Podcast Episode 33: Rock Support Strategies

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We were lucky enough to have Jeremy Hoff in to talk about Rock today. As we talked about his visions of how Rock could be supported we decided to turn on the mic so you could be a part of the discussion.

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. We thought we'd have an impromptu podcast since we have the opportunity today to have Jeremy Hoff joining us. He flew out from LA to meet with us. Jeremy is at Shepherd of the Hills Church. And we've worked all together on the church management kind of realm for many years. And Jeremy is actually a part of the Spark Development Network's board. So he's out kind of talking about some of the strategic things we're working on. We thought we'd just do a quick podcast. I think you have a lot maybe to tell us and some things to share. A lot to tell you. I hope so. I've got something good to tell you. Yeah, I work at Shepherd of the Hills Church. We're in Port Arrange, California, Northern Side Of Los Angeles. And, I've been helping as much as I can with Rock for, I guess, it's a little over a year, maybe a bit longer. But I heard about it, when it was just an idea on your mind maybe almost three years ago now. Is that about right? Three or four. Yeah. Yeah. It's been a while. So very excited. Very excited. So you've been out talking recently with a lot of executive pastors and and talking specifically sometimes about Rock. What are they what's the word on the street? Yeah. Rock's got a lot of buzz. People are asking about it. Probably the number one question I I get, especially among, executive pastors, administrative pastors, or by the churches is the question of support. And, , Rock is this product that has a software, but no , who do I call? Who do I ask if something goes wrong? That sort of thing. And the conversation from there usually, goes something this. They'll say, hey. Who do I call for support? And so I ask, what kind of support are you after? What do you feel you need? And, commonly, it's, well, something goes wrong, something's broken, software updates, fixes. What happens if things just go very terribly wrong? And, so another another type of question would be whether, , if if CCV ceases to exist or changes their mind about sharing the software, what then? And so for that one, I'd just explain that Rock is, supported by a foundation that doesn't live and die by CCV. That was just separate, but CCV is very graciously, supporting development towards it. So that's that's usually how I answer that. When it comes to the other question of who do I call when something breaks, I usually remark that there's a community that'll be out there. There'll be people, other churches, perhaps other vendors that come around to support this this ecosystem. And with that, you get a lot of help from people that already use the product, may already have had the same problem you have, and so have a solution there. And, so that's something they can look out for. , they know that the community, at least at the time of the conversation, there was no community per se. So, the question sometimes goes down to, , well, if if I have this product and we're by ourselves, , all alone, what do we do, , when when things go very wrong? Who do I call? What's what , I'm they're nervous about running a church. This is a church management software, and they wanna make sure it works. So they feel there's a a risk. There yeah. Absolutely. There's risk. And, , one of the risks well, we we all pay for support here and there. And the question is, do you the support you're getting? I mean, are you are you calling the companies that support you now and getting the kind of support you feel you deserve? And, , we're not this is expensive stuff. , some of these products we're supporting is expensive. So do you feel you're being well supported now? Do you feel a commercial enterprise would support you better than a community of other church workers, church staff, church volunteers, that sort of thing. I mean, you feel your support would be better if it were commercial? And, there will be commercial support with this. There will be somebody out there who, , pay the money and they will take care of, your needs. Yeah. We hope so. We hope there's many people. Yeah. And you can fire your support and keep your product. Well and that's pretty big deal right there. I mean, Rock, you could take the Rock software and let's say CCV does change their mind. Let's say the Rock Foundation does cease to exist. You guys get hit by a bus. The software still lives. I mean, that's the beauty is this is this is a software you can self host. This is software that you can have somebody else host for you. But you're kind of in control of your destiny because the worst that happens is that you are frozen in time with software as is. It will work and and and continue to work, but, you just won't get the benefit of updates or upgrades unless somebody else comes along and picks it up. This is open source. Which will definitely happen because there's a bunch of churches that are going to be relying on it. Sure. Right. And that's that's the beauty is that with the open source, you can do anything. And we've always said too that it's a it's actually a hedge of protection to where if something goes south with us, maybe if we hit by a bus or maybe we just don't feel it someday, you still have all that that source. And someone could go commercialize it. The two people could go commercialize it. Or one person could say, no. I'd to keep the vision of it being open source. Well, you're , you you have some control over that destiny here, , what what will be. And that's a very big deal for a church. Now sometimes it's a