Podcast Episode 90: Podcast Episode 63: Collaboration is King

Description

In this episode, we talk about how collaboration is king. It's key to Rock and key to the community. Also v8.8 is out so take it for a spin, and provide us with your feedback. Let's collaborate as we always do!

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 back to Rockcast, the podcast where we bring you behind the scenes with what's happening at Spark Development Network. I'm Emily Forman. We have Jon Edmiston and Nick Airdo here this morning, and we have several great updates to share with you as usual. And, we'll we'll take some time to let a little bit about not only the status of some things we're working on, but a little bit about the why behind some of the things we're working on and and some more of the details. So thank you for joining us today. This is a Tuesday. We usually do this on Fridays, and I'm just very off. , yeah, I'm off today. You're ready for, , a five day weekend now? Can we? Can we have one of those? No. Dang it. V nine's not out yet. That's true. But 88 is out probably by the time they're listening to this. Excellent. So we had two good weeks of beta and two weeks brief before that of alpha. We found a few issues during the alpha testing. Thank you, alpha testers. That was really helpful. So we added those fixes into the beta and we haven't heard anything up until today. So it's all all, going according to plan. And, well, I I would say something about v nine, but I'm gonna pass the mic to to, John. Okay. So hopefully, v eight eight dot eight is our last patch release, which I think it should be, and v nine is coming along very well. We're just in the fit and finish stages, for group scheduling, which is, , one of the biggest features, of v nine, and that's going really well. That is a huge feature, and there are so many moving parts, to that. And I think what makes it especially challenging is just the how should this work kinda concept of that. Most features are very cut and dry, I would say. , how should this work? I think this one has, a lot of different ways of how people want it to work, and I think that's been the biggest challenge. But so far, so, , it's a one o feature release, and, , it's pretty impressive. And I can't wait for people to start, using it and giving us feedback. Already, people have been, , pinging on it on the pre alpha server and and already getting, some feedback, which is really nice. And, , but definitely in the alpha stages, we're gonna want people to actually use it the way you intend to and and get us some feedback. Outside of that, we've been working through, some of the other features. It's kinda putting the final touches on some bug fixes that we wanted to slip in, and it's it's gone well. The the one thing I probably would say or warn is that the digital signatures will not be in nine. There's just been some difficulties in trying to work around our current digital signature provider, with that. And so trying not to make breaking changes, but probably gonna have to make some breaking changes. So we're just gonna delay that feature a bit in the road map. But there's plenty of other great features in nine that replace it, much more than we had originally intended to put in nine, which is kind of the story. Right? So it's always that case that here's the here's the features for for this release, but by the time you're done, there's, , 10 times more features, than you intended, so. Definitely true. And one of those features is, the personality assessments that we've been talking about since the conference last year. We're very excited about that. We have all the structure and the content that we need to put those in. We're working on those pretty actively right now. One of the challenges on that is because it's a project we've teamed up with someone on, they have given us exactly what we need to get moving, but we have to then put on our application hat, right? And we have to say, well, so how does this fit inside Rock? How does the standard database administrator use it? What does it look to the person who's been asked to take assessments? And there are so many different touch points with this particular feature between the people taking the assessments, the ministry leaders, the database administrators, that we have to make sure that it makes sense from each of those contexts in the way that we put it in. So that has been a little bit of a unique challenge because a lot of the content actually originated outside our team. And this is the perfect type of feature to have that be the case because we definitely have called out the experts on this one. But there are a few unique touch ups then related to things we haven't necessarily walked through before because of this type of feature, where we need to just make sure that that we're looking at it from the perspective of all the touch points someone will have. Yeah. And I think that's that's been surprising, the the level of effort that that's taken, to do that. I guess the best way to to kinda picture that is if you if you as an individual take the assessment and get the results, , that's what was provided for us, and that's a very powerful thing and to read through that. But it's very different then from the question of, okay, so now that you have thousands of these results in your database, how do you want to search for a person who might have a certain motivation? Right. Do you really wanna say, and their motivation is over 39 