Podcast Episode 61: Episode 35: Rock v7.4, v8.0 and Early Birds

Description

In this episode of RockCast, we're going to bring you up to speed on version 7.4 and 8.0 of Rock as well as let you know about updates to the RX2018 tracks. David will also share some details about work that the Sparkability Group has been doing that will make it's way into v7.4 and v8.

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. Thanks for joining us again for another episode of our Rockcast podcast. This morning, I have here myself, Emily Forman, David Turner, Nick Airdo, and Jon Edmiston. And we are here to give you a little update about what's going on with Rock. And as usual, we to kick that off with an update on our versions. Where where are we at with that, John? That is a good question. We are currently working on, features for version eight. So, we kind of shifted focus a little bit from the seven dot, releases to work on version eight. And so, currently, there's a lot of development going on that on big and small features. Mike is busy working on the group history, and Ethan is tackling a bunch of I wouldn't even say they're small, but they're kinda medium sized, items. A much requested, little re not a report, but a little block that you can see all the fees for an event registration and filter them by different means so you can, see who's, ordered what, and a lot of other just, , really cool little refactors and polish points. And so right now, we I said, we're working on version eight. We'll probably finish up some of those major, points and pause version eight to go do some seven four things. There are there are some bugs being, , fixed in seven four right now, but it's not taking a majority of our time right now. So I would say that in within a week and a half to two weeks, we'll probably pause version eight real quick, hit some of those version seven fours, and then get that out. But by the time it gets to alpha testing, beta testing, it it could probably be, , three to four weeks before, , we're talking about that. That actually sounds really good. I know we've been mentioning shortening our releases up a little bit. So probably that's the way that that needs to work if we're gonna put that out that way. Yeah. And we are looking at version eight because we we're kinda seeing the same thing that happened with version seven. We're getting scope creep, feature request creep. Know, we're guilty of that. But, , the community's, , a little bit pushing us on on some of that too. And so really kind of figuring out, , okay, we can't let this happen again. And so what are we gonna do to kinda, , trim that down a little bit? And so we're we really are hoping to to put the wraps on on what we're gonna tackle on that very soon, and we'll probably be talking more about that. Okay. Good. Well, that helps have a little clarity in in what the process looks now compared to this time last year. Oh, we had another really exciting announcement come up this week, so why don't you fill us in on that too? Yeah. So, , this is an exciting kinda trend that Life. Church is now pushing to get more people involved in open source projects that are kingdom minded, and I love that. It's really cool to see some of the stuff that they're doing. They're taking some of their very, very complex and well engineered solutions, and they're open sourcing them. And I think that's just gonna, be awesome for, people who are kingdom minded and wanna work on projects that. But even more importantly, the exposure it's gonna get to the secular world by some of the stuff that they're open sourcing. And, , they do some amazing things, and some of the technologies they have are are really surprising, I think, to a lot of secular people. And so having that, , exposure is great, but they're also trying to highlight other open source projects out there in churches and in other ministries. And so we've had Rock put onto their kind of project board or directory. And and that's pretty cool because that's gonna help us expand our community, help us kinda advertise our technology base and what we're doing to to a wider group. , right now, I think if you work with a church, if you volunteer with a church and your church is using Rock, you find out about it. But there's a ton of other, , people working in the secular world who just wanna plug into a kingdom minded solution, and they and they just don't know that they exist. And so I think the discoverability of of Rock will be greatly improved through what they're doing. And it's just really cool to see that, , we're we're one project that's that's kind of already doing that, and they're kinda being a clearinghouse for a lot of other projects and just helping us all work together. And I think that's a a really cool concept. That is a really cool concept. So if you run across Rock on this OpenDigirati platform, nothing's changed. It is the same Rock. Right. Yeah. I I mean, that might be one thing is , okay. So now you part of OpenDigirati. No. That's not quite how it works. I mean, we're just a project on their board. And but already we're getting, , some making contacts that we we wouldn't have had if we if we weren't posted on that. There's some people who are not, do not know about Rock and they have c sharp experience and they're already asking questions. And we've already met with, , one person too, , face to face because he lived in Phoenix. And just that project helped build those relationships. And I think what they're doing is amazing. That's Rock is just one project and to have that kind of overarching directory of projects ours is a is a really cool concept. That is. What a really neat opportunity. So that was a really fun thing to come out this week. Yeah. We also have another exciting announcement this week. I guess this is the week of announcements. We have for a long time been looking for a web designer that was a great fit for our team and that was local. And that's been a bit challenging, but we found out a little while ago that Garrett Johnson, who many in our community already know, was looking to make a move from where he was. And when we found out about that, we already had some familiarity with his skill set and knew that he was tied into the community. So we started talking to him about that, and it turns out that that's gonna be a great fit for him and a great fit for us. And we're really excited to welcome Garrett to our team in a web designer capacity in a couple of weeks now. And that's gonna be a huge help to our team. It's gonna be incredible to the community. It seems there's a wave right now of interest in having Rock power websites. And so to have Garrett on our team, I think will be well positioned and well timed. He just is gonna bring a lot of great skills and a great heart for the ministry to our team. And so we're very excited about that. David, can you give us a consulting update? What's been going on in the consulting world of Sparkability? Sure. Some cool things. One of the things we're just finishing up and getting documented is some data automation tools, which will let you automate the reactivating of people that were inactive. if they come and check-in or they give, it will automatically reactivate. Same with inactivating people who haven't done anything for a long time. So there's those. And even changing people's campus. So if they start attending a different campus or giving