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:
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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. - 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”.
- 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.
- 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:
- I picked up a lot more information on topics I had been over before. Stewardship and Communications strategy were the two big ones.
- 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.
- 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.
A lot of up close interaction, dinners, explanations etc. Where they have come from and what the plan is. Yada yada.
Monvee is NOT a “spiritual gifts assessment” nor “eharmony for churches to find volunteers” (they hate that phrase).
I knew there was a relationship between ACS and Monvee. What I didn’t know was that ACS has been consulting on the development of it for three years. As such, there is integration and partnership between the two. If you are an ACS customer, this can play in nicely with your spiritual growth and serving processes. It will require a commitment of time and resources, but the payoff for a church could be huge. Full details of the partnership have yet to be announced, but having this plug into your data right out of the box is amazing.
They did unveil the pricing (too detailed to go into here). They are still finalizing it so it may change some but it was average for small group resourceswell within line and not “tens of thousands of dollars”. The potential return is huge. Especially if you have a large social, online component to your church. I can see how a planned implementation, rollout and adoption of this, combined with the data you already have, could revolutionize a church. Revolutionize is not too large of a word. However, to get the most out of it, you would have make a conscious ministry vision decision. All in.
What I found FASCINATING is that it shows you not only where you are gifted, your strengths, your learning styles and preferences, but where you are prone to falter and what YOU can do about it. And then provides that data in the form of anonymous graphs back to the church. You know the economy is tough and it is affecting your congregation, but imagine if you could tell your pastor with certainty that “in the last 12 months, there has been a 70% increase in the number of families who are struggling with finances and a 120% increase in the number of people who say anger is now an issue in their homes”. All anonymously. All securely. All accurately. All linked to that database you hold dear. Think that would affect the ministry direction?
The convention was supposed to be different and useful and it was. This was the first time when after it was all over I really wanted to disappear and work on planning. There is just THAT much potential. That will have to wait until the end of July.
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