Podcast Episode 84: Episode 57: Looking Beyond the Hour Hand

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A behind-the-scenes talk with the Core Team, about what's going on, how we think, and some great things happening in the community!

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 another episode of Rockcast, the podcast that takes you behind the scenes with the Spark Development Network team. I'm Emily Forman. We have Jon Edmiston and Nick Airdo, and we are going to tell you what's been happening in the last month. So we have a lot of exciting things coming up. It seems we're making a lot of small steps forward on really big things rather than wrapping up small projects quickly right now in this phase. And speaking of that, Nick, how are things going with the latest update for Rock? Well, the latest update is that 86 should be a production release by the time everyone's listening to this podcast, which basically is gonna be Monday or Tuesday. Monday's a holiday for us. So, it's largely a bug fix release. There's just lots of bug fixes. There's some security stuff. So it's it's good that everyone moves to eight six. It's very safe. And then there's a few little tidbits of features in there. Just read through the release notes at rockrms.com/releasenotes to see all those goodies. But it was a smooth release. Hardly anybody reported anything during beta or alpha testing and there were a number of people doing tests so that's good. That's great. Yep. Awesome. I appreciate that you gave the URL right there. I feel I'm always the one coming behind everything giving URLs. It's kind of awkward sometimes. I just wanted to help you out a little bit. Thank you. You're my favorite person today, Nick Airdo. All right, so we've talked about what's going on in V eight. Let's give a a quick update on what's going on in v nine. John? We're making progress. It seems it's of the things that we make progress, it the bar is always moving out as we add it because new features are being added. But we are making progress. Grace has been instrumental in getting our processes in place for, , bringing this thing in. And we have some pretty ambitious goals to to knock out some features, but we're getting there. I think some of the things that are changing and flexing are some people are, , requesting new features to be added. But, also, , we're we're getting a better understanding what some features should be, the assessments. I think how that is implemented in Rock, the feature set is changing a little bit for the better. , it's gonna be much more robust. And I guess I wasn't we hadn't gotten to that level of planning yet, but when we got to it, it's , I think this is what needs to be done, and that's gonna add some more time. But I think it's gonna make it a lot better of a of a release. And and churches will have a lot more customization on which assessments they do want to use, and if they didn't want to participate in a certain assessment, they could they could turn that off really easily. So That should be really nice. Mhmm. It's always nice when we're able to put out something that has all the the features and aspects thought out ahead of time. And if you have to add them a little bit later, it's better to have that architecture and thought process up front. So. Yeah. And I, , I had a came up with a realization. It's not a new realization, but it's interesting maybe to talk about real quick is that the way Rock works and the way the community likes Rock, it's really hard to do that level development because everything's abstracted and nothing is concrete. So for instance, I'm looking at this new set of technologies, and it's so frustrating as I'm reading through it. I'm , oh, every example in every programming book says, if you want to make a page that does this, first step, create new page, then add this logic to this page. And it doesn't work that in Rock. , there is no concrete page that does person profile. Right? It's a abstract framework that hosts dynamic types of blocks that needs to inject security and said block type onto page. And then even that block type is abstracted to handle all these, , cuss user customizable badges, components, widgets, assessments. So as I was going through the book, I was , if only, , we could write apps this. , back in the when I worked for Honeywell, we it would totally be that. It's insert new page, write the logic on that page that you want, and you're done. So it's it's it's a lot harder than it looks, and it's a lot harder be too, because there's no one you don't buy a book on how to do that. You don't read a blog post on how to do that. You really have to go in and get an intuitive feel for how the framework works and then try to abstract out a way to do it. And I think it's easy when we get to this level because of the stage of the project because a lot of that framework is in, and it just feels , oh, yeah. Of course, it should do that. And then, of course, it does that, but to build that out is incredibly tricky. And and as we look at some of these new projects we're working on, it's having to start from scratch again. And so you get the book on how to, say, do a a mobile app. It's , yeah. You we don't have the the realization that we can just create a new page, and the home feed should always do this. , no. , has to be all dynamic inside. Yeah. It's pretty rare to find many systems that are as dynamic as Rock. , a lot of systems are just hard coded. They they shape the application the way it's shaped and that's it. And that's what you get. But Rock is that we say a lot, set of Legos. You can build it and put it wherever you want. Right. So if you're gonna make a maybe a a toy plane, most people would create an an injection mold for the plane and then stamp those puppies out, , a million at a time. And whereas we have to go back and say, okay. Here's, we have to create and figure out a component system of Legos and how they're gonna fit. And then you do all that and you spend a lot of time