a different campus, it will automatically change that for you. And then also one that a lot of people have asked for is, what about those kids that turn 18? How can we automate that? So there's a job now that will do that. And all of those have a lot of configuration that you can customize what type of data it's looking at before it does any of that type of stuff. Some other things, I think we've mentioned it too, is we're looking at caching and redoing that to just make it more performant and more customizable. We're looking at the s three storage provider and going to be enhancing that. And just some other little things some communication tweaks. One thing we're doing for Willow is this is kind of custom, but we're just adding some automated signature capture to their care center intake. Right now they use a different tool for that and it kind of is clunky. We're just putting that as part of Rock and streamlining that for them. And are those things that are coming in eight or beyond eight? The data automation will actually be in 7.4. The rest of those will be in eight or Willow's custom. Yeah. Okay, cool. Very cool. That's fun to hear how the work that we're doing with our consulting that we need to do actually contributes to what a lot of people are asking for and that churches are willing to contribute toward making that something that everybody can benefit from. That's really exciting. Yeah. And what's nice too is we're able to test with big databases so we know that it should work. Yeah, because their database is pretty big, I imagine. I imagine so. So the conference is coming. And we are steadily at work a little bit earlier this year because we have a lot of work to do. We have a lot of content coming this year. I know we we keep saying this, but this conference we're taking all the feedback we got last year and we're taking advantage of the growing size of the community and the growing size of our team to really dig in and bring some excellent content to this next upcoming conference. This is gonna be one you won't wanna miss. And in fact, there's a reason you'll probably wanna get your ticket here pretty soon. You wanna tell us about that, Nick? Sure. Because the the clock is ticking. So if you don't get your tickets, before the thirtieth, you're going to pay a little bit more. Or as John says, you're gonna just gonna donate a little more to the kingdom. So the price is going up from, $3.49 to $3.99. So you got a couple more weeks, if you wanna get that in quicker and save some money. There's also a new thing on on the Rx two thousand eighteen page for hotel listings. I think this is maybe new. Have we done this before? We haven't been able to get blocks of rooms with discounted pricing before because of the size of our conference. We will definitely be able to do that this year. So it is new. Yeah. So we've gotten big enough where if you go to the website, Rx 20 18, and look there, there will be links to various hotels. And if you click the link to that hotel, they're all pretty close to the church. If you click that link, you'll get the special discounted rate. I don't know exactly the rates. We're still getting some final details from them, but by the time you are hearing this, it should all be live. And so we just encourage you to go ahead and start booking your rooms as well. Yes, absolutely. Because some of the hotels are a little bit smaller, and I imagine Rock is going to actually take over a couple of hotels right in the area, which will be a really fun experience as well. So we had mentioned on our last podcast that we'd been getting all of these requests for some deeper training on specific topics that were a little more advanced. And we talked a little bit about potentially adding another day of training after the conference. But the more we looked at that and the more we thought about the logistics of it, the more we realized we need to be able to make this accessible to a wider audience and have it live longer. So I think what we've decided to do at this time is to make that a different format that can live online rather than to have another day after the conference. So if you were holding off, purchasing your travel tickets to find out what that looks , go ahead and make those just for the conference themselves, and we'll have more information at a later date about other training alternatives that will come up that won't require travel. So I I did wanna touch base on that as well. And then But but it's important that they not, , travel out the night of the second night. Right. Because we go late. Yes. As usual, the conference is packed with content and people and connections. Do not shortchange yourself. You're making the investment to be there. Your church is making the investment to send you. You will really regret it if you book a flight out for the night of the second day of the conference. Plan to stay at your hotel the night the Tuesday night and fly out Wednesday morning. The connections that you make at the conference and the chance you have to follow-up with your team and with everyone else there after you've heard everything that's going on is going to be just as important as actually sitting through the sessions themselves. So do not shortchange your experience. Make sure you don't fly out till Wednesday morning. Yeah. And beyond, talking with the community that night, that second night, , we'll probably still be available to chat. So if you can hunt us down, you'll have access to talk to us as well. I mean, last time we were there till pretty late. We were. Yes. And it's just one of those things where it seems nobody wants to leave. So, there's a lot of great momentum when you bring this incredible community together in person. And I think we see that best at our annual conference. And I think you will feel you are missing out if you book your ticket that way. So that's just a little public service announcement. People that have been to the conference before probably realize that. If you haven't been yet, you will want to make sure you're there as late as possible through Tuesday. So just don't even book that flight till Wednesday morning. We have been locking in some exciting speakers and some really great sessions and some mini tracks that are going to be widely appealing to your staff. And we're not quite prepared to make the announcements yet, but they are coming soon. And we think we'll have some names that you'll recognize and some sessions and tracks that are exactly what you've been asking for. For the last two years, we have been listening, and we're able to help put that together this time. So stay tuned. Grab those tickets before the pricing expires on the thirtieth, and get prepared for a really, really exciting time and make sure you're putting the budget in place to bring more of your staff this year because that content is going to be very wide. It's not just a tech conference as we keep saying. Awesome. Anything else to talk about today? Nope. I don't think so. I don't either. All right. Wanna Just another sunny day in Phoenix. We'll see you next time. All right. And today's show was produced by Emily Forman. And Nick was our audio engineer and does all the post processing of being on social media. And Jim Michael does all the editing of the audio. And our amazing show notes are typed up and put together 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.