Podcast Episode 40: Episode 13: Conference Wrap-up

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Find out the scoop on the conference and several other new happenings in the Rock Community.

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 podcast. We have a lot of exciting updates to share with you. It's been a while since we've spoken together and we are super excited to talk about some things that just happened and some great things we have on the horizon coming up. So the conference I think is the biggest news that we were going to kind of cover it today. I think just even by the numbers it was successful. I mean, we were thinking anything over 50 would have been a good success. We had over 110 representing 48 different organizations, which is pretty remarkable. Exit survey was really good too. So I think people got a lot out of it. We talked a lot about a lot of the features in four point zero, but more than that, I think we talked a lot about what is Rock. What it is, what it isn't, and I think that message really got shared. Plus it was just great to see those people hanging around afterwards talking about Rock. Right, it was really kind of the birth of the community for real. So another facet of the conference too is that we announced some really cool partnerships and integrations that we want to talk about a little bit today too. So, of the ones we'll hit first is around support and hosting. And I think that is one of the biggest pain points that people do have as they come to especially churches without a technical staff is, how do I get this up and running and who will be there to help when I need it? So we're really happy to announce that Kingdom First Solutions is going to become really a premier support and hosting provider for Rock. They have lots of capabilities. They have lots of experiences with in the church management space. And they have a lot of experience with Rock. So they're gonna be able to do hosting, they're gonna be able to do migrations, day to day phone call support, custom development, pretty much anything you would need for Rock. One of the things we also talked about at the conference, we spent a little bit of time, especially in the Getting Started sessions, talking about what does it mean to find hosting for Rock. And a lot of people, their first thought, go to that ten ninety nine GoDaddy account, and really that is not appropriate for Rock. And the analogy we kind of gave in the conference is it's kind of buying a brand new Tesla car and trying to run it on two double A batteries. It'll only go 110 feet. I did do the Google on that. Two double A's will take a Tesla one hundred and ten feet, which is impressive, but probably not going to get you anywhere you want to go. It's the same with hosting. So I would look at all the hosting that's available for Rock. And if you're going in there with the mindset of $9.99, that's a totally wrong mindset. What they're providing is a very high quality, robust hosting that your church is gonna need. And they're also very, very experienced with security and making sure that PCI compliance and those types of things are solved for you. Something that most other hosting companies are not even gonna touch or entertain. So just wanna put that out there. Another integration that was announced was integration with Push Pay. So if you're familiar with Rock, Rock has giving tools. But I think when it comes to giving tools, and a lot of features in Rock, options are good. And I think Push pay provides a lot of great user experience, especially around mobile. So if you are just getting started with giving or if you want a mobile experience for your giving, they have to give also. It's definitely something you should look at. It does kind of relieve you of some of the PCI compliance also. So there's other benefits. So I would really kind of reach out to them and understand their capabilities around the giving space. The third partnership that we kind of talked about at the conference was with Protect My Ministries. Again, if you're familiar with Rock, you're probably saying, well, it's already in Rock. What does this mean? What's in Rock is very quickly put together integration with Protect My Ministries that is very limited in terms of the packages that are provided and also the configuration of those packages. So for instance, some states need to send county level background checks, other states need to do state. That's kind of not built into that. So what we've worked with Protect My Ministries is really build a more robust integration. And that's something we're working on right now. So that's not here today, but it's something we're actively working on even this week. So that will give you a much better experience with Protect My Ministries. You'll have better packages. It'll be easier to set up. And so there's a lot of benefits to that. And going back to the Pushpay one, that's an integration that we're working on right now. So that integration is not done, but it is actively being worked. Again, a lot of time went into that even this week, working on that. So those two things are kind of coming very soon. The Kingdom First Solutions though is here today. Definitely check out their website. And that tells you everything you'd wanna know about Rock. They've done a really great job of getting that up there. In fact, their website actually runs on Rock, which is very cool. That's great. One interesting thing I'd to point out about the Protect My Ministries integration is a direct result of what we learned from the community. So we had community members coming to us and saying, yes, you have some ability to work with Protect My Ministries inside Rock, but we need more. We want more and we need to choose from different plans. We want a really full feature rich integration and that's something that we heard often enough in Protect My Ministries heard and we said this is a real need in our