and then you think about, okay, now how do we make the plane from the Legos and hope that you did it right so you can still make the plane you wanted. It is very interesting from my perspective to not being necessarily on the inside of that piece, but sometimes there are really well meaning experts in certain areas that want to give input or advice into the way something should be shaped in a new feature. And and I've just come to realize even from my angle or my perspective that a lot of times what they're saying is is a really good idea, and it's based on really successful things, but they don't work that way in Rock. And so we are kind of creating something that hasn't existed before, and it's really, really hard. It's it's good to stockpile a lot of great ideas and concepts, but you can't just roll them out the way someone's done it before. Right. And it's very common that we get code sent to us that's solving a need that the community wants. And they say, hey, I solved it this way. I just wanted to share it with you, which is great. We love that. And we wanna continue that. But you look at the implementation and it was specific to kind of their use case and their requirements, and it wouldn't meet the set of use cases that the community would have. And if we actually implemented that code, it would only be a week or two before people reported it as a bug and an issue that it doesn't also do this. Right. Because of their expectations and the way Rock works. Right. I mean, there's examples after examples of that, and it's and it's fine. It's good. It's we don't want that's just the nature of it. But it's it's just hard because a church can meet a specific need for themselves, and that's great. But it oftentimes can't be shared because other people would say, well, doesn't work this, this, and this in Rock, so therefore it's a bug, so it gets turned in as an issue, then we're basically rewriting that feature. And if it wasn't on the roadmap, if it wasn't funded, we just kind of got derailed a bit on that. Right. what I love about this podcast is that this really gives the community the opportunity to almost pick your brain, John and Nick. And you guys have been working on this for a long time, and it it's kind of, , a one-sided communication. But to have the opportunity to hear how and why things are done in this way is just not something that most organizations create an opportunity for from their leadership, and I just think that that's a really, really important thing in our community and very valuable. That's a good point. We haven't said this in quite a while, but if you guys have questions, definitely submit them in and we can cover possibly cover them over these podcasts. Good point. Yeah. Definitely a good thing to do. Yep. I work with a really talented tech team. All of you favorite listeners of ours. We'd to we'd to use I'm I'm telling you the things that have to get that get taken in and have to get evaluated in light of how Rock does things and then reconfigured, put out there, assigned, tested, and the the community that backs that up in our testing program. I mean, it's just it's a really incredible thing. It's a super complex dance that you stand back and look at it and go, wow. I cannot believe all the moving parts and how this works. It is. It's a watch. You open up a watch and you see the second hand is barely moving. But when you look at the gears, there's some gears in that are spinning super fast, at least in certain watches and components. That's kind of what it's a little bit here. You see the final speed, but behind the scenes, there's so much whizzing gear. It's amazing. You're watching the hour hand and going, man, why is this taking so long? When you see me work through some of those those struggles or those, , requests that come in, it's it is great and fun to work with those with other churches. I mean, even the ones that maybe they don't understand all the nuances of why that wouldn't work for other churches. I still love working with the churches with that. Oh, absolutely. That's the thing that makes Rock different from everywhere else. And I love that open chain of communication because in a typical vendor relationship, you don't hear from, , what they would call the users, which we love that term so much, But you wouldn't hear from the people who are using the product about the many different ways they would want to because it's just set up this and you use it or you don't. We don't care. You can leave. But here, we wanna hear that feedback and we think, oh, I don't know that I ever would have thought to use that feature in that way, but it makes a lot of sense, and it's a really good idea. So we can help give that idea legs. We can help give it the power to implement. We can have, , a platform for you to share that at a conference with a lot of other organizations. And that's the thing that really sets Rock apart. So it's very cool to see the deep technology that you guys bring on this team and the heart for the community and the heart for the church because it creates this formula that you just don't see other places. Yeah. And a lot of the best ideas that we do have came directly from just that interaction with the community. Right. It's not necessarily our idea. Right. We heard something, we saw something, and then we might shape it, tweak it slightly just to make it more reusable for other churches. But, I mean, you can go through the the the feature list in the manuals and and it's , that idea came from this church, that came from that church, content, , channels came from NewSpring. NewSpring, and and interacting with them on why what they about Expression Engine. It would be impossible to say which line of that communication, incoming to Spark or outgoing, , to churches, which direction would be more valuable. They're so equally valuable. It's incredible. And it's incredible to think that most organizations would miss out on that. They're just not set up to take advantage of it. And we love