Podcast Episode 50: Episode 24: Announcing RX2017 and Sparkability Group

Description

Announcing Rock Experience 2017 on Aug 28-29 at Willow Creek Community Church in South Barrington, IL and details about the creation of the Sparkability Group, Inc.

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 Rockcast. We are back with the first podcast of 2017. And there are the standard four of us here around the mic today, but I think we should introduce ourselves in the spirit of New Year's. I'm Emily. And I'm Nick Erdeau. I'm David Turner. And I'm Barry White. Just kidding. I'm John Edmundston, but my throat is a little. That's a good word. Raspy. I was gonna say froggy. Oh, yeah. Okay. We'll go with froggy. I that. So let's talk about where Rock is. Okay. So we are at officially, six dot one is out. However, six dot two was in alpha earlier this week, and now it just went beta a few minutes ago. So we are looking for a rapid release schedule. We wanna get, this out of beta as quickly as possible. So are we trying to maybe next week, hopefully Yeah. To go production Mhmm. As long as, we don't hear anything bad. So you can expect to have six two by next week. Great. That's exciting. Mhmm. And all our beta people are busy doing their thing. Yes. 72 be. Just got that notice. There should be a fair amount of activity. That's exciting. Thanks, beta team for working on that. Yeah. Good. Alright. So Nick, you were also involved in one of our very first, new events of the year called the Rock and Road Show yesterday. How did yours go? Yeah. It went really well. We had a number of churches come out and even some last minute registrations. We had a a group from Flagstaff, Michael Garrison's church, actually. It was a new guy, and they said, hey, why don't you go to the roadshow and get up to speed? So it was a a a quick easy way to kind of ramp up his knowledge. Great guys. And there was a number of other people there, lots of good questions. Good. And I think it could potentially be the the start of our local user group. So that they were bonding amongst each other. It was perfect. Very cool. Yeah. We love the Rock community and everything they can do virtually together, but there's something really unique that happens when you're all occupying the same space at the same time. Yeah. My only one of my comments is two hours, , isn't enough. We really were starting to spill over into a third hour, deeply into a third hour, but not everybody had, planned for it, so they had to break away. But I could see us easily doing another an easily another hour, but possibly two hours. Well, the it could always kick off the start of a local Rock community organization that got together from time to time. So, anyways, a little background information. If you have not yet heard of the Rockin' Roadshow, it is, a first quarter event that we are taking around to many different regions in The US and working with the local Rock community in each of those regions to put on a two hour event with a presentation of the basics of Rock. So if you're new to Rock or if a church that's considering Rock, curious about it, or thinking about some type of, CHMS switch in the next couple of years, this event is perfect because it introduces what we are, kind of what sets the Rock apart as a product, as a community, as an ecosystem, and then has a a q and a that follows it as Nick was talking about and really gives churches the opportunity to say, hey, I'm getting what you're saying about Rock, but here's my situation. How do these two go together? And so it's a great opportunity for that. And if you have not had a chance to look for one near you, I would suggest going to our web page Right now, go to rockrms.com/roadshows, and you'll see we have, many, many of those still to go. Next week, John, you are actually going to be in Texas for two of those. Right? Yep. Dallas and then Houston. So we're not letting him use his voice all weekend, so he'll be less froggy by by Texas. I hope so. But that's good. So we're excited. We're seeing a lot of good registrations. But again, if you already know about the roadshow or if you feel you don't need an intro to Rock class but other churches, think about your connections locally or or in some of those regions and, invite those churches. Give them the personal invite. That always goes better than, just hearing about it second hand if they hear a personal invite from somebody who knows, that's really what drives it. The road show also gave us the opportunity to announce, another big topic that you all will wanna hear about. Do you want to tell us about that? Sure. We're excited to announce that we have a date and a location for our annual conference, RX twenty seventeen. It's going to be at Willow Creek Church in Chicago on August. I mean, that's just our annual conference where we can we come to showcase some of the new features in Rock, and we ask for you guys to kind of share your best practices. So we're gonna be looking at you, think about what you wanna present, and it should be a great time to meet other users of Rock and just really get best practices. Great. And David said, you are key to what makes Rock work and we wanna hear how you're using the things that we build to have real life application and power your church. That's what everyone wants to hear. So we are looking at you. And the registration is open on the website. So take a look and get registered. Get registered early. That's right. And just a reminder, we do our conference a little bit differently. A lot of times you'll go to a conference, you'll have day one, day two, day three, and the momentum's wearing down, and people book their flights, and they're ready to leave town. It's we don't wanna have that useless third day that's just kind of a hanger on. So we really pack all of our content into two days, and, you are going to be best served if you fly in the day before and fly out the day after. And just assume everything that's happening in between those two days is gonna be full of great content, and it's really gonna be full of great connections. So if you leave early, you will be missing out on the opportunity to have some really powerful, meaningful Rock connections that will serve you at least for the whole, next year. So definitely make sure you're booking your travel to, support that. Another thing we have made a change from since the last two years is that we will be having a a portion of this conference in two tracks. So there will be a portion that's related to new to Rock and a portion that's related to more of the seasoned community members and some things that fit with both of you, and then there will be a a portion of it as well that is for everyone. So that was based on some feedback we've had. We always to honor your feedback, and I think that's gonna go really well. Not to mention that we moved it Central. So Yes. Thank you Willow Creek. We're very excited Yes. To host there. Let's see. We have committed to make keeping you updated on pledges. And we used our conference last year to roll out a pledge drive for 2017 and try to add a little more transparency