Podcast Episode 117: RX2020 Updates

Description

Many people have asked questions about RX2020 and we wanted to provide clear answers and updates.

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 Rockcast, the podcast where we take you behind the scenes with Spark Development Network, the community at ROCCRMS, and the technology that we build. I'm Emily Forman. We have Jon Edmiston and Nick Airdo. We're actually bringing you a special podcast with a bit of an announcement and an interesting topic that we've been getting a lot of questions about lately. And that topic is the Rock Experience for 2020. We have been working through some of the same things that many churches have in relation to COVID-nineteen and trying to figure out what that looks in this scenario. John, do you want to tell us a little bit about where we're landing on that? Sure, yeah. So, we definitely need to make a decision. It's something that we've been kind of postponing and just waiting to see what, , how the virus is going and how the communities out there are being hit and how they're responding. And also watching a lot in terms of other people who are in our same boat who are having conferences. And so, we decided to keep the conference, but we're going have to make it virtual instead of having it physical in a location. And a lot of that comes down to just having to figure out now what the future's going be in August. So some people might think, well, it's already in August. That's going to be so far away. But in reality, we have to think about right now because we have to make sure that there's enough people coming to warrant to cover the costs, as I think we've talked about a lot that the costs are going up this year because of being in a hotel space and such. So having a low turnout is not something that would be a bummer. It would actually be a huge financial hit. And we know that people, because we've seen it, aren't thinking about the registrations right now. And so we can't wait. We can't make a decision now and then wait to see what happens. We have a very, very short window to make a postponement with the hotel. They've actually been very great to work with in terms of working through this. I can't imagine an industry that's been hit as hard as they have. I think the hotel said that they were down to three people working the whole hotel, which is amazing. I feel badly for them, their families, those employees who are being furloughed. That's terrible. But at the same time that they're working through this with us, so that's really good. But we have a very limited time in their planning to either say, Yes, we're going through it, or postpone it back a year. And so we have to make the decision right now. We can't not make the decision right now. So therefore, for all that's the best of interest, we've decided to go virtual. But that doesn't mean we're not having the conference. In fact, other than being present, hopefully not too much will change. We still want to have all the same content. How that content is delivered will be different, obviously it'll be online. Do you want to walk us through, Emily, what we are planning in terms of how that would work out? Sure. So we're actually excited about this format and it's something we've been talking about separately for a while as a type of event that we wanted to be able to roll out. So I think this is actually going to be really great timing. So we're going to still look at, at the same conference days and we are going to take two half day segments of about four hours. We'll publish exact timelines on the website where we will be doing live stream keynotes, panels and a couple of community presentations. And during that time it will all be one time, one place, that place will just be online. So we're going to have an excellent opportunity to be doing the same thing at the same time and then there will be also quite a bit of content that's going to be on demand. That will help take into account everyone's different time zones because we have quite a time zone spread across The US and we don't want anyone to have to get up at a crazy hour in the morning or to stay up until a crazy hour at night. We want to try and respect that. So the best way that we found to do that is have a block of time in the middle of the day that will be devoted to our livestream and our keynotes and then give you the rest of the content on demand. The really cool thing about this is, typically when you come to a conference, that content is available on demand when you buy a content subscription at the end of the conference. For this virtual conference, we're actually going to throw that content subscription in right with the price of registration. So that gives you a little bit of extra flex time. It also really enables you to expand your audience. So if you've typically had some budget constraints about who can be there and, and what, how they can participate, we're doing some things with the pricing structure this year as well that will help you engage more of your audience with the Rock community, some of them maybe for the first time and we all know how incredible this conference experience is. We're excited that maybe you're going to be able to share it out a little bit more than you have before. So there are a lot of really great things that we're working through, but I think one of the main things we need to say is if you are a speaker for Rx twenty twenty, you are still a speaker for what we're calling VRx twenty twenty. So keep that presentation going, we will send some additional presentation guidelines and we're really excited to see what this looks . So let's see sponsorship. We've been doing some great things for sponsorship too. Sponsors will still be involved and we have some excellent opportunities, some that will look similar and some that will look brand new that we're very excited about. So if you are a sponsor or considering sponsorship, we'll be in touch and can show you the full lineup of what we have going on. We've been putting a lot of planning into this and we were hoping to communicate it all at the same time, but the corporate Marriott got a little bit of a jumpstart on this and canceled some room reservations before we were quite ready to have a full conversation and that we definitely wanted to make sure we had all the details ready for you. So thanks for your patience. I know we put a little message out there about, hang on, it's coming, but this has been a really exciting thing, but a big one. And you can find more details on our event website. John, what's the URL there? Rockrms.com/vrx. And so the V stands for virtual, so virtual Rx. And you said, it's kind of interesting that, , we've been talking