on a scale of what, ? Right. That's not very helpful. So we have to then take that data and kind of provide alternate attributes about it Mhmm. That make it easily easily searchable by ministry staff. Right. That's where the usability comes We have to picture, well, how would someone use this? And if they had access to this, what would they want to what would make sense to query on? What terms will be quickly recognizable? And how, , how do we make it something that is quick and easy to understand and has all the power and depth of these, , truly, impressive assessments. Yeah. And and always happens, that snowballs. You get to the point where it's , okay, well, we're gonna have to use these additional person attributes for these types of things. And then you do that, and then you look in look at it inside the UI, and you're , oh, these attributes are so long. But you have to have them that long because when you look at it in the data view, it has to be kinda organized this way. But once in this block, it doesn't look right because it's it looks all garbage y. Now we're adding features to attributes in Rock that you can have a an abbreviated name. And so that adds, , a little bit of of extra time. And then you're , oh, well, yeah. And then it'd be nice if you could have sections in these attribute value blocks. So okay. Well, let's add that. And before it, , this turns into a much bigger feature, much more time. But those things do add value to lots of other things. So now all person attributes can have an abbreviated, name, and the person profile attribute values block now has extra features that I know I can use in other ways too. So And they were born out of this. So that's exciting. I mean, that that really ties into one of our core values of craftsmanship. Right? You can make it so that it has exactly exactly what it it looks easily, and then maybe some things aren't super workable, but you could fix them going forward, or you can try and really wrap your head around, what are all the ways this can be used and should it be used that way? And how do we make that better? And how do we make the experience of this really intuitive? So it's an exciting thing to work on, but it is a little bit, of a brain twist sometimes. Yeah. It's one those things too when you come out to the other side, it's , well, of course, , this is but when you started, all all you had was all this, , raw data and and then trying to figure out. And then some of it's a little nerve racking because you're trying to make assumptions on, , how what's a high value on this on this on this data. Is it is this is that a high value, is that a medium value, or is that a low value? And so we're having to try to make some, , assessments on these new assessments. Right. It's all very exciting. I think we're getting really, really close. Yeah. But it is one of those things where you think, oh, we'll devote this amount of time to this and it'll be done. And then you dig into it and you think, well, we could, but we we shouldn't. We should do a little more. Gotta do it right the first time because people are gonna be making data views off this stuff, and if we change it on them, that would be not good. Right. But it is going to be very exciting how much power is behind this feature. If you're looking to fill, for instance, particular ministry teams, and that there's been, , maybe you send assessments to the people who are currently on some of those teams, and you figure out, hey, the people who are most successful might have these attributes or might be, , kind of have a personality that is focused this direction, maybe that's a recipe for success and you can try and find some more people who have said they wanna volunteer. And when you create another branch of that team, maybe you put that as the first option on a page that they're looking at or Mhmm. Those are the first people that you call. So it's gonna be very powerful. And the assessment system is extendable. In the past, it was just one, and and it was kinda hard coded into Rock. Now it's extensible. We've already had some churches talk to us about interests in making their own custom assessments that plug into the assessment system. So that's definitely something that we're already doing for That's very for school. So we have that's not the only big project that we've been working on. Right? No. Not at all. We have a couple couple others, I think. Yep. Yeah. There's a lot of other projects that we've been working on. Well, since we've this is one we've been talking about. Right? We said the personality we brought up at the conference last year. There was another big project we brought up at the conference last year as something we wanted to tackle this year, which has also expanded in scope, but is making steady, quiet behind the scenes progress. Do you wanna tell us a little bit about what what's going on with the mobile app? Yeah. Definitely. So you said, Emily, everything starts as a very small line, and then it gets by the time you come out to your side, it's this huge, , wide line. So, , we've been working and looking at the at mobile strategies for a a while, and so we we have been putting time and effort into, a Rock mobile strategy. And and there's code now being written. We've had to go back to the drawing board all the way back to the beginning and and kinda define, , what are the goals for what we're trying to achieve, and then what's the best technology platform, and then what's the best version