little still feels risky. Sure. But, what? If you're if you're dealing with software that's completely proprietary and they go under, then what? I mean, , you might get your data out of it, but will you have an application that runs it? And that's a bigger problem, would say. Yeah. I think when when you think about support at the highest level, you really think about, okay. I pay this money and I get peace of mind. But today, and with the things I pay for for support, I may have paid for a lot of things for support in my life. I've never really that happy. I have made a peace of mind, but I'm not happy with the execution. I think with this, you may not have necessarily that peace of mind because it's a new concept to you. But you actually have better protection because you have the source, you have the data, and you have this community that we're building. We know and we all know that the best knowledge of a product is in the user's hands in their minds. We always have this person in the middle who has to refine all that when that's the vendor. So we pull the vendor out and we bring up an open community where people can share ideas and help each other. For sure. I mean, I can't tell you how many times I've talked to other churches to get the answers I need. I mean, don't have time to research and to do everything. Mhmm. But I do have time to network with others. I do have time to share what I know. They have some time to share with me. And together, , we individually, we don't have all the answers, but together we have most of them. And that's a pretty big deal because our church is not doing the same thing CCV is doing. But someday CCV may wanna do what we're up to. And you can ask me, how did how did you solve that problem? Because you're further ahead of the game just just for that bit of sharing. And that would be so cool if a church had released a document or a manual of Shepherd of the Hills guide to using Rock, how we use it. Or the unofficial guide to using Rock groups, , and just what wisdom that they've learned. I mean, that'd be cool to see that kind of published. Yeah, sure. Yeah. I mean recipes . I mean there are lot of ingredients out there but how are you putting them together? So back to the just real quickly the matter of paid commercial support. We even talked about this today that we'd be totally okay with if somebody said, hey, where can I buy support right now on the community forums on our Q and A that you could go out there and answer this company will provide support? We're okay with having companies step up and say we'll do support right there in the Q and A. Right. We hope that ecosystem develops. Again, Spark has no interest in that. We want to build the ecosystem. We want to support the ecosystem. And some of these vendors we might even be able to help answer their questions if they have a question. But yeah. I was just going say I think it's super encouraging too to see how big that community has gotten just in the first week. I mean we opened up that community ten days ago and already getting lots of questions And I'm more in beta. Right. And even judging it on numbers, And on the quality of the post too is really what's encouraging. Because there's a couple of people out there who are really being insightful about researching. It's it's amazing what people have already figured out. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Well, they'll post, , really smart questions that gives you an eye into what their churches are up to, which is just encouraging too. It's just cool to see the church doing what it can do best. It's building a kingdom. Yeah. Spark can just be, again, providing those tools to help that community. , think it's a different model of support and it's one that people may not be comfortable with at first because it's new. But I actually think long term, it's actually going to be a better quality of support and no and no cost. Well and then the question, , is commonly, well, if it breaks, where are the bug fixes? Where are the updates? Well, you guys are committed to this. CCB is committed to this. CCCEV is committed. I mean, there are churches that are committed to making this thing work because you you're gonna use it in your own churches. So you're , if you look at the product as it is, it's pretty great. And it's only getting better. And so when bugs are found, you squash them quick. And that is something that that, is just gonna happen because you guys care about your ministries. But you also have an eye for all the ministries out there. Right. And one thing you worst case that could happen is if, again, something hit we get hit by a a bus. I keep I hate saying that because I keep visualizing it. Where is this bus? It would have to be a very big bus to hit all of Greyhound imprint right on my head. But worst case, if it's successful, people will see a market. They'll move into the market. If you already have Rock installed, I mean, it wouldn't take much. There's one configuration point that you just say, go get your updates from this server, not that server. And boom, you're back in business. We don't today want, we wouldn't want people to do that because we want people to get their updates through us because we know and trust that they work. If we ever stop doing our job, that's an easy fix. And that keeps us sharp because we know we can't rest. If we rest, , someone comes in and then just moves off with this. But I think that's a great hedge of protection for the church. Sure. And so when it comes to these patches and these fixes, yes, the there's somebody there that's listening and has an eye on making this product better. But if the worst should come, they can hire their own developer. They can find someone else that'll fix the