Cause to Pause

Better late than never.

A little over a week ago the annual ACS Technologies convention took place in Louisville, Ky. Here’s some of my random thoughts:

1. IT Roundtable. Dean Lisenby always hosts this. This year it was opened to non-ACS customers. Guess what, we all have the same problems. Treading the line between “equipping for ministry” and “letting them do whatever they want”, between “securing the resources we have been entrusted with” and “hampering ministry”. That is what makes CITRT so valuable. Join it today.

   Lot of discussion on Google apps and who “owns” the data. If a staff person uses their personal Gmail account and leaves, gets hit by a bus, etc. then what? If you don’t provide easy tools, they will just find their own and guess what – you end up supporting them anyway.
   If you do “go Google” do you “go all the way and ditch Office” or use a combination approach?

   Darryl Hunter was there, as was Jason Powell and a host of GCC folks including Kem Meyer. Funny how when she spoke all the keyboards went silent.
   I am guessing there was somewhere around 45-50 people in the room.

2. For the conference itself, it was supposed to be completely different than previous years. And different it was. Each morning and afternoon there were three main sessions taught by teams made up of ACS users. Not employees. These classes changed the focus from “you can do ‘x’” to “here’s what we did, what worked, where the holes were and how we overcame them….or didn’t”. Instead of having someone who knew the software, but happens to volunteer in their church, – or used to work in a church; you have someone who still lives and breathes the same environment you do every day and but happens to use some of the same tools. Subtle shift, but big perception change. As big as going from “theoretical” to “practical”.
3. There was also a “main stage” in the display area that had the equivalent of “live 10 minute infomercials” to show the “what you can do” aspect. I give those presenters a lot of credit. That had to be tough as people would basically just walk by, but I was able to catch the ones I needed to and it helped.
4. There seemed to be less ACS staff there, but a lot more interaction. The set-up was less “convention/trade-show booth-y” and more circular.

My personal takeaways:

1. I picked up a lot more information on topics I had been over before. Stewardship and Communications strategy were the two big ones.
2. I left with some serious projects I would like to get moving on. Done right, it will probably keep us busy for about three years. One of which may be MobileCause or some other form of mass text messaging.
3. This was a much better format. It is hard to quantify “interaction” without a lot of surveys etc. but from a customer standpoint it was definitely higher.

The big one:

Monvee
Multiple keynotes this year, including from John Ortberg and the founders of Monvee. Monvee officially “came out of beta” the day before the convention.
(continue reading…)

May 25-28 is the date for the annual ACS Convention in Louisville, Ky – this year titled Ideas-to-Impact – which is a take off on a series of “ministry help” white papers they publish.
That image (and a bunch of the text) on this page have been shamelessly stolen from the ACS website.
With the exception of the above mentioned disclaimer, everything else here is the result of my personal observations.

Generally, on Tuesday there are “pre-conference” events. Last year there was a great breakout by Jason “I want what I want” Lee on using biometrics with Checkpoint, as well as Matt Irvine on launching AccessACS. These were in addition to the IT Roundtable moderated by Dean Lisenby (usually draws about 20-25 geeks from all levels) as well as a sightseeing tour. As of now, time has been set aside on Tuesday for Pre-convention classes, but they have not announced.

The big deal for Tuesday, however will be the FIRST keynote address by John Ortberg. He will be one of two keynote speakers at this year’s convention. Eric Geiger of Christ Fellowship – Miami, Fl. will be the other. I expect Monvee to be a hot topic.

Q & A
What happens at a convention anyway?
You will be surrounded by hundreds of other users, managers and support people. There will be training classes, of course, but more important than the training is the interaction that takes place outside the classrooms. I have met people whose ministry organization is similar to ours that were able to share real world examples of configuration and data resolution with me. I met people who were where I was-just they were two or three years further along in certain processes. You just cannot place a value on that. Peer to peer learning is truly the best.
It seems like there are a lot of classes. What if I run out of caffeine?
First off, there is no excuse for running out of caffeine. Ever. And yes, they do have the full gamut and then some of training available. That’s a part of what conventions are for. My recommendation is that before you go, sit in a quiet place and ask yourself “Where does our ministry really need help?” and hit those classes. They also have “tracks” available-preprogammed class groupings. So if your focus is just “People”, they have one custom designed for you.
What if I sign up for one class, but change my mind at the last minute and want to go to another one?
This year there is no pre-registration for classes required. Convention, yes. Individual classes, no.
What else?
Ok, let me just say, the training classes are always valuable. Nothing like sitting in a room with 20 other people who live it day in and day out in the real world. The instructors they use are phenomenal at keeping the class on track and not getting lost down rabbit trails. However they do this while at the same time answering questions and not sticking to a predefined plan like some sort of robot. That said, in my opinion, the classes are NOT the most important part. Here’s what you get:

