April 12th, 2008 at 8:03 am
MinistryTECH and the Church IT Roundtable gave me a lot of great opportunities to gain interest in and discuss SonicWALL solutions with Mark Moreno, consultant and reseller, and SonicWALL poster children Jason Lee and Jeremie Kilgore. I must admit to being more than a little impressed with the combination of flexibility, power, and price that the SonicWALL products provide. Those are three pretty important areas. In specific my first interest is in the SonicWALL firewall (NSA Series) products that also do UTM including antivirus, antispyware, intrusion prevention and content filtering, my second interest is in their Continuous Data Protection (CDP) products as both on-site and off-site backup solutions, and thirdly I’m interested in the ability of the SonicWALL firewall appliance to also serve as a centralized control point for relatively inexpensive SonicPoints (wireless access points).
Before making a decision there are certainly things to evaluate, and I definitely want to get my hands on an NSA box for a while to test first. I like the ISA 2004 firewall interface that we’re currently running and I want to make sure I’m comfortable managing SonicWALL if we go that route.
April 11th, 2008 at 8:31 pm
Both MinistryTECH and the Roundtable were, again (for the Roundtable), well worth the trip in more ways than I can express, but since this is a blog I’m sure you expect me to try anyway (I won’t disappoint). There’s always something new and different going on (this time it was some video experimentation and the heavy use of Twitter throughout). This is only the second Church IT Roundtable I’ve been to (the first was last October), and this was only the fourth National Roundtable since Jason Powell kicked it off shortly before I discovered his blog and shortly thereafter started blogging (but missed the second Roundtable in Houston last Spring).
The Roundtable, Now and Again
Each Roundtable ends with a discussion regarding the future direction of the Roundtable. Do we want to continue as-is, or do we want to become more of an official group? Do we want to stay the same size, or try and grow? Do we have a problem at all, and if so, what is it? The general consensus I think, was that we will continue as-is until we discover a problem to solve. We’ll keep inviting people, but it doesn’t matter if they come or not. That’s their problem. I think almost everyone who has been to a Roundtable has had an amazing enough time that they are excited about it and want to share such an amazing experience with others in a similar position who haven’t heard of it, and that’s where the desire to grow comes from. At the same time, the group works well with approximately the number we have (25-75), so why change it?
I agree with both perspectives, how’s that for being on the fence? Until we have a problem, we keep it small but work to make it bigger. We have local Roundtables in our area if we can drum up enough interest among the locals Church IT folks. We work on centralizing and updating the main CITRT website more often to provide some cohesiveness and a single-source-of-information without becoming too structured. We keep hanging out in the #citrt chat room on IRC (connecting online with people we’ve met in person is a tremendous boon, at least to me, and the two complement each other very well), and we keep blogging. It’s worked pretty well so far. A couple of vendors suggested creating more structure, and I think they could end up being very helpful in this area when we get to the point that we want or need to do that! Until then, we’ll stay on what looks like auto-pilot (can you tell I’m writing this in an airport?) but with the usual careful planning and assistance that the “founding partners” have provided behind the scenes with everyone else helping out where willing and able. I think that was the consensus as I heard it, feel free to correct me or provide an alternate view.
One issue that was raised in the final discussion was, “Why keep having a discussion about the group at the end of each Roundtable, does that mean we need to change or people want change?” I think that group introspection and evaluation is a good idea to see what did and didn’t work each time, since each Roundtable is different. We are very “un-group” still, and rather than a core group getting together to review and plan after the event, I think it’s beneficial to have everyone contribute to the process as a part of the meeting. I would call the discussion useful and beneficial, which is why I feel posting the details for anyone to see here is just continuing the same transparency and discussion already started in person. Of course, this is all my understanding mixed with my opinion, so feel free to disagree (comments are welcome although if you care that much, it’s likely you have a blog of your own!).
All in all, I had at least as good a time at this Roundtable as the last, if not better. I love the people and the friendships and the discussions and the shared enjoyment of technology with fellow Christians. Sure, I can read Wired or Network World magazines and see a lot of cool gadgets, but there’s no shared worldview or mission to really connect with, it’s just technology (and often, in the case of Wired, a very atheistic worldview comes through very strongly). With the Roundtable, it’s not just a meeting and it’s not just about technology. It’s an excuse for friendships and relationships (shhh, don’t tell my boss–oh wait, developing relationships is higher on Lakeview’s radar than technology, and getting both at once is quite a nice combination :-)
MinistryTECH
So what about the new MinistryTECH conference? Overall, I think it was a success. In addition to the CITRT group, many of whom were present, MinistryTECH managed to reach a wider audience due to their existing MinistryCOM foot-in-the-door history and an actual marketing budget (apparently there are some benefits to charging $325 instead of $15 to attend, and hosting a vendor exposition hall!). They also were able to attract some well-known people in the Church IT world (such as Terry Storch and Tony Morgan and others) that provided some great information and ideas to re-energize us and provide food for introspection, in addition to the great church tours we were able to take (even though I missed about half while traveling). A side benefit to the conference and the many attendees was the opportunity to mention the Roundtable to people that hadn’t heard of it. We are at least getting seeds planted and the more we can get people involved in the national (and global) Church IT community rather than hanging out by themselves, I think there will be more of a reach for both MinistryTECH and the CITRT in the future.
