Podcast Episode 60: Episode 34: Special Edition Nick Airdo

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In this interview with Nick Airdo, you'll get a fun glimpse into the beginnings of Rock and the community that we now know

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 to this special edition Rockcast profile episode where we take you behind the scenes in an interview with someone who has contributed quite a bit to the Rock community and to Spark Development Network. Today, we have Jon Edmiston and myself, Emily Forman, and we're going to be talking with Nick Airdo, who has been a very long time member of the Spark community since all the way back to the beginning. Yeah. So we're talking with him or about him? Think we should talk about him. I'd prefer that you talk about me too. Okay. Well, Emily and I will just talk about you, and you can listen. That sounds good. So how did how did you first get involved with Rockwind? Give us a background of that. Wow. So the the , the real story. Well, before there was a Rock, , I was one of the guys that was pestering you and working with you, hopefully as a friend. Oh yeah. Reposition this here. And, just encouraging us to let's do something. We really need to do our own thing that we can control and all the lessons that we had learned in a previous community. Let's bring all those to this group and let's make something. So I forget exactly how it unfolded, but I remember one day you called me and said, Hey, we're starting to write something. It was in PHP. And so we all got together and kind of looked at things I'd say that was the first kind of unofficial official beginning. Then rapidly after that, we I think established the foundation, the Rock spark development network, and then created a press release. I mean, that's the kind of the initial start of the story. So we're talking about way back in 02/2011. Right? Yeah. Might even be before that. Was Yeah. Because you were doing the refresh cash conference Right. Which wasn't really targeted to a specific church management system or code base. It's supposed to be more open. Yeah. Toward the end. Initially, it started with one church management system. And then the last two, we we opened it up to we invited, in fact, we invited a a couple of different platforms. To actually came. Well, one of them was Rock because at that point, we we brought Rock in and announced it. At least we announced it. We didn't really have Rock yet. Right? Right. Right. Right. Yeah. And so that that's interesting that we don't really talk about it. It's those early days when we tried to change everything. , we tried to change our code base and our, development language, and, and that was a short trip because we we realized that there are certain things that we needed that were just kinda built in to dot net that that we I remember we were we were at, , it was a paradise bakery, I think, out kinda in between you and and us. Right. We met in the middle because I'm about an hour away from, from you guys at at at that point, Christchurch Of The Valley. So I remember sitting there at that table. I think we Phil came with too, my boss. Yeah. That was a long time ago. Yeah. We used to meet there because we there's a pizza place there too we'd meet at sometimes in the middle. Yeah. And so now you've been for years coming out to our neck of the woods once a week on Fridays. Yeah. So even so from that point on, from that part of the story, I would just join you guys at Christ Church of the Valley on Fridays. It wasn't every Friday. It was almost every Friday. And, , we we got to work together. And then, at some point once Rock had some real legs, we started working on it at my church, alongside you guys. But that was took us a little while to get to that point where our leadership really understood what was going on and how big this was gonna be and how awesome it was gonna be. But we then got approval to start working, on Rock during our work hours. This is the stuff of legend to me because I wasn't around way back in the day. I think I met you Nick when it was what 2012 or something when I came on staff at Christ Church of the Valley. But one thing that's always struck home for me is this vision that you've carried around since before Rock became what it is and it was toward community and open source and that's just been a huge burden on your heart and it's been really fun for me to see how that's played out and how it's impacted the current Rock community. Yeah, thanks for bringing that up and getting the goosebumps because I'm gonna get to talk about this kind of in a permanent, location. I've always talked about this at refresh cash. But, yeah, it's been a burden on my heart to see a community of, at that point, customers just complaining to the vendor about what the vendor should be doing. And that used to frustrate me because even in our old system, we as customers have the ability to add extensions and add some bolt on modules to that system. So it was my call to arms to say, we cannot come together and voice complaints about a vendor, what we expect from them. Let's build something. Let's do this together. So don't complain about what you want. Show us what you're building. And so that was sort of one of our mottos at Refresh Cache. And we helped kind of establish a mini community of developers. I think it was us and High Desert Church at that time collaborated on a check-in module for that old other system. And we worked on it cooperatively. We were both committing to one code repository and we worked out all the details and it was a success. And so other churches saw that and we just tried to model that and foster that work collaboratively together and don't point your fingers at the vendor. They aren't gonna solve your problems for you. You need to solve your own problems, if I could be so bold. Yeah. And when you say high desert, I mean, just to give kind of transparency that that was really Daniel Hazelbaker. So, I mean, he's very active in the community, but I don't think people realize that there's a history there too that goes back a long ways. Right. And he yeah. So he has since moved on from there, and he's now working with Jeremy at Shepherd Church. Mhmm. He's a amazing community member. And I remember telling you, John, , Daniel's really great. You you should see the good stuff he's gonna do. And now you're, I think, equally blown away. Right. Well, back then we weren't we weren't working closely with that code base. Right. It was really just you in in High Desert. Right. That's true. You didn't see the stuff I saw with Daniel. At CCV, we were kinda doing our own thing at that point. And Right. Because that's kinda where things started going south is when when you guys broke off a little bit, it kind of took out some of the energy from that old platform. Yeah. And at that point, that's when we were thinking, , we need to start over from scratch. Mhmm. And, , we were just kinda keeping things working Yeah. That we needed, but we were more interested in starting from scratch and and investing into a new platform versus continuing to keep alive something else. The patient was kinda dying. So at that point, it go. Yeah. I'm glad you're not my doctor. Yeah. Sometimes I'm a teenage girl because I'd be singing. That's right. Let it go. Either way. But speaking of investment, Nick here who wants us to talk about him rather than to him has been investing two hours a week. I know you touched on that briefly before, but he drives all the way from Mesa over to previously Peoria where we were and now in Sun City every Friday and spends the whole day, a very long day working with us and helping move a lot of things forward and continues to be a sounding board on the Spark Development Network board and just our team in general as we make sure that, hey, we're moving at such a fast clip. Let's run this by Nick and see does this make sense from the community standpoint. , let's let's talk about this. Let's let's see if we're still on track with where we need to be, and and he's done an awesome job with that. Probably not my most productive hours of the day, the hour drive here, the hour back, but it gives me time to reflect. And it really is something I wouldn't trade. I wouldn't just wanna work remotely. These days when I get to come in and see everyone and work face to face, it's priceless to me. So it's well worth the cost of driving. Us too. We appreciate your investment in that. Thank you. So maybe just one final question before we wrap up. Do you wanna I know the community would be really interested in how you're feeling. Yeah. So, I've had a bout with cancer, colon cancer, so had to go through three surgeries, two surgeries so far. Had a surgery in December. I'm feeling really good. Saw my doctor yesterday, it turns out, and he scheduled my third surgery finally. So it will be February 27. I think that's a Tuesday. So I probably won't be here that Friday. He I'll be in the hospital till Thursday. Okay. But I feel good. That's good. And there's no cancer. The last test they did, showed there's no cancer. Awesome. Thanks for asking. And thanks for all your prayers from everybody who's heard about my story and has prayed for me. I couldn't have gotten here without all that. Well, Nick, thanks for all you do. We couldn't do it without you. Thanks. Well, wraps up another behind the scenes special episode of our ROTCast. Thanks for joining us today. 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.