Podcast Episode 166: Episode 139 Easter Eggs at Thanksgiving?

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Join us as we talk about stepping back to clearly see where God is moving and what He is asking of Rock. Jon, Emily, and Nick share in this packed episode; what’s coming in v14.1, the Happiness Advantage and how we challenged the Rock team, and Easter eggs at Thanksgiving?Show Notes:If you have a story to share: https://community.rockrms.com/get-involved/role/share-your-ministry-story Register for RX2023:https://rx.rockrms.com/rxregister/rx2023 The Happiness Advantage: Ted Talkhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GXy__kBVq1M

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 this episode of Rockcast. I'm Emily Forman, and I have Jon Edmiston and Nick Airdo here with me today, and we're gonna talk all things Rock. So we are closing in on the end of another year of an immense amount of Rock effort and work and progress. And there's just a lot to discuss in general, but we better start with where we're at right now. Nick, tell us a little bit about what we're currently building for the next release. We've been building version fourteen one, some fixes of little tiny changes in that version. We've also been working on version 15. And because we have pre alpha testers, some churches well, some churches that are running version 15 and us, we've run into little things here and there and we're polishing that. So the odd thing is version 14 has been really quiet, which could be a miracle or a testament to the team. I think it's the same amount of pretesting and alpha testing, beta testing. I think that alpha and beta teams did an incredible job. I mean, always do, but this was a There was a flurry of activity from the testing teams before fourteen. And we did give them a lot more time. We did. We had more time. It was more involvement, and they found a lot of things that I think we captured and fixed before fourteen point zero went out the door. So that's why fourteen point one hasn't yet been released. There hasn't been an urgent need in the past there had been. Yeah. It's been a highly engaged testing season this fall for the team and they've just done an incredible job. Right. Now having said that, we are gonna button up 14.1 shortly as soon as we can, get the last things in there. And then probably in a few weeks or so, I can't quite predict, but. Yeah, we just need to go through our internal planning boards and look at all the tasks marked that require 14.1 and just make sure that those are all complete. It's not that we just kinda throw a dart at the wall and say, just do it. It's very organized behind the scenes and we have to make sure that all those tasks are checked off and done. New ones are always coming in. So at any moment we have to draw a line in that sand and move those to the next release. Mhmm. But it is a very methodical process and definitely a lot of work and planning that goes into that. Yeah. There's a lot and there's lot of funded features that need to be in '15. So I mean, our product management is really hard because we're not just driving in a straight line based on our timelines. We're basically inviting a whole bunch of other people's needs into our timeline. And we have to do that just because of the funding. there's just a significant amount of features come through, , funded features. And it's good, but it's just a little challenging. Can you imagine if the features that have been snuck into our dot releases never were where we would be? Yeah. Honestly, I'm a little frustrated with 14.1 because there's some really good features in there. And we from a excitement perspective, we those to be in full releases because it makes those full releases more exciting and so much excitement gets sneaked in through these dot releases, which is hard to kind of keep the momentum and the excitement around. So there's actually one or two that we might just not say is in there. It'll be in the release notes. we're not gonna hide things, but And sometimes we do hide things The hidden Christmas present. There's been Pay attention. There's been features that been hidden in the UI. We just don't show the page until the major release, but it's there for Don't tell me. Six months. Yeah, well, , if you're curious, it wouldn't be the first time someone found it. Yeah, that's true. , I was even telling someone on the team recently, they were saying something just, , just talking and they're saying, Hey, , it'd be neat if we could have more insight into what the developers are working on. And I said, Well, you do. It's called the GitHub commits. That's what I would recommend. Literally, I mean, there's not that many commits a day. I mean, it's probably in the 20 to 30. For sure. And if you just look at The plus. The commit messages with the plus sign, exactly. Yeah. And there's people in the community who I know do that. And I think they're better for it. Yeah, you're definitely informed, way more informed than everyone else if you're doing that. And my message to them was , if I was you, I would literally be doing that. There's no way I wouldn't want to know all the things that are coming in. I'd be looking at the code and trying to figure out what it does. Yeah, how many other products let you see that? Right. I'm not aware of too many. Just Rock. Well, we recently have been talking with a coach. Well, we've been talking with a coach just to make sure we're leveling up our leadership over time for a while. But there was a super interesting