Podcast Episode 103: Episode 76: Special Edition with Daniel Hazelbaker

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In this special edition of Rockcast, we talk with Daniel Hazelbaker, a Rock Hall of Fame member and a long-time supporter of the Rock community. We discuss how Daniel tackles learning new technologies, the value of getting involved with Rock, and we'll talk about Daniel's secret ops role in the Rock Mobile project.

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 RockCast, the podcast where we take you behind the scenes with Spark Development Network and introduce you to some of our best friends and family and catch you up on things going on in the life of Rock. So we have a very special guest with us today. Who is that? John, our special guest is someone that has been around for a while in this community. He works currently at Shepherd Church. He's been a hall of famer for a long time. And he's very familiar to people both on stage now from the conferences and in Rocket Chat. It's Daniel Hazel Baker. Is that why Daniel Hazel Baker's in the room? Unfortunately, is. Yeah. You're really looking forward to this, aren't you? I cannot tell you how much I've been looking forward to this. And that's why we did not tell you that this was going down. In fact, you just found out back yesterday, I think. We probably shouldn't have slipped as early as yesterday. Right. So you're very well prepared for this. Yes. I'm about as prepared as this as I am for anything. Okay. Well, that's So you've been around the community forever, Emily said. And in fact, I think we've all been working together even back before Rock was a thing. It really started in the arena community. Yep. So before Shepherd, where were you at? Before Shepherd, I was at High Desert Church for about fifteen years and that was quite a long stint. Yeah. And that was also so High Desert was on Arena, Shepherd was on Arena. We were on Arena at one point. Yeah. And I think that's where I think that's where the Brock community got its first start was just in a lot of the work of of the refreshed cash area, and that's where I think the community kinda got its start and birthed. And then out of that grew Rock. Yep. That that was definitely the start of our community and time hanging out together. Yeah. And so you guys have been, , especially Shepard has been on on Rock and and pushing to get on Rock from the very beginning. Shepherd is one of those, , couple churches that really helped us get it started. , Southeast, Shepherd, of course, New Spring, CCV, those were kinda the founding founding churches. So what do you think is different maybe about in the Rock community versus the the birthing community of of Refresh Cash? I mean, the size is so much bigger. I mean, I would say maybe even 20 times as big as it was back in our refresh cash days. Did you ever think it'd be that? No. Yeah. I mean, we had grand visions of maybe getting 60 people showing up to the meetups and hanging out afterwards. That's definitely changed to, hey, I hope I actually get to see John and Nick for a few minutes today at the conference. Yeah, that was kinda my biggest, disappointment at the conference is , there's so many people you wanted to connect with, I wanted to connect with. And I might've seen them in the hallway, but they were on a mission, I was on a mission, and it's , you can almost have another three days of just nothing but just talking. Yeah. It's true. That's one of the reasons we are telling people, hey, come early, stay late. Because otherwise it's hard to run into all the people that you want to. Mhmm. Yeah. I'm really myself looking forward to that next year because being able to spend some time chatting with people around tables and not having to rush to different sessions and whatnot. Yeah. Especially in those early days. I mean, I really think that whole movement was created out of out of hotel lobby time. Right? I mean, there's this so much time that we spent in the lobbies talking. Until 2AM. Right. I mean, those that and now, , we did that after this conference. We go back to the lobby, and there'd be a couple people in the lobby, but there's no way. Mean, you you just you can't get 500 people in the lobby, but you can't at this other You could. Renaissance. Yes. So definitely, it's gonna be different. It's kind of going back to the roots then a little bit in a different way, even though it looks , oh, it's not gonna be at a church. That's different. But it kinda goes back to where it all came from anyway. Yeah. I mean, are just really special times just hanging out in the lobby and just sharing ideas, and some people would have laptops in the corner being working on things, and that was definitely cool. And and it's definitely gonna be amplifying that in that lobby because that's not that's not the Hampton Inn lobby. That's a nice, huge, tall lobby. Yes. It is. So Daniel, I think I ran into you in person for the first time at the Bel Air Conference in California in '20 Yeah. Were you at the conference in 2015 at CCV? I think I was. This year was my fifth conference. So yes, you were at that. So in that conference we had, I think, 90 some