 155: RX23 Top Ten

Description

Tune in today to catch the core team - Emily Forman, Nick Airdo, and Jon Edmiston, as they bring you up to speed on the latest releases of Rock. With the highly anticipated conference just around the corner, they'll also unveil their exclusive RX23 Top Ten list. Get ready to be informed, entertained, and inspired! Don't miss out on this episode!  Show Notes:Version Releases v 15.1, v14.3 and v13.8 - https://www.rockrms.com/releasenotesiT1 Source Experience- learn more about them here: www.rockstandards.com or https://it1.com/New Promo Shop Merchandise- available July 24 https://store.rockrms.com/RX23 Sessions- https://rx.rockrms.com/scheduleRX23 Registration - https://rx.rockrms.com/ Use Code LASTMINUTE for $100 off.Rock PartnersWe are thankful for our Rock Partners and their support of the Rock Community. Visit their websites through the link above to learn how they can help your ministry and confirm that those you work with are as invested in the success of Rock as you are!

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, the podcast that explores the intersection of technology, ministry, and community with RockRMS. I'm Emily Forman, and with me today are Jon Edmiston and Nick Airdo. We are getting close to the annual Rx conference and we are getting so excited about it. So there's lots to talk about on that front. And before we jump in though, Nick, what can you tell us about where we are on Rock versions? Yeah, quick recap. We have released 15.1, 14 point three, and 13.8, pretty much all within the same day or so. And most of the bug fixes in 14.3 are in 15.1 as well. And then there's just a couple of other patches. We're calling that the security update. So you really want to be on one of those versions. And that should pretty much settle the score there. Then of course, working on 16. You guys have been very busy on the development team. It never ends. That's true. Well, if you're listening to this podcast at the time that we first drop it, we're about a week away from the Rock Experience, our annual conference where the entire Rock community comes together and a lot of incredible things happen. So for those of you who have never been to a Rock Conference before, we are going to give you the Rx Top 10 list. And if you have been to a Rock Conference, I think you may find some intriguing things on this list that you might not have anticipated. So pay attention. We are going to give you the top 10 list of why you cannot miss this Rock Conference. Starting at the top with number 10. Yes, and these are in order, not order. Because I don't want number 10 to be seen as the least most important because it actually is really, really exciting. And that is on the second day of the conference, we're gonna start off with another keynote by Dave Durham, and he is a former Disney Imagineer. And not just any Imagineer, he's a true, , highly respected Imagineer. In fact, if you watch the Disney plus show on Imagineering, he's featured in that quite a bit. So if you wanna get a little prepared for that, if you haven't watched that, those sessions, I highly recommend that Disney plus I don't know what it what you would call a docu series. It's very interesting, and Dave is highly featured there. So we can't wait to have him on the stage, and he's got a really exciting topic. I'm highly looking forward to it. It's so exciting, in fact, that we can't record it. That's right. So if you're interested, if this piqued your interest and you're , Oh, I'll just watch it later, you can't. So come to the conference. Come to the conference, right. Very cool. Well, number nine on the list is our new vendor space. Now I've heard a lot about it. I haven't seen the layout, but from what I've heard, it's going to be really exciting. There's a new pavilion space. It's definitely gotten a revamp from last year. Gosh, there's so many things I want to say that I know are in there, but I'm going to leave John to expose whatever we're going to expose. We've always wanted to have more technology that you can actually see, touch, look at, so it becomes a little bit more a Comdex for church technology. And we've never had the resources to do that. But IT One Source has really hit it out of the park this year, and they've brought in a lot of these vendors. You can go in there, you can kind of see some of this stuff. And I would highly recommend that you go in there and ask and talk to the vendors. Imagine next time you need to buy Zebra printers and you're , Well, I got to do some research. Well, the printers will be there and representatives from Zebra will be there. So this is your chance to interrogate and learn. Actually one of the best pieces of advice I got young in my career was a director at Honeywell and he's , Hey, vendors are your best learning tool. And so he would invite vendors in all the time and he would just grill them and try to learn new things. And so I use that all throughout my Honeywell career, whether it's Sun Microsystems, HP, back then Compaq, IBM. These folks are actually paid to help you understand technology and their product. So it's a great place to get up to speed. So I'd spend a lot of time in there. Yeah, plan for that as you're setting up what you're going to do. The other thing you can't miss, and I can't say a lot about it, but keep an eye open for new chip sightings at this And that's about all we can say about that. Don't forget, keep your eyes open and be there in person to have a few new chip sightings. Intriguing. Mhmm. Next on the