Podcast Episode 109: Episode 82: Special Edition with Jim Michael

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Rock Star, Jim Michael joins Jon & Emily on this episode of RockCast.

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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 back for another edition of the Rockcast podcast. This is a special edition where we get to talk to some of our favorite people in the community and on our team that are doing big things and kind of hear about what's going on with them and and what Rock looks from their perspective. I'm Emily Forman. I have Jon Edmiston, and our very special guest today is Jim Michael from The Crossing. Welcome, Jim. Hello. Hello. How are you doing? Just great. How are you? I'm doing great. Well, we're thrilled to have you join us today. It is not often we get to speak with a hall of famer on a typical Wednesday morning. We're recording on a Wednesday here, so this is really brightening our day up. Yeah. Yeah. That hall of famer thing is such a is such a loaded word, but, I do enjoy the cool orange guitar. That's right. That is so fun. Hall of famers. That's right. That first year. Absolutely. That was a that was a shocker. That's a lot of fun. Okay. So, Jim, let's just jump right to it. You're in the community. Everybody knows your name. What are the things that where do they run into you? What are you known for in the community? Probably people know me mostly from chat, because I practically live in there. It's almost a running joke that I'm in there all the time, but it's sort of a hobby for me where I just have it up on my phone, and so between commercial breaks when I'm watching a show, I'll just see what's going on in Rocket Chat, and I'll answer a question or two. So that's probably where I'm most known. I also answer quite a few Q and A questions out there in the sometimes forgotten Q and A. I touch the docs sometimes. Yes. My fingerprints are on a lot of the documentation. Funny story, I was just constantly pestering John about I I love the docs, but I'm , hey, there's a spelling error there, there's a typo there, or this could be more clear. I think he just got sick of me asking for changes, and he just said, here, go edit them yourself. So That's just a part of the world we grew up in, from the church, empowering volunteers. That's what we call that. There you go. So be careful what you ask for or might end up with a job. Right. Well, I mean, you're just as capable of doing it as I am, and it's probably quicker for you just to go do it than to get ahold of me and then so Yeah. And with, , built in trust, you just trust it's only gonna get better. Exactly, and so it's been fun to do that. I kind of add things to the docs self servingly. , if I get tired of answering the same question over and over That's great. Inside of chat, I'll go, what? That deserves a little paragraph. So I do that. I do recipes, probably written, I don't know, 10 or 12 so far. Every time I think there's something useful that other people could use, I'll take the time to do it. That's great. It's not fun. And there's so much value in doing that because if you have the knowledge, you've built the knowledge, that's the hard part. To take the little bit of extra time to put the recipe in now magnifies the impact by almost infinite. Exponential. Right. And I I just sometimes get so, I I dream about if everybody did that, , how much more there would be because everybody's doing great things. Mhmm. And it's just that little extra time to write it up and share it is what's holding back tidal wave of power. Yeah. Yeah. I encourage people to do recipes whenever I can. And I said, they're fun, but they're necessary. Taking that time to write it down one time will just benefit everybody who comes along after you. Right, right. Probably the final way people know me a little bit is from speaking. I think I've presented at RX four or five years, I've lost count. I probably have the distinction of having the same session, the almost identical session, the most number of Rxs, because I do the security. We pull that one out because the newbies need to know how to do security, and you don't want to tell them to go look at an old video and stuff, so we pull that one out just about every year. That's a great one. Is good. We hear a lot of good reviews from that. It's so helpful. Cool. Yeah. I enjoy doing it. So that's kinda what I do. Awesome. So I know a lot of people are in one or more of those areas and run into you. And I just wanna say thank you for helping model what it looks to do it well. And you said, sometimes it isn't always the most fun thing to do in that moment, but being committed to the mission of empowering the community and really seeing the payout on that collaboration, is something that you've managed to tap into, and you you're a great model of that. Thanks. I, I enjoyed just being I enjoy being part of the community that you guys have created, so you've made it easy to participate. Well, I have to say that nothing that's there now is the creation