conversation that we had and we brought to our staff that we thought might be a really interesting thing to discuss on the podcast today. And additionally, it's pretty seasonal. So, it just seems to be a great fit. And and it's really the concept of positive psychology and the value that it can bring to your life and the the additional success even that it can bring to who you are and what you're doing. And so we learned some really interesting things. There is a video, a TED Talk called The Happiness Advantage that's out on YouTube. If you want to look that up, you can find quite a bit more than what we would obviously have time to talk about today, but it isn't a super long video. Lot of value in listening to it. But one of the interesting things that that was brought up at the very beginning of that video was the mention of how we study average so much. And so we're always looking for and charting and graphing what's average and throwing out the outliers, which means we're kind of trending as a society in the things that we do in our training programs, in everything toward creating more average. Mhmm. Because that's what we study. And I mean, I don't know about you guys, but I'm I don't really wanna be just average. I don't wanna be , oh, great. A life well lived. Super average. I'd to be two two tenths above average. Two tenths above average. Excellent. But but how do you get there if you don't study it? So that's an interesting concept. , what are we doing? Are we tossing out the outliers? Are we focusing on the things that are different than average? Because right now average, if you follow the news at all, is depressing. I mean, it's it's not great. And that's not what I wanna shoot for. Yeah. The bar is definitely lowering everywhere in in everything. In everything, right. Customer service, I mean, just everything you look at, the bar's getting lower. And then we have excuses for it, right? Oh, supply chain. Supply chain. Chip shortage. That's my excuse for why my report yesterday was below average. Supply chain issues. Supply chain. We're running out of diesel. I couldn't get here on time. And brain cell supply shortage? I don't know. Anyway, but part of what he was talking about, the guy who did the TED talk has done a lot of study of psychology and of positive psychology in particular over time, was saying that it's not necessarily that our reality shapes us. Right? That's saying our circumstances make us who we are. That's not necessarily true. It's our lens through which we view reality that really shapes us. And so if we could change that lens, we could change the way we perceive reality, and we could refocus ourselves toward where we want to go. So if that lens is our interpretation, how do we make a more positive lens? And that's something that's always been of interest to me. Here's an interesting stat. 90% of our long term happiness is not related to our circumstance, but the way that our brain processes the world. So there's a a hard fact. There's a lot of research behind that. And so that's definitely something we want to focus on. They even take it down to job success, right? 75% of job success is predicted by optimism, social support, and the ability to see stress as a challenge instead of a threat. So with stats that behind it, it's definitely something that is worth paying attention to. So how do we raise our brain positivity level to take advantage of that optimism, create the social support that comes through positive relationships, and look at stress as a challenge? Because I don't know right now too many people not undergoing undergoing some kind of stress. And if you can turn that stress into a positive for you, then how much more can you leap forward in times that other people are paralyzed? So if our brain performs better when we're positive, how do we train our brain to be more positive? And that's what we were talking with our staff about. And they had some very specific steps to follow. And if you study the function of brain at all, which has made its way into business books and training, into psychology books and training, our brains are plastic really, they're growing every day, right? So whatever you think about, you're creating it, you're making it easier for your brain to go that direction. So how do you rewire your brain by doing something that reinforces what you want to become? And that's where they gave some positive specific steps. And those are the things we shared with our staff and could be really interesting to share here. They mentioned discussing journaling about one positive experience you've had in the last twenty four hours. So that makes you think of every day, something positive has to happen every day. And a lot of times it's easy to gloss it over in the middle of the stress and the all the things that are happening. You pull those out and focus on them. And then meditation or prayer. That's a great way to refocus our minds as well. And then a random act of kindness or letter of encouragement. And three things you're grateful for. So if if you do these things every day for twenty one days, they found a lot of success in kind of rewiring your positivity, which leads to better happiness and success even in your career. Career. So we did kind of challenge our staff to do that if they wanted to, and it's something that we've been working on. And it's interesting how challenging it is sometimes to come up with three new things that you're grateful for every day, which I'm kind of embarrassed to say because I tend to