Podcast Episode 67: Episode 40: v8 and more team updates

Description

Version 8 of Rock is coming! It's just been released for alpha testing, so start your VMs if you're in the alpha testing team! And soon on its heels: version 9 with volunteer scheduling.

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 for another episode of the Rockcast podcast. I'm Emily Forman. I'm your host today. Joining me are Jon Edmiston and Nick Airdo, and we are going to give you the latest update on what's going on with Rock and the Spark team. I know the subject you're almost interested in hearing about, and that is of course V eight. So we are going to quickly turn the mic over to John so he can get started on updating us on that. Yes. So we're just about ready to submit this to alpha testing, and that is always an exciting time. And it's a time when things can shift a little bit, last minute things can come up that need to be addressed. But we don't see any of those. So just give us some a little bit of of grace if that slips a little bit, but we should be getting this into alpha in the next week or so. Or by the time you're listening to this, maybe it's already there. So keep posted on social media for updates. Cool. Very exciting. And does that mean the dev team's done? We've got nothing else to do? Yes. Taking a long break. We're take a year long sabbatical now. Yeah. No. Well, we're already starting on a few other things. So one of the things that we're gonna be starting on in fact, we've already started on the on reinitializing the ideation of is volunteer scheduling. Volunteer scheduling is gonna be the feature in v nine. We're gonna push v nine very fast to get volunteer scheduling out, so it's not gonna even be as big as eight. So as soon as we can get volunteer scheduling completed, we'll ship nine. And so we're already dusting off where we where we left off on terms of the features and requirements, and you'll start to see some public talk about that. And we definitely do want to get a lot of public opinion on on this feature because we know everybody's kinda clamoring for it. So we're already starting on that. Also too, this this feature is done and is in in eight, but I just wanted to kinda bring it up because we're really excited about it, and there's a lot of people excited about it, is, the Wi Fi presence. So within RockNow, you'll be able to track people's presence on your campuses via Wi Fi. Now this does require an external service from FrontPorch, And they're the ones who kinda really do the some of the magic of of interrogating your WiFi controller to find out who's on the campus, get that MAC address to Rock. And then Rock has some really cool features to try to tie that MAC address to a person. And once we do that, then we can see their tenants over time. What's really exciting is there are there are some services that'll do that today, but they to date, they've always been very, very expensive and somewhat questionable about what they're doing with your data. FrontPorch has, they have a ministry heart and they are pricing this, in a way that's very approachable for churches, and it's a great price point, that they'll be releasing soon. And it's a walled garden, so your data is your data, and they're not doing anything with it. They're not selling it. It's yours. They're just providing you this service. They're providing you this data, but it goes no further. And that is that's really exciting to see. And they've been great to work with. We've been working with them for several months on the in the integration and just really, really cool guys. Wow. Well, having a feature that embedded right in a church management system is pretty revolutionary, isn't it? Yeah. It's it's pretty unique. And again, with the heart on both sides is is is really cool and the and the data protection. Right. That's really exciting to think about having an actual look at where people are. And I think your physical presence has a lot to indicate about your spiritual presence and spiritual needs as well. So there are a lot of exciting implications with that. Yep. Well, we've also had some updates on the Spark staff. We've been, as our listening audience here knows, we've been working for a long time to try and keep our Spark staff growing and moving at the same, well I can't say the same pace as community growth because I don't know that we'll catch up to that anytime soon, but just to kind of proportionally keep growing. And we've had a couple of really exciting additions on that front. I'll let Nick tell us about the first one. Oh, okay. Well, yes, so I am no longer only driving up here on Fridays. So I will be here Monday through Friday. That was a big kind of change for me, but you guys had asked in the past and timing wasn't right, and I think the timing is right now. And our leadership at our church agreed and said, Yeah, we're going to kind of send you off into the mission field, the church management system or relationship management system field. And so that's what they're excited about. They're nervously excited, leaving things the way they are over there, but they'll be fine. And they've got good people there still, and I'm obviously in contact with them. So everything's good there. But now I'll be stepping into some new roles here, and I don't know how much of that we're even ready to talk about. Yeah, I mean Yeah. So I think one of the things I'll be doing is kind of managing the developer task list and keeping things on track, trying to balance and juggle all of the things that we have going on here, whether it's Spark Rock Core or some Sparkability clients. And whatever else I can take off John's plate to reduce his stress. Yeah, I mean, you've always been a part of the team now, it's official. Yep, we're