Podcast Episode 118: Episode 91: Special Edition with Cullen McCoy

Description

On this special edition of Rock Cast, the team interviews Documentation Specialist, Cullen McCoy.

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 a special edition of the Rockcast podcast. I'm Emily Forman. I have Jon Edmiston and we are going to be interviewing the one and only Cullen McCoy. I say one and only because he has joined our team to do a very important task and has been working with us for a while as a documentation specialist. So if you haven't met him yet, you have definitely seen his work if you're active in the Rock community. So welcome Cullen. Hi, thank you. We're glad to have you here with us today. Oh, I'm glad to be here. So we want to spend some time today just talking with you a little bit and bringing the community up to speed on what it is you've been doing on our team and how you got to be here and a little bit about who you are and what you to do. Does that sound all right? Yeah. No, it sounds great. Yeah. No, I've been with Spark. It'll be a year in just a few months, so it's been a little while. And you said, I was hired to do documentation. And so that includes the written documentation, the online manuals that the community all has access to, as well as the Rock You videos. I have some of those out there as well. And so, yeah, so that's my role is to try and keep up with all the great changes and features that we're making on a constant basis to help serve the community and make sure that the community knows about those features and how they work and how they should be used and stuff that. Yeah. Yeah. That's a pretty important role. There's a lot of great work being done in development, but if nobody knows about it, it's almost it isn't there. Right. And I mean, , the team, , we're not doing this for ourselves. , we're doing it for the community and to expand the kingdom. And so it's really important that people know how this is, because we really want to make sure that everybody who's using Rock has all the tools that they need at their disposal to be able to use it without having to ask a bunch of questions or become lost. Accessibility is one of our core values and we wanna make sure that we're sticking to that. I couldn't imagine a harder role to step into than documentation, especially as you're coming into the community or into the organization not really knowing Rock. So you have to learn Rock and then documentation is not an easy thing because gain the tone right and what level to go to, it's very complex. It's a difficult role to step into, but you've stepped into it and you're doing a great job. Well, thank you. Yeah, no, it's been really important to me to, I said, to try and make the documentation accessible. you noted, the tone and the voice, , we want it to be approachable, understandable. We don't want it to be laden with a ton of technical jargon that only developer would understand. We want the average person at the average church to be able to pick up the documentation and feel , Okay, I think I can do this. And that can be tricky, because Rock does a lot of cool things, but explaining it all a way that makes sense maybe to somebody who's not technically proficient or is themselves brand new to Rock, it can be challenging. But it's certainly a challenge I enjoy. I it a lot. And the community might have seen you on RockVideo, RockYouVideos. So if they're looking for where have I seen a run into colon, and then they can also make suggestions for improvements to our documentation, right, through our community tools? Yes, absolutely, which I love getting those. And so, anytime anybody is looking at a manual or anything that online, there's a little pop out along the right hand side of the screen and the community can submit suggestions for additions, for changes. They'll find strange typos that I've missed, all kinds of stuff, and it's great. And what I really are, I mean I wish they weren't there, but occasionally we will get questions , hey, is unclear, or I feel that's missing, or this is confusing. And when I get that kind of feedback, , I immediately think, okay, you're not the only person who must be thinking this. And I love that feedback because the documentation is there for the community and if there's any part of it that's not working for the community, I definitely want to know about it and want to get that fixed. That's very cool. So you've been here for about a year and what was it that made you look into coming to Spark? What was the interesting factor for you? How did you run across us? I was just coming out of a slightly different industry. I used to work in higher education. And to make a long story short, I exited that industry. And when I was looking for sort of a, I guess you could call it a new career path, I was being very particular because I didn't just want a job. It was important to me to find a role where I felt I was doing something bigger than the job itself, than the actual task at hand. And so I immediately started looking at nonprofits in general and private companies too, there were some. But I came across Spark and Rock and very much liked what I saw and liked direction and the philosophy. Of course that you're a Christian organization and have those values, and that was really important to me too. And so I was very new to it. John noted, I had never used Rock before. I didn't know it existed. My church doesn't use it. But I was willing to learn and wanted to because, again, it was more the culture and the community and the purpose of the work that that attracted me to it. That's really interesting. So before Rock, you were, you said, the