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Just wrapped up MinistryTECH and CITRT, it was truly an amazing time of fellowship and learning from my fellow Church IT brethren. Today’s quiet time reflects what is on my heart…

we are bound to give thanks to God always for you, brethren beloved by the Lord, because God from the beginning chose you for salvation through sanctification by the Spirit and belief in the truth, to which He called you by our gospel, for the obtaining of the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore, brethren, stand fast and hold the traditions which you were taught, whether by word or our epistle. Now may our Lord Jesus Christ Himself, and our God and Father, who has loved us and given us everlasting consolation and good hope by grace, comfort your hearts and establish you in every good word and work. 2 Thessalonians 2:13-17

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Looks like our friend Nick Nicholaou over at MBS, has some company in the local admin debate (full article) – the Google Enterprise Blog highlights an interview in CIO magazine with Douglas Merrill, Google’s CIO.

A few quotes from the article:

• Google information systems believes in choice, not control. The goal of choice is to let your talent express their talent in the most effective way they can.
• We really believe in choice, not control, so the number of things employees can’t do is pretty small. And then the infrastructure is pretty smart and pretty self-healing. Our machines come already imaged with security controls. People can install their own software if they want to. We have lots of remote access options, and we assume people will work from cafés and other things, so we do lots to make that possible.
• My ability to do choice not control is profoundly affected by some of the changes in the security model…I have a very big focus on defense at depth—lots and lots of different things in the infrastructure and the applications that protect themselves.

I think I am slowly being swayed towards the choice side, but I am not fully convinced yet.

I have put together the Church Technology Search Engine, a Google Custom Search Engine that searches about 60 church technology sites. I have placed search boxes on CITRT/IT Discuss Wiki and on the right side of my blog. If you would like to place the search box on your own blog or site, here is the code or use the Google Gadget:

<!– Google CSE Search Box Begins –>
<form action=”http://www.google.com/cse” id=”searchbox_008518344505620298469:vglyn_j7atm”>
<input type=”hidden” name=”cx” value=”008518344505620298469:vglyn_j7atm” />
<input type=”text” name=”q” size=”25″ />
<input type=”submit” name=”sa” value=”Search” />
</form>
<script type=”text/javascript” src=”http://www.google.com/coop/cse/brand?form=searchbox_008518344505620298469%3Avglyn_j7atm”></script>
<!– Google CSE Search Box Ends –>

I am also looking for volunteer contributors, if anyone is interested in helping manage the search engine.

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!

Thursday, Nov 25th, 11am at Fairfax Community Church, John Falke will treat us to espressos and smoothies from The Great Room.  We’ll probably head out to lunch afterwards.

We are planning our quarterly local CITRT for this upcoming Thursday, October 25th at 11 am.  John Falke at Fairfax Community Church has graciously offered to host the roundtable.  Please comment if you have special requests for topics.

I had an amazing time at the 2007 Fall Church IT RoundTable, connecting on a binary level – we laughed, we cried, we prayed and we were inspired. It was an honor and privilege for me to connect with so many gifted people that are passionate about using technology to reach people for Christ. Special thanks to Clif Guy and his team for the amazing hospitality they showed in hosting the event.

We went over a lot of materials in the various sessions at the RoundTable, I’ll highlight here a few of the things that sparked my interest:

• Nick Nicholaou mentioned that they use ZENworks an automated configuration management solution.
• While discussing use Google Apps as an Exchange replacement Bryson Medlock suggested looking at ScheduleWorld for mobile calendar and contact synchronization.
• Justin Moore has a slick Asterisk setup using Aastra phones that he auto-provisions. (This guy is the real deal, he configures Asterisk via command line and edits the configs with vi).
• I am now convinced that going the SAN route will be the best configuration for our new VMware environment. What is left to decide is which product to go with…Jason Powell loves EqualLogic, Clif and Trace both went with Dell/EMC and Mark Moreno is hawking some pretty slick looking Intel solutions.
• Mark Mareno told us about a client of his that had disaster recovery insurance and when their RAID 5 disk array failed they were able to get insurance to pay up for the uber expensive data recovery.
• Brian Slezak turned me on to GenControl, a simple desktop remote control program that can temporarily install VNC and connect to another machine on your domain in a matter of seconds.

This morning I read Ephesians 4:1-3:

I, therefore, the prisoner of the Lord, beseech you to walk worthy of the calling with which you were called, with all lowliness and gentleness, with longsuffering, bearing with one another in love, endeavoring to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.

I felt that it was an encouraging and appropriate passage considering the warm environment at the Church IT RoundTable where, as Clif mentioned, it is truly an ecumenical crowd that has come together for learning, support and inspiration.

Earlier today I arrived in Kansas City for the Fall Church IT RoundTable at COR. Thanks to Clif and his team for a such a warm, hospitable welcome.

• Pictures from the COR Campus Tour are up on Flickr. Make sure to check out the pictures of their ultra organized storage room and the WhatsUp monitoring setup.
• Ian Beyer at COR mentioned PaperCut Print Logger, a neat little app that Tony Dye had told him about – I am looking forward to trying it out.
• Dinner at the Sunset Grill – lots of discussion about VMware, help desk, Exchange and Google Apps.

Looking forward to soaking up some more of that vast technical knowledge tomorrow!