Podcast Episode 48: Episode 22: Rock’n Roadshows

Description

Get the details on the first Rock'n Roadshow, upcoming local roadshows, the recent Church IT Network conference at NewSpring in South Carolina, and the recent Whiteboard sessions.

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 to the Rockcast. This is our twenty second episode, and we're very happy to have you listening here with us today. We it's been a little while since we've talked, and we have a lot of updates, so I guess just get ready. Let's do it. Let's do it. And you're up first, aren't you? I am up first. So the first thing we wanted to kinda cover is the conference we were just at, the Church IT Network Conference. But I'm gonna back up a bit and just kind of talk about our whole trip. So while we were going to the conference, it was at New Spring Church. Church. So we work a lot with New Spring on Rock. And we spent a week before the conference with them and just had some really encouraging conversations, time developing, time thinking about new things, time which was the best part for me was just seeing what they're doing with Rock. And it's so encouraging to see Rock being used for real ministry, because oftentimes we don't get to see that. We're stuck in a room developing. And so that was a real encouragement and a lot of good ideas. A couple of things we're gonna talk about a little bit later coming up out of that. While we were also there, we did our first roadshow. So that was something that we're gonna be doing more of. But that went really well. We just kind of practiced our road show while we're there. Had about how many people were there? About 40? About 40, I think. 40 people. And it was just great meeting new people, engaging with people who are already in the community also. So we had a busy trip and then we capped off the end of the trip was the conference itself. And it was a great conference. NewSpring and the guys at CITN did a great job on the conference. And I think what was really encouraging there too is just a level of interest in Rock. I think that totally blew us away So many people were considering, were learning about it. It was huge. I mean, definitely that snowball is rolling down the hill pretty fast right now. And getting the plug from the pastor at NewSpring when he spoke during one of his keynotes. That was unexpected. So, one of the pastors in the keynotes, actually both of the pastors in keynotes, talked about Rock to some extent, and that was great. And even a lot of the sponsors who were there too, the other partners, there's just a lot interest in getting integrated into what the community is doing. And I think that it was just awesome being, obviously, we're part of the community too, but this is a huge community win for Rock. And so congratulations to you all and just be prepared because there's a lot more people coming. You've probably seen that in Slack. I mean, we're way over 500 now. Think it's last I saw was five twenty two this morning. It's incredible. And what? That's it is incredible. And it means that you guys are even more responsible for Slack because we simply cannot keep up with all of our schedules, the consulting we need to do, the core stuff we need to do. So a good part of the day, we're not actively in there. I try to look at it at night to skim through it and answer a few things. But you guys are doing a great job supporting that. So just keep it up. Way to represent. Yeah. It really is the power of community. It really is. So let's talk about what else we had happen while you were in South Carolina. We took the opportunity while you were there to try out a prototype for a brand new idea that we had that kind of was birthed out of the conference. Right. The Rockin' Roadshow. Yes. So we did do our preview one on the road, and that went really well. I mean, we said, 40 people and Yeah. It's an idea we've had for a while. Right. And we always thought, know, really the goal for it is that we don't do most of them because we just simply can't be everywhere. Can't We don't have a sales department that can go and do this. And honestly, our best people to introduce people to Rock are the people who use it every day. And so people listening to this podcast. Right. So but the interesting thing is we always thought, well, we can't just throw people out and just go, go do one of these things. We knew we had to provide a certain level of support, the presentation. And so doing this first one was a great way for us to put together all that content, run through it ourselves, videotape it. And now we have those resources so that people can do that. Right. So the little historical view on that is that at the conference, the Rock conference in August, we were surprised by the number of people that were new and were looking for very introductory information about Rock. So we ended up having a session on the second day over lunch to kind of communicate very basic things about Rock as a model and a product and an ecosystem. And it was very well received and we thought, we need to not only make this more accessible, we need to make it live and we need to make it regional Because Rock is a different model and people need to see a person and they need to be able to put a face and a name together and get their specific questions answered. So, that's why we decided to get into this roadshow concept. And going forward, because of that success we had with the one in South Carolina, we now have the training materials and tools and have been in contact with some of our, community members who have a great hosting locations location and have been with Rock for a while to begin offering these in other areas. So an exciting announcement is