community. How can we partner up to make a difference with this? So I think that's a great example of how what you're saying and what your needs are, are really impacting what we do here from the vendor perspective and from the development side. And I think that's what's so unique and really great about Rock. One other thing is that, this does not need to be an exhaustive list of new sponsorships. If you and your organization are interested in becoming a premier sponsor or partner with the Rock project that we're working on here, we would love to hear from you and kind of start up, what that could look , with your organization and with us. Please reach out to us. Shoot an email over to me at emilysparkdevnetwork dot org. And I'd love to set up a conversation where we can get into a few more details on how that might look with your organization and with Rock and how that could be a really mutually beneficial addition to the ecosystem and help to your business and to Rock as well. So we'd love to hear from you. Immediately after the conference, we launched the Slack channel. And if you were on that Slack channel this week, know it exploded with lots of activity. So I think we're at a hundred and three as of today, people on that channel. And I think that's just gonna be another cool resource for people to stay connected after that the event. As well as , when you just need that quick answer, you don't really have time to wait. Might wanna jump out there and see who's lurking might have an answer to your question. And we're really hoping Slack turns into a great tool for just building more community where the Q and A is still gonna be there, still a great thing. We don't want, it definitely has a huge purpose. But Slack can give you a little bit more of that kind of conversational type thing. And already it's just amazing when you see what's being talked about, the ideas being shared, and the relationships being built. Look into that every day and I'm just amazed at all of the benefit that's happening in that one community. Not just on Rock, but in church management in general. Yeah. It's a perfect example of just the community supporting it. I mean, everybody's jumping in helping each other. Right. And the ecosystem too. There's a lot of vendors in there who are what I love is they're not selling, they're just helping. And I think that's a very subtle nuance, but it's very important. And I think they're doing a great job in just helping people understand what's available without being salesy. And I think they're doing a great job on that. That's right. That's what we wanna see is people expressing and meeting needs together in a true community sense. I love what Nick just said about how it was really the birth of the community. It's the first time we've seen the Rock community all come together in for one purpose and that the Slack channel launched out of that. And I think it's been great to carry the momentum of that community group together out into the virtual world and forward toward the twenty sixteen conference, which we don't have any great announcements about right now. But hang in there. We're already talking about it and it's going be a really exciting experience and we're going to take all the feedback we've gotten this year, incorporate that for next year. And it's definitely something you want to plan for. You won't want to miss that. Definitely. So what's next? Four point release? Yes. Okay. Yeah, sorry it's taken so long to get here, but four point zero incorporates a ton of changes and a ton of features. The timeframe for four point zero isn't we typically wouldn't want to wait this long and we typically won't in the future. But we just have a lot of stuff that we wanted to get into it. Since there is so much, we're gonna have a little bit different of a release process. We're gonna do a pre alpha, which is gonna be just a select few people that are gonna start alpha testing, both the install and the features. And, once we get feedback from them, we're gonna go to more of the typical alpha release, is, churches that have kinda signed up for that, and we'll be doing more testing. Once they get give the go ahead, we'll go into beta. And we'll probably have a longer beta for this than we have had in the past just because there's so many features, and we just wanna get that feedback and get it make sure that when we do go general release for four o that we've knocked out as much as we can. So time frame, we're we're done with all the enhancements. We're just wrapping up some issues. So we're probably going to pre release Soon? Very shortly. Yeah. That's how the weekend goes. Yeah. We'll be focusing a lot on it this weekend. And then we're just gonna go from there. We don't have any hard dates, but we're thinking pre alpha shortly, alpha, December, beta, around that period. And so at the beginning of the year, we can be looking at getting it released general. Yeah. It's really gonna depend on what we find in in those stages. And just to kind of add on to it, David. So this is a huge release. This is four or five times bigger than any of our other previous releases. And again, that's atypical. It just had to be that way because of the needs and capabilities we needed to roll into the rollouts that we were doing. Know, five o will be much smaller. And it's not so much the the concern of all the features that there could be more bugs because in reality, two churches are using it as their kind of live system, the spark, , us, we're using it on our site in the Rock site. So it's really just about the payload, isn't it? It's that large of an update coming down. I don't think we've experienced anything that big yet. Right. For sure. So let's say that someone missed the conference and didn't have the opportunity to hear the background on four o. You're talking about new features, you're talking about the size of the update. What can we expect to see when this