• Face to face interaction with some of the support people as well as product leads and the Development Team. Nothing like being able to put a face and a name together with a voice. This is really changed the way I viewed support calls. It really helped me to see these folks interact in person. You find out they are not “playing a role and reading a script” when on the phone. They are who they are.
• Preview of upcoming products. Last year they previewed the their new remote deposit check scanner, as well as Unifyer, all-in-one kiosks and other implementation strategies.
• Seeing what is on the horizon is also helpful in making your strategy for software implementation and use. Two years ago, Facility Scheduler just didn’t do what I wanted it to. It had a lot of very cool features, just none that applied to me and the one I really needed was lacking. I had contemplated switching to a whole new system (we all know how painful that would be). By going to the convention and meeting the people in charge, I was assured that what I needed was already in the works and just waiting for some final kinks to be worked out. Having that knowledge and being able to look the person ultimately responsible for it right in the eye when they said it saved me DAYS of work and WEEKS of frustration. This year I am curious about Monvee.
• Food. Lots of it.
• If you are an information junkie, this is like waving candy corn in front of a diabetic.
• I HIGHLY recommend taking some class time and spending it in the booth area instead. Definitely connect with the guys from Implementation. It’s easy to blame the tools, however, most of the time the issue is not the tool, it is the lack of defining the goal. “For lack of a vision, the data is useless.” Nothing more embarrassing than raising a stink only to find out the real cause is PEBKAM. This will help you avoid that.

I talked to a buddy and he didn’t get much out of it when he went years ago.
You get out what you put in. Literally. Sometimes we church people are famous for our sense of entitlement. If you think you can just sit in a lobby chair and the CEO will come up and say “Gee, you look down. Is your data corrupted?” You will be disappointed. But if you see the president of the company walking in the hall and you say “Excuse me, I was wondering. Why doesn’t the company do ‘x’?” You might just get an answer. Plus all the department heads are there. It’s like shooting fish in a barrel. (Sorry guys, but it is.)

Ok, I am putting this part in small type because it is kind of embarassing. They also have a karaoke party. I have always believed karaoke should be reserved for little girls under the age of 7. They can do that and look cute. The rest of us…..not so much. But I must confess, it was a complete riot. And that was without the normal ingredient that makes people think karaoke is a good idea.

Recently David Sterrett of First Pres. Austin, and I have begun talking about our uses and potential uses of AccessACS. What started out as “Are you taking payments for VBS online?” turned into a “We should set up a collaboration tool so we can have an ongoing dialog about this.”
In the course of our discussions, the topic came up:

Should we invite ACS Technologies to the discussion now or wait until we are further along?

The concern was that by having them participate in the initial stages of the dialog, it might hamper some of the openness and candor we were looking for.
A quick gut check settled that question as a non-issue based on prior performance. They are known for thick skin when it comes to listening to their clients.
But it brought up another question or two:

Are all your vendors like that? When you come with a problem, do they respond or just kind of “duck, hoping you will go away”?

I used to deal with an office equipment supplier like that. When my main color MFC would act up, they kind of “ducked”. Operative words are “used to deal with”.

But more importantly, are we like this with the people we serve? Do we “duck and hope they go away”? I am not just talking about the folks who are high maintenance – but those who legitimately have needs and gripes that we should attend to. If we can’t correct it the situation, to at least offer an EXPLANATION not an EXCUSE as to why and what can be done. If someone is upset, do you want to hear it from them when you can do something about it, or from the grapevine?

I am willing to bet, the more we want to duck, the better the odds are we should take that one on the chin.