of that technology platform. And so we we are landed on, Xamarin forms, but we're taking it to some of their newer, technologies that that have come out recently. So I think it'll make it much more extensible and easier for people to customize. It's in the same vein as, , what we saw at the conference with with Avalanche, but it is a a entirely new thing. So it's it's inspired by that, , pilot project Mhmm. But it's it's from scratch. We're making good progress. , we we're not ready to commit any kind of deadlines or due dates or road maps. But I think whenever you start a project that, there's a lot of decisions that have be made architecturally. There's a lot of directions that you have to pick and technologies, and framework that you have to write. And I think we have traction in that, which is always, the first big hurdle is to get traction in your in in the creation of the framework. And I think we have that. And, we actually are collaborating we always do. Collaboration is kind of the whole key to Rock and the key to the community, but it's not easy. I mean, anybody who thinks collaboration's easy is is crazy, but it always returns best results. And, , honestly, I think too, it's it's really what especially as a Christian technology community, we're called to because, I mean, that's that's just the whole spirit of the gospel is community and collaboration working together and putting checking egos. And, I would say that's hard though, but we are, , collaborating on that. So we have, a couple other people who are, inside that. Daniel Hazelbaker at at Shepherd Church is investing now a sniff a significant amount of time on on that too. So it's been fun, I mean, because you get more people, more ideas, and then it goes faster too. So that's that's kind of another positive thing. So the update is it's we're we're making progress. There's traction. There's direction. But as of yet, there's no road map. , I think it's really cool that you just mentioned collaboration right there because so far we've talked about, what? We've talked about group his group history. Mhmm. I'm sorry. Volunteer scheduling. We've talked about, personality. We've talked about mobile app. All three of those are examples of collaboration that we've done that are totally different styles of collaboration and have been enriched by the input of all of those who have been a part of them. But you'll also notice at the same time we say, well, we started with this small concept and it grew because that's the thing with collaboration, right? Everyone contributing things that make it better, but a little more complex. So you have to kind of layer on that complexity before you can figure out the simplest, most elegant way to solve the problem. And so I just think that's really interesting that all three things that we've talked about as being the big things right now have all had major, collaboration from from other organizations. Right. And one thing that's not on the agenda for this podcast, but is happening right now and is highly collaborative is is the STEPS project. I mean, we're making progress on that. That's highly collaborative. And it's, , working with a denomination that's different than usually that has been part of the community, which is super exciting and, because we want our community to be collaborating across denominational boundaries and, in fact, hopefully blind to them. So that's been really exciting. I mean, I love that project. I think it's gonna be a a big piece of our go forward direction, and I love the fact that it's just but, again, the blindness to denominational lines. Right. And so obviously, we have a lot of things going on at the same time here, and we are one team. And that's been interesting because that has created a lot of growth for us, right? It's created a lot of intentional interactions with other organizations. It's created a lot of different increasing work patterns inside the organization. And so we have discovered as every organization does that's dealing with growth, that maybe the way we had things set up originally needs to be adjusted a bit in order to keep up with the community growth, the feature set growth, the development growth that we have been experiencing. So that's one of the other things that we've been working on a lot behind the scenes is really just saying, well, what should processes look ? If we have more people involved in the average process here at any given time, because we have more things going on, we simply have to, how we apply the correct processes so that we're not relying on the things that are in any one of our brains, but we're making them very explicit and things that anyone could follow. How does that work? So we've been putting a lot of energy into how things should work and what processes should look , and it sounds not that hard, but it is kind of. Super hard. Right, because a lot of times you're inclined to just say, well, this is how we do it now, I'll tweak that. When really what you should say is, let's pretend we don't have a way of doing it now, how should it be done? And so we've been putting a lot of effort into that. One of the things that we're realizing is we need a more centralized project management that we can take these collaborative features, kind of what we've been talking about here, and make sure that everything is reaching a core implication if it should. if this is something that should be incorporated into core, are we making sure that that's the