bug. There's nothing hidden about this. Right. Right. This is out there in the open. And that's unusual. That kind of access is very unusual. It's actually kind of fun to talk about because , , we deal with a lawyer all the time and he keeps scratching his head , don't understand why you do it this way because you're basically protecting everybody but yourself. And that's good. And then I talked with community business guys who are in my neighborhood group or just I bump into and I tell them about what I'm working on. They're , that's great. How much does it cost? I'm , Oh, it's free. Well, that stinks. You're wasting your time on that, aren't you? And you you explain the model. No way. Every kind of looks at you you're crazy or something. But I think that that gives we're because we're trying to protect the church the most. Right. Well The goal isn't to make money. Right. It's not to make money. Well, the goal it empowers churches to acquire software and tools that they otherwise couldn't afford. Right. That's a big deal. There are there are not that many big churches with big deep pockets. And there are a whole lot of churches that need the same tools that don't have those deep pockets. And this this makes it possible. Right. And and still yet, there is an ecosystem that builds up. And if you want added services, there'll be hosting companies, we hope, several. We hope there's several support. We hope there's plug in makers or steam developers, but that's all optional. And one of the things I think Nick, you always talk about is protecting that we don't want to become a freemium where it Right. I would prevent that from happening with all of my might. You'd be driving a bus if that's a problem. The bus be coming towards them? Yeah. I despise those models. I do too. So yeah, Rock is going to be awesome and free and you'll get everything that's free and awesome when you see Rock. But again, we yeah. We'd love for tent makers to make money off of making tents. So if you wanna build some custom stuff and sell it in the Rock shop, go right ahead. I'm okay with that. Right. But that but those we'll never hide a great feature only to make someone pay for it later. Right. That is totally against our philosophy. Right. In fact, we have an idea board where whenever one of us has an idea that we think, hey, should this be in the core or can we go off and do this on our own? It has to get voted on by the team and we basically will Veto it. Veto it. And so we'll make it become part of core. Right. Now the people who want to make their own modules are welcome to make any module they want. Sure. But we just feel since we work on core, we need an extra level of accountability that we're not going to take these cherry pick the best ideas and make people pay for them. That's against everything we believe in. So when you come out of these conversations, Jeremy, I mean, do you feel you've answered their questions and that they're they're more satisfied and less risk? , they feel they're getting into less risk? Generally, yes. I mean, some people are just just don't get it. Why would anybody give something that's any good away? And and then why why would they feel Jesus? Well Just kidding. Supposedly, they have. So it's not that, but they also live in this fallen world Right. Where that's that's unusual. Counter. It's counterintuitive. And, , sometimes people see value when there's a cost. Right? True. But, , it's not to say Rock is free. It's just you're getting a system that out of the box is dead simple to install. It just works. It's easy. And and as you find, places where Rock doesn't suit your church, you have the power to improve. You have the power to pay someone to do it, find your own volunteer to do it, whatever. If you need support, you can go find it. If you need something but but the core product is aiming aiming to not require a lot of external support. Right. You your your church may not have the the staff to get it set up and going. Well, you can find someone that can help you. Yeah. But and the community is there, and the community wants this thing to work. They they want success for every church. So when it comes to setup and and so the question becomes, do you need your handheld? And if so, you can pay for that. But if you don't, you can go your own and you're fine. And the updates is, what, three clicks, and you can, , get the latest installation of Rock. I mean, that's pretty incredible and dead simple to boot. So the documentation that comes with those updates is very good. The explanation of it is very good. So just just Rock core works well and is simple. And under the layer, under the veneer, is this simp system where you can exploit it, expand it, extend it, however you see fit. And where does Rock Core end, and where does my custom code begin? Your users probably will never know. They probably shouldn't know. They shouldn't care. Yeah. They shouldn't care. Right. And it's just it's just awesome. So to your about your question, do you I think they feel their question is answered. I think most of them are still humming about Mhmm. , the next step, and some of them have come back with additional questions. So I'm not sure I've assuaged their concerns, but I certainly haven't turned them off. Well, I think there's a lot of onus on on us too to just to I mean, we we we talk a lot of this, and a lot of it is here, but we still have a lot to deliver on. Proof's in the pudding and Yeah. There's more work to do. Yeah. I mean, the bottom line is no matter what you do, there will always be early adopters and there'll be the laggards, the ones that wait until it's proven and we're okay with that. We've I think we've already seen that we're going to have plenty of early adopters. So we're not pushing