Podcast Episode 54: Episode 28: What’s Coming Soon

Description

In this episode of the ROCKCast, the team talks about some of the features which they're working on bringing to Rock - you may have heard about some of these at the conference - and what it takes to bring them to reality!

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 episode of Rockcast, the podcast where you get to go behind the scenes with the core development team at Rock. And we have some great things to share with you quickly today. We're going to talk about some things that are coming soon, which you may have heard a little about if you were at our conference. And if you weren't, this may be your first introduction to some of the exciting things we have going on, and then a couple other updates. So let's just dive right in to what's coming soon. Pretty exciting stuff. Yeah. So we have a couple things to to talk about. All of these things were in and talked about at the conference, and you can actually watch that video online without a content subscription. So highly recommend you go look at that also. Which which video is that? It's the first one. State of Rock. State Rock. And that is at rockrms.com/rxcontent. Correct. I feel you should have done that in a better voice, so And that you can find at rockrms.com/rxcontent. That's better. Okay. Yeah. So the first one is a project that we've been working on prototyping for a while called Slingshot. So backing up, when we talk about our core values, one of our core values is accessibility. So accessibility takes many forms. One of them is cost, which is why we don't force you to pay for Rock. But another one is just getting up and running on Rock. And one of the pain points is just getting all your data into Rock. So to date, there's been a project called Excavator, which has done a great job getting us to where we're at. In fact, I think most of the churches who are on Rock have used Excavator to some extent. And so that's done a great job getting us here. But what we really need to do is figure out how do we take that to the next level. So in doing that, we came up with this project called Slingshot. It's supposed to slingshot you into Rock, which is kind of ironic too because slingshots usually have a Rock involved with That's true. Yeah. So what this project seeks to do is to help you take your data out of your current system, your legacy system, and quickly move it into Rock. And so there really are two components to this. There's a set of applications, one for each legacy type, which basically vacuums your data out of that system. And it creates a single file that we call a Slingshot file. And all your data is kind of embedded into that file. You can then take that Slingshot file to your Rock site, upload it, and then Rock will go unpack it, as best as we can into Rock. The cool thing about this process is it's very quick. The vacuum software, it only takes a few minutes to vacuum all that data out. And the unpacking software is even quicker. So Mike Peterson's really worked hard on some technology to really unpack that. Now we have to set expectations. It's not when you move houses, it's not you can put everything in the same place because there's different places. There's different rooms. And if you love that house so much, you probably would not have moved from it. So different systems have different places and different ways of doing things, but we do our best, especially with the standard data around a person, financial transactions, and attendance. Also managing expectations, Slingshot is not ready yet. It's something that we're prototyping and working on. It's been used by some of our partners to get some migrations done. And really, partners have been instrumental in getting us this far with Slingshot. So we wrote, for instance, the vacuum for Church Community Builder. And then we are going to make sure that we work hard on that unpacking piece. But we're really going to rely on our partners to create more vacuums for other legacy systems. So already, Bema has done one for one of ACS' products. And they're actively and in fact, they're almost done with an F11. And so that's super exciting. The Slingshot, you can get to it. It's it's in GitHub. So if you go to the Spark Dev Network GitHub area, you'll see the the Slingshot, repo. You can look at that. It has, open source license that's a little bit different than the normal open source license we use. And that license requires you that anything you do to improve Slingshot has to be shared. So we're basically making it a little bit more firm and saying, Hey, this is a proprietary technology in a proprietary file format. That said, you can use it all you want. But if you do anything to improve it, you have to share it back immediately. And that's just making sure that all that stuff gets shared and and and that the investment that we've put into it doesn't turn into a commercial product. That we wanted to make sure that it's it's something that's easily shared with other people. And mentioning going to GitHub, that's really for the technical person who wants to see it now. Right. But it'll be part of RockCore or will it a plug in? Yeah, that's a good question. So the unpacking piece will be part of RockCore. That'll be in seven. The vacuums will be downloadable. So we'll have those. And and, yeah, that's a good point. Right now, it's really there for the super tech programmer types. But we hope within a few months that that will be accessible to all and very, very easy to use. We've made sure that the process is super simple. You don't have to be a programmer to use the vacuum in the upload. And there'll probably be a book or a guide for that as well. Probably should be. Yeah. There already is a white paper on it. So we can put that white paper in the show notes for this podcast to download it. It gives you just a little bit of information and it really unpacks the CCB migration. You can kind of get an understanding of what data types it supports. And even if you don't use CCB, the rest will be very similar. It gives you an idea. So if you're a developer