Church IT Roundtable Sponsors

The Spring 2010 Church IT RoundTable is just a month away.  If you haven’t registered go on over to www.citrt.org and claim your seat, QUICKLY!

One of the great aspects of the CITRT National events is to learn about great products and services that you might need to implement or use in the coming year.  We will be again having the Vendor Bazaar were CITRT partners can share, demo, explain etc the technology and tools they sell. 

Every time I attend a National RoundTable I end up learning a ton about a specific tech or product and then get home just in time to hear a staff members say,  “Would it be possible to… “

Maybe there is already one of those “would it be possible…” projects on your list and you don’t know of a vendor with the solution, shoot an email to info@citrt.org with your need and we’ll see if we can find a vendor to meet with you face to face at the Roundtable.

Maybe you know of a vendor that others should meet and learn what they have to offer, if you have a vendor in mind contact them and encourage them to check out the CITRT Spring RoundTable Sponsors Page or email info@citrt.org for more information.

Church IT RoundTable 2010

One of those can’t miss opportunities for Church IT people is about to take place just a few weeks away.  The Church IT Roundtable’s National Spring event will be hosted at Saddleback Church (Lake Forest, CA) March 11-12.

If you have attended a CITRT event in the past, you know what I am talking about.  If you haven’t attended I am serious when I say its a highlight of my year.  Every time I go to a CITRT event I learn tons about Church Information Technology, I meet awesome peers and I have a great time.  If you are in Church IT (staff, volunteer, vendor) you can’t afford not to attend this event. 

If you haven’t already, make plans to head to Southern California March 11-12.  For all the details check out www.citrt.org

GCC Church IT Roundtable session 4

VOIP

• What are you buying when you buy a SIP Trunk
  • Voice dial tone over the data connection rather than a PRI

• Bandwidth.com
• Many are seeing cost savings in the $1k’s
• Make sure your PS/ALI (911) is compatible
• Do you need to keep copper for Fire, Elevator, etc…
  • In some areas this can be done wireless

• What about Hosted PBX
  • Bandwith.com can be trusted for this.
  • Response point is second possible solution

Gapps or Exchange or hosted exchange

• Hosted exchange –
  • http://www.sherweb.com/hosted-exchange

Approachability – Friendly IT

• Users have to be able to approach IT
• How do you help your users ask questions when they should be asking question?
  • Use a Ticketing System they can ask for things they might not think to ask when chatting in conversation.
    • Zen Desk

• Ask for meeting times be proactive don’t wait
• Set appropriate expectations for the users when you will be able to respond.

Metrics

• Tracking ticketing time
• How much does a new staff member cost?
• Do leadership make Technology a priority?

GCC Church IT RoundTable Session 3

Admin or Not to Admin cont.

What happens when they have admin rights and things go bad

• SysInternals Process Explorer
  • http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/default.aspx
  • http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896653.aspx

• If you allow Admin access you "Must" have standardization and images of each "flavor" of workstation.
• What do users "need"?
• Does Software and Hardware get purchased Centrally?
• Some applications get un happy when they don’t have local permissions
  • SteelSonic.com
  • Encryped Run As ($6.00 per license) http://www.wingnutsoftware.com/

Spyware Removal

• Malwarebites.org

Application Deployment/Virtualization

• CloneZilla
• Ghost
• Fodproject.com
• Casper Suite – jamfsoftware.com
• Mac OSX Imaging
• PrinterShare.com
• Vmware VDI
• Ardence by Dell
  • http://www.dell.com/content/topics/global.aspx/solutions/en/thinpc?c=us&l=en&cs=555

Passwords

• Ewallet
• SecretServer – Multi User
• How Frequently do the passwords change

What is the burden on IT of the "pitfalls" of Social Media

• Leadership has to decided assisted with by the direction of IT what the orgization’s going to "Use" social media for… then IT has to come along side with the vision/mission
• We have to digest social media for our leadership so they "get it"
• Find an advocate for IT on staff… find someone who can digest Technology on your behalf.

GCC Church IT RoundTable Session 2

Revisit SLA of DR with Executive Team

Computer Emergency Response Team Cert – http://www.cert.org/

StorageCraft – http://www.storagecraft.com/

IM

• Allow/Block?
• Content Filtering -
• Open DNS
• Dan’s Guardian
• Sonicwall Content Filtering
• Untangle
• IPCop
• Estro

PC and Mac Solutions for Mac remote clients

• Not Blocking IM – But Archiving it?

Why do IM?

• Step between email and a phone call
• Reduce Email Ping Pong

Why Not do IM

• File Transfer conduit

Colaboration Tools

• Live Mesh
• Groove
• Adobe Connect
• Skype
• FreeConfrencecall.com
• Callaflower.com
• Mobile Content Filtering
• Convenient Eyes – Accountability Software

Spam

• Postini – $1500 min
• Resellers are a little more $$ but they provide support direct from Google doesn’t
• Barracuda
• Sonicwall
• ExchangeDefender

Inbound and Outbound filtering

• Catching outbound emails containing credit card information

Data (PCI) Compliance – how are you managing data on laptops etc.

