Podcast Episode 73: Episode 46: Version 8: It's alive!

Description

Version 8, Version 9, Rock Stars, Master Classes, and how we're working to add to the talent pool for church technology workers - with all of the great information packed into this episode, you're not going to want to miss it!

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. And welcome back to this edition of Rockcast. We're so happy you joined us today. I'm Emily Forman, and I have here with me Jon Edmiston and Nick Airdo, and we are going to give you a little bit of an update on what's going on. Now some of our podcasts, we have just a few things to talk about, but it seems we've had a lot of developments this week. So we have some really, great things to talk about. Let me dive in first by saying the long awaited v eight came out this week for early access. And we're at least as thrilled as you are, I promise. Oh, yeah, it went around and around. But if you do not have access to v eight right now, when you go to your update page, and it says you don't have access, let me explain very briefly what that means. We have an early access program that limits the release of, an update, a major version to the group of people most engaged in our community for the first three months of its, its release. There are two purposes for that. One, it's to remind people that our organization is a nonprofit, and we only get by with the donations from the organizations that are using Rock. So if your organization has not pledged or donated to support Spark Development Network, then you will not have access to the newest version updates until three months after early access when general release is announced. Now that serves a couple of purposes. One, it does help fund Spark, but also we tend to find as we've looked through the community that those who are donating are also the ones who are most engaged in a lot of metrics. So to kind of put it into the church world context, when you look at your congregants, and your attendees, that you will also find that those who are tithing are probably the same ones who are serving, probably the same ones who are involved in your small group. And those are the people that are really core and key to helping your church grow. And we found that that is exactly the same in our community. So we set our model up. It's hard. We know. We set our model up to be yours. You don't charge people at the door, and neither do we. And it's really that donation model that makes things function for your church and for our organization as well. So if you'd to have access to V eight and you don't, it's pretty simple. Go to our donate page on our website, make a pledge, make a donation, and you will have access immediately. Now, if you've already done that and you also see you don't have access, no worries. Sometimes we just have to connect your organization and your instance inside our database, and that takes a short amount of time. And there's a report button there. So one of those two things should work for you if you don't have access right now. But oh my goodness, was it a whirlwind getting V eight out? We talked about it at the conference, and then here we are weeks later, and it didn't go exactly according to plan, but it's all good now. No, and it went well because of our next topic, which is our beta testers and alpha So I just want to say thank you guys for, jumping in, especially 08/1982. You guys found some things that were just buried in there that we, we didn't uncover during our testing. So you guys, we are really super happy with, what you guys are doing to help the quality of Rock. I also want to talk about real briefly that I'd love to move some of the beta testers to alpha testers. So if you have some additional, skills there and you feel pretty comfortable with setting up and tearing down a database, we'd to do more testing during the alpha phase and have a longer alpha phase because once something goes to beta, we we because of our rules, we don't, we can't just change that code. We have to create a new release and go through the process again, which is pretty involved. So I'm gonna make some effort over the next many months to move people from beta to alpha and try and expand the alpha team. I I'd really for that team to be bigger than the beta testing team. So are you gonna be posting about that in the Slack channel for beta testers, or how would someone be able to connect with you about that topic and find out exactly what they needed in their own environment to help out? For for right now, just direct message me on Slack, Nick Airdo and or Nerdo, I think I'm called. And we'll probably figure out a communication plan also to try and track more of them down. And I think what was unique about eight o was is there was a lot of really deep things that were refactored and and to make things much cleaner. Mhmm. But those refactorings can bubble up in all sorts of ways. So I'm really happy that those cleanups are made, the way caching was moved to the service layer, so it's not in the UI, I mean, kind of tech speak. But that you're all gonna you're gonna you're gonna gain a lot of benefits from that. And also, , Mike did some great refactoring of the way data views were working under the covers. And, again, just really clean code now. So but when you make those types of changes, it can have lots of impacts, and I think the the alpha and the beta testers did a great job of finding those. And we don't want we wanna, , meet deadlines, but we don't wanna push out, , unquality codes. So we invested a lot of