Podcast Episode 68: Episode 41: Special Edition Ethan Drotning

Description

In this profile special edition of the Rock Podcast, we interview Ethan Drotning, learn what he does on the team and hear a bit about his background. You may not have met Ethan before but you might have used the software he's been involved with in his past. Join us as we celebrate Ethan being on the team.

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. Hello. Welcome back to this special edition of the ROTCast podcast. Today, we are going to do another interview. And with us today, we have Ethan. Ethan is a member of the Spark team and has been with us most, I think, of this year, 2018, and we are going to get to know him a little bit better in today's interview. So I also have Jon Edmiston with me, and the two of us will be having a chat with Ethan, and it's possible Nick might join in too. Maybe. Okay, so Ethan, what is it that you do here at Spark? I'm a C developer. So I work on the core products and do some consulting for features for some churches. Very cool. What were you doing before you joined the Spark team? I've been a developer for at least the last ten years, and mostly working in the auto industry. Kelley Blue Book, Cox Automotive, some pretty big players in there. And they were good places to work, I learned a lot there and worked with some really talented people. Yeah. Those are sites we've all used. I mean They are. Pretty much all gone to Kelley Blue Book at least once to look for a price of a car. That's cool to to work on a property that's that popular. Yeah, it was. But we're glad you're not anymore. Right. Just thought I'd throw that out there. So tell us a little bit about the story of how you came on staff with Spark. No real magic, I guess. I came across the position online and applied and the interview process was pretty straightforward. Having worked in an industry that I didn't have any real passion for, it was nice to think about working for the kingdom. So that was after the interview, talked to my wife, I was , This would be a really nice place to work. So is this the first time you've kind of married your faith and desire to impact the kingdom with your skills in a job? Yes. I've been a volunteer for my church for the usual things, usher and communion helper, things that, PowerPoint monkey. But yeah, this is the first time that I've used my skills as a developer. That's really exciting. What was it about the position that was most exciting to you once you'd had a chance to meet the staff and things? It's having an impact on the way churches manage their congregation and just the flexibility of the system. It looked really promising. And I had to do a test before that. Which you did very well on. Yes, you did. It was a pretty impressive system. These big projects I had worked on in the past, they were very rigid. I had total control of everything and didn't have to worry about what other people were going to do. The exact opposite is true with Rock. It's a different dynamic and it's exciting. It's cool. Had you ever interacted with a church management system before as a church member or attendee, do ? I have not. Just been kind of doing the grunt work for my church and letting the office gals take care of all that other I know it is interesting when I talk to candidates in interview processes. A lot of times I have to explain kind of the, if you will, air quote industry that is the church management system, because a lot of people don't even realize that it exists. So sometimes our interview process is the first time that someone has a chance to come across it. It's pretty interesting. Yeah, was it the first time that you kind of had your eyes open to how involved the church behind the scenes is in terms of the organization, the database? Yeah. I haven't gone to huge churches. The church I go to, we have a weekly attendance of around 500 to 600, depending on the Sunday. So not super small, but not really big either. It doesn't need this huge system to manage it. So I didn't quite I didn't That was a surprise coming in. Can you tell us a little bit about some of the projects you've worked on since you've been here? Yeah, some pretty interesting stuff. I just got done with some work for our new caching system and being able to clear that so that content that you've added is updated more quickly. And see some WiFi presence stuff so that congregants who come in and their phones connect to your church's WiFi, when they did that, how long they're staying, where they're going, things that. Tweaks and additions for all sorts of stuff. I made you track down a bug yesterday. I think you got stuck with that. So you're pretty handy with that kind of work too. Yeah. Well, every developer is pretty good at tracking down bugs. But I think in the in the short time you've been here, you've you've seen into a lot of the dark corners. And and, , when we have different assignments, it's natural to go to certain people for different areas, and you've really expanded, , who we can go to for for things registration. You've done a lot of changes in the registration system, a lot of cool features that are coming out in eight. And it's nice to be able to have another person who is understands all the dark corners of those features. And I'm I'm surprised how many dark corners you've gotten into in just in the the five to six months that you've been here. So because sometimes it's it's a little nerve wracking to give that to someone that when they're new, it's , oh, gosh. I know there's a lot of weird things in there. , is everything gonna be okay? And complete confidence now that that you you get it. Well, I work with some pretty talented people, and going to David and Mike when I had questions has definitely helped pick everything up quickly. How about the conference coming up this year? This will be your first time at the Rock Conference. Are we going hear from you on a stage? On a stage? I'll be giving a talk on Entity Framework and how it works in Rock and what we use it for and ways to maximize that capability. Great. So you'll be on the developer track Yep. Helping lead developers and how this is how it works at Rock. So it's good. Yep. It's exciting. So where did you grow up? Minneapolis, Minnesota, or the suburb right outside I call Wayzata. If you've watched Fargo, you've heard of Wayzata. I was just about to say I detected a bit of an accent, so I was trying to figure out where that was from. Yeah, sure, you betcha. I'm a developer, don't ? Oh, that's great. And how did you end up in Phoenix? I got a position with a small company called CDM Data. And, they had a, this was in 02/2001. They had a device, a tablet device, that ran Windows February that, car dealers would use to get their inventory online. So they'd book it out, pick options, take pictures, that sort of thing. I worked for them for probably six months and then the CEO was , well, we're gonna Well, Kelley Blue Book is buying us and we're moving to Scottsdale. Do you want to come with? And my wife and I, we've been married not that long and we're kind of talking about maybe going out and exploring a little bit. So we're , Yeah, for maybe three or five years we'll move and live somewhere else and then come back to Minnesota. So we moved down here with the company and, I kinda jumped from position to position inside Kelley Blue Book, who was then acquired by Cox Automotive and then in that organization. And three to five years turned into ten plus. That's great. No plans to go back to Minnesota? No, we're pretty happy here. We have a great church family. We have neighbors that are pleasant and a house that we with not very much left on the mortgage. We're , moving would be kind of difficult then. Some great coworkers? And I have a great job. Hint, hint. So you've come in, you've seen Iraq, you've seen a lot of the dark corners we mentioned. What's one thing about the code base that you think is interesting? Well, it's just the flexibility of it. I I kinda touched on before all the products I had worked on before were fairly rigid. , if you you're making a web page, you you actually made a physical page. You connected physical controls to it and, using ado.net, you tied it to a database and then you you maximized everything for, speed. For here it's, maybe it's a page, maybe it's a database entry. Maybe it's a core function, maybe it's something that we put in the rocket for everybody to kind of tweak around. It's a completely different way of thinking. Cool. Yeah. Sometimes we kind of forget that there's other ways. Although sometimes I pine for the option of just making it so specific that you don't have to worry about what else is someone gonna do with it. Because in alpha testing, you're , you're doing what with it? Oh, we never thought about that. That's awesome. That's a good idea. But we hadn't thought that use case and, , we have to test all these different ways. What are some of your hobbies when you're not here with your amazing coworkers? Playing with my kids takes up most of my time now. I used to bike ride and mountain bike and rollerblading, things that. Most of my time now, I just take the kids to the park, do family time. That's great. Any other questions for Ethan? Well, not saying it's a question, but just a comment. I I just love the fact of the capacity and the capability you bring to the team. I really feel going forward, we have a such a strong team. I'm just looking forward to all the new projects and the new initiatives that we have. And, so just thanks for being here, thanks for all the hard work. Thanks for having me. And thanks for joining us for another edition of the Rockcast podcast. 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. There are 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.