case? Or if this were tweaked a little bit, could it benefit all churches? And so I think it's gonna be really crucial that we are centralizing our project management, centralizes technical architecture and some other things. So that's been one of our key focuses this year so far. Yeah. And I think you're right that it all looks easy when it comes out the other side, but it's it's not been easy, and it's trying to figure out how do you do things in a repeatable way and and never have to figure out the same thing more than once. So it's creating highly structured processes. Right. Right. And that means they have to be living. Right? You can't Mhmm. Set them and forget them. You have to be constantly tweaking them, and and so that's a a culture. Yeah. And establish roles. And Mhmm. So I mean, a lot of that goes back to I mean, you've been doing a lot of reading on that. How do you make I guess one of the books and titles was predictable success, and I think that's been really inspiring to to us to get that. How do we get that into our organization? Mhmm. Because we have visions of where we want to be or and the type of organizations that organization that we want to be, but it's one thing to have the vision of it. It's another thing to have to implement that, and that's what takes the effort and the work. Right. And really, it's not just to solve today's problems, but how do you keep tomorrow's problems in mind? So how do we create something that is perfectly functional today but scales so we don't have to do this every six months? Right. And we have been growing, and that that takes a lot of effort just to do that, just to grow and bring new people onto the team and train them on the culture and how we do things. Yep. So just any organization, probably just our listeners' organizations, sometimes you get something really right, sometimes you get something not really right, and you just have to learn from all of it and keep moving forward in the right direction. I mean, it's an adventure, but it's really great. It's inspiring to see what the future holds here and what we can all contribute to it. Right. So we're spending a lot of time on that, but for good reason, I think, right now. Yeah, definitely. One of the exciting things we have coming up this summer though is our next masterclass, and this is not just any masterclass. This is really exciting because it's the first one that will have v nine content. And we've realized for a little bit, we probably couldn't squeeze any additional content into the typical three day agenda for a masterclass. So we decided to really blow it out and move it to a four day class. We're adding V9 content, we're adding extra time for really important hands on activities, and this master class should really be one to set the standards. It's definitely, if you've been considering a master class, this is the one to come to because it's it's gonna give you access to the latest and greatest as far as understanding new feature sets. And it's the format's gonna be a a really great one. Yeah. I'm excited that as we've rolled out new versions of Rock, it's been harder and harder to squeeze it into that three days. And and now with the four days, it feels we have now more time to spend towards some of these features and to to really give more time. Think there's still a little bit of room in there, , for version 10 and version 11. Right. But eventually, we're gonna have to probably expand it to five days because or split the class into pieces. And and that's one thing we are talking about is, , other classes that we can do maybe are even more advanced than the master class. Mhmm. And actually some that are maybe a little easier than the master class. So that is definitely something that is actively being considered. As with all things Rock, nothing stays the same for a very long time. We definitely are always looking for how to improve and I think that three day format has lasted us for a couple of years. So as far as the amount of content that you can have and flex and it's made a lot of sense. So I anticipate four days will be another period of time, a couple of major releases. But, at the point that it has to grow, , we're thinking ahead right now, what should we be offering? What should it look ? Again, we're not gonna we never start with what we have today. We're always looking at what should be. So. Yeah. And and just to show that the classes are important to us, mean, we are currently investing in our own com our own training space. That's right. So we just feel that's something that we need to be able to control in that space. And, , the space that we have that we were using is not bad, but we don't have any control over it. And even just providing Wi Fi is difficult because there is no Wi Fi in the in the room because it's not it's not part of our office. It's Right. On a different building on our campus here, and there's no Wi Fi, which is interesting. So if you're a long time listener, that we are, perched right here on the edge of Sun City, which is retirement community, and we have great rent rates here, right? But they literally when we went and talked to the management about hey should we have a projector, a screen, WiFi in the conference room that people rent, they said why? Yeah. Right. At least they didn't say what's Wi Fi. That's they may have been thinking that. That might have been behind the why. Wi Fi? Yeah. Right. So funny story to share. John actually ran wires up and over the