Podcast Episode 42: Episode 16: Gunning for MailChimp

Description

Lots to cover including: a financial update, RX2016 discussion and of course how to clean-up from what the Monkey left us.

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. Alright. We have gotten some great feedback. So shout out to Robbie at Renovation Church. Thanks for some feedback on podcast. If you guys have other feedback you'd to give us, let us know. We're always listening to hear it. Nick, your imitation of Emily this time is just it's spot on. I've really been practicing. Yeah. Here, listen to how good it is. I'm really glad to be back. I don't know what things went down with Nick last week, but I sound more myself, and I'm glad to be here. But thank you, Robbie, for the feedback that you wanna know who is here at the podcast every time. So we're gonna go around and introduce ourselves. I'm Emily, and I help out at Spark with a variety of things, partner and church activities, and that's probably what you'll hear from me in addition to here on the podcast. You also do the financials, which is very important. I do. Yeah. And it is. Yes. So Thanks. You do a lot more than than just that. But I'm Jon Edmiston. Never quite sure what my role is. I think kind of every day you walk in and it's something new that needs to be done. But I guess I try to chart a a course for where we're going, but also right now do a do a lot of development work, usually more the lighter side of the development and more of the UI, I guess, to date. So that's what I do. And web? And web. And documentation. And documentation. I love documentation. Sarcasm. Yeah. If anybody ever wants to take that off my hands, just let me know. I am David. I work pretty closely with John. I do pretty much development, make John's vision happen, and just kind of help the community implement Rock, use Rock. That's my day. And I'm Nick Gerardo. I am just part of the Spark team. I do various tasks when I have a chance, but primarily, I'm I'm still working at Central full time on their implementation. Although the last piece everything's done except for that last piece I mentioned last time is check-in. So hopefully soon, I'll be doing more and more Pure Rock stuff. Good. Looking forward to that. Wanted to do a few updates today. And one, we sent a newsletter out a little earlier this morning. I don't know if you've had a chance to look at it or not. But one of the things we touched on was just a financial update since the conference in October. And we have seen a little bit of movement in a good direction, but wanted to give you some more details about what that is so you can know where we're at and how you can be involved. So while we've seen some overall positive direction, our partnership program has been great. We've really exceeded our goals in that area. We wanted about 15 of our budget this year to come from organizations that are minded, that are contributing to the vision, and they've really stepped up, caught the vision, and we're doing really well in that area. However, that is not going to sustain us long term. So the area where we see the most need for growth right now is from churches that are using and in the process of implementing Rock. We need about 50% of our budget to come in there. Right now, we are only we only have 17 churches donating in 2016. We're We have about 21,500 that we've brought in or that is promised over the course of the year from churches that are using Rock. Not 17 churches again. We need to have about 175,000 in our budget for that. So we really need churches to consider how they are going to contribute to the community. We know that a lot of value is being added. We're hearing that feedback constantly and that's one area of growth that we really need to see some churches step up in. And it looks I mean I mean, you would know better because you talk with a lot of the churches coming on. It looks there's a lot of momentum in that area There is. But there's still ways to go. Accurate? Yes. We're moving, but it's it's coming in inches. So we just need churches to consider how they're going to be a part of that. And I know speaking with a lot of churches as I do, I know quite a few of them are saying, we're talking about it right now. We're working with our leadership on it, we're close to implementation, we plan to switch over maybe our CHMS budget when we do implement Rock Fully or maybe we're talking with our missions team at the church and we're considering this investing in the big C church. So a lot of ways to look at it and there are several churches that I've spoken to personally that are somewhere in that conversation right now, so that's a good thing. Also from the feedback that we've gotten, we've created a couple tools. We have on our donate page a button where you can create an invoice. Whatever your organization needs in order for you to get the right approvals in place, we understand many people need to speak with their supervisors or their leadership team. Sometimes an invoice is the best way to get the conversation going, you can set one