listening to this podcast, you could use all that information to go out and build another vacuum. But they should probably coordinate with us. Yes, please do because there's work being done on several of them. I'd hate to see a duplication of effort. So that's Slingshot. That's exciting. And you said a few months before we see. Hopefully. Yeah. Maybe more, maybe sooner. Don't We'll see. A lot of it's in the partner's hands to see how fast they can write their vacuums. And then I'd to see them run a few just to make sure that we have the unpacking service just right. Sounds great. Yeah. So the next thing to announce is a project that we're partnering with FrontPorch, which is a vendor who is an expert in Wi Fi. And so this project seeks to help augment what about people by creating interaction points whenever someone walks onto your campus. So what this does is it links Rock to your enterprise Wi Fi gear. When someone walks onto the campus, it's going to start noting their presence on your campus. And then there's some features that will help link those devices to actual people in Rock. So you can kind of know we're not calling it attendance because attendance to me means exactly what they're doing when they're on campus. We're actually just going to call it presence. So there's an interaction type of presence and we'll just keep tracking that. It's really interesting. Think that has a lot of other really cool features. So for instance, say someone comes on your campus for the first time and they want to engage your Wi Fi. Maybe it's the middle of the week and you just have a meetup for moms or some kind of after work activity. Someone comes on and wants to join the guest Wi Fi. What it'll do is it'll connect to a captive portal. So basically you'll get that, you'll connect and it'll say, Hey, pop up a web page, here's some content. And most of people are , Oh, I don't want to do that. It's not going to force you to log in. So it's going to be really smooth that way, but it also allows you to give some personalized content to that person. It'll know what zone they're in on your campus. And so you can hit them up with some really relevant content right there. While that's happening, we're also placing a cookie on their device to know what device it is so that later we can link that up. That's pretty exciting. So if you have, say, a mom's group during the day that meets there and has something, and then you have an actual church based Mothers of Preschools group or something, you could put that content on that page, and it would be something that would be directly relevant and interesting to the group on your campus. Right. Very cool. And so when it hits that page, that captive portal page, that'll be a Rock page. So you have all the power of Lava, all the power of your calendars. And if the person already has logged into your website, you actually know who they are already. So you can do some pretty cool things with it. So we're working with FrontPorch. Again, they're the masters of that technology. And it's been an exciting project and learning a lot. So one of the things we're doing right now is we're getting that whole technology set up in our office so that we can play and experience it just everybody else will. So do you envision in the future not to interfere with the ERA badge but maybe another badge that might show a person's presence? Yeah, think so. I mean, I think ERA is this one component in terms of looking at engagement. And so it probably, you said, won't roll into ERA, but definitely it becomes another tool in the toolbox of how engaged is this person. So that's exciting. And we hope again to have that maybe completed near the end of the year. In terms of what enterprise gear it works with, that's pretty much everybody's next question. It works with a lot. So they are experts and have done it a lot with Ruckus. But I think they've also done it with the Cisco products. I don't think you have to be too concerned about, Will it work with my gear? That said, if you're about to make a huge purchase, might ping me, ping them just to make sure. But if you're you're safe with Ruckus and some of the Cisco lines, but again, it's not really too reliant on your on your gear. So the next thing to announce is another project that we're working on. And again, these are all kind of future, so manage your expectations. But it's called Spark Data. And it's an initiative that we want to do to help you append more information into your database. So the first thing that it'll be, and it's something we've talked a lot about, is SmartyStreets. They've donated their services to the Rock community, which is amazing. But they've asked us to help manage those keys so that they don't get flooded and inundated with 1,000 requests to get keys. So they said that they would give us a master key and just asked us to be responsible and give it out to the Rock churches. And so we'll be working on that. That's actually in V7. You don't need your own key anymore. We'll provide you with one. And we want to extend that in some ways in the future. But we also want to be able to append more information to you. So one example would be a data package called Personix, which is created by a company called Acxiom. And basically, this data set is used by almost all marketers in terms of segmenting and personalizing their messaging to you. And so this data, they have it for every household in America. And basically it's a of a combination of things the family dynamics. Are you married or not? Do you have kids in your family? Do you live in a rural area or an urban area? There's some stuff on age classifications and there's some stuff on affluence levels. So if we can append this into your database, it might sound a little scary. First of all, it's optional. You have to pay for it because it's a paid service. But if you think about what you could do with it, it's really interesting. So say you were to append everybody in your database. It comes with the percentage of those clusters and groupings. So it has a whole set of clusters and groupings. It has a percentage of how every