there because we know what's going on here and we just get so busy working. Sometimes we forget to tell you where we're at. So we'll do a little update on the pledge. The pledge drive has been going pretty well, and, we are funded at about 83% of our budget for this year, which is good because the first quarter, we're really planning hard. We're looking and mapping out features that we wanna write into core and trying to plan all of that out. It's it's a good start. At the same time, we're noticing our community growing at a much faster clip than it was in the previous couple of years. So we're knowing that our budget there is just really the beginning. , we really need to be able to keep growing simultaneously with the community. So we do ask that if you are using Rock and loving Rock and it's powering your church, would you power us too? We definitely need those donations to keep growing and moving and, and putting the new features of Rock in your hands. We've got a lot of great ideas. We've we've given you some more behind the scenes in our whiteboard sessions lately, and there's good stuff coming. So help us help us get that in your hands quickly if you could please. We did wanna let right now that about 40% of churches that are using Rock are donating to Rock. We know that's never gonna be a % because the point of Rock is that ministries that are too small to to contribute can still have really powerful tools in their hands. But we also know that that isn't the best number to shoot for. We really need every church that can to contribute what they can to keep this mission moving. So it's definitely a different organizational setup than you'll find in most, CHMS products, but the open community aspect is really what pulls people in. So once you're in, let's contribute because we're all doing this together. And have those pledges then turned into actual online giving? Oh, that's a great question, Nick. And, yes, almost all of them have converted into giving or the recurring transactions, you said, set in place. So that's going really well. We've got we've got great people that commit and follow through. So it's a good team. Yeah. Okay. So we have one other thing that we've been kind of talking around about for time. And it's it's really starting to come to fruition, and it's got some exciting opportunities. So, John, if you wanna talk about it a little bit, if you can, and then save your voice after that. Yes. I'll try. Well, one of the things I think we've noticed is that are going really well with Rock. I think Emily kind of alluded to that. But there is something that's still needed, and that's support. And a lot of people wanna pay for that, and there's a lot of third party development that needs to be done. And last year, we did a lot of that, David and I, through Minecart, and that was what kept us alive last year. But that's really growing, and and we looked at that, and we thought, well, we kept two options. We can either grow Minecart, or we can grow something maybe closer to Spark. Promise Spark is a nonprofit, so there's certain things we can and can't do, and there's certain things we should pay tax on as responsible citizens. So and that was one of the reasons why we created Minecart. But Emily has spent a lot of time talking to our lawyers and to our accountants, and we think we have a better way. And so what we're gonna do is we're gonna start a for profit that's a % owned by the nonprofit. So Spark will own this this entity, and this will be the vehicle that we use to provide all those services. I think that's healthy because it services Spark in the end, so all profits would go to Spark one hundred percent, and it kind of meets all the needs, at the same time supporting Spark really well. So we will be launching that entity here soon. It's gonna be called Spark Ability Group. It has a tie in to Spark, so Spark Ability Group. And, , to that end, we're trying to to keep that going too. And we'll be trying to grow that so that we can meet the needs of those out there. There's also, obviously, a lot of great partners, and so we we do want you guys to still be supporting them. Look at them. Sometimes there would be a better fit than than Sparkability, either because of location or expertise or bandwidth. So I think right now, there is more than enough work to be done that can't be met. I mean, there's just so much stuff that needs to be done. Yeah, every month there's more work. There's more churches coming online. They want more help. They wanna buy services. They wanna buy help in migration help. So it's not getting it's not diminishing. It's only growing. Yeah. In a sense, it's almost one way to look at it is there's a pie and we can all split it. That's really not the way this is. There is we are a pie factory. There's pies coming out. Pies for everyone. It reminds me of the Lucille Ball episode where they're trying to stuff those little candies. Yeah, the candies are coming too fast, and there's just not enough resources, trained resources. So there was an announcement too we made that Mike Peterson, we were able to bring him. He was, , leaving and going to a corporate job, we were able to bring him in and kind of, in a sense, keep him in the church, keep him in the Rock community. And so he is part of Sparkability. So now, Spark will have a relationship with Sparkability to do some core stuff too. So Mike will be working on some core stuff, but for the most part his time is available for anybody who needs it. Right. Right. We're really excited about that. John said, there's so much work to be done and we've been hearing, oh, for at least the past twelve months from churches that say, you talk about accessibility, but really for it to be accessible to our church without a tech staff, we need to hire support. We need to hire, someone who can handle our migration or we cannot use Rock. And so since, accessibility is one of our core values, we've known that we're not hitting the mark operating the way we have been. So we need to we need to make it more accessible. And that really has been the driving motivation behind this. So we are very excited to see, not only how we can help meet those needs, but how we can, , also contribute to and support, the nonprofit as well through it. So as John mentioned, every church has unique needs. SparkAbility will be able to meet some churches' needs in some areas. Some churches will find they have different needs, or they have a local connection and a trained resource in their area, and that is fantastic. We, support our partners and they support us, and we're very, very happy, that they are contributing in the manner that they are to helping churches come online with Rock and and being that support partner for them as well. So we wanna thank you for tuning in with us here today and for being a really incredible dynamic community. I talk to a lot of churches, and there's not one conversation I have with a church where we don't reference the incredible community that really keeps Rock going. That's you, and we're so thankful for you. 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.