list is our new promo shop gear. So if you have seen what's been in the promo shop, come prepared. You might wanna pick up some new merchandise, and there's some exciting new things that I also can't tell you much about. And at number six, we have the new to Rock track. So this track has some incredible speakers with really great experience, not only in their own launch experiences, but this is a community that has people who are helping churches move to Rock every day through guided discussions, through working hands on, sharing the things they know. And we have an incredible lineup in the new to Rock track. So while you're listening and you may feel the new to Rock track is not for you, don't forget that you'll be running into people at the conference who are less familiar with the event and newer to Rock, and that's an excellent track. So please point them in that direction so they can kind of get their feet under them. If you see people walking around looking a little shell shocked at the quantity of information about really complex things you can do in Rock, those are probably the people that need to start in the new to Rock track. And we have a really solid lineup of speakers there and some dedicated time for them to work on their own internal plans with their team as well. So it's an excellent lineup. If you are new to Rock, check it out. And if you run into someone at the event that looks that would be the right place for them, please encourage them to attend the sessions there. All right, number five. For those of you that were there last year, what the Dave and Buster's game night tournament was. It was quite a fierce competition between some of you people. So we're doing it again. It was highly requested. So Monday night, there will be a fun evening of gaming at Dave and Buster's, which is really just half of football field away from where we're gonna be at the hotel. Right. And there's dinner there as well. So it's the pre day warmup for the event and it's all fun and games, literally. Yeah. So the community is dying to know Nick, what is your favorite video game at the Dave and Buster's? I don't know if they had it. My all time favorite, I think was Galaga. I was just always infatuated with Galaga. I wished I could be better at Tempest. I always loved Tempest, kind of that vector graphics, but I was terrible at it. There's a good documentary in the history of Galaga, if you're interested. Oh really? Okay, no, I'll have to check that out. I watched it. It was kind of interesting. I don't think it's very long. Number four, Spark sessions. So there's a couple of Spark sessions that you can go to if you want to learn more about the next gen project, and that's going to be a deep technical dive into how that's coming along. And we're really excited about it and some of the new things it's going to provide. So Daniel Hazelbaker and Nick will be hosting that one. There also will be a session on the content library, something that we've talked lot about, but we're gonna go a little bit deeper and show you kind of how it works. And then definitely it's gonna have a larger QA session because we know there's gonna be a lot of questions about that. So number four, Spark sessions. That's great. And number three are the Gold Circle Rock Community Awards. There are so many of you doing such incredible things with Rock in the community every year that last year we debuted a new award recognizing the feature development and the design work that many of you are doing in several categories. That includes design in mobile, web, and Apple TV apps, and it includes the feature and ministry functionality in not only those platforms, but in Rock itself. And we had some incredible submissions this year. So we're looking forward to unveiling those from the stage during the keynote at RX this year. And it's cool about that. It's two purpose. One is to recognize those who've really invested and were innovative, but it's also another place that you can get inspiration. That's right. Hey, that's a great idea. I could do that and maybe mix it a little bit because of our unique culture and do something a little bit different. Some of the things I've seen are just amazing. And you realize, wow, you did that in Rock? That's Rock. It's just awesome and surprising. Yeah, so looking forward to that. Number two, find out what's next on the Rock roadmap. So during the keynote, we will be talking about some features that you might not have heard about. Some of them are very near to being ready and some are coming up. So this is where you'll learn a lot about what's on the roadmap and what's coming, and we always try to keep a few surprises in store. Oh, last but not least, and I know we said these weren't ordered in importance, but I feel it's appropriate for this last one, connecting with community. for me, and I know many of you, the best thing about RX is just A, getting to hang out with your fellows, brothers and sisters, but that community is so special. Being able to share and see what somebody else is doing, connecting with new people, finding people that need help and guiding them to connect with other people. I just love that part of the whole event. And you can't get that anywhere else except RX. You kind of get some of that online, but when you're in person, it's magnified by a thousand. Yeah, there's no replacement for that. No, there really isn't. It's interesting if you haven't been to one before, you really don't, you can't imagine what it feels . There's just this intense connection. It