we will have more road shows coming up. We are planning probably seven to eight in the first quarter of the year. Wow. I know. Isn't this exciting? And these again are gonna be regional and live. So it's a great time when you see one come up to invite the people, the churches that in an area that could get there. We will have registration, and we will just make sure that they get their questions answered and that will help the community in general. It'll help the Slack community for sure because a lot of those early questions can get answered and more people will be equipped to answer them. We have two locations right now that are locked in, and we haven't made complete announcements yet. But I will give a little hint that we'll release soon on at least two of the seven to eight, and they will be in Arizona and Ohio. So keep your eyes open for some announcements. And if you're local to those areas, you'll also probably be getting some more specifically targeted information about that. And if you are not new to Rock, keep in mind, someone else who is or could be interested. So forward those along. Yeah. I know somebody lives in Arizona. This is astounding. And what if we wanna host a a roadshow? Okay. If you want to host a roadshow, let me know. Just email emily@sparkdevnetwork.org, and we will get some things going. We're very excited. We're close to probably being booked out on capacity for first quarter, but we are definitely looking to expand the rest of the year. So if you feel you have a great location that could host about 40 to 50 people potentially and, have enough experience with Rock that you'd be comfortable answering those questions because, again, we're not gonna be able to be present at each of these. Let me know. And if you feel , gosh, that's something I'm interested in, but I maybe have another year's worth of growth to do here at our church before we're ready. Let's talk about that too because we can definitely get that kind of get that conversation started. And so it's definitely angled toward new of churches. But at the same time, it could be the birth of your local rug. Yes. Your Rock users group. Oh. Which is kinda weird, but I it. Kinda that. A Rock. I think a new thing was just born here. Right. At the road show too, one of the best practices we actually discovered, I mean, wasn't anything we did, it was something that the host church did was they had the best cookies. It was probably the best cookie I have ever eaten. Wow. Shout out to Fellowship Greenville. Thanks for the cookies. John has been talking about them weeks now. I'm emailing them to see if they're they have a business. I'm gonna see if they sell them online. Setting the roadshow bar kinda high. Yes. Now you have to provide cookies. And I'm not kidding. That's the best cookie ever. Sugar cookies, right? Yeah. They call it a sugar cookie is probably to undersell it. It was amazing. It was a white cake batter sugar cookie. So all of y'all know directly how to get to John's heart right there. It's through one particular sugar cookie that fellowship Greenville can It's gotta be good. Elaborate. That one was good. Yeah. That's amazing. I'm still talking about that cookie. We noticed. Yeah. It's been very subtle. Has it? No. Okay. So another topic we wanted to update you on is, our pledge level. So we introduced as well at the at the Rock Conference in August, kind of this pledge concept, because as , the Rock model is entirely funded on donations. That doesn't mean it's free, and that doesn't mean there are no costs associated with running it. Our costs are substantially lower than the other CHMS products you'll find out there, and we wanna make sure it's accessible to churches with no budget. So to do that, we really need the churches that are using Rock and that are working on their implementation to put a Rock line item in their budget because that's really what keeps us going forward. And to date, we have not been fully funded. So a big thank you to our developers who donate a lot of passion and time to making Rock work. We'd love to make this a more sustainable model going forward. We really need your contributions. Just a reminder that a dollar 50 per average attendee per year is what it takes to offset your organization's weight in the system. So it's kind of a complicated, equation until you break it down and look at it. If you have a thousand people attend per weekend on average, that's just $1,500 a year. Break that down into a monthly recurring contribution, and it's it's just very, it's easy to do compared to any other CHMS. So if you're moving to Rock from another, system, it's a great idea to just go ahead and keep the budget line item there, but just begin sending that to Spark Development Network so we can keep Rock moving forward. We have a lot of great ideas, guys. So our pledge update is for next year, we need to make number of $430,000 to keep Rock moving forward. Again, that's extremely low compared to the other CHMS products out there. Most of those products have a team of how many people running things? Sales. I mean Marketing. Thirty, forty, fifty. A few developers. More than that for the the super And how many voices do you guys hear around the microphone? Four four today. There's a lot of donated time there. Is there Steven? Here's four. So that's our budgetary need. Right now, we have 38% of that pledged for funding. That's a really great start. We haven't made it super public yet outside of the conference because we were waiting to have a couple tools in hand to be helpful to the community. We have those tools now, so we will begin promoting that a little more. We need your help definitely to put that together. Right now, we have about 