of any one or two or small group of people. It's all there, and it's all functioning the way it is because so many people are diving in and have a vision for just improving the ministry of other people, and it's it's a pretty fun thing to be a part of. It is. It is. I've been in IT now, I don't know, thirty plus years, and for some reason, it's just part of my DNA that every time I get in a new job or a new piece of software, I find the place where people are talking. It used to be called forums. We had the Q and A. Back in our previous church management system, there was a small group of people that had a place to talk. For whatever reason, I mean, this was back on the CompuServe days. I'm dating myself, if you even know what CompuServe is. But I go and I ask questions, and then at some point, I find myself answering more questions than I ask, and I just find that rewarding. And so the natural thing was, when we went to Rock, I started asking questions because I needed to know answers, and then at some point, I was just answering more than I asked. Though I still ask a lot, the chat is just as useful to me as it is for me helping other people out. Well, I love too how a lot of times you have the ability to answer a question for someone who's new, but you're trying to do the whole teach them to fish thing. And so you'll say, hey. That's in the documentation. Here's a link. And so now it adds to the awareness that, oh, I can link to that. I can find that. It probably exists. I'll go see if I can find it myself. And it empowers people to feel they can answer questions too because it's a lot, easier to approach the concept of sharing a link to documentation than it might be to say, oh, here's how you should do something. That that could feel a little more intimidating to someone who's new. So I think it's it's just a great pattern. And I I think that's a pattern that we all need to remember. I'm always going back to the documentation. There's some features I was just working on yesterday, I'm , I had to refresh myself on exactly how that works. So I I just go right to the documentation, look it up, and earlier this week, some folks who, , really know Rockwell were asking me for a feature that actually was in the documentation, so I shared a link back to that too. So even if you're new or in the intermediate stage, don't be afraid of going back to the docs. I mean, that's, I think, even the advanced power users are still doing that or forgetting to do that. So Yeah. Yeah. I I laugh at myself because I have this reputation for pointing people to the docs, to the point that some people say, I've already read the docs, but I still can't figure this out. They preemptively But then sometimes I'll find myself going in there to say, How do I do this or that? And I'm , -oh, I didn't look at the docs, and there it is. I didn't even eat my own dog food, so it's tumbling when that The search across the docs actually works pretty well too, when I'm looking for something. Sometimes I kind of know where it is, but I'll just use the search and it gets me really close. Yep. Yep. That's been a big help. So, Jim, you've been around the Rock world since very early on. Can you share with us a little bit about how you ran across Rock in the first place and just how far back you do go? So I go back, I don't know, five years. It was whenever John and David presented a little 10 Talk at a church IT conference that they had this new thing coming down the pike. All they had was some mock up person profile pages and stuff that, and I'm sitting there in the audience kind of , Seriously? We just went on this new product, which was Arena, and we were really in the thick of that and doing custom development because at that time it was the only product that let you do that kind of custom development, and they're getting up there and showing this really cool stuff, and I'm just , We need another church management product, really? And then, of course, I started to investigate. I think the next year you guys did a day of presentation pre Church IT Network at CCD, and I just immediately caught the vision and the open sourceness of it, and went back to my leadership and didn't have to do a hard sell or anything that. I was , , this is what we're on now. These guys wrote this other system, and it's gonna be better in all these ways, so that's what we're moving to. And they said, Okay, make it happen. And just for the record, we were kind of on the other side saying the same thing, because we had written another system that got sold and then was not trending well, and we were , Really? We've to do this again. Really? We've got to create another church management system. So, that wasn't necessarily the perfect straight line. We had to zigzag there to kinda get the innovation back that we felt was needed. Yeah. Yeah. So I think we've been in production three and a half years, and we just love the model. Love because we were very worried. In that time period between the old system and going to Rock, we kinda lost our developer who did a lot of C code for