effort behind the scenes, , making sure that those are all tested fully and fixed. And by we, we mean not just the core team, but the alpha and beta testers. Right. We really gave them a workout in the past several weeks, and they rose to the challenge. It was really exciting to work together with them on that. So in, this week, in addition to getting v eight out, we actually had also two master classes. One was a small format class here in the Phoenix area, at our Spark International World Headquarters, which is just huge. And one was, in Pennsylvania, GT Church hosted one, and, Bema led that one. It was a large format. So there are a lot of new masters being released into the Slack community. And you'll see some new, little mortarboard badges popping up. A lot of people with answers to questions, and we've just been encouraging them. Hey. Don't be, worried about how many points, someone has or doesn't have. You jump in and you answer the things . It's really exciting to be able to continue to grow and develop members of the community. Okay. So that said, we also have a small format class coming up again in November. We have a few people signed up for that now. We do have to have 10 in order to make sure that we host the class and we don't have to cancel it. But if you've been to a master class, which I think a lot of our podcast audience has been, or someone else at your organization has, don't forget that sharing that knowledge, that depth and breadth inside your organization will only benefit your organization. So if you've been and your colleagues haven't been and the main database admin at your organization hasn't been, it's time to start probably budgeting for whatever your budget allows. Send one person a quarter, send one person a year, whatever that looks . Just make sure you're getting the depth of knowledge you need because maybe someone specializes in event registration here, but then we have reporting a specialization in another area. You just wanna make sure you're covered. The less it all comes back to one person to handle everything at your organization for Rock, the more successful you're going to be. And the more people understand, hey, if something went wrong here or it looks we had a hiccup over there, maybe it's something that we just need to learn a new approach to something or maybe we didn't understand a feature really well. So it does just kinda help with setting expectations and things too. And if you're gonna come to a master class in Phoenix, November is a great time to ideal. Yes. So It's one of our best months. It is. John, in addition to masterclass training, there are some other ways to be, helpful and influential in the community, and one of those is to become a Rock star. So you were just on stage in August talking about and congratulating the Rock stars who've risen up in our community. And it's almost doubled, hasn't it since last year? Close. Yeah. Very, very close. So a lot of people are pouring back and taking what they learned and putting it back in the community. But today, we probably have some future Rock stars who don't know their future Rock stars yet or don't know the path to get there. What what would you say to them? Right. So the great point. And I think in the past, we've really talked about Rock stars once a year, and it's really at the conference. And and we wanna change that. We wanna make sure that we're growing Rock stars, as you mentioned, that as the community grows, that, , we're building up the next layer of leadership. And so, , that first step is, , the Rock star. Now it's easy to to focus on the, , the objective measures, the points, and, , whatever, pull request, whatever it is. But what we really wanna do is instead focus on the activities and, , kind of the the behaviors of a Rock star. And so that's really just stepping out of your comfort zone and just sharing. I know that first time, it's a little nerve racking because we all know something that we can share, but none of us know it all. And I think it's really tempting to think, well, all these people know everything about Rock, and that's not true. The highest point total people out there do not know everything about Rock. I do not know everything about Rock. There's stuff I learn and see in the community or need to be reminded about in the community all the time. So I think take that first step, answer that first question in Slack, consider making a post on Shoulder the Boulder. Go to Shoulder the Boulder. There's steps there to show you how to get involved. Think it's just stepping out of your comfort zone and realizing that you do have knowledge that other people don't have. And maybe there's someone in the community who has that same knowledge, maybe not, but it doesn't matter. Just step out and do it. And I think once you get the traction, you get started, you'll find that there's no magic to it. There's no really, the Rock stardom is about the people who's who took that first step. There's no secret gift that they have that the rest of us don't have. Right. Lee Peterson's a great example. Right. He used the primary ingredient to Rock stardom is effort. He applied effort to his learning, and now he speaks CPL as a second language. Now in that case, that's a great example of a very technical, , Rock star, but that's not the only way to be a Rock star. We don't wanna be a a community of, , really technical people. We wanna be a community of real people because that's what god made us to be. Some of us are arms. Some of us are legs. Some of us are ears, some of us are noses. And