people. Yeah. And it was very it was all in this little teeny tight space. Think there's only two rooms. Right? There's two They sitting there right next to each other. And we could hardly get enough people to go into the second room. Right. It was kind of a wild experience. And the worst part about that conference is we had to do almost all the speaking. It was it was literally, , I think we had, , eight or nine sessions each. And who wants to talk that much? I mean, and that's what I love about this conference is getting more and more let more and more and bigger and bigger, and we get to do less and less. And you get so much more diversity and ideas, and I just think that's great. Yeah. It it's been fun for me seeing you guys do less, not because I don't want to see you do as much, but just seeing other people stepping up to take all those positions and fill all those slots that need to be, , have information provided. Yeah, We keep coming through the post conference feedback and that's one of the things everyone's saying. It's so incredible that the community is providing all this valuable content and helping each other out. Yeah. And that the other comment that's most prevalent is, I want more time to hang out in the hallways and connect with people. So it's interesting that, , that We need some bigger hallways. Well, the hallways at this place are huge. They're They are. Probably forty, fifty feet wide. Yep. It's made for that. Nice. That'll be fun. Yeah. I mean, we're really going to an event location that it's made for doing what we want. And and churches have been great. I wish we could keep doing it there, but we just have outgrown the facility needs for the conference. When you think about all those breakouts and the vendor area and the food eating area, it's just even big churches don't have all the spaces that we need. We were even talking about that before this last conference, if we could host one, I was , we're not sure we could, just dealing with all the breakout rooms, eating room, everything, we don't know that we'd have enough space to do it all at once. Right. And there's so much value in recording all of the different breakouts that we can't abandon that. And that's really one of those things that makes it hard to accommodate as we grow. Yeah, that is one of my favorite things after the conference is spending the next few months slowly going over and watching all the sessions and learning just all the smallest tidbits that I just had never known myself. How do you feel about watching your own sessions? It's watching a train, hitting a car and going off a cliff, but you just gotta do it. I agree. I completely agree. That's a great analogy. I really feel anybody who enjoys that, it might be a little different. Definitely different than me. Yeah. I don't know. So, Daniel, we have had the opportunity to work closely with you on a variety of projects over time, and you've really helped extend what the core team can do in a lot of ways. And recently, we've been working on a project with you that's been exciting. It's been I mean, we've kinda had to keep it secret. Right? So you were kind of in the secret ops team here of what was going on pre conference, but it's one of the most asked for things. It's one of the most important things, think, initiatives of the year. And, you've put a lot of work into helping us move that forward. What can you tell us about the work that you've been doing on Rock Mobile? Oh gosh. And you can say anything now. It's, it's exciting for me to work on something with very clear direction. So I've been very thankful to John to have provided that, , concrete, this is what we're going for. This is what everything should look . It's been really helpful. It's an interesting project because it's involved so many new technologies that I've never worked with before. So there's been a lot of ability to learn new things, practice with new technologies, even different platforms of between Mac and Windows having to go back and forth to test things. Really looking forward to eventually building to put that version one stamp on it and saying, , it's ready for production use. Doesn't have all your features yet, , , Rock was in the start, but you can actually use it now. So that'll be an exciting feat once we were able to put that rubber stamp on and start on version two. Right. So that's interesting that you mentioned you had to learn a lot of new technologies. I think that's a challenge for everyone in our community. And I think maybe some people look at you and think, oh, Daniel knows it all. And they kind of opt themselves out of the category of people that could, , achieve big things and go places with Rock because they don't know it all. But I think what you're saying is, well, there's always more to learn. So how do you tackle learning new technologies? I feel I'm a little bit odd in that way. I have, at least it seems to me a really good memory when I'm reminded of something, when something will trigger that memory, I can remember a lot. But if it's just kind of free recall, I need to remember how to do something, it'll take me hours to remember it. So that tends to work well with programming