Cause to Pause

Couldn’t wait any longer so I manually updated my G-1 from firmware version 1.1 to ver. 1.5(Cupcake). In case you were wondering, there was nothing in between.
I could have done it a week ago and even thought about it. Chickened out as I was afraid to brick my phone before the ACS Convention (more updates on this later). That would have been embarrassing. At any rate, I couldn’t wait for the OTA update. Now that I have it, I wish I had done it earlier. Here’s why:

1. Video Record. The new firmware adds video record with super simple upload to youtube. Since it is a G-1 and you are REQUIRED to have GMAIL, once you set up a youtube account, they link so there is no sign in process. You are already signed in. You do get a handy little icon to tell you when the upload is done. This would have come in very handy last week.
2. On-screen keyboard in both portrait and landscape. I know you iphoners are thinking “What’s the big deal?”. The big deal is now I have onscreen PLUS slide out. My initial reaction is the G-1 onscreen is a lot easier than the iPones I have tried. A LOT easier.
3. Battery life seems to be much better. Will know by the end of the week, but initial reaction is that it is.
4. The compass app works better. Previously it seemed to hang-up.
5. GPS fix is faster.
6. All of the user interfaces are much nicer. Especially the GMAIL. This one is a major improvement.

You can find the whole list of new features here. Those above are just the ones that applied to me.  
The camera still needs work. Loads faster and has a very handy upload to Picasa with ability to choose which folder the picture ends up in-but the picture quality is still not great. It’s a 3mp lens, so maybe the next software update will help it out. 
Now, if they could only make it render flash…

Tags: ACS, g-1, iphone, t-mobile

Today was the official kick-off day for Reach09. It started with a great keynote address by Eric Geiger, author of Simple Church. Previously I was not a fan of his book. I liked the concept and agreed with his conclusions, it just seemed like the book was too slow of a read. Seemed like a good pamphlet that was stretched out into a book. Granted, my favorite genre is classic Russian literature, so I am a little off. After hearing him speak, I am willing to give it another shot. Very dynamic speaker who hit on some very key paradigms that MUST shift within the church community if we are to be vibrant leaders once again. He talked a lot about the drift toward complexity and away from discipleship.
One of his points that resonated with me was that “if you personally can’t do everything you are asking your people to do, then you are asking too much. We should go to church, be involved in a small group (or whatever you call it), serve…but then be in the community with our neighbors. Be at the little league park. Be on the HOA board. Get out there and live life and be exposed to the rest of the world and let them be exposed to you.”
Another key part of his message was that discipleship is not something we “do” but it is the WHOLE PROCESS and anything that does not contribute to that process is causing us to drift off mission.
I can’t do it justice, but suffice it to say he was on point.

With the convention in full swing, all of the products were out there and on demo. I’ll try to have a few more pictures tomorrow including the fingerSCAN checkin system. (Don’t say fingerPRINT, it’ll make your members think of George Orwell. Say fingerSCAN and it is less scary.) The nice thing about the finger scanner is the odds of someone leaving their fingers behind are slim. It is also faster than a bar code or number look-up. No need to pull a card out of your wallet, etc.

The big hit of the day came from R&D. Who else? They unveiled their new Facebook app as well as a host of other projects that are either just completed or near completion.
What this app does is take your current online member database-AccessACS and bring the interface directly into the Facebook iFrame. It looks a little like this:

Yes, that is right. You are infact seeing tabs for your church directory, your church member profile and your groups right in Facebook. This picture shows the view when the “groups” tab is selected.
It pulls the information straight out of AccessACS. Oh, and see that little ‘mark attendance’ link? Yep, if you have the correct permissions within AccessACS, you can mark attendance for your small group right within Facebook, which will send it to AccessACS, which will send it to the church office. All automatically based on your login. Once you do the initial set-up, when you log into your Facebook account, you are logged into your AccessACS account.
Browsing Facebook and need a member number? That is what the Church Directory tab is for. Again, all based on security profiles.
Change your email address or cell phone? Make the edit under “My Profile” and it pushes back to the church office.
It is a “working beta”. There are no technological limitations at this point. There are some final details to work out with Facebook’s terms of service (go figure).
There is more customization coming as well.
Those of you who have issues with creation of “Christian Ghettos” have got to love this. This was born out of someone saying “As the body of Christ, we need to go where the current is. And the current current is Facebook.”
And all this time you’ve been “throwing sheep”.

I didn’t have time to check out the integration with Unifyer or some of the new features in Broadcast-digital signage pulling information dynamically from your church calendar. Hopefully tomorrow.

Follow the twitter hashtag #reach09 for all the latest up to the minute news.

Tags: ACS, multi-tasking, productivity

Tuesday was “Pre-convention Day” for ACS technologies annual conference. This year titled Reach09.
I spent the first half in the IT Roundtable discussion loosely moderated by Dean Lisenby. In this case, “loosely moderated” was the goal. In a half a day we covered two topics- Social Networking and Volunteer Recruitment. I am sure the afternoon session covered more ground.
The Volunteer portion focused on volunteers WITHIN the IT department. Do you have them? Do you let them have access to more than compressed air?
It was a very interesting discussion-especially in light of the mix of people and ministry styles. There were those that shuddered at the thought and others who confessed that their volunteers were really the network administrators. It was the volunteers who would be up in the middle of the night if exchange went down. A vast spectrum to say the least.
Social Networking hit on- what else-twitter. However there were questions I hadn’t REALLY delved deeply into. Including monitoring and potentially limiting staff usage to twitter. “How much of the youth director’s time should be spent on twitter?” “Are we, as IT people now supposed to act as the police for that?”
With great power comes great responsibility.
The second half of the day was spent listening to Jason Lee and Linda Cleveland from Northwoods Church talk about their experience launching Checkpoint.
There was a considerable amount of information to be had. Especially in terms of setting expectations and defining goals with ALL ministry members that will be impacted by a specific change. Never underestimate the need for having everyone who will be a “stakeholder” to have complete “buy-in” to any ministry project.
From start to finish their project took over a year. This included investigating other check-in solutions to find which one would ultimately serve their needs the best. Once that initial part was done , which took several there was the process of defining the outcome in terms of data but also in terms of the experience for the end user or “guest”.
If you have any questions related to Checkpoint, rolling out a new system of any kind or how to encourage your vendor, in the direction you need to go, Jason is the guy to talk to. I am sure he would welcome the dialog.
Keep an eye out on his blog as he is going to post some very useful documentation there shortly.

There is a steady stream of tweets coming out. Just follow the hashtag #reach09.

Tags: ACS, expectations, productivity