so I think that the other thing that we're trying to change in the community is the fact that that one body part is more important than another, and that's not the case. , developers are not the most important body part in our community. They are a body part. We need that body part, but we also need a whole bunch of other people to step up and share their knowledge. It could be something that something about background checks and the right security process that should be involved. Or you might have learned something about a financial process that churches should know about, where there's a lot of movement in the space of privacy, nontechnical things that are super valuable to what we do. And I would just encourage you to to share articles to it may not even have to something that's directly applicable to necessarily Rock, but it's applicable to the community who uses Rock. Share those those things. There's there's a couple articles that went out this week that I thought were just really interesting that made me think differently about some of the features that we need to to work on and really had no direct correlation to Rock, but I'm so glad that they were shared. I just wanna encourage you to step out. We need all roles to be Rock stars, and we'd love to to double again for the next conference. And a real quick, easy way to move toward that path is just lurk on Slack. Look for people who have questions with something that you happen to know, and just jump in there and help answer that question. That will snowball at some point. It will just lead to the next question and other people hear about what and they may even start asking you directly. Yeah. Lurk and share an article. Yeah. Hopefully, we're all even if it's not, none of us are getting all these articles or finding them on our own. A lot of them are shared with us by somebody else, and our job is just to pass the buck along. And that person, I'm guaranteeing you, they probably didn't find the article on there. They were shared to them, so we just need to keep , maximizing this. And so just just do it. , use the Nike slogan, just do it. And let me be clear. Lurking is only for starters. It's only for when you first start, then you are no longer a lurker. Yeah. But I almost wanna say no. If you're a starter, just jump in both legs. Don't, , go in the pool in the in the, , the first step of the pool and just sit there. Just cannonball into the deep end. Trust me. It's, , the best way to get in the pool. It's a friendly pool. It is. And the and the temperature is great. And don't if you're wondering, , where do I start? So what is What is the thing that I can feel confident in knowing? I would say look backwards a very short distance to your most recent pain point. Wherever that pain point was, and you had to learn something to overcome it, you had to figure something out in order to apply it at your organization a specific way, I guarantee you're not the only person who encounters that pain point. So that's where you start. And you start there. You you do two things. You continue learning, and you look for people you can help. And if you're in the position of both mentor and mentee and you're actively engaged there, that's where the community is, you're gonna find your sweet spot in the community. And that's exactly what a Rock star is. It's a really simple thing to do. And you don't have to have authored some huge groundbreaking amount of content on something nobody else in the world knows. Just you were saying, John, it's just what was helpful to you probably has not been seen by the entire community. So pass it along Find ways to be helpful to others. Right. And so in that process, we've now talked to the people maybe on the edge of the pool, considering diving in. I just wanna talk real quickly to those who maybe are already in the pool. When people share that, let's be encouraging. Let's that. Let's add on to that. Because I think it is sometimes intimidating when you make that first post, you're not sure what the response is gonna be. And I think a lot of times that response is very positive but unshared. So we don't plus one it. We just kind of move on and go, Well, that was a great article, and we internalize it, but let's share and let's encourage. That's a really good point too. So I think that's all we have to say to rockstars and future rockstars right now. Keep up the good work. The community is growing. People are are going after learning and education and and all of that's a really great thing. Now let's talk again. Let's flip back to what's going on with Rock, from product side. And since v eight is out, that means v nine is in progress because we're never sitting around with nothing to do. Not yet anyway. Hasn't happened yet. Okay. So, John, can you give us an update on what that progress looks ? Right. So behind the scenes, it's a new product release is always a little interesting because by the time it's released, we already have some good traction on the next release. So it it kinda feels sometimes old news to us, but that's certainly true here. So with version nine, we do have some really good traction. We talked to the conference what the major features were gonna be, and you can go back and and look at the video on that. But we have the assets feature nearly complete. We whenever you complete a feature, you always get some more ideas how you want to get to the next level, and and we're kinda doing that right now in some minor polish. So that that's a big one that allows you to kinda connect in external cloud storage