see myself as a positive person, but it's stretch. it makes you be creative in looking for positivity. And I think it's a really valuable thing because I can feel it stretching my mind. Yeah. Found the secret is be specific. You're very specific, you can be It's easy. So if you say , Oh, I'm thankful for my kids. Oh. I already said my kids. Check that, you Fox. You can't use that one. But if you're thankful for the decision your one child made this week that made you proud, you're more likely to find them. I think that's actually might be not just a trick or a hack, to game the system. It actually does makes you , oh, yeah, it's easy to say you're thankful for your kids who's not. But if you're thankful for the micro decisions, then it's easier. We'll put that in terms of a compliment. Aren't the compliments you receive from other people that are highly specific more valuable than the ones that are did you ever have to do that thing as a kid where you had to give someone three ups if you told them something negative. I had a teacher at school that made people do that. And they'd always be , I your shirt. I your face. I your hair. And that means nothing. Right? But the more specific someone is about a compliment, the more that they saw you, they heard you. And so it kind of makes sense that that specificity is really valuable. But in terms of that, it's also Thanksgiving season. Right? It's a great time to focus on the positive and the things that we're grateful for. And there's a lot in the context of Rock that our team has to be grateful for and the community has to be grateful for as well. So it's just a great season to reflect on that. And and we wanted to share, , obviously with the things that have been impacting us and that we're studying as a team, but also then reflect on what are some of those positive things that we see and that we're so grateful for in the support network of this community. So one of the things I know I want to mention, and and this isn't only specific in that it happens once a year, but the Rock conference, , it just creates such a momentum for me and for our team because we're building relationships with people. And we get to see individual people eyeball to eyeball and hear very specific stories about how Rock is powering ministry. And we're still in the afterglow of that. it's two months later and it's still to me is something that gets me out of bed in the morning and makes me excited to do what I'm doing. I don't think I'm the only one. I continue to hear about that from people in the community. Yeah. Kind of related to that, of mine is tags onto that, but it's not the same as just the thankfulness for the community, but I'll give you more specific because that's what we're supposed to be thinking. And I think it's really the impact that the community has. I love, , the philosopher, I guess you could call him that, Marcus Aurelius. I really, I've read a lot of his stuff. He's really good. you could put him in modern day. the stuff he talks about is so specific to what we're doing right now. And I just read a quote literally last night that said, What we work on today will echo in eternity. And I thought that's a really cool quote. I really that. But I would go further and say what the community is working on today is gonna thunder in eternity. Because there's just gonna be so much changed lives and so much difference in impact because of the tools. And it may not be exactly because of that keystroke you just made, but that keystroke you just made is gonna have this amplifying effect. It's kinda these microphones that we're talking today or even the ones that your pastor's talk into, the microphone has no, literally impact, but what goes into it gets magnified. And I think that's exactly what the people in their community are doing. If they weren't there doing it, there'd be a huge difference. But yet if it was just that, it would have no difference. But we have to understand that because I think it can be discouraging. the microphone and the amplifier might be , oh, woe is me. We don't really make that much of a difference because they technically don't, unless there's something going into them. But the ministries that we're impacting them, because we're all working in those ministries are being hugely impacted by the work. And I think we just need to think about eternity will be different because every keystroke that you make today, and you add that up over a month or a year or a career, , that's a huge impact. It is. And I see that in the work that our team does, but I also see it in spades with the work that each community member does. Are we all just taking turns? Can I jump in? Please jump in. Anytime. Well, I'm thankful for John and I were asked to join a group, a small group of people at a tech summit, and it was just kind of awesome to be invited and get to be a fly on the wall. We just got to go and listen. And A, I'm thankful for that because it energized me to hear the stories. And then at that event, getting pulled aside by a church who said, Hey, we'll pay, we'll hire, or we'll take our video team and we'll film your stories. So if you guys get those stories to us, we'll use our budget and time to make those awesome and give you guys little cool videos. So I'm thankful for him stepping up to do that. And I'm thankful for the potential for stories to get sent to us from people who have offered them. So little reminder, if you had a story you're gonna send us, let us have it so we can get those to that church. I didn't wanna