up with whatever you need on there. Let us know if you need any other tools or any other conversation points, but we are really looking forward to seeing the churches step up this year. We are bringing great great technology solutions forward and making things possible and just looking forward to that partnership with churches being something that is steady and and that we can rely on. Because the the investment there allows us to be freed up to work on technology that benefits everybody. Yes. In fact, right now, we're having to pull in about almost 80% of the budget in custom development work right now just to hit those needs. And, guys, you gotta know that when we're doing about 80% custom development, the vast majority of that is not something that's gonna benefit all churches and not something that moves the Rock core product forward. So we know you're asking for that. We see in a variety of locations that you're you're asking for more features or you wanna have some feedback or some port in other areas, and we're just not able to really deliver on that until we are freed up from the custom development. We need to take that back down to about 10% of our budget. Right. Or a lot of that has to come on weekends and nights It does. Which it still does. I mean And and still does, but it's not healthy long term. Right. That's the that's the key. Right. It's not that anyone really minds bringing extra to the table right here in the SPARC team. Right. It's just not sustainable to do that long term. So just wanna make sure that you guys are aware of that. We've heard from several people, hey. Where are we at? What do we need to do? What's the status with financials? So now . Yeah. Thanks for the update. That's great. Sure. Another hot topic lately has been mandrel. Oh, boy. Mhmm. Yeah. John? Gee. Wouldn't touch snail, champs. Let's throw John over the bus here. Gosh. We really love them too. Yeah. Anything they do with a monkey right now, I'm not not too happy with. I take a gun to that monkey, which leads us into maybe using an another platform called Mailgun. So Cute. Obviously, I think a lot of that that they changed mail Mailchimp and their little startup called Manjul changed some things this week. Some of it has to do with costs. And, , honestly, I I have no problem with that. , costs are costs. If if things cost money, they , we we have to we have to change with that. But it's more of the way that that you have to use the product in the terms and and acceptable use conditions changed to a point where I don't think it's crystal clear, but it sounds as if we can't use Mandrill the way that we had planned to and the way that we have been. In the way that you churches wanna use mandrel. Exactly. The way that we've documented it. Yep. So I think that's the disappointing thing is, , I I understand costs change, and we need to be sensitive to that and and have patience with that. But it's more of those terms of service changes that I think were disappointing. Also, the the limited amount of time they they gave all their customers to to pull off those changes, I I don't think is the right amount of time. I don't think two months is enough. But that said, their product, , they can do what they want with it, So And we wanna protect the churches. We don't want them inadvertently using and breaking the terms of use. Right. For sure. I mean, we definitely don't want that. Integrity is always really high concern of ours. So we've looked at a few of the other services. I, , I think, honestly, there's a lot of other great options. I don't think that there's one that is necessarily, , the best. I think just looking at them, , we've looked and have determined we we'll probably replace it with a mail gun integration. We're actively working on that. So we hope to have by next week a mail gun replacement for Mandrel in the Rock store Rock shop for free for you to download and start moving to. We will also put that Mailgun integration in the next release four dot four. Normally, we don't add features and functionality in dot releases point releases. But to us, at this point, Manual's a bug that needs to be fixed. So and we want to give you guys the ability to to move as quickly as possible, thanks to their limited time frames, to do that. So that's kind of our plan. That said, there is an excellent plug in for SendGrid in the Rock shop. That's a great solution. , there's other options. We always say that we what we about Rock is is that there's options. You don't have to be stuck with Manjul or Mailgun. There's there's SendGrid, and there's other great options out there that I'm sure there'll be other plug ins written for. But I think out of the box, there needs to be one that just comes out of the box for you guys to use. So we'll be updating that and the documentation to reflect that in the next few days. Great. And we have a blog post coming out about that as well too? Yes. In fact, it should be out today also. Good. Good. Basically, just saying the same thing I just said, though. So if you're listening to this, don't bother reading. We're good. Yeah. So we just wanna keep it simple for everyone. Yeah. I mean, again, that goes back to every week is an adventure. Right? Didn't Didn't see this one coming. And and we've been real happy with Mandrill. So it's a dis disappointing but, again, , one thing I would throw up too is, , , Mailgun has a free level. Right? 