churches that jump on if they're not comfortable. Eventually they'll see, oh, that is the choice. That's the one we should go with. And I think we need, , to give a lot of credit the early adopters that we have because they're the ones who are going to make this successful. we couldn't do it without even the sport we're getting today. But I just see where this is going. They're going to be so instrumental in the success of this. We hope that they understand that we value them. We really value the time that they're putting in now, testing this, returning in issues, helping answer questions. We hope that they feel encouraged to keep that up. Well, you had talked about an idea. Well, if I have an idea. I mean Right. , these early adopters are gonna look at Rock and go, this is so close. But if only it did this thing, what do they do? It's a good, good question, because we just rolled out a feature for that on our website. So giving a little bit of backstory is when we decided that we wanted to start a project this, it was probably four or five years ago before we even started coding. And we just were talking and him and and Han and what would it do? What would it do different than the stuff we've done in the past? And so we got this little black book. It's a little moleskin black book. And we just wrote everything in that black book. And over the years, we would just have these black books around. We this Blackbook around, we just add into it. Yeah. It's not actually that one. It's a little bit smaller. So we created this feature. We call it the Blackbook. And it's just a little online form that you can virtually add something into our Blackbook. Now, our black book, not every idea that goes into it will probably make it into the product. We write tons of stuff in that black book that now we look back and go, yeah, that's just not quite yeah, it's not practical or it's not in our strategic vision. It was a better idea at the time, maybe? Yeah. Or sometimes you look at it and go, what was they really thinking? I don't know what it was. I must have written that, , right after I woke up or something, because that's a pipe dream. And so, , not a lot of our ideas don't make it out. A lot of these ideas probably won't make it out, too. But we want to collect them. We want to curate them. We want to read them. Everything they put goes in will be read and considered. May be scheduled out for version two, or it might get done. I mean, of the features that people have returned in have already been put into the project and update Some things get reacted that much. So if you want to get to that, just go to the the Rock website under ask, you'll see icon to the right side. New idea. Also, after the next update at the bottom of your installed version of Rock, there's a little beta label right next to that is an idea link. A lot of those links will probably come out after the beta just because we don't want to kind of clutter up your install. But for now, you can submit an issue, ask a question or now have this one, which is to submit an idea. So that's just kind of giving you a window into something that we've done for a while. And giving you a chance to participate in that. Again, too, if it goes into the book and it doesn't get done, it's a development environment, right? You can either hire somebody or you can write it yourself. You have the power. Yep. Well, so again, with with regard to support, what's out there now is that community. You can ask questions and get answers. What's coming is paid support. Hopefully. I mean, that's that's something that's outside of our control because it's up to other companies to start that. But we are already hearing people who are showing interest in that. So, and we want to encourage that kind of activity, because we because we don't want to get those calls when , some people do want that call, be able to make that call. That's something I think people should be considering. So is there any anything else you guys wanna talk about before we wrap up? Anything coming in the next update, David, you want to mention? To put you on the spot. We don't even know when the next update will be. We're we're Yeah. Probably won't be this week. It'll probably be, I imagine, next week. Just haven't been enough bugs. Yeah, that first week there were several things that were brought up that we fixed. I think we did two updates that first week. We are doing some things with geo coding. Probably just wait to talk about that. Let's see some communication enhancements. And then just some small bug fixes. Yeah, we're trying to get back to focusing on the features that need to be checked off to do our one point release. Right now, we're kind of scheduling that or thinking about that in early fall. That's probably our worst case, I think. But, , summer comes and there's just a lot of things going on. So we're trying to be conservative in our guessing on that. But there's certainly a lot of things on the board to get to the one zero release. And it's just been hard because we keep seeing little things we want to tweak or add or or get to or suggestions that were really good that we want to put in now. So really trying to get back to focusing on the one I'll release. And to be honest, there's still, , and you guys obviously know it too. There's still documentation that needs to be written that we want to get to. And so you guys know how to fully use stuff adding blocks and and and widgets to pages. Well, I'm excited. So thanks for your work on it. I appreciate all that's been done and just seeing the progress on this thing. I'm excited about using it everywhere I can. Well thanks for coming out and joining us today. Yeah it's good to be here. 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.