A few years ago I started a group called Geeks-4-Jesus. Today I was cleaning up some old files and I found this video that I had used to recruit our first volunteers when it was all beginning. I don’t think this is the final version of it, the quality is pretty poor, but it’s what I found. Enjoy!!
Next week is PhreakNIC!! I’ve been looking forward to this for months! I’ve been asked to help setup a couple of servers for the RootWars and I’ve got them mostly setup. I just got some update info from JeffX concerning the way the network will be setup, and I have a little tweaking I want to do to make the target network as realistic as possible, but even so it’s all pretty much ready to go. What is a RootWar you ask… go check it out at http://rootwars.jeffx.com.
I’ve got two people coming with me to PhreakNIC, possibly more. Unfortunately, one of them can’t get next Thursday off work, so we can’t leave until 5PM, which should put us in Nashville around 1AM or so. Not exactly what I was hoping to do, but what can I do?
I got home from the Fall Church IT Roundtable last night about 10. It was good to be home. Today I’m back in the office and I only had 6 messages waiting for me. It appears I’m doing my job well because I wasn’t really needed while I was gone. That’s a good thing, especially considering the environment I walked into when I started this job. All my planning and scheming and behind the scenes “stuff” seems to be working.
Things to think about from the RoundTable:
My plans to use Asterisk were confirmed by people currently using it who were at the CITRT. Specifically Andrew Mitry and Justin Moore. Both are currently using Asterisk and are VERY happy with it. And they suggested the plan I had been working on as a means to slowly replace an old PBX system. It was good to have these things confirmed and hear from people who actually have Asterisk in place. My reservations, and the reservations of my superiors have come from the fact that we didn’t know anyone who was successfully using Asterisk. Now all of that has changed!
I discovered during the CITRT that we can upgrade our free Standard Edition Google Apps for Your Domain to the Education Edition, which has all the features of the Premier Edition for FREE because we are a non-profit. I also heard from others who were successfully using Google Apps in their organization. So I’m rethinking whether we should using Exchange or not. If I can convince our staff to stop using Outlook and to take full advantage of Google Apps than we have no need for Exchange. The only missing component is PDA syncing. I’ve been looking at ScheduleWorld. It seems like a good option for syncing PDA’s with GCal. I just need to convince my superiors, and our staff. I think I’m going to use our Senior Minister and his Administrative Assistant to beta test the project. One of the things I’m looking forward to trying once we’ve upgraded our Google Apps account is trying to integrate it with Samba. I believe I should be able to create, and control accounts via Samba, and I should be able to provide single-sign-on functionality for our users.
We’re still looking for a new ChMS (Church Management System). More on this later.
I made it to the CITRT this morning and soon after events started I noticed that the pocket where the keys to the church van should be was empty. At lunch time I went out to the parking lot and checked and sure enough the keys were in the ignition and all the doors were locked. Great!
So after the afternoon roundtable session I asked Clif if any of their facility guys might be able to help me out. He passed me off to Jeremy, Desktop Support Specialist. Jeremy checked with Facilities and had Mike, one of the facilities guys, meet me at the van and he helped me break in and get my keys.
So I just wanted to say:
THANKS JEREMY AND MIKE!!
I’m heading out in the morning for Kansas City for the Fall Church IT RoundTable. It should be about a 2 and 1/2 hour drive and registration starts at 8:30AM. I’m planning on leaving around 5AM in case I run into any traffic or construction, which is almost a certainty.
I’ve been looking forward to this for awhile. The last one I went to was in TX, and I came away from it with quit a bit of info, and ideas for the future. Most of which I’ve put in place by now, so I’m looking forward to the new ideas that will come out of this RoundTable.
Expect some live blog posts during the upcoming events.