20% of churches that are using Rock or are working on implementation right around the corner that are donating to support Rock. So say that again. We have about 20% of the churches that are using Rock are supporting Rock financially. Okay. So that's an interesting number. It's an interesting number. There's a lot more There's room for growth. Growth there. Yes. And here is another interesting number. If all the churches that were using Rock that are not currently donating would begin donating a hundred and 50 to $200 a month, we could hit that pledge number tomorrow. And those are the ones that we know are using Rockstar for reporting? Self reported. Right. Right. So that doesn't seem an impossible ask or a big thing to do. It really takes some effort is is really what it is. So here are the tools that we have in place. We have created an invoice generator and it's on our donate page on our website and you go there and you can put in whatever you want. We know your accounting departments need some kind of paperwork because accounting departments specialize in paperwork. Say that tongue in cheek because I am our accounting department. I think I just got that yesterday. Okay, good. Where's the receipt from? So you did, yeah. That's a pretty regular thing. So I receipts and John doesn't. Anyway, go ahead and and put that information in. Calculate based on your average attendance per weekend. Put in that dollar 50 amount as a a whole number and and take that and see if you can get approval for that. Let people know how much Rock, is changing your work. I loved what Newspring did. They sent a thank you video that that had the actual people using Rock, the pastors and the admins saying, here's how I'm saving time, here's how I'm impacting people. We know that's happening in your church as well. One great thing in addition to having that invoice, if you need to have a conversation with your supervisor, and this was a great suggestion from, Christ Fellowship at our conference was to go and say, hey, we need to do this. And I'm so bought into this. I'm so behind Rock that I will take these other items we've been planning on and put them on hold for a year so we can make this happen. And what else how can you help me reach this number if I can sacrifice these things? And that goes a long way with a supervisor. Mhmm. A couple interesting things. One of them is a quote that I found this week that really spoke to me. It said, nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could do only a little. This was by Edmund Burke. He was a statesman and order from Dublin in the seventeen hundreds. I wish I had an Irish accent to do that justice because I'm sure that sounded pretty incredible. Just give it your best shot. I have no Irish accent. So anyway, I thought that really demonstrated where we're at with our funding needs and with our generous community. I know you guys will step up and and that's, just something that we're comfortable with. We know God's got it and we know that you've got it. So we appreciate you being that support to us. If you are from a church that currently donates to Rock, thank you. You make a big difference with our team, not only just in supporting us, but in the emotional encouragement as well. I mean, we really we run off of that. You guys really power us in in a couple of ways. Remember, Rock isn't free. We don't wanna lock it behind a paywall so that churches with no budget can't get to it. And and so the way that we choose our words makes a big difference. And if you're donating to Rock right now, what would be the best thing that you could contribute at this point would be your vocal support in the community. I'm just saying, hey, we support Rock. Our church contributes to Rock and you guys should too because your voice and your words are far more powerful than ours and have far more value. So I wanna stress that I think we think and know that a lot of you guys listen to the podcast probably are already donating, but you guys are advocates. You're our spokespersons. You're our reps out there when you're sharing Rock with your local churches and you're telling them how cool Rock is. It's really we rely on you to also let them know and be that voice about the donation model and how we rely on that. So some of you guys have done that and are actually bringing And girls. And girls, I'm sorry. Yes. Some of you guys and gals have been those vocal pieces and have drummed up donations and we really appreciate that. And so we're just really wanting to inspire all of you guys to do the same thing. That go giver concept, take it out to the Rock marketplace. And another thing, don't know if you guys have heard us say this or not, but the guys and gals that Nick is talking about, we call you Rock champions when we talk about you. You're just a very, quite a strength to our team. So we appreciate you. So not only better together, stronger together. That's right. And I think it's discouraging when you see a church that can give, was paying for it, not because that really is robbing resources from a church you simply can't give. I mean, that's what Rock was done. That's why we did what we did, is that we want to make sure it's accessible, and there are some churches that simply cannot afford this. That's right. Right. But if you came from another system, you obviously could afford it. Right. And to see churches not give when they could, it's basically robbing from a church who simply cannot. That said, we realized there was a little gap in our narrative. We hadn't necessarily explained that really well. We knew it, but we didn't do a good job of communicating that really until very, very recently have we started making that an easy to understand