us on the old system, and he just moved on to a different He went back out into the real world instead of the church world. We're , How are gonna make this happen? And then we came across this model where we could sponsor, pay for a feature that we needed, and let the core team develop it, and then everybody gets it, and then guess what? When it's your problem to maintain that code, not ours, so we didn't have to worry about upgrades and stuff failing, that we just fell in love with the ability to get what we need, so to speak, out of the product by paying for those features, or going with other churches on a really big feature. I think we're one of the three or four churches that did the family check-in, because that wasn't in Rock version five is when we started, and it was kind of a single check-in, and we thought, that's gonna be a little slow for our needs. So I think three or four churches went in, we were one of them, and we said, let's add this. And now that's just part of core, so we don't have to maintain it. So we love it. Yeah. There's so many examples. I can't imagine doing it anyway now. Yeah. And model seems to be, , really attractive. We hear that a lot, that people really to be able to do that, and some churches get so excited about, oh, this is going to go to court and everybody can use it. And I don't think there's many industries where, , in the secular world, that'd be called competitors. Right. But in our world, it's not. They're just friends, and they love being able to help everybody by what they put into the core. Exactly. It's a win win. You get what you need, but you're also giving back, so your dollars are going further than you originally intended them. In fact, we often hear too, , someone's working on that feature, and they'll say something, Hey, these are our requirements, but if you see something else while you're in there that would make it more beneficial to, , the big C church, we're willing to pay just a little bit extra to make sure that it's even more extensible for everybody. So don't just put our requirements to this. Think broader, if there's a way that we can help that, we're really interested in that. And that's that just blows you away. Mhmm. Definitely. That's kind of the point of what we're doing. We're just really making an exponential impact on ministry by everyone sharing the tools that they have. And just think how much faster one can get the same foundation, the same learning practices, and then be looking at the new and innovative things. Mhmm. Yeah. Yeah. And I it when you guys push back when we suggest a feature that we need, and you're , hey, could it work this way? Because it would be much more extensible and usable instead of that little niche that you think you want that niche, but what you really want is this feature that can do a whole bunch of other stuff. Extensibility is good because even for the single church, things change. So, , I always learned, , when we worked at CCV, it might be that, well, CCV needs it this way, but I always wanted to write it a very extensible way because I knew today it was this way, but it was probably gonna change, and it'd be easier long term to make it extensible and configurable. Yeah. On the flip side, we appreciate it when we once in a while, we'll we'll request a feature that is really specific to us. It's something that a church isn't probably gonna want or need because it's just part of something we do, and you guys are up front and say, We'll do this, but we're not gonna maintain that forever. If Rock Version 11 breaks this, then you're gonna have to revisit and pay to have it fixed up. So it's not you just pay for something once and get it forever. If it's a really niche thing that doesn't end up in core, you still end up having to maintain that over time, but it's a lot less than paying a full time developer. It's still a win for us. And there's been a couple of projects we worked together with you guys where the because of the timing, we couldn't flesh out the feature and get it into Quark because of the of the need, but it gave us good ideas that got put into it in the next release. Mhmm. So, that's what I love about working in the trenches, , helping you guys and many, many, many other churches is you get, , barraged with good ideas where if you if you just sit in the closet, there's no way you're gonna get these ideas. Yep. So, Jim, your everyday life in the world of the crossing, what does it look , and what do you do there? Well, I'm the my job title is IT manager. So somehow I'm in charge of the networks and all the servers and the infrastructure, and at some point I just inherited the church management system even before Rock, because in our church, we decided we needed someone who owned the product in the sense that they knew they might not work in every part of it every day, certainly that's not realistic, but at least how one piece affects the other, and what's coming down the pike, and you're keeping your eye on bugs and all that kind of stuff. So that just fell on me, and I love it because