10,000 units. But we we have to be somewhat sensitive in terms of don't worry as much about free. I mean, , if they change those terms later, that that might have to be. It's happened before with other services. Right. I mean, Smarty Streets did that too. I mean, I think especially when projects ours come and we bring lots of people to the table who are all in the free program, that impacts their bottom line, and that changes things. So I think, obviously, cost we're we're we're working ministries. Cost is a big thing. , we've worked in the Ed Church for for fourteen years. We understand that. So we we've looked at cost when we picked Mailgun, but don't get too hypersensitive about the free package because again, these businesses are there to to make money too. They have salaries they have to pay. So And that's the difference with the Mandrill solution because you said even if you pay and you're using Mailchimp, you could still be in violation of using Mandrill through Rock to send out newsletters from Rock. Yeah. Don't think anybody's gonna come chase you down, but it's not within the strategy that they want. They want all those marketing emails to come through the Mailchimp Right. Which, , if it's coming from Rock, it's not coming from Mailchimp. So now they I think they'll probably come out and clarify that. I mean, there's a lot of people on the Internet not happy right now. Mhmm. So we we don't have immediate plans to remove Mailchimp yet. We're we're gonna put in this new solution. But that in the future, it could be removed. Yeah. I mean, I'd that goes into, , another discussion from a development perspective is we try not to remove functionality that's already installed. It may not be installed in future releases of Rock, but I doubt we would actually pull it out of Rock for a long, long, long time. Okay. Because that could that could break something for you guys. We don't wanna break things. It's probably likely that it won't be an option on future installs, though. Definitely won't be active. Right? Yeah. Nor documented perhaps. Right. Because, again, , we don't wanna we don't wanna teach you how to break terms of service. , that would be a bad thing. But so, I mean, I I think this is good lesson on what not to do, Mike, as a vendor. And, again, I don't fault them for changing their minds or changing their course, but I think the limited time frame is the thing that I I think is probably something they didn't consider very well. , things happen. Yeah. I get that. , you wanna change direction. I get that. But you gotta give more time. And there's so many people who have integrated their great product. Right. Which is why we're trying to move quickly because we know you're working with a limited time frame. So Yeah. We kinda get to that finish line together on time. Being on this side of an equation too is, , I understand how things change and , , they charted a vision that went one way and all of sudden, , you get further down that path and you wanna you need to change it we've been there. But I think just being more responsive on time frames and Mhmm. And transition plans would have been nice. Now for some good news. Yes. How about that? Good. We are finally announcing dates and locations for Rx twenty sixteen. Our Rock Experience Conference this year will be held at Bel Air Church in Los Angeles on August. So we have more details that will be coming soon, but in the meantime you'll want to save those dates and you should be able to use the location and the time frame to put some general budget things in place with your organization if you need to. So just carve out that space for us. We are looking so forward to seeing you there. And, a couple of different changes for this year. We are looking for more input from churches. We want to hear how you're using Rock. We want to hear your success stories. We want to hear your best practices and learn from you. We want the community to really shine at this next conference. So on that note, we are looking for more speakers from churches that are using Rock. And so if you're interested at all, we are definitely interested in speaking with you about that. The best way to begin that conversation right now would be to reach out and make a mention on our Slack channel, and then I will private message you from there. So again, to get to the Slack channel if you're not there already, you can go online to rockrms.com/slack. And there you'll have access to the Rock Slack channel. And with a nice mention there, I'll private message you and we can get that started. We really, really would love to have you on the agenda for the upcoming conference. I heard a rumor about the Oh, you did? I'm not sure if it's true, but since it's in Bel Air, I heard you were working on