very excited about this. And if you're a newer listener or this is one of the first podcasts you've heard, go back a few episodes because we had an interview with Nick in a kind of get to know you format in one of our special edition podcasts. Oh, I don't know. Maybe three or four podcasts ago. And that was before really any of this had even come up as being a possibility now. It's pretty exciting. That's a great way to get to know Nick who's coming on with our team in a greater capacity and one where you'll probably interact with him a little more. We're really excited about that. So thanks Nick. Yeah, thank you. We have another addition. Just recently Aaron France started with our team and this is a really cool story as well. So Nick has been really a part of ROQ since Rock was an idea and helped drive that. Aaron has been around, gosh, as long as Rock's been a viable product. I mean, just before that, I think. Mhmm. And then was one of the first members of our community and one of the first people I think to download Rock probably. Way back in the day he connected with John over some early connection format when he ran across Rock on a Google search I think and downloaded it, was very interested. What was he doing? Was he interning at his local church? Right, yeah, in The UK. In The UK, right. And he was going into a field. Are you going to tell the story, John? Well, dive in. Happened? This is good. Well, I think he was going into a different field, and Rock was so exciting to him that he changed his direction in college and went into software because he wanted to really make an impact. He actually went back to university and for computer science to be able to use technology in with churches, in the mission field. So that's pretty exciting. And now that journey is done. , he's he's graduated and, , we inquired what his plans were and he's , well, definitely wanna stay in the Rock community. And we're , well, we definitely want you to stay very close to the Rock community. How about you come join our team and and we'll open up a London office? Yes. And that sounds so, , fun and official. I mean and it's probably way more sophisticated than than it is. But but yeah. We're really excited about that and and it's cool just to see that circle come that story come full circle. And who would have thought? That's right. And you'll probably have seen Aaron in the Slack community and possibly at a conference. He's just been around for a long time. He's been to our conferences since Woah. Has he been to all of them? I think he made it to the second one because we had to kind of coax him and help him get out here. That's right. But I would go back if if you have this the content subscription to the to the conferences, watch those sessions he's done. He's always done a great job on his on his sessions. And I think most people probably already know who who we're talking about because he's in the Slack Mhmm. A lot. And he runs his own side thing too right now. He has some plugins. Yep. So this is a really exciting little bit of news for us and it's going to mean huge things not just for our team which of course we're excited about but really for the whole community because the the capacity of our team is really increasing and the heart for the churches is still right in line. Mean this is it's really exciting to be able to say hey we're bringing on people that that have demonstrated a heart for churches and that are very very interested not just in in how to move technology forward for all churches but also just in the concept of collaboration community open source technology, and so it's a really big deal for us and for you. It's crazy though because as we add capacity, it doesn't seem it seems the work goes up twice as fast. Well, remember that whole thing about the community growing faster than we are? Yeah. I don't see that slowing down anytime soon. As as many people sometimes you you look around , well, with all those extra capacity, how come we're still, , struggling to keep up? But it's amazing. It's amazing. It's a lot of good stuff. It's a lot of good stuff. Quick plug, if you haven't signed up for the conference yet, don't delay. Don't don't put it off. We will have another price increase coming up soon. So you'll definitely want to get that registration in before that happens sometime in, I think, mid July. Don't forget we have lots of sessions, lots of topics this time. Is again, we remake the conference every year and based on your feedback we have tracks in data, in communications and web, leadership, finance, lots of best practices. What am I forgetting here? DevTrack, everybody's been wanting that for years. So this is something you want to be at. We have a lot of great keynotes as well. Don Wilson, who really blessed the Rock Project from the beginning and enabled this to get off the ground, Terry Storch with Open De Girardi at Life Church. This is something that drives the whole community for a year and is not something you want to miss, and you definitely want to bring the rest of your staff with you. Yeah. I think what, , Adan did is not only give us the base to build us off of, but it's really his leadership and his vision that's, , lit the flame to do what we do. And I can't wait for the community to kinda hear his heart and because we've grown up in that. , we were just immersed in that for, , for thirteen years. So to hear that so for the community to actually have access to that and to hear his heart, I think is gonna be really cool. It really will. So join us then. You can do that by going to rockrms.com/rx2018 and registering there, checking out the schedule list and the speakers. Thanks so much for tuning in today. Have a great day. 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.