In Which The Babbling Stops
That just about does it for my thoughts right now. I have a lot of pictures to sort through and upload (in the range of 600-700 raw), and I’ll post them or links to them when I do that. I left my laptop off and did more Twittering than blogging or note-taking this time, but Jason Lee and several others have done an excellent job of posting outlines and summaries of many of the talks and topics, and in many cases speakers have posted their slides for download as well. In addition, a couple of talks were streamed and recorded using the uStream.tv video service thanks to Ian Beyer.
Also, this post was written primary on Sunday, April 6th (the day after the Roundtable) while I was in the Cincinnati airport on my way home, with links added later. So it’s a fresher perspective than I have now, not that I’ve had time to think about it since! Being gone for a while from work means a bit extra waiting when I return :-) Since it’s taken me a while to get this posted, Tony Dye (at least) has already managed to beat me to a lot of this. Check out his posts, and as usual they are very logical and well-considered (he also re-caps each session he attended and all of the Roundtable in posts just prior, check them out too!):
I know others have posted as well, I just haven’t had time to find them all yet!
April 5th, 2008 at 2:54 pm
I’m provided some live updates and coverage on what went on earlier this afternoon here below, live feed, starting at 3 pm Central. I invited Nick Nicholaou to provide content as a panelist as well (this was a last-minute thing, otherwise I would have invited more to participate, CoverItLive supports up to 10 contributors and unlimited live viewers who can leave comments!). Everyone was welcome to submit comments, and there were 11 viewers total while it was live. It’s archived below for your convenience and perusal!
UPDATE on April 7th: I have gone through the entire Live Blog below and spent some time linking to people (the first mention of them) and products as well as cleaning up a few areas where the wording was a bit unclear. Just click Replay below and you can scroll through “blow by blow” notes on the discussion topics from 3 pm to 5 pm!
April 4th, 2008 at 4:46 pm
The second and last day of MinistryTECH is almost over. The tail-end of the Megachurch Tour was good on Wednesday and some of the Crown Hotel group had some good discussion both of the previous two nights in the Northwoods hotel room. Unfortunately, my throat has been pretty sore at the end of this cold that just won’t let go, so I’m not operating at peat performance. If only I could clean out my system with a quick A/V scan…fortunately, it gets better daily!
Anyway, I’ve been twittering a lot but haven’t booted my laptop up much (phone is much easier to carry around). I have been making some good connections, learning some good things about the possibilities of SonicWALL devices (both firewall and data backup), and trying not to hack up a lung. The conference has been great!
Ian Beyer has been (and is at this moment) streaming video from the sessions via uStream with his “parrot cam” (web cam taped to his shoulder). Excellent!
I’ll have more to post later once I’ve processed it, beyond the very active Twitter tweets from a lot of people here! Meanwhile, focusing on people and less on blogging/computer stuff has been really good! (There. I said it. :-)
April 1st, 2008 at 5:18 pm
I’ve intentionally stayed away from using Twitter for a while (not that I haven’t had an account!); it’s just one more thing to deal with and I already have enough profiles, blogs, and other random accounts. But it seems to be getting more popular among some Church IT bloggers, and I’m starting to miss things by not following ‘tweets! So I set up a new Twitter account today (I’ll leave my old one private and locked), called dszp. Why? In addition to the above, because it’s easy to update via Google Talk and especially SMS texting, it will make it easier to provide updates in between blog posts while I’m at MinistryTECH and the Church IT Roundtable this week, especially when I’m not at a computer (or when I don’t feel like taking the time to boot mine up).
I’ve put my recent ‘tweets in the right sidebar of this blog for quick reference. My flight leaves Indianapolis at 8:15 tomorrow morning and I arrive (supposedly) at 11:10 am Oklahoma local time. Once I get my rental I’ll likely try to track down the megachurch tour in progress, hopefully for lunch and the tour’s second half, but we’ll see how things pan out. You’d think I’d have a better handle on this stuff, leaving in the morning and all…
April 1st, 2008 at 4:00 pm
Just in case, for some reason, you believed it (if you did, I have some ocean real estate to sell you in Arizona, quite a good deal!), don’t. Hope to see you sometime this week if you’re attending MinistryTECH or the Roundtable :-) I’m staying in the Crowne Plaza hotel in one of the rooms Jason Lee graciously grabbed for several of us, including Jason Powell and the CoR folks, among others (yes, I’m too busy to name and link them all…the names are at Jason Lee’s post, and Andrew Mitry is also joining us at the same hotel).