providers into Rock and be able to pick the files from that, upload the files directly to it. Similar to the file types, but much more robust, I think you'll really that. So that's a big feature. We also Mike just completed up the content components. And, if you're at the conference, you will remember that. That's as as if the HTML block and the content channel view block were to get married and have a baby, they would have the content component block. And Mike did a crazy good job of finishing that quickly. I'm not sure how he got that done so fast, but it is well done and it is a really cool feature. So good that it was one of those features when we're down , oh, this is awesome, and we should have it do this and this and this. And so he's actually now adding those things now too. So but that was it was really amazing how fast that went. We also are working with Greg and the team over at Healthy Growing Leaders to get those assessments that we talked about at the conference. Again, if you haven't seen that, you have to go watch it. There's five assessments that we're gonna be putting into Rock. One, the disc is already there, but we're actually polishing up that assessment and the results screens so that, , a little bit more of a better user experience. And the assessment has been updated, so it should be a little bit more accurate, although it's always been accurate. But he changes his models as he gets several thousands of people doing this. He changes his models, and so that's good. We're also working on getting this virtual gifts test implemented, so we're actively working on that. The three other assessments are in process. So the conflict profile, which is a really cool one, how do you deal with conflict? You might have seen some traction on that. There's a beta request to take the assessment that we put out into the community, and we've done that first layer of beta testing. If you missed it, don't worry. There's gonna be plenty more layers of that. But it's cool that the Rock community is actually helping them develop these assessments that are gonna help the global church. So that's really cool, and it really helps them out too. And then the EQ and the motivators is still coming, but we're actively working on that, and we're still very active in our communications with Greg. So we were doing video calls and talking about these assessments. And I had to tell you, every time we have a video call with him and his team, it's just so encouraging that they have the same spirit as the Rock community. And I mean, just the brilliance that he has in his head and that he is so willing to share with people is amazing. So I highly encourage you guys to engage with their team to really go deep in the in your understanding of these assessments and how you might implement them. I think the content that he's providing for free is amazing level of detail, but you can go so much further. I thought I was a pretty knowledgeable person on disc test. I mean, I've been through several trainings, , through the, , the decades of working at church, understanding disc, and I learned so much from just from hearing and talking with him. So that's that's going super well, and we're already planning our next generation even beyond these five of what we wanna do next. So it's it's so encouraging to work with them. And it's a great point too, when you were talking about all the kinds and types of peoples and people and skills that it takes to do something really well. I love seeing what Greg is bringing and pouring into the community that literally none of the rest of us could have had without his input. Okay, another update that we have is we talked briefly at the conference about working on helping to build a bench, build the community, help bring in new technical assistance and new people who can do technical roles that are trained in Rock. And that's been of a growing importance. And one of the things that we're doing on our team is working with Liberty University to work with some of their students for a capstone project, and then work on setting up a recruiting program with them. And that program is really exciting. We are moving forward on that. We met a group of students from Liberty this week for the first time on a call. It was very impressive. They're just a great group of kids. Yeah. Very impressed. Yeah. The communication abilities that they had, the questions they were asking, we're really excited about that. And then a few of us from our team are going to actually be traveling out there for a career fair, some actual recruiting interviews, and to really speak into their technical study fields and connect with the students there. We're connected with the the department chair. It's just a really exciting opportunity that has a lot of room for growth in it, and I think it's gonna help place people in the community in a really great way. Yeah. And we're doing this selfishly so we can recruit. But actually, we we wouldn't be putting as much effort into this if we weren't looking at trying to help the whole entire community Right. Get these. Because we I mean, it's a lot of effort. And, , we we might net some out of it, but we're not gonna net the amount of effort we're putting in. And so what makes it worth doing it is to help you guys out. Right. Exactly. We're not looking, just to to build a bench here, but really to help do that because the whole community I mean, , we we rise or fall together. So we hear from churches all the time that, do anyone? Do you do of anyone looking for a job? We really need