mention his name. Yeah. Yeah. We share over time a lot of the things that we're we're asking God for. Right? We know that God's behind what we're doing here. And so we share some of those publicly, and some of those we're just continuing to pray over. But it's great to take a minute and step back and go, where do we see God working in the small ways too that add up to the large things? And one thing over time that we've put a lot of prayer toward and shared about is the access to good development resources and talent. And and that's something that we've been constantly recruiting for, working on, , putting our effort into it and allowing then God's timing to work out. And there's just been a lot of movement on that front in the last twelve months. And in the growth of our team in a lot of different areas, a lot of positions is just something where I can see God's timing and hand have been at play. And that's you have to step back and look at it from a macro level. But we've been we've talked about that one particular request over time quite a bit that we we would to continue resourcing the team. We wouldn't to get more development talent on staff. And there's just been an influx of that that we've seen that definitely represents God's timing. Yeah, I mean, lot of work goes into that. Absolutely. Thanks to Amy on our team who puts an enormous amount of time and energy into that recruitment process. And we always kind of say that's us putting our lures into the water and then God has to bring the fish, but you have to put the lure in the water. I mean, occasionally God will throw a fish right into the boat, but if that's what you're waiting for, for all of them, you're probably not gonna get too many. And we have had a few fish jump straight into the boat, but majority of it is this through a lot of time and effort that she puts in to not, I mean, and we're proactive. She spends a lot of time hunting people in the Phoenix area on LinkedIn and other tools. So that's a lot of work. But you said, there's a new generation of people coming that we're really excited about. It's gonna be a lot of work getting them up to speed and everything. God's brought some, is bringing some really good people into the team in the next week to three months. That's right. Yeah. We have a number queued up now. Yes. And when you hear their stories, you can also see that God's timing was at work on their side. Mhmm. And so it's just it's really interesting. And we have to be there standing in , putting our lures in the water and standing at the crossroads and saying, hey. Wait. Look over here. But it's often the timing is seems to be really interesting on both sides. Yeah. They're definitely on mission. Right. We've just in the last twelve months, we just keep every time we talk, it's about mission, mission, mission because that's the only thing that- Matters. Can attract and retain people. That's why we do what we do. Right. So we just constantly are talking about mission and I'm really excited that these candidates are definitely on mission. Yes. It's exciting to work with a passionate group of people toward a common goal. I wanna say again to our testers, because they've really given me a lot of peace of mind over the past couple of years. And in the past, when we didn't have a solid testing team, it was very nerve wracking. So having a solid team of committed people that, I know not everybody can test every version, but the core team of people there have jumped in. And I think I said the same thing last year at this time, but it really is on my top 10 things I'm thankful for here. Yeah, it's important that, I mean, product is so hard to test because it's so extensible. Right. That's some of the things that, the way people use it to date, almost on a weekly basis, I'm just , oh, you're using it that way? Oh, interesting. And good, but we just didn't intend that. So it's good to have that creativity, but it's hard to And people in the community testing that use the application in different ways. That's the critical element of it. That's why it's so valuable. And with different hardware devices, I mean, we now have mobile, we have iPads, we have Windows things and devices. So as those get older, they're not always supported. We ran into that recently with some older OSs on iPads that just aren't even supported in our development tools. So it became really hard to troubleshoot. And one of our testers caught that right at the last minute, at the eleventh hour, fifty ninth minute before version 14. So we got that in there for 14. Yeah, but we are very generous with what we consider to be old. Ten years is old for an iPad. I mean, I think everybody can agree that a ten year old iPad should be taken out back and probably Or given to the children's ministry for a kind of a simple coloring book type thing. But there's a blog post coming on that topic to kind of sunset older devices that are causing trouble in our world. Yeah. Did that last month was the eight year anniversary of Rocks one point zero launch? Wow. I think I saw it on my calendar. I think you might've put it on the And it took a long time to get to one O. Mean, that wasn't- It did. It wasn't one O just came out of the ground. Nope. Yeah, I was thinking about that. I saw another thing in social media this morning that said something the developer's creed. I started it because it was easy, but then it wasn't. And I literally was thinking that's my life. if I had known that it was gonna be that hard, I don't know. I don't think we would have