April 1st, 2008 at 1:09 pm
The recent storms in Oklahoma have gotten so bad and caused so many issues with airport delays and other damage that it appears the MinistryTECH conference and the Church IT Roundtable have been canceled, or at least postponed to the near future. This is unfortunate, but organizer Terrell Sanders was quoted as saying, “It’s disappointing, with all the success that MinistryCOM has enjoyed in recent history, to have to do such at thing with the TECH conference at the last minute. It’s devastating to see all that planning go down the tubes, really.” Jason Powell, the originator of the first Church IT Roundtable and a major participant and organizer in each Roundtable since, was supposed to facilitate the Roundtable this Saturday, but when I talked to him late this morning about the cancelation he seemed to be sad, but his spirits seemed higher than he tried to sound, probably because he was secretly happy about being able to stay home and gorge himself and not have to walk around airports with such a full stomach now that the Church IT Biggest Loser contest is over.
Terrell was concerned that the weather had caused enough disruption with local communications that he has so far been unable to call or email everyone scheduled to attend the conference, and hasn’t been able to get his internet access to work long enough to update the MinistryTECH website with an announcement, and hoped that putting the word out through blogs would be enough to alert everyone.
Hopefully the airlines and hotels will be understanding of the situation created by the weather and refund people’s tickets and reservations, or it may be difficult to afford travel when the events are rescheduled. Unfortunately, airlines are known for making up reasons for not giving refunds in such circumstances, but we’ll see how it turns out in this situation. An alternate idea might be to contact the government and see if they can assist with disaster relief funds, although this might be limited to people attending from organizations without any religious affiliation.
I was really looking forward to attending these events this week, but I guess there’s always the Roundtable this fall to look forward to…as long as there aren’t any hurricanes in the Carolinas this October!
March 29th, 2008 at 1:51 pm
The long wait and delays are finally over (not that they were that bad to begin with) and WordPress 2.5 has been released, as of today (the official blog post announcing it was made less than one hour ago), along with a new WordPress.org website design! There are numerous blog entries around the web with information about how to prepare for the upgrade, so I won’t repeat all the details here (if you haven’t been following the development, read that link and do some Googling and read up on the new version before you jump in head first). I will point out that, if you don’t like the brand new administration area theme (I think it’s better than the old one, but a lot of people disagree with me), there is a Plugin you can install called Fluency Admin that replaces the stylesheet that comes with WordPress (actually you get two color scheme options in 2.5 by default, and each user can choose them individually!). Fluency changes the entire look, much like the Tiger Admin administration theme (no longer maintained) did for older versions, and the two plugins have a lot of similarities in their layout. I’ve had some issues adjusting my widget sidebars while Fluency is enabled but most other things seem to work, and I’m sure it will be updated soon now that the final version of 2.5 is out (they’ve been busy making a lot of changes and that’s probably what caused the problem).
Some Major New Features:
- Administration area redesign
- Widget-based administration Dashboard, customizable
- Draft auto-save improved
- Search now searches pages by default (no plugin required)
- Add unlimited copies of any widget to your sidebar(s)
- Semi-automatic Plugin upgrade
- New tag management area
- Built-in support for Gravatars (Gravatar is now owned by Automattic)
- Other cool stuff I can’t think of right now, plus minor cool stuff that adds up to coolness :-)
General Information:
Good info about WordPress 2.5, along with some upgrade information:
I, of course, am now running the final WordPress 2.5 release on several sites already, including this one!
One thing I did notice: Even in the final 2.5, on all the sites I’ve switched, is that at the bottom of the admin interface it still says, “You are using a development version (2.5). Cool! Please stay updated.” That is usually only shown on the trunk revisions (hence the term “development version”) and not in a final release, so it looks like they may have forgotten to change that for the final release, unless I’m doing something wrong!
Upgrading with Subversion:
To upgrade WordPress, my recommendation, if your host allows shell access and has Subversion installed, is to switch over to running your WordPress installation based on a subversion repository checkout. There are instructions in the Codex on how to install WordPress using Subversion (using the “svn” command), and I have done this what feels like countless times with much success (Joost de Valk has a good post about this as well). The basics go something like this, to install version 2.5:
- Start with an empty directory that is the folder to install WordPress into (make a backup of your existing install and move it first if you have one).
- Inside that directory (using an SSH shell), type this (don’t forget the final period):
svn co http://svn.automattic.com/wordpress/tags/2.5 .