hall from the people across the the hallway from us. So we kind of beg and borrow and steal their Wi Fi with their acknowledgment. They bump their plan up before our class. We use it. We pay for their month's Wi Fi. It's kinda how you have to get things done when you're growing sometimes. But Which is strange, though, because he I mean, he even his wife even his Internet is so small that's not enough for the conference. He has to call Cox, bump it up for one month, bump it back down, which he's great. I mean, he I don't know why he does it, but he's super nice and he loves our mission. And, but every month, we wanna do a master class. We actually have to call and arrange this for him. And Another example of why you need process. Literally so we use Asana for our our project management. Literally inside our master class setup project, we have call the guy across the hall, ask him to bump up his WiFi, and afterwards, , go take him a thank you card and just make sure he he knows that we appreciate him. So funny, the things you have to incorporate and process. But bringing that in house will be so much easier. Right. And having the room just down our hall that we can control and have. I mean, even, , make sure that it's painted. The other room has some walls that could probably use some painting. So it's just gonna be nice so we can control the environment. That's why we keep it dark in that room. Yeah. So Yeah. Well, speaking of, I mean, we're going to have adjustable lighting. These are things you just don't think about until you're using someone else's space. Right? So we're we've taken all our lessons learned there, and we will create a very inviting But, again, all the things that you don't think about till you have to do it is, , how how do you find the right training table, and how do you find the right training chair? , these are, again, things that we've had to research for hours and hours and hours on nights and weekends. We don't spend our eight eight to five looking at training tables. But because you wanna get something else that's gonna last, it's not gonna look weird, that's gonna , has a good surface, that the chair's comfortable. Yep. I mean, we're going this is funny because this is true. We were on our tour of churches recently. Emily and I had my eye out for, , training tables and comfortable chairs. So sometimes I we'd be on a tour of the church, and I would just disappear into a room because I wanted to go try the chair, , the what kind of chair is this? And I'd be turning it upside down, taking a picture of the label underneath. Guess this chair's pretty comfy. What do you hey, Emily, back here. Check this chair out. True story. Yeah. That's awkward. But, , that's what you have to do. How do you order I mean, chairs are expensive. , how do you not try it first? Right. And then we find what we want, and guess what? It's a make an offer site. Right. , just nothing is easy. So if we're touring a campus for an Rx conference, we may be checking out your other equipment as well. That's true. You have to. Pay us no mind. Right. And so that brings up a great point, Nick. We have a conference coming. I don't know if you've heard about that or not. I have. It's quite amazing. In fact, I know you're about to talk about it, but well, I'll hold I'll hold my comment till you're done. Oh, okay. Well, it's September this year, and it's at New Spring Church in Anderson, South Carolina. Our web page is up. You can register there now. In fact, you should register there now before pricing goes up. This is the best pricing you're gonna get right now for this conference, and, it's gonna be pretty incredible. I know we say that every year, but I think if you've come a few years, you will agree that we really kick it up every year because we kind of remake the event according to the feedback we get. And this community is growing so fast that we have so many people that really know their stuff and so many people that are willing to share even if they feel not entirely competent on every subject, but they really know the one that's helped them. And so this year we're going to have two full best practices tracks running. And we've had so much interest in speaking slots that we really only have maybe a couple that are still available right now. And And only in certain tracks. And only in certain tracks. So if you were thinking about speaking at the conference, reach out very soon. I don't know how long those are going to still be available. But you do not want to miss this. You want , we talk about the masterclass, and that's what you want your database administrators and your power users to come to. But this is what you want to bring your whole Rock team to. Mhmm. This is going to be the event where you get so much information. I think, John, you always say you're drinking from the the fire hose with this. You get so much information that if you're trying to take that all in as one person for your organization, it's going to be more information than you possibly could. And good. It's impossible. Well, I mean, especially this time that there's even more tracks. I know. So you have to have more than one person, there's no way. And you really need to share that experience with someone on your team so you can go back afterward, recap it, come up with your game plan. that's really hard to do if you went, someone else didn't go. How do you communicate an experience that? You just really can't. So you'll wanna get registered for that