it lets me scratch itches. I have a degree in computer science, thought I wanted to be a programmer back in the late '80s, and then I sat next to real programmers who just kind of spew code as if they're having a conversation, and I'm , That's not the way it works for me. I have to really struggle to come up with an algorithm or to figure out what I'm trying to do. So I went down the IT path, the data administration path, but Rock lets me circle back, and with Lava, with Workflows, I can scratch those programmer itches because I can accomplish really cool things without ever touching code. That's great. That's exactly what it's all about. Yeah. So on a daily basis, I pretty much live in chat, which is kind of a running joke. They're , do you even have a job? Because you're in chat all the time. I do. I keep the window. I keep one eye on it, but once in a while I have to shut it down when I need to tunnel, so to speak, we call it tunneling. But my superiors, they consider it part of my job responsibility to keep my thumb on the pulse of I have a knack for just seeing a bug go by because I watch the GitHub feed. I don't watch GitHub itself in real time, but I watch the channel, and someone will come along, they're, I'm having this problem. I'm , that's a bug that's been reported. Here it is. ? I don't know why I have a knack for remembering those, but I do. You definitely do. Thanks for thanks for applying that to the community. Yeah. Yeah. Jim, a lot of people have told us, previously that as they've dropped into our chat community, they get a little intimidated by the level of technical speak that's happening there and, and have come back and said their immediate feedback is, oh, I'm not a programmer. I don't know if I can do this thing. So I I love how you were just talking about your, preference for the way you to work and and the strengths in your skill set and how that applies to Rock. But when you started Rock, you were also completely starting from scratch. Right? , Rock didn't preexist, and you didn't have preexisting Rock knowledge. So you started from ground zero. Yeah. Absolutely. Just everybody else. You start asking questions. You read the documentation, especially the LAVA docs. It seems one of those things where it's so intimidating, and I'm never gonna get this, and then you can't even identify when it happens, but suddenly you're able to write down a piece of lava without having to go back to the docs and use it as a reference. It's just part of your knowledge. You've absorbed it, and you only do that by doing it. And I think it's one of those Rock is a little bit of this crazy enigma because I think people think just because you can extend it in these really advanced ways that you have to, And then once a new person comes into the community, they see it being done that way, and they think, oh, I have to be a programmer or this or that. Mhmm. And the truth is, out of the box, it's just every other system. You don't need anything. Just because you can doesn't mean you have to. And I think that's something that we always have to keep, , repeating because I think it's a lot people are doing really cool things, and that's cool. That's the power of people. , you can do a lot of amazing things as much as any other product without those skill sets. What would the advice be Even you do need some customization, you can do so much with Lava and workflows Mhmm. Before you ever have to get into messing with the block. Before, all we could do is go to a block, a module, I think the old system called it, and that's where you had to edit even front end stuff, but with Rock, you can do all sorts of stuff with the UI that you you don't have to touch code, and it's pretty rare. So we love it. So what advice do you think we should give to somebody who's brand new and peeking inside the community and the product for the first time? Well, don't be intimidated, which is tough. It's easy to say, tough to do, but I'd say just jump in. Don't feel embarrassed asking what you might think is a stupid question. There are no stupid questions. And for people that are wanting to get more involved, I've been accused, because I've been there all the time, but I'm an anomaly. I don't have children. I got married late in life. I have a lovely wife, been married ten years, but children just weren't in the cards. So I have lots of free time, sitting at home, at work, and I get accused of being too quick. It's , Before I even have a chance to answer something, you've already answered it. And my response to that is, Sorry, I don't mean to be a hog, but always throw your answer in, because my answers are often wrong. A lot of times they're pure guesses. I think this is probably what you're talking about, or this is the way it might work. I to pepper my responses with maybe, I think, it could be. Yep, that's But always jump in. It's not I own a thread or anybody. , the first person to respond now is responsible for that thread. It's jump in and say, what? My experience has been different than that, and and I think it could be this. There's