a Fresh Prince wrap Yes. For a marketing play. Is that Interesting. Is that true? Who we can't let the cat out of the bag right now. It's just a rumor. So that I'm just doing the writing, though. This was to be performed by you and David, I believe. So who's the Fresh Prince and who's TJ Jesse, the boy? Wait. We cannot give it away right now. We just can't. I'm taller. So that means you're singing. Nice job. David is turning red, by the way. You can't see that? Back Up Dancing by Nick Airdo. No. We don't. Actually We're calling him the fly crew. Oh. Yeah. It was doctor doctor something back in the break dancing days. Yeah? Yeah. So you actually had a persona. No comment. I've said too much already. Next topic. Liz will be reaching out for pictures and video. Well, since we're talking about I am gonna change the topic. Since we're talking about community, so let's just mention that we were really impressed with some of the things that we saw people describing at Rx two thousand fifteen. Some of the churches did things that were just awesome and surprising so that's why we wanna hear more about that. But you guys that are out on the Slack channel, you guys are our advanced technical group. , you're doing a lot of interesting stuff too. And I I'd mentioned this in the past. I wanna just encourage you again. Because you guys are out there doing stuff every day on Slack, we wanna bring the good gold nuggets out of Slack and and have you I would just wanna again encourage you to post them up onto the q and a. And it doesn't mean you have to post the answer the question and the answer. Just work out amongst yourselves, , you and the person who had the answer together, go out there and post that gold nugget up in the q and a section on the Rock RMS page. That's a really good point, Nick. We have a lot of people visiting our q and a site that don't have the background or experience or connections with the Rock community quite yet to have answers to questions, and that's where they look. That's where they go. So that's a really great point. Yeah. Because the the Slack channel, , we're exceeding our our numbers. So those old bits of data are going away. They're gone. Right? You won't find them after a search for them. So Yep. Sometimes you can hear the echo of that information being lost as it falls off that 10,000. It kills me. Yeah. It's a side kitten. Yeah. We should take a moment and just take a look at that. The tree falls in the woods and there's no one there to hear it. Yeah. That post falls off the ten thousandth thing. Doesn't and no one's there. Does it make a noise? It doesn't until you go search for it and then you hear the side of kitten. Yeah. It's good. Wow. Okay. What version are we at right now, David? We're just gonna we just released four three this morning. So four three was another update. The biggest thing that it addresses was some issues with check-in and how it cached what was available to be checked into. So some of the churches were seeing things that either a group or a location wasn't available to be checked into when it should have been. So we found an issue with that and fixed that in four three. And then we're working on 4.4 which should go to alpha beta late next week or the next week. Great. On other news front, frequently from churches that are going through the implementation process and we know of three right now that are going live in March, which March starts next week, so that's already here. I know. Can you believe that? We know that NewSpring, RealLife and Church on the Rock are all going live on The Rock. How exciting is that? At next month and we're we want to make sure that we are continuing to lift that implementation process up in prayer and to be an encouragement and help to the churches that are working through that. We know a lot of people are putting in a lot of extra time, and we're very excited to to welcome those three groups to the full fledged implemented Rock community. It's awesome. Are we ending? I don't know. Let us know. If you are working on bringing Rock to your organization, let us know. We'd love to be able to pray for you too and announce your great launch and just help you out along the way. So let us know. Now I think we can. Okay. Well, I'll I'll close this out in prayer. Sounds good. Father, thank you for again this team and all the resources you're bringing to us. Lord, we just ask that you would continue to keep obstacles out of our way and give us the ability to jump the obstacles when they do have to come our way. Lord, we just pray for the whole community that they would shine and be examples of your son helping one another and giving away or just help with all the implementations that are happening and the people that are looking at Rock and help spread the word, and we ask for all this in your son's name. Amen. Amen. Really kinda feels a Duck Dynasty episode at the end when with the prayer. It's nice. Oh, I'm missing the beard. Oh, we can work on that. 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. 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