just, again, working with the the community of churches on that. Right. Sometimes we get led around by people who are outside the community who are more they have a separate profit margin. Right. They're more of a vendor who wants us to tweak our stuff to work with them, or they're selling a service and then they want us to make changes. Those are not as fun necessarily. I mean, sometimes there's certain ones that have the right interest at heart for the community, and they're willing to fund something for the community, and I love that. But sometimes they throw over a micro request or even sometimes a pull request, it's , ugh. Right. And sometimes those have bugs in them, and then we end up investing tons of time and money into something that we didn't we didn't want. And now we but now once we pull that pull request in, guess what? Guess who owns it? Buck stops here. Yeah. Sorry, Nick. Pointing at Nick. Yeah. And so that that's frustrating. Because what? It's all about stewardship, and we take that very seriously because every time it's not a waste of, let's say, John's hour, Nick's hour, Emily's hour. That's a waste of, , a donation that a church made. Right. We take that really seriously. So if someone asks us to do something, even if they go, oh, here's a poor request, and we look at it, and it's not from a community member, and it's not it's servicing their own need of a of a noncommunity member, nonchurch, we might look and go, Wes, there's no harm in that. But there is because I guarantee there's gonna be some issue down the road that that's gonna impact, and it's gonna cost us some hours. And those hours got funded by a church donation. Right. And they didn't even want it. And and and that's above and beyond the fact that somebody has to go look at it, study it, test it, merge it. I mean, there's there's just it's gonna cost time. Right. Right. So it had just it had better be good. Yeah. And we're and we're much more willing and and super forgiving if it comes from a church that way. , we understand that. We're an open source. We want pull requests from the churches, from those who are supporting us through their gifts. , we're here to serve. It's when we're servicing others, and the community's actually gonna have to fund that later that it gets to be a little bit Right. And the interesting thing about our culture here is that we do have in meetings as we're talking about things that are going on, initiatives we're working on, prioritizing things. We literally have conversations that say, is that how we should be spending the time that is paid for by the donations of churches that come from people's tithe? And if we can't give that a solid yes, then we're gonna have to give it a no. Yep. So that literally is built into our culture from the from the ground up. Right. And an example though of one that did work out well, , , Glue came to us and said, hey, need an export API because we wanna do for some of our services. And it's , okay, well, , we have a choice. We can write an export API for Glue, call it, , API slash Glue slash export. But instead, , they're they're kingdom minded. They wanna make sure that what they're doing, if they can help other churches, they can. So we pitched them back, hey, how about we make a few changes to this and make an export API just for Rock that services everything you want, that's super performant, but everybody gets to use it. And they were , absolutely, that's what we want. Isn't that so cool? Right. Yeah. And so, I mean, what extra did it cost them? Hardly anything. But they could've also been protective if they wanted to. Some people might think, well, no, want my own, so even my that guy over there can't use it. Right. Right. That's not what they want. They wanna make sure that, hey, how do we how do make this a win win? And so that those type of external partnerships are great to work with. Oh, right. And the other interesting just little comment on that is the mental energy that's required to engage every incoming possible option at the level of how do we make this work for everyone. So how would we rearchitect it? How could we imagine it to be something that benefits everyone is a huge mental tax. , that's something we choose to engage in, and it's I we go home at the end of every day with our minds blown over and over again. We're just exhausted, but we do try to approach everything that comes in, not from the perspective of what does what will satisfy that one need, but how do we take that as one data point in what might be a greater need that's either known or not known? What are all the requirements for this concept? Who else do we have to talk to? And how do we architect this to solve today's problems for that one need, today's problems for everyone else, and tomorrow's problems, or at least give us the platform to build out the solutions for tomorrow? And we do that on everything. Yeah. And and also too, sometimes it's , if we do this, who else might who else do we need to communicate with that we might upset if they don't understand the intent? Right. There's a lot of dancing around too of , okay, well, I hope they don't get the wrong intent by us doing this, and Right. So we're always having to kind of make sure who we communicating with to keep the channels of communication well oiled. And I think that's where your leadership really comes into play, John, because from the very beginning, that's the thing that you've been focusing on, is how do we make this work for everyone without limiting anyone? And that has been, again, something that's really built into the culture of what we do and that it's hard. It's hard, hard work, and it's something that you've championed from the very beginning, and it is the reason Rock performs the way it does and is so engaging with the community. I don't know about that, but I just I just Back me up, Nick Gerdo. I don't people to be upset with me, so I try to I try to think through as much as I can to communicate so that we don't have