because I'm constantly being reminded as I go through stuff. But a lot of it is for me just reading. When I started this project for the mobile, I spent probably about a week just all day long reading through all the Microsoft Xamarin documentation, kind of treating it it was a novel, start to finish, read the whole thing. Then as we were actually developing it, I would hit something go, Oh, I think I read something about that in this part of the book, go find it. And some of the same I try to do with the Rock documentation that's been a while since I've taken this, have to read through all of it. just go through it, get a feeling for, okay, this is kind of what it can do. And then I can remember to go back and find that specific page and refresh my memory on how to do it. So that familiarity with information, taking it all in upfront. Yeah. Sounds a big time investment, but you're saying it really pays out. It really pays out well for me. I do enjoy learning, but not so much staring at a screen all day and reading, but it is part of the job. Sometimes you do what you gotta do. Yeah. Interesting. When I think too, you said, you kinda, as you're learning new technology, you kinda have to stay high level, read and skim across a lot, but then you also have to need to go deep on things and it may not make sense in that moment, but later it comes back as I go, yep. Yeah, there are sometimes pages later in the documentation I go, Oh, that's what that was talking about and referring to and finally having it click. I remember I came out of college too, I just I would read every trade journal out there. Back then there were these things called trade journals. Was this thing called paper. Yeah. And it was printed on this thing, new technology called paper. And I subscribed to all of them, and they'd come out weekly. They're a tabloid sized thing, and I would just read them from cover to cover. And I had to understand about zero of it because I was just out of school. I didn't know what, , Lotus Domino's was, , and I didn't need it for my job. But later, after reading and reading and reading, I could hold a conversation with people and, , oh, yeah. I know what Lotus Domino's is. That's a web server that you can run on the way on the mainframe or I thought that was pizza. Yeah. It was a little confusing at first for me too. I'm , is this a pizza or is this a technology? But it was just such a gift later to have that breadth of knowledge, even though I literally knew nothing about what I was reading. But you just you keep reading it over time and it gets So you live in California and you work at Shepard with Jeremy Hoff, who's also been very helpful and influential with the Spark team. He's on the board And he is excited about mobile technology as well. And you've been working on that with his blessing and Shepard's really put a lot of momentum behind what we're doing. What other kinds of things do you do for Shepard? Kind of a jack of all trades, just doing whatever needs to be done, Rock related, sometimes helping with general IT things, just because I've been doing IT type stuff since I was 15. So, , it was before Windows that I was, , messing with computers and working on them. So I've just accumulated a lot of knowledge, a lot of it useless, but a lot of computer knowledge that's been, it's been good to have to build a through an ideas to the other IT folks on the team and say, well, what if we tried something this, would that solve that problem? But as far as Rock goes, a lot of tweaking the websites to get exactly how they want it. They're able to get really close, but they can't figure out that one last, , JavaScript or maybe it's a custom block that needs to be written piece. But it's a little hard to say because this year has been six months of mobile development and I know, we're so thankful. Thank you, Shepard. So you also make a lot of plugins. What's your favorite plugin that you have out there? My favorite plugin is probably the project management. Yeah, that's getting a lot of traction. I've heard from so many people how it's been helpful to them, which is really great to hear, both as the plugin author and just as a person, I wrote it primarily for me because I needed something that worked the way my brain works. And most systems out there don't work the way my brain works. And or, , they're completely outside of Rock and now we gotta get our staff to use Rock and this other system, we want something all in one. So, spent some time writing it up and it's , man, it's probably gonna be useful to a couple other churches and it's ended up being more useful than I thought it would be. Are there any new features coming to that one or? There's nothing major coming. There's a few small tweaks. At some point would to get a kind of a calendar view of upcoming due dates and everything. That's requested a few times by different churches and it's on my list, but just been trying to figure out how to present that without it ending up being this giant calendar that doesn't actually help. Mhmm. Mhmm. Well, I know, know, you've jumped right into the community from the very beginning, but if there's someone else out there who, , there's