• Policy /Guidelines
• Enabling TPM
• Cornel Spider – Searches computer for security numbers http://www2.cit.cornell.edu/security/tools/
• If its important enough to keep from people seeing it… its important enough to have backed up centrally
• Make the Network Work and make the network Secure… those two are mutually Exclusive… there has to be balance.

Admin or not to Admin (locally)

• Why Local Admin – Super rapid growth couldn’t support locked down machines

ACS Pre-Convention Day (Roundtable & Checkpoint 201)

Today we had a great crowd at the ACS Church IT Roundtable.  As always I got really jazzed and fired up from the peer learning and community that are parts of all CITRT events.  There were a lot of new people to meet, and I also enjoyed getting to know some CITRTers I had talked with but never met…. Like Jeff Suever Great to meet you!

The conversation was great and I even got to shamelessly plug CITRT.org for those who haven’t’ heard of it… thanks Dean.

The afternoon consisted of the Checkpoint 201-Launching Checkpoint Successfully in your Church pre-convention workshop… This was a great group and we had a lot of fun sharing our experience and hearing how others are planning to launch Checkpoint for their ministries. 

As I noted in the workshop we are more than happy to share anything we have learned or produced during our Checkpoint launch that you might be able to use for your ministry.  Most of today’s content is now listed below but we’ll continue to add and update items as time goes on (Download Content Updated June 9th to include additional content).

If you have questions about launching Checkpoint or would like to share your story with us we would love to hear from you.

• Workshop Power Point (PDF)
• Registration form (PDF)
• Program Insert (PDF)
• Website FAQs (Web)
• Training Documents (PDF) (DOCX)
• Self Service Kiosk Instruction Pannel (PDF) (JPG)
• Self Service Kiosk Instruction Pannel – Draft 1 (PDF)
• Self Service Kiosk Signage (PDF)

Indy Motor Speedway

After a great morning session (see Session 1 and Session 2 for Notes for the details of the info presented in the Road Show Presentation) at the the Sonicwall Road show presentations we headed over to the Indy Motor Speedway for the lunch and afternoon festivities.

Sonicwall provided lunch in one of suites above the track near the start/finish line.  There was an awesome spread of food and great conversation.

After lunch we headed to the Garages and Pit Road during the Firestone Indy Lights Qualifying.  We had a great time checking out the cars of the Indy Cup drivers as well as the Indy Lights.

Here are some photos from the afternoon… go here for all the photos.

Late Night Tour

While in Indy Jeremie and I wanted to meet up with other Church IT RoundTable people and we were able to connect with David Szpunar.

We Had Dinner with David, Tom Templin, and Mark Moreno

After Dinner we had a VERY LATE night tour of Lakeview Christian Center with David. We started the tour at around 11:30 PM, but David gave an awesome tour, and we didn’t even stand in once place for more than 5 minutes!

Here are a few Shots from our Tour.
 
 
 
 

For more photos of our Tour of Lakeview Check out the Sonicwall Road Show Set here.

Preventative Maintenance Plan

At our recent IT Roundtable, Preventative Maintenance plans came up in our discussion and I mentioned that we had started writing a plan that gives our team some guidelines.  Granted this preventive maintenance plan is in no way a complete or exhaustive guide, we have started getting our plan on paper. 

We use this policy and procedure guide to actually perform the maintenance but also as guide for what we want to see happen.  At the RoundTable I mentioned one of the most helpful reminders for us has been to add the items from this plan to recurring tickets in our helpdesk system.  When a task is due we are sent a reminder and it stays there until we complete the task.

After the RoundTpreventative-maintenance-planable a couple people asked if the P&P document was on my blog… I hadn’t ever thought of posting it until now…. so borrow away.. I hope it gives you a kick start to start writing you plan! preventative-maintenance-plan

I would love feedback via email or comment or if you you would like to share your preventative plans with us email jason[at]jasonmlee[dot]net.

Trying something New – Local CITRT lunch

Our recent trip to MinistryTECH 2009 it has encouraged me to continue building relationships with my local peers in Central Illinois.  We had a great CI-CITRT event almost a year ago, but I have struggled to plan new events.  If you participated in our past event, or are in Church IT in central Illinois what do you thing about a less formal local approach to a local Church IT Roundtable?   You interested in a low key, minimal comment monthly lunch to talk shop, eat lunch together at a local restaurant and get to know one another?

Leave a comment or email me (jason [at] jasonmlee [dot] net) if you are interested.

When:
May 21st
11:30 am – 1:00 pm

Where:
A Local Peoria Restaurant (TBA – somewhere centrally located for everyone attending)

What’s a Roundtable Discussion?

A roundtable is a peer-learning event where the participants are both teachers and learners. A roundtable is small enough to emphasize interactive learning, led by a facilitator and peer, includes participants who have an affinity with each other, and does not include a strong agenda beyond sharing knowledge. The participants set the agenda, and interaction among participants takes precedent over presentation by “experts.” In fact, in one-way or another, most of the roundtable participants are already experts. In this group, we intend to learn from each other about how to better resource, equip, and train ministries in the areas of computer hardware, networking, server support, web services/sites, telecom services, etc. It will be geeky and fun.