people with these particular skill sets. And that's what we're we're looking to help with because we hear both sides of it. Mhmm. Yeah. I would I would add, as you're out there, listen, and you're working with your volunteers at your church, if you're finding out that maybe they're losing their job or they're looking to move on, you're a hub to to your local body church. And if you bring that information back to us, that could get spread across, and we may have an opening, another church may have an opening. There's the shoulder of the bolder job board that you'd want to take a look at, but just realize that God's moving and people are moving, and so be on the lookout for that movement. That's right. And what we're not looking to do is move the people currently inside the Rock community around to different organizations and roles because that helps no one, and it creates animosity. We're looking to seed new people into the community to keep up with growth. So the best way to do that, honestly, is if you look around at your circle of people, volunteers at your church, people that are maybe you're in a small group with, and they're very mission minded and looking to make an impact, and they're a technologist, those are the people you need to be considering looking at and thinking, gosh, I wonder if there's a role for them inside the Rock community. So also, I wanted to mention really quickly before we moved on from this topic that we did create an interest list for churches who were interested in, being a part of kind of the initial recruiting program and who say, yes, I have openings right now. It might be a development. It might be business analyst, maybe even, IT networking, or, web development, we would be interested in knowing that and seeing if we can start looking into how we could help connect you with students through this program we're developing. So we will put a link to that interest list in the show notes for this podcast. Great point. And then, finally, I wanted to give a quick funding update. As , we are an organization that, is 80% supported by the donations of churches that use Rock. So our budget is whatever you give us, and that sometimes ties our hands. And it's been something we've been working through, and there's a lot of growth going there. It is really exciting to me that we've moved up a couple of percentage points in our funding. We're currently at our highest level. Churches using Rock today are supporting us by about 49% of those churches are contributing or have pledged to contribute before the end of this year. So that's our high point. Obviously, just hearing the number 49% is kind of , oh, well, we've got a little bit of room for growth there, which we do. But I know a lot of people have recently, as recently as in the last few weeks, really stepped up and let us know what their plans are. Could be that there are some churches out there that have plans to support us but haven't been in contact, so we don't know. And if that's the case, then our planning cannot include your plans, and that's kind of a a bit of a handicap for us. So if you are planning to support us and we don't know about it, just get in touch and let us know, or go right onto the website to our donate page and click pledge. Pledge, has the ability to let us know in 2018 how much total are you going to be able to support Rockwith. That makes a really big, difference. But, again, do remember that just you don't charge churches to come in the door, we don't charge churches to to begin using Rock. But if you don't have your supporters in your church, your church will literally have to close its doors. And we elected to operate on that same really complicated and complex platform because we want you to know we're committed to how you work, and we wanna work the same way. We want to be accessible to really small ministries with no budget whatsoever. But those who've paid for a church management system in the past really need to begin supporting us when they move on to our platform. So remember, you are the voice and spokesperson in your organization for supporting Rock. So as you continue to talk to your organization about new features you want to move on to or if you're considering a move to Rock for the first time, build that funding conversation in because your executives will be saying, how much does Rock cost? And so you need to be able to know the answer is a dollar 50 per average attendee per year. So for a church of a thousand, that would be about $1,500 per year, or simply move over your budget line item from whichever platform you are on over to Rock. So those are the tools that you would need to have that conversation, and I'm also perfectly happy to help out with that conversation. If you would someone else to connect with your executive team, just give me a shout and let me know. But in general, we're really happy with the growth that's going on. Just really thankful for the support of our community and the great ideas that come from the community and all the ways people are looking to contribute, whether that's their time, their expertise, or pouring their newfound masterclass newly minted knowledge back into the community. We have a great community and we're really thankful for you. All right. That's a lot of content. That's a ton of content. I think we did a good job, though. Yeah. So more to come next time. But in the meantime, thanks for joining us today. Today's show is 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 rockrms.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.