so many other ways to get connected without having to be a developer. I think that's one of misconceptions that we're trying to steer through. But if someone's out there and they're brand new, how would you you should give me recommendations on how to get started? How to get started being involved? Mhmm. They wanna be a rockstar maybe, they see that term and they wanna become that. For me, the best way for me to be involved is helping other people answer questions. Even if I don't know the answer, it's a way for me to learn that piece of the system because I have to go, , pull up that page, look it over, look at the settings. When I remember, go read the documentation about that page, , figure out what they're seeing, why it's not working the way they expected and then build a report back. So even just trying to answer questions is a great way for me to both help the community and help myself grow and learn the new features of Rock. I think that's a great reminder, because I find the same thing. I think people when they see you and Jim and whoever answer a question, I think they might assume that you knew the answer. And almost all the cases for me, and maybe I'm just different and not so so smart, but when I'm on a call and I'm answering people's questions, I have Rock open. I'm looking at block settings. I'm I'm playing as it right there because you can't keep that in in your head. You're just trying to figure the puzzle out. Yeah. There's so many kings to Rock, which are great that I found myself I'll answer something because, oh, that's what it was two weeks ago. And then Jim or somebody else will hop and say, no, actually it's different now it's this. I'm , oh, I haven't had a chance to even learn that that changed yet. Okay. So that's another great reminder that even the Hall of Famers get it wrong. It's and that's okay. , we're all learning. There's no I think sometimes we're afraid of getting it wrong and I've been so wrong on things and some of the things I'm wrong on is stuff that I even wrote. So it's , that's embarrassing. Yeah, mean, Jim and I were sitting together during the Rockstar meeting when something was mentioned about the new, group scheduling or something that. And we're both , really that's in Rock? We didn't even know that was coming. I mean, it's , in the eight point release or nine point release or something , oh, we haven't even had a chance to even know that existed, let alone try to learn how to use it. And that's good, we just, we don't have time to learn everything. People feel we do because we've been around long enough that we've known the earlier versions of Rock, but there's very little in eight or nine that I've had time to really learn myself yet. Right, and just realize when you see those questions, I mean, oftentimes you're going to figure it out and then you answer it. It's rare that you're just gonna start typing the answer is true, ? And that's very approachable for anybody and maybe a little slower in the beginning, but you gotta start somewhere, right? Yeah. Mean, you and Jim, at one point you and Jim got your first point. That's true. And there's plenty of opportunity if I'm hearing you correctly, because when new things come out, new features, updates to the way features function, everybody has to learn it. So someone who might be starting new is at the same starting point as the rest of the community. Absolutely. And sometimes there's more than one right answer, right? Often. I to see when there starts to get a threaded discussion going about other options and other ways, and there's such creativity, , that you can have in Rock because it's so extensible. You can come at problems with different from different directions. Yeah. In fact, I think that's why sometimes someone's frustration some people get frustrated at me because my answer is always, depends. You could do it different ways. And I think they just want that one answer. And there's oftentimes not just one answer. Yeah. That's where that best practices track comes in handy. Mhmm. Mhmm. Well, I'm always amazed too, at conference time to see some of the stuff that people are doing, I was , would never have thought to do it that way. That's a really cool idea. So Definitely. Well, Daniel, thanks for coming, first of all, and joining the team in the office here for a few days this week, and for all the work you've been putting into mobile. And then just for taking the time to share some of the stuff with the community. I know that they love to be able to kinda get inside the minds of the people who are working on the features that they're interested in right now. So thanks for taking that time. You're welcome. I I tried to get out, but you would not let me. So No. You're welcome anyway. Yes. You got your podcast done, so you , next time you come in, you don't have worry about a surprise. Yes. I mean, if we get rave reviews No. , if all the comments start coming in True. Bring them back. Right. Don't don't make me hack your server to get rid of those reviews. You can DM me. Thanks, Daniel. You're welcome. 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. 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