American falls into that. So you can now compare your congregation to the average in America. If your congregation has multiple campuses, you could within your campuses look and say, Oh, this campus is a little over representative in non married or under representative in these ages or affluence levels. So it gives you a good understanding of how your campuses are made up and how they're different, which might affect how you might message to them. What's really exciting too is in the next kind of goal of it is to say within these group types, you're over representative in this affluence level or this age level. And it really kind of says it's going to help you understand how your group types that you set up maybe you have a small group ministry how are they reaching people? So you can compare the population of your congregation to those who are experiencing certain aspects of your ministry, a group, maybe baptism. Maybe in baptism, you can say, Wow, we're really reaching these types of people, but we're not really reaching those types. And that's really going to help you do those things. It also could help you with your messaging. If you're doing some fundraising messaging, you might change the tone of an email or the wording of an email based on age, based on rural or urban, or definitely based on maybe affluence level. We hope, again, that will be something maybe we can keep appending. So I was thinking the other day, if you could keep appending every week to new people, it would really help you in your welcome email to kind of tweak that through LAVA to say, Hey, if it's these demographics, , say this. If it's those demographics, say that. And I think it's worthy to note that, John mentioned, people are, every business uses this anymore in their marketing. And as a result, all of us, including me, are used to being spoken to from businesses and organizations in a really relevant way. And if someone is just blasting the same message at me that they are at everyone else, not only do I not pay attention to it, but I'm a little irritated by it because I feel they don't know me and they don't care to know me. So the general consensus is if you want to make someone feel welcomed and known in your congregation no matter the size of your church, then you really do need to tailor your message to where they're at in life and what their experiences are and what their expectations are. Otherwise, you could be not just missing an opportunity but potentially even alienating people if you just sound flat and and have no ability to to adjust your messaging based on who they are as a person. Yeah. And that messaging is huge. And if you're the Rock admin and not the communication director, it's up to you to share all this information with your communication directors and kind of let them know it's coming. Good point. And they will be excited. And I think too, to be able to go to your groups pastor and say, Hey, do you realize that the groups are doing great, you're not reaching these segments. And maybe that needs to be addressed in some way, or at least known. I mean, that might be obvious, but at least it's known and it's factual at that point. There's other things that Spark Data will do, too. One of the services we're building right now is a national change of address service that's part of this initiative. You'll be able to send your data over to the service and it'll send back who's moved, who's filled out the cards at the post office to say that they've moved. So it's very unlikely that people remember to tell their church that they've moved, but they usually tell the post office because they want to get their mail. And that's actually interesting. Some of the data that comes back is cool because it'll say this person actually moved 1,200 miles away, which probably should tell us we should automate the setting them to inactive. So I think it's going to have a lot of data hygiene benefits to churches. And so already what we've seen is pretty interesting. Yeah. Unless you have an online church. But even then, if you don't, you might wanna help steer them to another church. It can You can't take action on it, basically, when that kind of a thing. Right. And when you do have an online campus, maybe you need to be immediately steering those people in that direction and adjust what you're saying to them instead of saying, hey, you haven't been here in four weeks. , come back and join us. Say, hey, we noticed that you've moved. Here's our online campus. That's a great idea. But there's a lot of other things that we hope to push through that data. Some machine learning algorithms that we're trying to build that we hope to open up that people can then use them, through the Spark Data Initiative. And the last thing that's coming soon is we talked a lot about at the conference. This would be a different video. This would be the What's Up and Coming. I think it was on Day two. Is that one available for is that one for you to I think it is. I think it is. I'm pretty sure it Yeah, it is. And that one is called I forget. It's one of the few free ones. Yeah, it's the first one on day two. Should be pretty easy to find. But we talked about this concept of collaboration and how if we're gonna be successful, we have to collaborate deeper and a lot more. And how really the Church should be the model for collaboration, but oftentimes we're not. And sometimes we call what we do collaboration when it's really not. It's just really sharing after the And collaboration means that we don't go into the kitchen, make something and bring it out and give it to somebody, but we actually invite them back into the kitchen to help do the cooking. And so one of the ways that we want to expand that is to create this concept of Rocklabs, which is a collaborative environment for people who are serious about applying their time, energies, and talents to move Rock forward. This isn't a place for a five minute drive by and machine gun shooting out the window of ideas. Because that hurts. Get that a lot every time. That's really easy. This is going into a lab