about that for six, eight months doing a VRX conference, in the spring to kind of balance out the presence one in, in fall, , , on-site and then doing a, a virtual one. So we kind of had some of the thinking and branding and marketing in place prepared and ready. It's kind of interesting how that came about. But you talked about pricing. So the way we're thinking about pricing this is based on organization size. And so what we did is we kind of created five categories of organization sizes. And we thought to ourselves, okay, well, for a church of this size, how many people would they typically send? And so then we just took a ticket price, multiplied it by that number and said, okay, well that's how much it would be for a church to virtually attend this conference. But you said, Emily, they can literally have 20 different people all live streaming it from different locations if they'd . So hopefully, you said, more people will see it. It's definitely cheaper than normal because our costs are down. We still do have costs for this. But it's quite a bit cheaper than a regular RX. Plus you don't have the travel costs. Maybe in terms of the way we think about it is this year is not as great in terms of building community and presence and being there and seeing each other, but maybe it has a wider audience than we typically would have. So maybe a little lemonade in that lemon. Right, and depending on what your circumstances are, you can have multiple people from your organization all tuning in with that one registration from different locations or you could have a group of your staff if that is the way that you're set up at the time that the event is happening, you could grab some lunch, bring it in, grab a conference room and experience the live portions together and even walk through some of the on demand content together if you'd as well. So it will be a little different. There will be a lot of things that are different. There will be a lot of things that are the same. One of the great things that's the same is our community. So I think that's one of the reasons we've had the biggest challenge in making this decision is our team just loves that physical presence, we love that physical gathering and we've been hearing from some people in the community that they were still really looking forward to that as well. But others have, , feelings about it, we've got state guidelines we have to keep in mind and at the end of the day, we really feel we're making the best decision for this year. And we, as the more we think about it, the more we realize, oh, there are going to be some really great upsides to this event and not to mention it's one that we've been wanting to do. So, we're pretty excited about this and we realize this announcement might leave you with a lot of questions about your registration or the registration you haven't made yet, about your sponsorship, about speaking, about a variety of things and that's okay. If you have registered with us on any level for an event registration as a speaker or a sponsor, we have plans to be in touch with you very soon. So we will be reaching out to you and answering your questions. If you have not yet set up any type of registration for an event this year and you have questions, please do feel free to let us know. And you can just come right in through our infosparkdevnetwork.org and we will be happy to answer any of those questions. Yeah. I would say too, you're mentioning getting together with your coworkers and watching it. I would too book time to watch that on demand content and have a plan for that. Because if you're me, have the intention to watch a lot of that, but then you don't schedule it so it never gets done. It is the first day is only four hours. So maybe book the rest of that time. And then the next day, maybe add another third day that you're just booking that time where people know that's what you're doing. Because I feel if you're me, you're going to have the intent to watch some of that content, but you're never going to get to it unless you schedule the time. And so if I understand correctly, there will be sessions overlapping during live. Is that still true? Actually, no. The live is going be all serials. Going to be one channel. You just watch that channel. We'll have the keynotes. We'll have some panels, a couple of community ones that we think are gonna be of large interest to everybody. But there'll be breaks in between too. So just to give you guys a chance to grab some food, hit the restrooms. Very short break, we're gonna try to keep everything moving pretty quick. Well, eliminates then the fear of missing out. So you don't have to feel , oh, which room should I be in? So there's a total plus there. Yeah, yeah. And , have a lot to figure out in terms of how we're gonna do this livestream, so it should be fun. We've got a basic plan of how it's going to go, but, and we'll be calling on some of you guys in the community to help on some of those panels too. Yeah, and I think that's a good point, John, that you made. When we're out of town, when our presence is gone, then people are less likely to pop in and we're even maybe on our own less likely to insert ourselves into a little minor thing that might need our attention if we're out of town. But if we're in town and our presence is there, that may not be the case. It might be too easy to prioritize something that you wouldn't prioritize if you weren't there or too easy for other people to pop in on you. So it probably is something you should calendar block, you should communicate out. I'm attending a conference even though that attendance might look a little bit different this year. Yeah. That out of office email response is great. It might even apply here. And then we're back to the same, we'll be putting out more details, but we will be back for 2021, back to the normal. Yes, great We are planning to be back to normal for 2021 and we'll make sure that you have all of that information in hand when you need it and a little bit before. So we'll see El Presidente in 2021. Yes, yes. Not they will not lose the the right to to do that. Yes. That's correct. It's just a bit of a delay. So I guess it's a long reigning title is what it really is. True. So it's a two year deal. Right. In the Rock world. That's right. All right. Well, thanks for joining us for this little announcement. We are looking forward to interacting with you at a very new event type for us with some exciting new things and stay in touch. We will reach out to you if we've discussed something with you already about Rx twenty twenty and we're really looking forward to kicking this off. Thanks so much for joining us. And 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.