done a lot of these things. the good thing, we thought it was easy. Yes, that's very true. A number of times I've wondered, why did we do that? Why did we make it so flexible and adaptable? Just gives Or did we do it, period? Well, yeah, that reminds me of last night's Andor episode, which I won't say, but there was an interesting- No spoilers. Dialogue in there with the character of Luthan, and he starts describing what he's given up, what it cost him. Okay, we're gonna have to have a spoiler alert here if you keep going. No, that's all I'll say. Okay. I was relating hard to that. that was incredible. But I think God does that because if you knew how tall the mountain was or where the journey was gonna take you, you would never take it. It was described to me early on in my faith that it's kind of you're walking up a mountain in the dark and you have a lantern and you can see one step ahead of you and you'll take that step because it doesn't look too bad. But if you saw where you're going, you would turn around and that's why God doesn't show you the mountain. He just shows you each step and you have to walk by faith. And that's certainly the case, I think, if you're following his path. But I think so many people even just with that, just stop and just don't keep following the path. You might think, well, that's good because yeah, it is a mountain, he has this plan for you and you're going to get to the top and you're going to see something that you never thought was ever gonna be possible. All you have do is just take one step and be okay with living in discomfort. The discomfort of not knowing what's ahead of you or the fear that you might stub your toe or trip or fall or Yep. But And every once in a while, we get a glimpse of what happens if we step to the right or left, and that looks a little bit intimidating too. Yeah. Yeah. Definitely. But what? I think if we had known eight years ago and what it took three years to get to that launch anyway, but if we had known at that time all the things that would happen on a a worldwide scale and to The US churches and all the things that churches would have to go through and and industry changes, it it would have been just an intimidating thing to think that Rock needs to be available to help churches through that during those times. And yet, god led us every step of the way with just the right funding and just the right people and just the right timing to be positioned where we needed to be at the right times. Mhmm. Yeah. I mean, definitely, it's a different pathway than I think any of us would have imagined in a much better way, but Not easier, but better. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Not easier. Because as you were talking, , I don't know where you're going, but I'm not sure I would have done it. Right. Because I don't know if I would have had the strength or fortitude to think that I wanted to. And extrapolate that forward. We don't know what the future holds. Right? Just in the last week or two, I've had really interesting conversations with churches looking at Rock literally around the world. And so, , we're we're interfacing with churches in Australia and Malaysia, Singapore, The UK, Canada. It just it's fascinating to think, , we don't know what god has in store. And it's that's why the community is so critical and so important because that's the ministry focus and basis for what we're doing. But the interesting thing I think for that too is this it all seems to come in these weird spurts. Yes. , it's not coincidental. you think one spurt might be coincidental, but the way it's just kind of common and how everybody kind of, it's fish going and all of sudden they just flip and go a different direction. how do they know? what one fish told them, because it appeared to be instantaneous. So it's interesting how he works that way. We even heard it, I think a little bit at the meeting that we were at, Nick, that you referred to, that all the churches get there and they all have the same problems and they're all looking at each other , Hey, how do we all have the same problems at the same time when we work in basically isolation most of the time? And then we come and meet and then yet we all have the same things. Yeah. Weird synchronicity. Mhmm. And so we've learned to be very open to seeing things come in little groups and go, this might be God's prompting in this area. How can we be super responsive from a product and community standpoint? Yeah. Our product is definitely that. , features that we work on are the ones that are put in front of us by him through projects and just talking to lots of people. So I didn't think we'd have some of the features we have that are our most powerful features just because it's not my thoughts. It's what he wants. And it's exciting to think about where that will be. in eight years from now, what will we be talking about? What will we look back on and say that's history now? Mhmm. So many technologies that doesn't even exist. That's right. Glad I can only see that little lantern or flashlight a few steps ahead of me. And I know you can see that's coming soon, price increases. This early bird special. And Nick, that's an excellent thing to lead right into. The early bird pricing on Rx tickets is ending in just a few weeks. So at the December, the ticket price goes up. And part of the reason for that is a little earlier than other years, but the conference itself is actually in July, of 2023. So make sure that you secure those early bird ticket prices. We wanted to