story. So to that end, one of the other tools that we've created is a video. And we've it's about a four to five minute video. It's not a huge investment of time. And it describes the Rock model. It describes how we work, what we do, how you can be a part of it. It's called why Rock and we will be releasing that today, I think, on our donate page. Yes, it will be there after this part. That Probably, yeah, it'll be there now. It'll be there by the time you're listening to that. That's right. So that is a great tool for you to listen to, for you to share with the community. Feel free to take that and share that as much as you . Again, we really rely on you to do that. And if you're a church that isn't donating or you realize, gosh, we could do a little bit more. We could either hit that 1.5 per average attendee per year amount, or we could go above and beyond and help contribute for those churches that can't afford to donate yet, revisit that, show that video to your leadership. We have a lot of churches that just get it. And we realized many of those just got it after we started telling the story in a way that made it easy to understand one. So hopefully this is a good tool for that. And the video is really a four minute summary of your thirty minute discussion at the conference. Everybody raved about that. Now you have a four minute version of that. Much easier. And I mean, it's all reproduced. It's all done in the in the new studio. So That's right. If you haven't had a chance to see those new studio effects either, this is probably it. Yeah. It's the first one. There's a few things we wanna correct and some audio levels that are maybe a little too hot, but it turned out really well. And you did a great job. I mean, anything that was lacking was more in the production side. Oh my goodness. It's definitely a new challenge for sure. Yeah. Okay, so let's talk about six O Alpha. Yep, sure. I can talk about that. We did release six O shortly after the Rock Conference and we got some good feedback. There were some things we needed to fix, which we did. We repackaged those and released an updated Alpha probably about a couple weeks ago. And so far we've had a couple people test that, but we're still waiting for some other people to look at that and not getting a whole lot of feedback. Some people have been great, Michael Garrison, thanks for going through all your testing. But we could really use some more feedback on that and maybe even some more testers. So at this point, really all that's holding that up is getting feedback, getting confirmation on how it's working, how it installs, because we really don't wanna release it to the mass public until we've gotten a little more sign off. Right. Because, , once it leaves the Alpha program and people who are in the Beta program start using it, they will potentially put it on their live production servers, the brave Beta testers. And Thank you beta testers. Absolutely. And we just can't afford to have it blow out their system. So that's why the alpha testing is really the more aggressive or risky situation. Now we've already had a couple people who I should say one of them who wasn't able to do the first alpha successfully installed the second alpha. And most people installed alphas fine, but a couple others on the first run, it didn't go wrong. Right. Had some issues. So that's why we're being cautious. It's really waiting on on the community. Yeah. At this point, nothing no errors have been reported or nothing that we need to get back and fix. So it's just getting that feedback. Good. Alright. You guys got that. So another interesting new thing is our whiteboard sessions. You may have seen those come out on social media. We'll make sure to circulate those more than once so you'll have plenty of opportunity to catch that if you didn't miss it. Remember, if you follow us on Facebook, you'll wanna go and specifically request to see our posts because Facebook does a great job of hiding those from people even if you follow them and if it's an organization's page. So go and say see all posts in under the button, and then you'll make sure to see the things that we put out. It's easy to miss. And Twitter, as , has a running stream all the time, so it's hard to keep up with. Just a little a little feedback there. The whiteboard sessions are fabulous. So we sit around here, and we have these great discussions about where we're going and what we wanna do and all these things that can benefit you. And we want you to be able to hear about it. We wanna bring you behind the scenes and do that in a an easy quick way. So we've created whiteboard sessions, which are quick videos that give you that behind the scenes look at features and feature development and how churches are using things. And they're pretty incredible if we say so ourselves because what they do is open that line of communication, not because anything different is happening, but because we are, trying to put into your hands some of this information ahead of time. You have questions, what's going on with reporting? Oh, we would love to share with you what we're talking about. You have questions about contribution statements. Wow. This is actually the perfect time to talk about those because they're coming up. Try them now. Don't wait till the last minute. And so we have created these whiteboard videos, and we have three of them that are out now. You could go find those on our Facebook page or on our Twitter account if you look for them, if you miss them. We have another one that is coming and will be released soon, and we're gonna keep this up. So if you have any great ideas of things you'd to hear more about behind the scenes, let me know about that and