anchorite.org

While debating pros and cons of giving users local admin right at the DC CITRT last week, I brought up slick setup that one of our volunteers had ported over from his day job.

David Mikhail, one of Fairfax County Public Schools’ top Windows engineers had put together a master list of software to blacklist via GPO.  This gives us the flexibility to allow users local admin right with some comfort that known bad software can’t be installed.

David has graciously provided an export (backup) of the GPO so that you can use it as well.  You should be able to restore the following into Group Policy:

Blacklisted Software – GPO Backup (zip)

HTML file for those of you who want a quick peek

We had an awesome roundtable on Monday at McLean Bible Church, thanks to Marvin and crew for hosting us.  I was too engrossed in the conversation to take notes, but here are some of the highlights from the day.  If anyone who attended would like to add their notes or other details, just let me know.

High Level Topics:

• Keynote by David Drinnon
• ChMS – Mainly discussed Fellowship One, touched on the Table Project, SoChurch, bvcms and Arena.
• Backups – Symantec Backup Exec with VMware Plugin, Veeam, File level
• Personal laptops on internal network, 802.1x
• PCI Compliance
• Google Apps
• Group Policy – Locking down executable, installer tweaks for Java, Flash and Adobe Reader.
• Users as local admins
• Mac OS X Server Virtualization, AD Authentication

Attendees: (If I missed someone or you want to update info let me know)

• Patricia Balzer – The Falls Church
• Tim Barley – Lancaster County Bible Church
• Jerry Baskin – ACTS Group
• Larry Bull – McLean Bible Church
• Copeland Eccleston – McLean Bible Church
• Nancy Graham – Christian Fellowship Church
• Marvin Haines – McLean Bible Church
• Sue Harris – Christian Fellowship Church
• Scott Heading - Restoration Church
• Sydney Kirby – McLean Bible Church
• Andrew Mitry – St. Mark Coptic Orthodox Church & InnoCloud
• Brian Norberg – McLean Bible Church
• Matt Pugh - McLean Bible Church
• Steve Simkins – Restoration Church
• Sheldon Strause – Lancaster County Bible Church
• Bill Sheeler – Glad Tidings Assembly of God Church
• Glenn Smith – Christian Fellowship Church
• Rami Tadros – InnoCloud
• Rob Thrush – SiteOrganic
• John Voorhis – Tenth Presbyterian Church

If you haven’t already, please join the CITRT group on LinkedIN, follow #CITRT on twitter and check out the new CITRT site!

Also, check out Derek’s post on Five things I took from the 2010 (Florida) CITRT.

* Major props to Bill Sheeler for the group photo.

Sorry for the delay on posting this…

Good news, the regional DC Church IT Round Table is right around the corner.  McLean Bible Church is graciously hosting us on Monday, October 25th at their Vienna, VA (Level 1A) campus. The cost for this event is $35.00 and you can register online.

So, now you are thinking, what is my part.  Right?  Well I’m glad you asked…  The goal of the Church IT Roundtable is to further community, relationships, and information sharing among IT folks in the church.  So your part in all of this is to spread the word.  Get in touch with the IT folks at churches you have relationships with and let them know about the event.

Schedule:

• 8AM – 9AM: Registration/Coffee
• 9AM – Noon: Roundtable
• Noon – Lunch
• 1PM – 5PM: Roundtable

http://dccitrt.pbworks.com

Twitter: #citrt, amitry

It was decided to not do a national Fall roundtable due to the economy, and the expensive nature of travel in general.  Instead, we are going to make a strong push for some GREAT regional roundtables in the fall. DC is hosting one such round table at McLean Bible Church in Vienna, VA. The cost for this event is $35.00 and you can register at dc.citrt.org. Finally the deadline for registration is 10-20-09.

We are having a meet and greet dinner the night before (Sunday the 25th) for people that plan to come into town early. Be sure to indicate that on the registration so we can plan accordingly. There is no additional charge if you are coming the night before.

So, now you are thinking, what is my part.  Right?  Well I’m glad you asked…  The goal of the Church IT Roundtable is to further community, relationships, and information sharing among IT folks in the church.  So your part in all of this is to spread the word.  Get in touch with the IT folks at churches you have relationships with and let them know about the event.

Register at dc.citrt.org.

Michael Smith posted his notes from the May 2008 DC CITRT.

May08 DC-CITRT

We had our best turnout yet for DC CITRT, thank God and thanks to our hosts at McLean Bible.  I apologize that I am not the best at taking notes and have a weak memory, so if anyone would like to add to this please feel free.

• Content Management Systems (CMS) – SiteOrganic was definitely the crowd favorite, Drupal and Joomla! were mentioned.
• Wireless – Cisco recommended, Proxim mentioned.
• Helpdesk – ServiceDesk works well, Spiceworks not bad for the price.
• Multi-Campus – McLean went with satellite video, large up-front cost, small recurring cost and scaling (adding sites) cost.
• Work/life balance – Read Boundaries.

DC CITRT, tomorrow 11:30am at McLean Bible.

Fall 2008 Church IT Roundtable, October 8-10 at Seacost Church, Mount Pleasant, SC.

Rob Thrush, the Director of Information Technology at McLean Bible Church.

Marvin Haines, the Assistant Director of Information Technology at McLean Bible Church.  Looks like Marvin has been blogging for a while, but I just discovered it now.

Welcome Rob and Marvin to the Church IT Blogging world!  Make sure to add them to your RSS reader.

Catch all of us at the upcoming DC Church IT Roundtable.

Rob Thrush and his team at McLean Bible will be hosting the next DC Church IT Roundtable on Thursday, May 22nd at 11:30 AM.

McLean Bible Church Tysons Campus – 8925 Leesburg Pike, Vienna, VA 22182
Room 1410 (off first level entrance by the water falls)

Please comment below if you will be joining us and if you have any special requests for topics.

What’s a Roundtable Discussion? (Taken from Jason Lee’s Blog)
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.

Please see citrt.org for additional church IT community resources.

We had a great roundtable at Fairfax Community Church today, thanks to John Falke for some great smoothies, blueberry pomegranate anyone?

Here are a few of the items we discussed:

• Spring MinistryTECH conference and adjoining roundtable.
• Free Sharepoint training.
• CITRT IRC Channel
• Spiceworks – free, ad supported help desk and network management software.
• GenControl – desktop remote control program for Windows networks.
• Google Apps for Your Domain and Microsoft Exchange (emphasis on calenders/resource management)
• FellowshipOne – John showed us their home grown check in station.
• Storage solutions for Mac/Windows – Anton suggested a box running Centos/Samba or Openfiler with 2 GB of RAM and 16 x 500 GB raid edition SATA drives in a 13+2+1 configuration gives you 6.5 TB usable and will run about $4800.

John Falke will be hosting a Photoshop CS3 for Ministry Seminar on November 8th. Our graphics guy attended the last one and is going to this one – he tells me that it is definitely something you don’t want to miss!