miscommunication. But and I was thinking, oh, I wanted to just add that glue thing I added about the export. That's an eight six. So I just tied that right to a NICS. Nice. Yeah. Good. No. That's alright. I , one of the things that's funny when I'm watching you guys talk and Emily mentions John's leadership and John, , , has this, , look on his face , no. I'm not, , the greatest. I'm I'm not that good. They you guys can't see John's humility, but it there's always lots of humility on this team, and that's one of the things I love about being here working at Spark. So what else is really interesting about this team that I haven't run across in the business world previously or anywhere else that I've been is really that if you look at a DiSC score, so if you're familiar with DiSC and the four personality types, you would find out that our organization, it has a lot of C. It's very high C, and that's the reason that we're delivering the small details that that work where that's our goal at any rate is to deliver things done excellently, well, on time, as promised. The details make a big difference. And and you'll notice that a lot of the leadership here and a lot of the direction and and processes in the organization are driven from a very c, a very high c perspective. A lot of times in organizations when you talk to the leadership, there's a lot of d and I influence going on, and those are all good too, but this is a really it's just unique. It's kind of a unique perspective. So I think okay. I think we should tell what our DISC profiles are right now. I think it would be interesting for people to know. Do you remember your sync? I think I must be SC. Yeah. I think that's what it is. SC. And I think aren't we weighted heavily as an SC or a CS? We're an SC or a CS in most cases. Yeah. I'm definitely SC. I'm CD. So I've got a little bit of an outlier on there. But in this type of work, the C comes out in all of us. Yeah. But it's just interesting if you study communications at all or personality types, that's how you can communicate with us best. Mean, we come at things from that perspective. So if we ask a lot of very detailed questions about things that are coming in, it's because we're putting all the puzzle pieces together in the back of our brain and trying to say, okay, know how all these moving parts are working right now. If we bring this in, this information, or if we share that, how does that affect the other working parts? Yeah. Organization is very much introverts unite separately in your own workspace. Which is a very happy experience for everyone involved. Right. Saw that on a t shirt the other day. Thought that was funny. That is really funny. Yeah. That was a good lead in. Are we talking about So also in v nine time, you mentioned a little bit about the assessments and what that rollout might look . But some of the community members have probably received an email or two from me lately about the beta version of these assessments. And so in order to build them, we've obviously contracted with healthy growing leaders to build these five assessments, and they do a phenomenal job. But it's this really interesting and intricate process of building an assessment from the ground up from he's a he has a PhD in psychometrics, I think. And that's fascinating and bewildering all at the same time. I watch what I say around him. Just don't wanna be psychoanalyzed. That's what I told Greg the other day in an email. I said, thanks for really knowing us from all of our personality angles and still liking us. Every every call with him is probably one of my favorite calls. He's I just learned so much, and he has such a positive attitude, and I just every video call we do with with those guys is awesome. It is very awesome. And one of the ways that we can help them out and move things forward for good timing for our releases is as their beta assessments are released, into the community, they really need testers for these, and it's about the quantity of answers they get back. So this is something where it makes a huge difference if you can answer and if you can take it to your staff and they can answer. And the more people's hands you can get that into, quickly, the better. They usually have about a three to five day window and they'll need hundreds of responses. And that's the only way to really make sure they're measuring their skills correctly and to have that ready to go for the next phase of their build. So we appreciate all the help that we just had on our EQ beta test, and we have another motivators assessment coming out soon. And one other thing to keep in mind about the beta assessments is that they can be kind of long. And some of the questions might feel a repeat of a question you'd previously answered, but it's at a slightly different angle or slightly different wording. And that's all intentional in the process of building the assessment. So go with it. Just don't overthink it. Take the test in a frame of mind that makes sense to you. Keep that same frame of mind the whole way through and just complete it and get other people to do the same. It makes a really big difference in being able to complete the process and get these launched into V9. So look for motivators that may be coming your way soon. And if it doesn't and you wanna be involved early next week, that should be coming out. If you don't see it, let me know and I'll be happy to send it your way too. We'll have to get, quite a few people to to help out with that. One other small note, you may not see results at the end of the assessment on the beta version, and that's okay too because creating those results is based off of what they learn from the assessment that you take. So by the time it comes out for real and it's it's rolled out in Rock, you'll get a really nice results page that'll tell you what you need to know. So this is a this is a community helping situation. It's not a what it will be when it's actually in your installation of Rock. Yeah. And we we have told them that