keep your eyes open because we love sharing with you. We actually did the one of them that's out and the one that's coming, we actually did it at NewSpring. So it's really about some of the stuff that they're working on that eventually will be put into core. So really good information. We could have done 10 of those while we're there, but unfortunately, we only had time to actually do two. So it's not always just about what we're working on, it's sometimes what we see out there in the community. And that's the incredible part, just making the information that is sometimes in the hands of a few accessible to the many. And that's what we're excited about. Yeah. We have some more progress on things we could talk about. Yeah. Just to BI? Yeah. Quick update on BI. That was one of the whiteboard conversations. So if you wanna get a little backstory to that, definitely check out that whiteboard session. But using and increasing the business intelligence tools within Rock is a big priority for us right now. So over the last two to three weeks, I've been reading up and studying and doing a lot of R and D on different modeling techniques for these analytical tables within Rock, how we're going to keep them loaded, how we're going to access them, and actually reconnected with an old friend who actually has a lot of experience in this area and kind of showed him what I was looking at and got some affirmation of the direction and then also some tweaks on some best practices. So I'm really excited about getting his input into it. And I think actually that he's gonna be a great resource for the Rock community in the future. He actually has a consulting business where he does this for a living, and his rates are very accessible to churches. That's exciting. I'm hoping mid to long term we can get him plugged in and be an asset to all you guys. So we have a pretty good direction of where we're going with some of the business processes that we wanna map first. Those being, I mean, the two that just stand out as as the classic starters are are giving in attendance. But looking at these features, it's really expounded some of these other features that we've always wanted to do, is group history and person history. And I think these analytical tables and the models that come out of this kind of area of IT are really gonna solve those needs too. So This is actually going be a bigger thing than originally thought. I've been very fortunate too that there is some interest at some churches on this topic area. Mike at CCV is approved to help with some of the project, and we're really excited to be working with him to bring some of his experience in loading this stuff. A lot of the work that goes into this and the hard work of doing this is basically the transformation of getting the data from a normalized table structure into a a decisions more of a decision making model. And so he's gonna be able to help us there, and he's got some great ideas on on doing that. Now getting the models in place, that's important. That's that's a lot of the hard work. But then the tools that we use on top of that is also something that we're spending time on. We wanna be tool agnostic. We don't wanna basically force you to use a specific tool. That said, we really do feel that Power BI is the tool that we're gonna specialize in, and that we're gonna provide some best practices, some recipes, some starting points. Know, looking through and playing with these tools, the hardest part, once you have your data, which will get you get that for you. But once you have your data, is looking at a blank sheet of paper and trying to figure out where do you start. And so we wanna provide a template that you you will use to as your starting point. And that template, most likely, the the direction we're going is Power BI. So that's something to be looking at. The models that we're creating, I think, are gonna make it a lot easier for you to to approach Power BI. If you were to approach Power BI with the current transactional models, you'll get a little ways, but you're gonna quickly find some stumbling points in terms of all the complex relationships that you have to know and and and kind of bring re remodel. We're gonna do that for you. So that's something we're actively working on. We're really excited about it. I think it's gonna be a huge new feature for 2017. And, just a quick update on that. That's pretty exciting stuff that's going to really change the way people operate inside Rock. Yeah. I mean, I I can't even wait to get these models completed just to use within the Spark data. So Good. Got lots to be excited about around here. Definitely. Yes. And Christmas is coming soon. It sure is. So if you're tired of hearing us this, and would rather hear us this, we are willing to accept a gift donation. I think we're looking for $600 to get a soundboard and some new mics. So if you're dissatisfied with the quality of this podcast, you can definitely help and you join the ranks. We would obviously put your church's name on the on the mics and soundboard. So you join the ranks of the NewSpring Innovation Board, which is our whiteboard and the Central Christian Church Vision Caster, which is our shared monitor. Yes. That's right. So Central Christian donated the TVs that we could use for for meetings and stuff. So but we and the whiteboard has been that was our first one. I we use that thing all day. I couldn't imagine not having that. And we were so cheap that if we were to buy a whiteboard, it would have been a tenth the size. Yeah. This is a good healthy sized whiteboard. Yeah. Definitely. Alright. That's a wrap, right? That is. Until next time. Thanks. 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.