environment, reading, collaborating, sharing. Researching. Researching. Now, this might sound you have to be a developer to do that, and that's not the case. While we do have some activities that will be development based, we do need everybody to help. So for instance, one thing that anybody could do is talk with their senior leadership and ask them specific questions and try to dig into, , how can we use some of these great technologies that the world's producing in the Church environment? We are the first to admit we do not have the answers to that. And so one of the things I shared is that my grandfather always used to say, literally once a day, he's , I don't know the questions, let alone the answers. And so that's what we're seeking to first find out. What are the questions that we need to be answering? Because I think actually, we might actually understand some of the answers better than the questions. We know what these tools are and what they can do. We see the patterns in the secular world, but we're not quite sure how to apply them in the Church world. So if you're interested in more information on that or looking into that, we do have a sign up form that if you want to be part of labs initiative to let us know. We'll also put that into the show notes. The notes. Yeah. So if you're listening to this on SoundCloud, the notes may not be there. So just go to our website and go to our blog area. Think it's under Community. And look for the Connect. Connect, that's right. And look for this podcast there and that's where the show notes are going to be. But again, there has to be a commitment of time to that. Now, for those of you who heard about that at the conference, a little update is we've been collaborating first on how do we collaborate, what tools do we use. And I think we've kind of landed on there's really no silver bullet tool. We spent a lot of time looking at things. And so I think what we're going to try to do is add some features to Rock to allow us to use Rock to do that collaboration. That's going to take a little bit of time. But in the meantime, there will be some things going out very soon. In fact, today, one of my goals is to get out the first Q and A document to send to senior leadership. It's pretty much almost done. I just need to polish it and then just send out the email. So to get our first kind of answers to what we're doing, we've also been developing some other, mini applications to do some data entry that we need. Some of it's not glory, but we just need to get some of these data entry tasks done. And there's going to be some new features that we're adding into Rock Core that we need in the Rock Lab. So you're going to get the benefit of having, can I say comments? Sure. So mentions and comments on notes that will email out and notify you when somebody mentions your name. So that'll be good. Yeah. A lot of those have been features we've been wanting on notes, it's just never been high enough on the chart to get to, but now it will. But this is a great solution for people who have been looking for ways to really get involved with what Rock is doing and be helpful in that. I think it's it's fair to note that, just the core team moves things forward in a group and without a lot of individual accolades, that's what this is too. So consider before you join this group, think about it. Think if you want to make that investment, think if you're ready to get, up to your elbows in mess in the kitchen because someone's not gonna be handing you a plated, dinner. And it might be a little messy, but truly it is the best way to really move things forward, to really get the best of the best, and it has to happen as iron sharpens iron working together in the minute. But it's not something where people are gonna be coming out with, hey, I did this and I did that. It's gonna be a we group. And if that's the thing that has been driving you, and we've heard from a lot of you it has, that's what you want, this is exactly where you need to be. But do take the time to consider, am I willing to put in the time and the effort and the investment into this that it needs? Because if to if right now isn't the best time for you, then it won't be helpful to the collaboration team. So make sure the timing is right where you can really invest in that. Yeah. I think you bring up a good point. There's a a piece of the heart that's in this too, that collaboration, you really have to be open, and it is a we environment, not an I environment. But I think that's the future. I mean, there's not going to be this solo genius in the future that this creates everything. It's going to be a very collaborative thing. And you said, it can get messy and it can get sticky. Since the conference, we've been actually doing a lot more collaboration on the features that we're preparing for the next version. And it actually takes more time. Actually And sometimes it's a little bit more painful because you have to explain things and what the intent was, whereas before you just knew the intent and you just moved forward. But the results speak for themselves. Mean, the ideas come out much more rich and just thought out. There's been a few times where I thought it was going be a simple little , Okay, here's what we're thinking. And someone will just put in a couple ideas , Oh my gosh, I had never even considered that part. And so it's the right answer. It's just sometimes it feels harder. But the answers will always be better. But yeah, definitely checking your heart before you go into this. This is not a place where we need the single genius coming in and just Right. And we also don't need we talked about in the video, we don't need thought leaders. We need thought doers. Yes. , we don't want the drive by peppering us with random bullets of ideas that aren't deep. Right. So you need to find where your heart and your calendar coincide. And if that lands at Rock Labs, then we would love to have you join. Yep. And we have another topic for you, but before we move on to the next segment, let's hear a little bit from another couple of our sponsors. This podcast is made possible by Protect My