we love what they're doing. They're doing a great job, but don't don't rush. , let's get this just great. That might mean that one or two may not be in the initial version of nine point Right. They're not saying that. I'm just putting that out there. To me, I'd rather just get them perfectly right, Yes. And and then release them into nine one, nine two. But if you get a link, do rush over to take the Yes. Because there's not much time in that window. Yeah. They're doing a great job. We love what they're doing. I just don't think we need to rush it to get it. Right. And then Yeah. They're doing a fabulous job. Yeah. So It will be amazing. But also be thinking about how you're gonna be using these assessments in your ministry. I mean, assessment's great, but how are you gonna use it? And I'd honestly be thinking about too, and you might be talking with your leadership now, how how do you need to engage with healthy growing leaders to Mhmm. To figure out the right way, the structure, the strategic way to implement this at your church? These assessments are gonna be great. They're gonna give you great data points, but I'm a little nervous that people may not get the full value out of them if they don't understand them correctly. And I just know every time I talk to Greg about what he's working on and he explains it, I I kinda get it. , I I mean, I'm not dumb. I I can read and go, oh, I understand that. But then when I see the the rich insight that he gives to it, I'm just, , blown away. And, , churches need to get that same thing. That's right. And as members of the body of the Christ of Christ, we have a responsibility to understand how other people work and to work together for the the benefit of the whole. Yeah. And he man, the way he brings his biblical understanding to the psychometrics is just Pretty incredible. Yeah. I think that's what really is the highlight. So be thinking about how you can engage with him to make sure you're getting the most out of this out of these free assessments. Right. Great point. So we've we've also, I think, briefly mentioned that we're we've been working on some new websites, and one of those is redoing the Rock site, which has been needed for a little while. We just haven't had the chance to get to it yet, but it has some some interesting components that'll be a little different from the current Rock site. Can you tell us more about that, John? Yeah. So we're still working on it. It's it's kinda been this little filler project that we've been putting here and there. But we are we do see the need that we need to split the Rock site from the from, , a community site, and that a lot of the audiences are very different, and the needs and the desires on a day to day basis of those audiences are are completely different. So we're creating two sites. One, the service, people looking for information about Rock. And then one is when you once when once you're finally using it, here's the stuff you really want and need. So that's pretty exciting. The community side, I think, is, , 99% done. The Rock site is probably only 40 done. And we wanna roll them out together because I think it makes sense together. So we but we're we're working hard on that. So we're excited about that. I think that'll be another great tool. We're just constantly trying to add more and more community features. And again, , when we release the community site, it's not it's not our final vision of where we're going. It's just another step on the road, and we know what the next steps are, and it's gonna get better and better. Mhmm. It's kind of we're starting to see a glimpse of how all the community tools that were released in the twelve days of Christmas are kind of coming together and and creating a whole and a really a really great community interaction area. Yeah. In some ways, kinda jumped the gun on those. We we pushed them out in, , rapid fire, which is fine. They get you gotta ship. But now we're trying to bring them in in bring them in altogether. And again, we're nowhere we're not the finish line. We're not the starting line. Right. One thing to know about our team is we're never satisfied. So whatever you see, we do believe you have to ship. You're right. But whatever you see come out here is the best we can do for right now, but there's probably a greater vision behind it. Right. Yeah. We don't and we often don't celebrate what we True. Accomplish because we're on to the next thing. , why would we celebrate that? Speaking of onto the next thing, we have a conference coming up this year that we're really excited about. Are we doing that again this year? We are. Yeah. Hold your breath. It's gonna be a ride. It'll be a lot of fun. So if our attendance growth patterns continue, we're expecting a really great community connection time with maybe six or 700 people at this conference. , that remains to be seen a little bit. But if we extrapolate based off of the exact same growth rate that we've had at every single conference, we're looking at something that. So if you have not yet considered coming to a conference, there's never been a better time to really learn from what's going on in the community. This is a place where everyone is sharing best practices. Whether you've been or you haven't been, if you are running on Rock now, you have experiences that are important to the community. And the things that you've been working on and the things that you've been learning are exactly what the community needs to hear. So we are starting to collect names of people who will be speaking at the conference. We want to provide a lot of valuable content. And honestly, the best way for that to happen is if those who are in the community using Rock every day share their learning points and their best practices. The responsibility of our team is to put it all together, make sure it's a great, powerful experience, and then make sure that we communicate accurately with the community what the vision and the goals are, what we're working on, what's coming