feels a little bit a really big family reunion where everybody likes each other. Seems a strange thing to say, but you're connecting online all year and then you have this one time of year where you can see each other in person, build that relationship, meet new people. And of course, the vendors and sponsors are available to help as well. It's a great time for the whole community to be together. Yeah. That hotel's just happening till about 1AM. It truly is. So don't forget to, one, sign up. And if you've been procrastinating, you didn't quite know if your schedule was gonna work out, you've had a lot of things on your plate. It is happening in July this year, not another time, the time might've gotten away from you, whatever that looks in your space. If you're not registered yet, we have a special discount code for you. So register today at rxrockrms.com and use the discount code last minute, all one word, last minute, and you will get a discount on your Rx ticket. So we we want you to be there. We want you to experience the things that can only happen in person. So it pays to procrastinate in a small sense. Well, we want to help the people out that have had challenges. Sometimes the scheduling in the summer is a little bit challenging and kind of down to the last minute. Right. For some people, things were canceled and now they can come. That's right. So this is the perfect chance to get in at the last minute. Yes. And just a reminder, if you're coming, do not forget that you can pre look at the entire schedule of sessions that are available and you can you can create your own session. Once you're logged in, you can favorite your sessions you wanna attend and create your own schedule, which will be kind of a great map for you to follow when you're on-site. And if you're coming with a team, you can kind of coordinate who's seeing what, and you can cover a lot more ground. So that's a tool we make available for you right on our site. Make sure you use that. You have to log in, of course, to save the sessions you wanna attend, but it's a great way to be prepared in advance to tackle the myriad of sessions that will be available when you arrive on-site. I just realized I kinda left you out, Emily, on number five. What was your favorite video game or what would be your favorite video game at Dave and Buster's? What? What's my favorite video game at Dave and Buster's? , I did not actually play any of the games at Dave and Buster's last year, but I did circulate and watch a lot of people play. What would it And it was a very competitive scenario. Okay. So I don't have a long history of video games and I know this is gonna shock our podcast audience. But the one that I played at home the most would have been Pac Man. I was thinking it was gonna be Pac Man. Not Miss Pac Oh, well, okay. So Miss Pac Man Okay. And Pac Man. So that's it is two. Does that count as two? No. Oh. That does not count as two. Sorry. Was feeling really Ms. Pac Man is actually Pac Man with bug fixes and a bow. The bow goes a long way. Yeah. They rushed Pac Man and they had to make some bug fixes and they thought, Well, let's make a new version and they made him as Pac Man. Well, there you go. Now everyone knows. Great. Well, I was getting text messaging from the community asking, you asked Nick, but you didn't ask Live during our recording that hasn't posted yet. Well, what what's yours? I don't really video games that much. What? Yeah. Sorry. I don't know. My favorite video game growing up, which I didn't play a lot because I was very cheap, was probably Omega Race. It's kind of a less That's a vector. Yeah, everything was vector back Blue, white, beautiful. Yeah. And that was only my favorite because I got stuck in a arcade in Las Vegas. My parents were they never went really to Las Vegas, but they took us once. And I was downstairs with my great grandmother and my mom had just won a ton of quarters to keep us busy. We were down there for, I don't know, a couple hours. The computer game I really liked. This was way back in the Oh, wow. You had a computer? We're gonna transition to this. It was Oregon Trail. Oh. Oh, that's Okay. That's some time ago. It's definitely That was a really long time ago. Classic. Yes. Yes. I never played that. You didn't? You never had dysentery? Mm-mm. I'm not sure you're allowed to ask questions that. You break some HR rules. On the air? Well, I'm not sure where we've gone with this podcast, but if you stayed with us to this point, you've learned a lot that you didn't know before you tuned in. And saw a little behind the scenes of how we usually start these podcasts before we hit the record button. So true. Well, thank you so much for listening. We are looking forward to seeing you in person in a very short time and and being able to connect eyeball to eyeball face to face and share all the things that you've been doing and we've been doing, and it will be an incredible time. Don't forget the discount code last minute, all one word, and sign up if you've been procrastinating. Can't say that word today. If you've been procrastinating or if it's something that you're just now hearing about, we'd love to have you. Thanks for joining us for this podcast on the intersection of technology, ministry, and community with RockRMS. 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. Churches get the ease of a SaaS church management system without losing any of Rock's powerful features. Are you ready to take the next step or share with another local church? Visit rockrms.com/hosting today.