higher education industry. What were you doing in in your role there? I worked with a student information system that's sort of a church management system. They can be reasonably compared to one another. And so for institutions of higher education, these would be the systems that people use to enroll students and manage classes and pay tuition and stuff that. My role was as a consultant going around to different colleges and helping them implement that system to transition off of their old student information system, which were usually very old and very homegrown, old mainframe systems, into the new modern era of web based applications and stuff that. Interesting. That seems a good mix of things to learn a new technology but keep the client side or the the experience of those using the software in mind. Yeah. And, again, there too, it was sort of, , we're there for the students, was was the sort of the motto in in higher ed. Just kinda Spark is, , here for the community and for kingdom, , we had to keep in mind, okay, , it's it's easy to get lost in the day to day of, , this one task or or that other task. And and they're here, it's always important to keep in mind there's there's something bigger that we're trying to do, , we're trying to help people. And and you hear a lot of that in higher education too. , you hear those stories about first generation college students, , who have been struggling and, , really had to make their way. I've encountered more than a few students who are college students attending classes, living out of their car, things that, , really, really struggling and people are sacrificing a lot and really, really working hard to become educated, to better themselves. And so I enjoyed very much being a part of that and tried to focus on that in my work. How are we helping students? Mhmm. Mhmm. Well, it's interesting how much attention we've always put into documentation and hiring for the role that you're in. I can just say we spent a lot of time talking to people and trying to find a good fit because it's such a critical piece of what we do in Rock with an open source community. And it's really part science, part art, and and a lot of flexibility. We shouldn't take lightly what you do. I just wanna say that we really appreciate the work that you do. And I think I can speak on behalf of the community too in saying that what you're doing has a major impact in the day to day lives and functioning of many ministries. Yeah, no, and I keep that first and foremost in my mind. I mean, it's what I'm here to do is to help however I can. So Colin, when you're not doing all the things related to documentation at Spark, what do you to do in your free time? , here in the age of COVID, things have been a little bit different. What I've found obviously is I'm spending a lot more time at home with my wife, and we've been finding things to do to keep busy and primarily that's been coming down to, , don't want to just sit and watch TV every night, so we've been playing a lot of games. We launched a Dungeons and Dragons campaign with the two of us, which has been kind of interesting because I haven't played with two people before, but it works. And yeah, just hanging out. We have a couple dogs, so we hang out with them. We've been trying to take them for walks. We typically to go out on a hike. We live very close to the White Tanks. And that was in fact the last, I think, activity that we did before quarantine was we went out on a hike because they're just right in our backyard and we go there every time. So we miss that and we're already making plans to return. But yeah, if we're not at home, we're near home. We're at home playing games, engaging with each other, spending time with family, or, , we got the White Tanks in the backyard, we're hiking. We to stick close to home base. Well, that's great. Is there anything that you would the community to know about you that we haven't covered today? No, I think we've covered about everything. I , I would just encourage folks as you're out there with the documentation, please don't be afraid to click that little icon for feedback if you have any questions or anything that you don't understand. Again, I would just say to the community, as we've said before, the documentation is there for you, so if it's not working for you, we absolutely wanna know about it. So please don't hesitate. You won't hurt my feelings that, hey, I don't your documentation. It's perfectly fine. I would I would rather I would rather know and be able to fix it. And they should know that they're not just clicking and adding a comment that goes into a black box somewhere. You actually do get that. That's true, yeah. Yeah, no. Goes somewhere, it goes to me, and whenever I see them, I mean, again, we're here for the community, so those get priority. In fact, I've had a few people who respond back to me that they're , woah, I'm surprised that happened so quick. Because I think they might have been expecting that it just went into some black box somewhere, you said, and somebody will get around to it when they have time. But no, I mean, we're here for the community, and if something's not working for them, I'm on it. That's awesome. Well, thanks for your dedication in that. Oh yes, my pleasure. Thanks for joining us this morning. It's been fun having a little exploration on who is Cullen and what does he do, we just appreciate your time and the work that you do in keeping the documentation up to date, easy to read, and fun and interactive. Well, thank you. Was a pleasure to be here. 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? 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