up. But those best practices, we couldn't do them justice. That's where you and the community really, really carry the day. So we're ready to start putting some speaking assignments together. You don't have to know yet what your topic is, but send me a message or a DM on Rockchat, and we will get a spot slated for you, and we can circle back up on topics. This is this is the time. Don't worry about what am I gonna say? What are they gonna think? That's everybody there. And it's really just a great time to share, and you'll be surprised how much you learn as a speaker in addition to as an attendee. So it's something we highly recommend. Yeah. And so just to translate what you said, Emily is talking to you. Yes. You listener. You. Right. Well yeah. You. Singular you. And so, , the next step is, I know what you're thinking because I'm thinking the same thing about the conference. Oh, no. I don't want to do that. I don't want to get up on stage and say that. But we're talking to you, so just pull over the car. Whatever you're doing, stop and email her. Because once you email the commitment that I will do it, we don't need to know the topic, but now you you you're you're you're set. Mhmm. I always kinda say it's riding the log at at Disneyland when I was a young adult. I'd I never rode those rides, so they would freak me out. But once on Splash Mountain, once you go up, you're riding the log now. There's no way to get off. Yeah. That's right. So what you need to do is just get on the attraction right now. Just email Emily. You're now committed. And, , Craig Groeschel says, there's no growth without being uncomfortable. That's what I was just about to , it's a great growing opportunity. Right. And by just sending that email, you've now established you're doing it. So please, just just do it right right now. Right. Today, this minute, if you can. We're waiting. It helps us tremendously to know this. And also, , we want new fresh faces or new fresh information. Oh, that's a good point. Just because you've seen the same people on stage several times and you think, oh, they know what they're doing, they don't know what they're doing any more than you do when it comes to that. You don't know what we're doing any more than you do. Right. Oh yeah, that's probably a big fallacy too. The three of us sitting by these microphones today don't have , all the answers. We're faking it. Yeah. Every day we get up and do our best. And and a lot of times we stretch. I mean, in this role myself, I have to do things every day that I come into them and go, I don't know how to do that. I'm not super comfortable doing that. I guess I better figure it out. Yeah. Yeah. And it's just about not looking you don't know what you're doing. Oh, right. Smile and wave, boys. Smile and wave. Have the confidence you're in a group of people who feel exactly the same way. Yep. Yeah. So just please just sign yourself up. Future you will be frustrated at at yourself right now, but afterwards, you'll be so glad you did it, and the growth that you get from it will be amazing. And the contribution you give to other churches is what we're called to do. So wait. What if what if the listener is an introvert? I'm an introvert. Okay. So what if they have no speaking experience? Well, that's great. So you start by getting some slowly ramping it up. So then what I would say is, what do I what do I need to do to get there? So you might offer to speak at your staff meeting. Mhmm. That's a good one. Although, I actually think speaking at for me, it's always hard to just talk at a staff meeting because I felt I was talking to people that didn't share the same interest. Mhmm. Good people. Loved them all, but we didn't have the same interest. So but work your way up. Possibly a team meeting, though. That's a good Yeah. Here's what I wanna present at the conference. You guys understand Rock. You you understand what I do. Let me know what questions come up that maybe I didn't think of from that angle. And what you have to do, and I'm doing this already, I already have notebooks, , filled with little, , tidbits and notes and, , topics or even a even a, , one word phrase. Start gathering that now, because what you want to do, if this is going to be your first time, is you're going to want to give that presentation four or five times to your family, I know it's awkward, to your friends, they're going do you a favor, they'll be happy to do you a favor, to your team, maybe even to your staff. Mhmm. And there are lots of other speakers out there for the conference. You could team up with one of them and do a, , video call where you kind of outline your presentation or deliver it too and help each other out. There are a lot of options. Yeah. Just don't let the growth opportunity pass by. And also realize just because you're gonna present doesn't mean you're presenting in front of the whole conference. , it's a breakout. So Right. Don't picture all of them. Picture just some of them. Imagine that John and I will be standing on stage in front of the entire conference, and that's come on. You got what it takes for a breakout. Thanks, Emily. Sorry, I'm feeling sick. You have to be there. But so don't let that. I mean, we can't grow unless we push ourselves. Right. And this community's all about that. Right. And it's at New Spring. It's a great facility. Sign up today because you're gonna get a lot just seeing what they do. I mean, they do some amazing things. They have some great thought processes on how they break out their campus into these little rooms and such. Mhmm. It's really cool. I was at their facility for another conference a couple years ago, I thought, wow, this room is amazing. It'd be great for an Rx someday, when we can fill Can you imagine filling it? Yeah. Let's fill it. I know we can. We're very close, but come. Bring some people. And bring your staff. Yeah. This is the best time for training and connecting that you're gonna have all year. And we're gonna be talking about some really neat