Ministry, offering background checks that are fully integrated into Rock. Protect My Ministry keeps your risk management strategy simple. Protect My Ministry is committed to helping faith based organizations maintain a safe environment so they can fulfill their mission. Just ask any of the thousands of ministries currently served. Also brought to you by Jeremy McPeak Communications. Specializing in social media strategy, this award winning social strategist brings twenty four years of professional experience to your organization. Whether you're looking for a social media audit, staff training, social advertising campaigns, or the creation of a fresh social media strategy, Jeremy McPeak Communications is the right choice to add the visibility, consistency, and successful outreach you need. Check out Protect My Ministry and Jeremy McPete Communications today on our partners page. Okay. So we've been talking about some really exciting things and doing our best to give you a timeline on when to expect them or what stage of development they're in. But it's, I think, fair to note that a lot of that timeline actually is not in our hands, it's in the hands of the community. And we have been working very hard in the last twelve months to give the community many, many tools and opportunities that we that are really responsive to the things that we have heard that you need. And this is a this is a full circle thing. So because we are a community and because we do get messy in working together instead of having some of those very clear cut vendor lines, vendor customer lines, we don't operate the same way. We are a nonprofit and we run almost a hundred percent of our budget has to come from churches that are using Rock. And, we haven't always stated that very clearly, but we don't have many, many income streams, and so we rely on the churches that love Rock and that are using it every day to to share the love and help us keep moving forward, which is really an investment in the future of each church. So, on that note, we are opening our pledge drive for 2018 and this is an annual thing that we do. And , we've been working hard to share what exactly is the need and we've seen some comments on Slack and we've talked to people over time and everybody wants to know what what's your bar? What do you need? And how do we know if we're helping you get there? Which are great questions. And we've come to realize that we could give you any number and any slice of time, but with the community and the growth rates doubling and tripling the way they are now, that what we tell you today could be completely different from what we would have to tell you on the next podcast. So really the best way to look at it is to say this, the community's maturing and growing quickly, and the core team has to do the same. If you want the quality of work to come from the core team to match the quality of what you're doing and the maturity that you're having now with Rock, then you have to help fund that. What we need is about 85% of churches that are using Rock to be donating. And if that percentage stays consistent, then our work can stay consistent with that same maturity and growth rate as the community. So that's what we're shooting for. Right now, in 2017, we have had 56 churches donating to support Rock. This represents about 41% of the community that has reported to us that they're using Rock, that's frankly, it's just not enough. So we do have to spend, time, time that would be devoting to Slingshot and Wi Fi presence and Spark Data and Rocklabs and OV seven, doing other things, doing some consulting work just to make sure that the Spark International headquarters lights stay on. So, that's something that we'd to improve. And, I always to say that Rock powers churches and churches power Rock. Right now that equation is a little out of balance. So we're opening our pledge drive for 2018, and we are requesting that 85 of churches donate at this suggested rate of 1.5 dollars per average attendee per year. So as an example, if you're a church of 1,000 average weekend attendees, this would be $1,500 for the year. Most churches choose to break that down into a scheduled transaction every month And that seems to be easy and fit with the kind of standard billing structure they're used to. And and again, this is initially just the pledge. So we we need you to tell us what you're gonna be doing so that we can plan. We can't plan without that. And right now, we're planning. We're planning. We're almost in fourth quarter, so our fourth quarter planning is about wrapped up. But we need to plan for 2018. And we want to do better. We wanna bring you more. We want to we have a lot of great ideas, and we just need to be able to put the work in to make it happen. So how much work will you let us do in 2018? Let us know. Put that pledge in, which is at Rock r m s dot com slash pledge, and, what you put there will be very helpful to us in determining what we can deliver next year. As John mentioned earlier, accessibility is a huge thing for us. We know there are some churches using Rock that are very young and very small, and we want them to have access to Rock, and that's why we didn't set this up with an invoicing or bill structure. But we didn't set it up that way to be quote unquote the free system. So if that's the reason that you're moving to Rock, that's probably not the right reason. It's it's an open source community, co investment kind of platform and we're gonna do great things together, and those things are happening. We just need to be able to deliver to you at a faster pace. So invest in your future with Rock. Put that pledge in. Right now, we just opened this a couple weeks ago. We have about 6% in on pledges, which since we haven't promoted it too much is okay. We're moving in the right direction, but, help us out and let us know. You'll probably see a couple things come in the mail or come over email. Please respond to that and let us know so that we can let too. Sounds good. Anything else? Alright. I think that's it. Until next time. 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.