as soon as possible before pricing goes up. And if you're unconvinced about going, just listen to the next upcoming special edition podcast with Frank Grand. I think he really sells it well, and it's just from his heart. So yeah. Yes. Our next upcoming podcast features Frank Grand. You heard it here. And, , there's always the conference, which is amazing, but but you also get to tour and see the environments Mhmm. Of a of a really great church. And all the churches that we've ever been at have had great environments, but NewSpring has some really incredible ones too, and and very intentional environments that, , you can learn a lot from that Mhmm. Also. So that that's another good reason to go. Someone did find the speaker page, which is still being developed and hidden, but they guessed the URL and shared it with some people in a in a in a private channel. And and the response was, wow. This is, , off the chart in terms of the speakers who who are talking. Just all those all you guys in the community. Mhmm. Just it's it's gonna be a very impressive conference and definitely leveling up from last year, which I thought was an amazing conference too. Definitely. And speaking of speakers, that's hard to say. Speaking of speakers, we do plan to make that site publicly available live and done by the end of this month. So Mhmm. There will be a lot of you'll be able to share that excitement at that point. There's lot of work that goes into all that topics and Mhmm. And schedule and Okay. And yes, if you are speaking and you're on the schedule and you haven't yet sent your information for that page back to Robin, please do that soon so we don't disappoint the other listeners who are waiting to get access to that page. Yeah. And, I mean, I'll go off script here, which is always gonna make Emily worry. Yeah. So, I mean, just to be transparent, , we put a lot of effort into even, , our part of that. So this week, we're doing something new and unique is we're going to a class on how to be a better presenter, a, , a private class that we arranged with a basically, he's an he's a acting Mhmm. Instructor. Instructor, and he's gonna we've sent him some of our videos of our previous work, and he's gonna give us some tips and help us to level up in what we're doing, and just, , again, this is not something that it comes natural to us either. And so but we're trying to every year, , make get get better and show steady improvements. Mhmm. And so that's something that that we're doing. Although we will not be adding show tunes to our repertoire this year. Oh, I did actually tell him that you wanted help in that. So That's kind of behind the scenes. Okay. That's not coming out of the conference. Oh, not this year. Maybe next year. May 2020. We'll see. Yeah. Emily sings her pres her keynote. Well, not for 2019, so we gotta stick with that. But we are definitely investing in all the things that help to make a better event, and it's going to be an incredible experience this year. We are going to wrap up a lot of the things that we've been talking about at previous conferences, kind of put a bow on some things and and share, know, so what's next? And I think it's really exciting because this event feels a culmination of every event before it. Mhmm. And it's not something you wanna miss. So if you've seen the people in the, Rocket Chat community that seem they know each other and they're interacting there really well, you'll probably find in almost every case that they've connected in person at a conference. And that really drives a lot of that casual, quick, helpful, interactive behavior that you see there. And it's something that if you haven't been, you will find a lot of value, not just because of the event and the content, but because of those connections with the community that really continue on into the future. Yeah. And we do have a few things we're gonna, , surprise announcements at the conference this So We always do. Definitely want to be there. Definitely. So if you don't have enough reasons yet to come, don't know what else to tell you, ask someone else in the community and they'll fill you in. But this is the event of the year for sure. We also have, recently had a sighting of some new members of our internal community, some new iterations of Chip. Yes. So Chip has been out and about, and he's been, , changing and doing some new things. So we felt we needed to get some new chip stickers into the community. So and, a lot of times, these stickers just come about because of certain things that get said or certain things that come up or certain ideas that we've had. And and funny, mean, there's a lot of chip stickers that are just been designed and never done anything with or, , they're 80% done and sometimes you just have a weekend and you're just , I'll just finish this one up. And, when you match that up with a sale from, Sticker Mule, then Right. Exciting things happen. They get born. Yes. That's right. So do check the store, the promo shop for the I think we have four new ones. Well, there's more than that, but some of them are are limited. You have to actually do something, , speak at the conference. There's special one just for you guys at the conference. If you speak at the conference, you get a special Chip sticker, and Chip Chip, you, is a little nervous at at speaking, and so we put that into his little sticker. So That's okay. We're a very compassionate audience. Yes. And so is Chip. He's very compassionate. Or if you do put