- Visit the URL to the directory you just installed into from a web browser and walk though the usual steps to create wp-config.php, set up the database and complete the installation.
- If you backed up an old install, move your themes, uploads and plugins back into the proper folders in the new structure.
From now on, the files created by the Subversion checkout will be updated when you use Subversion to “switch” to a different version, but files you create (like plugins, themes, uploads, your wp-config.php file) will be left alone and are safe through upgrades. Subversion only updates files that have changed so it is an efficient upgrade method. To switch from one version to another, just run this command from a shell in the same folder as above:
svn sw http://svn.automattic.com/wordpress/tags/2.3.3/
That will change your installation over to version 2.3.3, but be careful in practice to never “downgrade” to a prior version, as Subversion updates files but not the database (after an upgrade, the next time you visit the administration area you are prompted to update the database if the new version has made changes). If you switch to a prior version, it will likely choke on the database that has been changed for a newer version! You can also install or switch to the trunk, which is where current development happens and may be broken or insecure, so only do this on test installations. To install the trunk, use this command (include the final period!):
svn co http://svn.automattic.com/wordpress/trunk/ .
And to switch to trunk from a prior version, use:
svn sw http://svn.automattic.com/wordpress/trunk/
In addition, if you’re running trunk, and you want to update to the very newest changes, just run this command:
svn up
If you know the shell at all, you have access to it, and the Subversion “svn” client is installed, running like this makes it very easy to upgrade–especially if you run multiple WordPress installations like I do! If it weren’t this simple, I’d probably be running WordPress 1.5 still :-)
One of the other excellent features in WordPress 2.5 is the ability to upgrade plugins from the Plugins panel in the administration area, as long as you know the FTP username and password. If you use Subversion for your main WordPress install and the new Plugin upgrade feature for your plugins, it should significantly reduce the time required to keep your WordPress installation up-to-date! (It is possible to add plugins to your Subversion install as “externals” so you get the trunk copy of any plugins you run updated whenever you run the “svn up” command, but this is a bit advanced and the new upgrade feature should negate most of these benefits.)
WordPress is amazing, I just wish there was enough time in the day for me to experiment with even some of the things I haven’t done with it. This list of 48 Unique Ways To Use WordPress is inspiring! I’ll take comfort that at least one thing on the list we’re already doing: using it for sermons (#34)!
March 27th, 2008 at 10:30 am
No, not really you, unless you work at Lakeview. Then, maybe. I recently added a custom field to our HelpSpot helpdesk application that’s very simple: it’s a checkbox. When I’m working on a request and a user solves their own problem, is extra helpful, or makes a brilliant observation (the details boil down to “I’ll know it when I see it!”), I check the Gold Star box for that request. Later, I can run a report that shows the requests whose users have gotten Gold Stars.
I haven’t yet figured out what to do with this information, if anything, but I had a few really good user experiences recently and thought this would be a good way to track those over time. As much as the helpdesk system tracks problems, I figure this is one way to track positive results. I’ve only given out two or three Gold Stars in the last month or so since I implemented the program. And no, I don’t tell the users (well, I jokingly told one but didn’t mention that I actually am tracking it), it’s just an internal IT thing. But such data could prove useful in the future, so I’m curious to see how it turns out over a bit longer period of time!
Shhh…don’t tell anyone…
March 26th, 2008 at 2:18 pm
My Nokia N800 can run SSH (via the standard Linux OpenSSH software compiled for the N800) in client and server modes without a problem. But I like the keyboard on my Treo 650 and can type quite quickly on it. What if I want to use Subversion to update my blog while all I have with me is my Treo? A little Googling turns up pssh, which does the job very well! I also found TuSSH which works, but I like the pssh solution better. TuSSH supports SSH 1 and some SSH 2 servers, while pssh supports only SSH 2 (which is all I connect to anyway–SSH 1 is broken and less secure). Both support public keys for authentication, although I haven’t tested this feature. I think pssh is going to stick around in my Palm’s arsenal and will likely come in quite handy! OpenSSH has its own list of Palm-compatible SSH software, with three entries (two of which I just mentioned). All three are freeware, and pssh and TuSSH both are under 300KB in size each.
One tip I did manage to track down (found this item on the pssh users archived mailing list) was that I could type a Tab character by typing Shift+Space (extensively useful for auto-completion in the bash shell on a full-sized keyboard, but even more so on a thumb board!). There’s a menu option to type a Tab as well, but that does kind of defeat some of the shortcut-ness I was looking for.
pssh does warn that it doesn’t use the best random number generator out there for encryption. I’m all for extra security, but for the few times I will use this I think a targeted attack that manages to crack my SSH tunnel is unlikely, and there are probably weaker links in our webhost-connection security than Secure Shell.