launches? Well, you'll have event registration. There's a new whole connections feature. There's just a ton of micro changes. Small, medium sized tweaks and changes to things giving and finances. A lot of new analytics types reports. Right. Yeah. And we do have you don't have to wait right now to for it to come out to be able to do something. There is a demo site available for the Alpha. It's at alpha.rockrms.com. You can log in with admin admin just the regular demo site. So you can get in there and just realize people from the conference have been in there kind of playing around. So you will see some stuff tweaked and undone. And we'll be refreshing that often, but not quite as often as the demo site because people are in there kind of working, we don't want to blow away all their work. So it will get a little untidy just because of the nature of it. There's also, we've released all the documentation for it's still in an alpha stage also. And it's at rockrms.com/alphadocs. And that's where you can go and you can get the updated manuals. There's two new manuals, one for calendar and events registration and one for connections. Which is involvement for volunteering. That's one use for it, yeah. True. So don't wait though, mean that would be the biggest shame is if everybody waits and says well it's not here yet. You can get in there, you can understand it, you can play with it so that when it is released, you are already halfway there. Yeah, you definitely wanna start dreaming now for what you can do with those features. Understand how they work and then you're ready to go when they roll out. One of the things I was most excited about at the conference is the number of conversations that were started. I know we began conversations with people that we've only talked to remotely. It was great to see different members of the community coming together and talking about what features they were working on or what little tweaks they were doing for their systems and how many had similar needs. And so many interesting things were sparked there. And then John, you mentioned with the vendors saying, Hey, I can help you with or how can I just be a contributing member of the community? I really love how that's coming together. One of the great conversations we had a chance to begin is also one that we've kind of titled Go Giver. So you may have seen some of that come through in our social media with the hashtag Go Giver. You may have run across that in a few other places, but the Rot community is going to be different from other communities you've been a part of. And we're excited about that. We're going to be different in the fact that we're all really united under a mission and we want to contribute. So we're there because we believe in a cause and we want to contribute. We want to contribute to the community supported open source solution that can be used to move ministry forward no matter the size of your organization. So that's a great conversation to start and now is a really good time to do that. Brock and Spark officially took the leap and launched on the October 20. It's very recent and we have a lot of work to do in regard to that, all of us together as the Rock community. So Go Giver represents how we can do that together since it is our community and we have such strong involvement. We can help direct those conversations a little bit. And three of the points that we went over inside that Go Giver conversation were committing ourselves to helping our own organizations recognize the importance of being a financial contributor, committing to supporting others in the community, and committing to telling other organizations about Rock. Now, are a lot of ways to do all of those things. We do have some suggestions inside each of those categories, but I'm sure there won't be an exhaustive list of how you can support Rock. Again, we are open to all conversations and we've been having a lot of great discussions with vendors and with people who are exploring Rock for the first time and others who've implemented it. So if you have any additional conversation you want to start, we'd love to entertain that. But one thing I did want to mention is we're just getting to the end of 2015 here and I know all of us are starting to crunch those numbers for the 2016 budget And, that's got to be a to do item on everybody's list. I know I've done that myself. And I just want to encourage you to see the value in what Rock is doing and to express that value on your end by looking for ways your organization can financially contribute to move that forward. Spark is very small and we're very mission focused. We don't have a lot of financial needs, but we do need to put bread on the table for our families. So it's not a huge need. We're only a few weeks past launch here. We're funded at about 11%, which is pretty good for the timeframe. But we are not wanting to take those bridge projects, those outside projects that we have to do to support our families. We really want to focus on moving the core development of Rock forward. And so we need to put some funding in place to do that. It's nothing extravagant, but every little bit will help, and we just want to encourage you to look at the budgets that are coming out for next year, whether this is something that could be a technology solution for you that you want to contribute to from that angle, or whether you see it as really a mission outreach to support other small, organizations around the world and let them do ministry and let us do details. However that works, it's something we really want to encourage you to start building into the budget now to make that support intentional. And if your organization needs an invoice to make that happen, we actually have on our give page on the website, you can make your own invoice. So you fill in what you need to see, you can print it, turn that into your supervisor or talk to the head of the department that