on a roadshow Mhmm. We're trying to, right now, to expand out the recognition of what people do in the community. Mhmm. Good point. So, in fact, I hope that there's a session at the conference on how to be a Rock star, because I think people think to be a Rock star, you have to have a certain number of Slack points. Mhmm. Or we what's not chat points? Chat points. And and that helps. Yes. That's a piece of it. But it's not just that. , we don't expect everyone to be equally successful in the in the number of chat points. And also, we don't need everybody doing that. We need everybody using their talents and their gifts in their own unique way. So we're expanding different ways, and and trying to visualize that out so people can see, oh, okay. Well, maybe maybe there's more than just chat points. This person has done, , three road shows over the last few years, or this person constantly is having, , phone calls with other churches talking about how they use Rock, or this person has been flagging and con , issues and and confirming issues in inside of GitHub, which is super easy. I mean, can you just confirm that this is an issue? , anybody with a mouse can can help with that. Maybe they can't get all of them, but they can get a significant number. It's it's right there. It tells you how to, , reproduce. So we're trying to give more and more ways that people can get acknowledgment for the the effort that they put forward in in the community. And so one of them is is hosting a roadshow, and there's a special chip sticker for that. It's interesting, I kind of think about the Rock star measurement the same way that I think that churches probably measure engagement. So they all probably measure the engagement of their attendees in slightly different ways, but there is no one standard that says, okay, this person's engaged. Engagement means a broad engagement with the community, with the, , the whole congregation there in the ways that make sense and that and that maximize their talents and what they have to give. And so it's it's kinda similar to that. Yeah. And I think today, we've only I mean, that's the the one that you can see the biggest measure of. Right? So then people, think, say, well, know, that that's that is the measure. And it's never been just the measure, but there's not a way for for people to see those others. So we're trying to create those. So we're working on actively trying to put something into the community your community profile page where you can if you have a conversation, if you set up a time to talk to a church about ministry and or Rock, you can log that, and that'll give you, , a point for that. Mhmm. And also tells us that that conversation was had. So because we're having conversations with all these churches too, so it's it's helpful to know, , all the touch points with that church. Just you said when you do with ministry, you wanna know all the touch points that a member or attendees had with with the various church. We're we're doing the same thing within our Rock instance. And so, we really wanna start acknowledging that effort that people are putting in in different ways. Right. I mean, it's kind of , acknowledging the effort of maybe the nursery volunteer the same way that you would acknowledge the effort of the worship ministry volunteer. One's up front and center, one isn't, but they're they're adding the same energy and the same effort. Mhmm. Yep. Exactly. Alright. So if you have not yet searched up those chip stickers and you're sitting in front of your computer, you can find them in two places. You can find them on the store, or you can visit Chip's special website realchip.rocks. And if you haven't checked that out yet, you might want to. Yeah. You get to to see the backstory. That's right. And you can see the full list of stickers and really how likely you might be to come in contact with some of them. Right. And and we know that I mean, it tells you the backstory, but we know that there's a touch point of why how Chip came to be, around a b fifty two song. Right. And I do wanna put it out there that they b fifty twos are currently touring right now. So if you wanna hear Rock Lobster live, this might be the last time. I mean, they're they're getting up there. You could you could go to their site, find out where the tour is. They're coming to Phoenix in, I think, , October or September. Can we get a podcast ad from them at least for this? This is quite a plug. Let's see what we can do. I mean, they they probably need all the help they can get, honestly. So I I'm I'm going to go. They have other people going with them. So they have OMD in Berlin if if you're interested. I'm a huge OMD fan. What they really need is a a chip mascot at the conference or at the concert. what? Maybe I'll maybe I'll make a special sticker and, throw a few on stage. Oh, man. The many lives of Chip. Well, he is a lot of fun. Thanks so much for joining us today and coming behind the scenes with us, allowing us to share what we've been working on, what we think about, why we're doing what we're doing, and it's really all for you. Thanks for joining us today. Today's show was produced by Emily Forman. Nick was our recording engineer who turned the dials and pushed the buttons. Jim Michael handled all the audio post production mixing. And our amazing show notes, which you can find at BrockRMS.com/connect, were transcribed and written up by Michael Garrison. 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.