stuff. I mean, we've already spent a lot of time talking about the theme. The theme is gonna be launch. That's our name. And you'll find out what that all means when you get there. But we're gonna be talking about some really interesting directional changes. Nothing that's gonna be radical that you're not gonna have ever heard of seeing coming, but we're now actually, , really close to being able to do some really cool stuff. Yeah. Very exciting. And it's mid September this year. So you can find out the dates. We have a very light landing page right now for conference registration. You ready, Nick? Here we go. Rockrms.com/Rx20nineteen. Nice. Yes. Good guess. That was a guess. I know. So you can go there and see the dates and the location and find a registration link. Go ahead and register now that you can block it on your calendar because the price of tickets will go up the closer to the conference that we get. So go ahead and lock that in. Talk to your staff. Bring as many people as possible. how it is. You take this really great experience. You go home, and you can't translate it to the rest of your team. And they don't get it. And they're busy, and they were busy while you were gone. And it's hard to get those things to fit into what you learned to fit into what's going on at your organization if you're the only person there that heard it. It's much better to take your team. And with the number of breakouts we'll have, I promise you can't see it all. So that's a good time to sign up now. Oh, we've also been having some really interesting conversations lately with a lot of different people, but one in particular well, a couple conversations that have come up just this week, kind of back to back, have been with a couple of different Catholic organizations. One, a large Catholic church here in Phoenix and another actual actually a whole diocese and talking about how and if Rock could be set up to function for some of the unique needs of the Catholic Church. And of course, we're very flexible. So it's a matter of understanding requirements and customizations and and kind of looking at that. But we've had some really unique conversations about things our community and what that means and why that's important. And it's been it's been pretty interesting. Yeah. And then I think you even mentioned this week, , what what are the chances that both of these would come up in the same week and and be so interrelated? It's just it seems , , interesting that that that this is all coming up. But I think it's what I love about our community, and it makes me smile every time I see it, is when it's kind of a democratization of help. Before, it was big church helps little church with this thing. And now, in our community, it's not that way. It's every church helping every church, and sometimes you'll see the smallest church helping one of America's biggest churches on this nugget. And it's , I just love that because it's just an equalization of of we're all in the same body, we're all the same importance, and we all have the same value. And I think how cool would it be too if we could if church technology could help be that thing that kinda brings, , cross denominational communication better. I mean, we we see a lot of communication within the evangelical nondenominational. , that's kinda not I mean, there's always room for improvement, but it's it's pretty good. But how do we branch out and so that every church of of every denomination is is all participating with their best practices and, lessons. Because honestly, way the Catholics track some of the things is a little bit different, but it's actually kinda interesting. How can we learn from that? Mhmm. It's actually a perfect fit too in Rock for some of the things they wanna do. Right. Do, some other churches do some other interesting things in some of the programs they do. How can they learn from that? I just think it'd be so cool if one day all this stuff's happening in our community, and they're all, , learning from it. And it doesn't matter, , what denomination you are or what background you are. That's a pretty cool vision. It it is very interesting that all of this has happened coincidentally at the same time. I don't think I actually believe in coincidence. Yeah. Right. Definitely. When even some of the people that they know that we know that, I mean, it just seems interesting. It is interesting. So one last thing I wanted to bring up, I'm always running calculations on our fundraising, and that's a really important part of my role because it's a really important part of our organization. And obviously for us to do our best, we have to be funded. And many churches that are in our community understand that and support us. And it's very exciting to see that this year, a lot of the commitments that churches have made are a step up from what they were doing last year. And that's really, really encouraging to our team to see that because to us that communicates, I'm fully engaged, I understand the value in what you're doing there, and I support it. I'm excited about it, and I'm not putting it on autopilot. , I'm revisiting it. I'm communicating value. And that's really encouraging. At the same time, when you run the calculations, I can give you a little bit of an update. But of the number of churches that are running live on Rock right now, they're not working on an implementation, but they're actually running on Rock, 56% have made a commitment, to support Rock. So currently, that 56% number is the highest it's ever been in our community, which is really something to celebrate, and that's exciting. We're moving in the right direction. But at the same time, if you think about it, just over half of the churches using Rock have decided that it's important enough to them to contribute. So that's a little bit of a two edged sword. It's exciting that we've made a little bit of progress in the right direction, but it's also kind of discouraging when you look at the amount of work and effort that goes