would be in charge of maybe technology or missions or wherever that makes sense in your organization. And we would really appreciate your support. Yeah. Are you going to touch more on that, John? Okay. I just wanted to say at the at the event, a couple people did come up and ask us about, well, what are your needs and how big how big of a mountain is that? And when we told them the number, they were sort of shocked. And they're , oh, that's doable. We can rally as a community and and raise that money. I'm , yes, let's do that. That's what we need to do. It's not that hard. , a number of organizations just giving what they can reaches that goal. It's not, an insurmountable goal. So I just wanted to make sure that that was clear to everyone out there listening that it's not an impossible goal. No, we definitely, we run on a shoestring budget because we're committed to the cause and it's not something that will be difficult to reach. But we really do need everyone who is a member of the community, to do some contribution at whatever level they can support. Because that's what it will take for all of us to get behind Rock as an ecosystem, not just Rock as a product. Yeah, that kind of reminds me this morning as I was eating my standard two slices of toast and watching my favorite news program. He was telling a story about this fictional character in this book that he's writing for the Christmas season. And one of the quotes that came up out of the book was, Sometimes a little help is all one needs to be saved. And that really kind of resonated with even just preparing for the podcast this morning. It's sometimes it seems overwhelming in that what each of us can contribute is so small, but sometimes it's just that one small step that can save us all and make the project go to the next level. So I would say, hey, even if no matter what size church you're at or what your budget might be, I mean, even something is a huge thing. That's a great point. So there are other ways to be go givers as well. And in addition to being a financial supporter, the more you can help share word about what Rock is with the people that you're around on a daily basis, if there are other churches in your area, other ministry minded organizations or parachurch organizations that you come into contact with, your word-of-mouth will go a long way towards spreading the great news about what Rock is and what Rock can do for people. One way you could do that right now would be to help us out by going to Capterra, which reviews church management systems and filling out a review on Rock. If you have Rock implemented at your organization, could you please just take a minute and fill out a really quick review online? That makes a big difference as people shop for a new church management system. They usually go to a site Capterra, they'll read reviews, they'll talk to the people they know. The more reviews we have there, the more solid someone can see the product is and the community is, the more they'll be able to fill out, what an experience would be working with and inside of Rock as they see what your comments are. That would be a huge help to us. We are right now shooting for 10 reviews and we're just too short so your review will make a huge difference. It will be 50% of what we need to get to 10. Think about that. That's an easy commitment on your part because it will be just a couple of minutes of your time. That's something that we would to ask you to do if you've implemented. We also have a really great blog. David, can you tell us a little about that? Yeah. Mean, it's a perfect example of one of our other points about being a go giver is just supporting the community. And that blog is Shoulder the Boulder, which was started by Aaron France. It's been there a while, but what's kinda unique about it is that it's not just one person posting. I mean, it's a whole community of people posting to it and it's actually gotten a lot of traction and people are are posting a lot of good information up there. So I I would encourage people. It's not just check it out, but to actually think about how they can contribute to that also. I mean, I think everybody that's using Rock has a unique experience and something unique they've learned that would be beneficial to everybody. And that's the perfect place for them to share that. Do you have to be a developer to post something to that No. Fact, a lot of the posts are more user focused. A recent one was how to encourage your members to renew their credit card expiration so that you don't lose that recurring gift from them. Wow. That sounds a great point and something that everyone can use whether they're actually implemented or not right now. Good things to consider there. Alright, so don't miss that. And what did you say? What was the address to that again? It's shouldertheboulder.com. Perfect. Alright. If you want to contribute to it, Aaron will help you get access and help you do if needs a little help getting there. He's very keen on helping with that. How do we ask for that help? You could get to him through Slack. I realized I didn't give the address. That's If you wanna get an invite to that channel, just go to rockrms.com/slack. I think that's Say that three times fast. No. I think that's probably the easiest way to get to Aaron real time. He seems to be on that board. Yeah. I think there might be something on the blog too that tells you what what to do. Perfect. All right. So we have a lot of exciting things going on and there are a lot of great ways you can continue to be a contributing member of the Rock community. We're so thankful for you. We can't tell you how much we appreciate seeing you there, listening to your conversations, and I promise we aren't listening. What you say really matters and is very important to the work that we're doing here. So thanks for your support and, until next time. 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.