absolutely nothing wrong with that. Yeah. Or even agree. I think, you said, there's no one authoritative source to sort of have two people say, yeah, that that that's that's exactly right, or, we found that to be true also. I that is helpful. It gives the person more confidence and that the person who answered first gives a little bit more them a little bit more confidence too that the answer is right. I'm I'm with you. , sometimes I'm answering, and I I'm pretty sure that this is the answer, but either I don't have time to dive into deep into the code, and so I feel nervous sometimes even putting a quick answer out. I do because I think it's helpful, but I'm I'm with you. I'm , well, I'm pretty sure without looking at the code that it's this. But I Right. I have been wrong too. And because Rock is so flexible, if they're asking a more open ended question about how to do something, there could be a hundred different ways to do it. That's right. Correctly. Mhmm. So no two ministries tend to be the same, then the more answers that you have can help the person get to the same place or can kind of inspire the creative thinking to to approach it from their unique angle too. Yeah. But but the key is really get in there and answer even if you're unsure. And you don't have to worry because it couldn't be more embarrassing than me who I have answered a question about a feature I wrote and documented, and I got the and I got the answer wrong. So you're not it's not gonna be that embarrassing, so just go for it. That's right. We are a growth mindset community. Yeah. And I've done that. I wonder if there's a correlation between the people who answer the most questions and the people who ask the most questions. Maybe that they aren't happening at the same time necessarily, but do do the the people who answer the most start out as the people who ask the most? I imagine. It it could be because, boy, I ask a lot. So, Jim, there's one more community role that you have that I think a lot of people don't realize that you have, and that is related to this podcast and, in fact, every podcast we record. Tell us a little bit about your role there. Yeah. I get to edit these things. So funny story. This is the story I was mixing up in my head at the very beginning of this podcast. But a couple years ago, I'm in an airport, and I run into John Post Rx, and we got to talking, and I said, Hey, I love the podcast. And at that time, I think you were even debating about whether to keep doing them or not, and whether they were useful, and I'm , I love them, because it gives me this insight into the core team that I don't get anywhere else, and please keep doing them. But the audio seems to be all over the map. Sometimes they're really loud, sometimes they're very dim, and I have to turn up and I can't hear them in my car. And I'm kind of a sound nerd, and I'd be happy to take a look, and he's , They're yours, here you go. So, again, careful what you complain about in the Rock community because you will get a job. So that was, I don't know, two or three years ago, and I've been editing them ever since. And there's not a whole lot of editing. There's taking out a lot of jokes and stuff at the beginning and mixing in some music. And sometimes John is hitting me in chat real time saying, At 02:14, please remove this word because I sounded an idiot. An idiot, yeah. That's quite common. So that's one of my roles and I love it. And they sound so much better. Before anybody else. That's true. You do. And they do they sound so consistent now. So thanks for all your help with that. I try. I try. So So you've mentioned running into John after a conference a couple times now, and you've been to all of our conferences, I think. Right? Every Rock conference we've had? I have. What's your perception of the conference over time? It just keeps getting bigger and better. It I don't think I've ever been involved in a community that went from 50 people sitting in a room. I don't know how many were at that one at CCV. Maybe it was closer to a hundred, but It was less than a hundred, but, yeah, it's somewhere around there. It was a small room of people, and then go back to Newspring just a few months ago, and it's , Holy moly, what is God doing with this product? It's a rocket ship. Ironically, that was the theme of The Last Rx is, , rockets. So I think it's amazing. I'm really looking forward to see where it goes in the future, and I'm just glad to be part of the ride. Yeah. We're so glad you're part of the ride too. Yes. We are. Well, thanks for providing a platform where I can, , get to use some of my gifts and, give back. For the benefit of everyone. Mhmm. Thank you for continuing to show up and to pour things back into making everybody better. That's been incredible. I love it. Well, thanks for joining us this morning for, an opportunity for the community to get to know you a little bit better. We've had a great time hanging out today. I just wanna say thanks for joining us. Thanks for having me. 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.