into that to communicate to someone that that, hey, it looks you're really finding value in what we're doing here. Did you find more value in Rock than your previous system? So why did you decide not to support Rock if you were donating to another system? And and how do we how do we talk about that? How do we position that? And it it it's kind of discouraging to think that that's hang hovering around the 50% mark. Of course, we want churches that are really small and ministries that are small to be able to use Rock without being able to afford it. It's crucial. But honestly, of those numbers, churches that are supporting Rock of various sizes, many, many, many of them are little churches, and their donation might be $20 a month. And that's perfectly in line with our suggested rate and it makes us so happy. But a lot of the churches in that percent are the very small ones. So it shows that they get it, and that's exciting. But we have some really large churches that use Rock and don't contribute at all and aren't really interested in that. And that's, , I mean, it's kinda disappointing. I mean, it's really, at that point, missed potential. I mean, it's opportunity costs that if they did, then they have the ability to, if they did, what else could we do? In a sense, a large church who's using Rock still has a weight to the community, still has a cost to the community. So in that sense, basically, the little church is funding that. Exactly. And it's kind of the opposite of the way the model was set up with the intention that the churches that were already paying for and supporting a system would be kind of granting or allowing this this ability of funding for churches that couldn't otherwise afford it. It's a mission. Right? It's a mission outreach. It's kinda backwards right now. It's basically our mission. That's what we wanted to do so they can participate directly yeah. And I'm thinking of some of those. Mean, churches who aren't, are large, using successfully and not donating. There's issues being turned in from those churches. There's emails being sent to us that we're replying back to. There's communication going on. There's them asking questions in the community too, and we would never call that out, but it is frustrating to watch because it's , okay, they're taking, but they're not giving something back. Right. And , we know that a lot of you guys listening to this podcast are coming from churches that do donate. Right. So we would just ask that you would join us in that prayer. pray that the attitude and mindset of those other churches would change because that's really all we got. That's all that we have that can affect that. That's a great point, Nick. But even in addition to that as well, we're understanding that it's going to take more than just our voice. Going to take a community megaphone. We need churches to start asking, hey, are you supporting Rock? Are you doing that at the right level? Do what your support means to this community? And it could just come out as a, hey, what are you guys supporting Rock at? What level? We wanna match. We wanna make sure we're at the right level. You can kinda play stupid a little. But it's it's something that's gonna take the megaphone of the community to make it successful. So right now I would have to say that it's not totally successful. It's not, , it's it's we're working really, really hard. We put a lot of hours into trying to get churches that love Rock to pay for it and to support our team and make that move forward. And that's, , there's some of that to be expected and some of that that's a little over the top. But your role in this, do please pray for us, but also please start talking about it. It can't be something that only we talk about only once at conference and, , and then get feedback that, oh, you shouldn't be talking about that. And it just someone has to talk about it, and it's important, and it's important to our success. So if you could help kind of spread that word. Also, you can look on our organizations page, rockrms.com/organizations, and the churches that are donating or have made a commitment have a badge next to their organization. And so you can see if the church you're talking to has donated or not. It doesn't have anything to do with level, although you can see the churches that donate above are suggested right there. But you can see churches that have decided to make that commitment and those that haven't. So join us in that. It's really an effort for the success of the entire community. Mhmm. And making sure that we have the right spirit, because there there are a couple larger churches that are going through things that Oh, absolutely. That make sense. , we get it. So just make sure you use the right judgment and tone and spirit. Yeah. Because we don't we don't wanna judge even a big church that can't do it because of a certain situation or a struggle that they're going through temporarily. It's mostly about asking well intentioned questions and raising awareness. And in most cases, there's just a little bit of education lacking or a little awareness lacking. But as we all rise up together and bring that up together, then the awareness and the importance and the value of that donation comes up as well. And we do hear from organizations when they go through a rough patch, and that's perfectly fine. We are completely empathetic to that. And in many cases, we'll see them later circle back around and say, hey, we were able to get things back together. Thank you so much. We're gonna put our donation back in place. And to us, that's part of the ministry of what we do. We're so glad that your ministry wasn't derailed from a people and data management perspective because you had some other things that were going on. Mhmm. Is that it? That's it. That's our our community update for today. We'll see you guys next time. Sounds good. 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 Rock r m s dot com slash 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.