correlate that with your end of year budget. So if you have any just get your ticket purchased. Don't forget to do that before the price goes up because that is definitely going to be the thing that powers your ministry, going forward. And it's great for leadership to understand what Rock is. It is not just a a piece of software that allows you to look up someone's phone number. And so it's much easier to understand what Rock is all about at that conference and then to get the connections that you need and the learning that you need to power your organization all year. So you're right, the ticket prices go up and it doesn't have to affect you though if you purchase before the December. And I would say act today because this is a short month. There's gonna be a weird part of the end of this month with the Thanksgiving holiday. Don't put it off. You're hearing this now, just go walk right over to your boss and ask him, hey, how many people are we sending? Let's sign them up today. That's right. You'll wait and then all of a sudden December will be here. Yes. And also if you wait, that hotel that we're holding the conference at is going to completely book up. Again. Yes. Again, we know that will happen for sure because it happened this last year. So don't forget about that. There are plenty of nearby area hotels, but it is so much easier and more fun to be in the hotel where the event is happening. Because just because dinner's over does not mean the event is over. Everybody hangs out in the common spaces and works on things together, gets to know each other. It's a a cool opportunity. Also timing wise, we're getting toward the end of the year. And as I mentioned, budget surpluses. And we did talk today a little bit about some of the additional development resources we've been able to bring on. I know we've mentioned in the past the work that we've been putting toward building the next generation of Rock technology, which if somebody hasn't really heard about that, we're really future proofing Rock by making sure we are considering what next technologies needed to under good and under good and support what Rock is doing before we would get to a point where we'd have to make a critical decision. But that takes years to build the next technology stack. And so we're literally building two rocks at the same time right now, which we said, I don't know if we'd do that again. And and here we are. Hey. what? Let's do another one. Don't know. Don't think too hard about it. Pretend it's not really happening. So we have to recreate everything that currently exists in and continue pushing into the new innovative features. We don't wanna stop the train. We gotta keep moving. That means, that we are stepping out in faith and saying, hey. We're gonna build this. Churches need it. We do not wanna get, stale in our technology stack. We need to be pushing forward. Don't forget our key, values that we talk about include innovation, community, accessibility, and craftsmanship. And if you lay all that out, it says in a decision framework, you absolutely need to be ahead of the game on the next tech stack. So we're stepping out in faith. We're building it. We're building two rocks. There is additional funding that's needed to do that, and we stepped up and said, let's make it happen. If you came to the conference, you saw everything that we've been putting out this year, which is an incredible amount of work. But that does leave us in a point of saying, hey, we really need to have a capital campaign here before the end of the year, and we are going to be publishing that here probably by the time this posts. We need to be looking at how can we raise additional funding to cover some of those costs that we've proactively put into the next generation of Rock technology. And so please take a look at your year end budget and see what you can do. Most churches have a use it or lose it budget. See what you can do to help fund what we're doing here. that it's essential to what you're working on, and and it's essential for us to have an appropriate amount of funding. And we had just kind of reset that for building Rock, and now we have to build two rocks so we could use additional funding for sure. Yeah. So we call that funding the future. Let's fund the future. So look into your budget, see what you can do above and beyond our suggested donation to help fund the future. And thanks in advance because I know there are churches that are hearing this and going to do that because we've stepped out in faith and taken steps to use that funding that's coming in. we're planning. Right. That's accurate. And every amount helps. Right? So some people might say, oh, I just have a little bit here. I don't have a lot. They really need a lot. But every little bit adds up. And that's what we know is the power of community. We've seen it in action for those eight years. Well, thank you so much for the support that you give to the core team, to the development of the product and to the community. We appreciate and know we could not do this without all of you who are listening to the podcast today. We look forward to sharing more next month about what is going on here and closing the year out. In the meantime, let's all go do amazing ministry focused things and send us those stories of how Rock is powering your holiday ministry opportunities, and we will help get those recorded and published. Thank you so much for listening, and we will talk with you again next month. 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.