bamed.org

OK, we haven’t had a Geek Day of Service in a while, mainly because of budget reasons, but also because of some reorganization of our staff structure, and some overall evaluation of every ministry at CHCC. A lot of the changes being discussed all year are happening now, and all the restructuring of staff has been decided and is in the process of being implemented. Of course my job stays the same, but I’m working with different people now. Anyway, all that to say that we’ll probably be having more Geek Days of Service soon.

So there’s been some questions about how we do the GDOS, so I thought I’d share some ideas concerning how we’ve organized it.

First decide who your target will be. Sometimes we’ve made the GDOS specifically for our congregation, and other times we’ve made it more outreach focused. This effects how we publicize the event. Then I start recruiting volunteers. I’m not a great recruiter by any means, so i won’t go into that. I do try to confirm how many volunteers will be there ahead of time and plan accordingly. In an ideal situation, with a usable budget I try to provide for each volunteer, a battery powered screw-driver, a toolset of needed software, and a T-shirt. Of course those who have come before have most of these things. The night before the event I try to get everyone together and we setup the room we’re doing the event in. I like to have a table setup for each volunteer. I ask each volunteer to bring in a keyboard, monitor, mouse, CAT5, a power strip, and power cables. Of course most don’t so I provide as much as we need. For every volunteers workstation I want at least one keyboard, monitor and mouse, the necessary power cables and a connection to the network. I usually have a couple of analog phone lines nearby with VERY long cables in case anyone needs to troubleshoot a modem (we usually get a couple of those).

We use our Atrium for the GDOS, it’s a BIG room, basically it’s the foyer for our new worship center. It’s actually big enough we’ve been able to worship in it (just not everybody at once). In the middle of the Atrium, event spaced apart are four floor outlets complete with network connections. So we setup a circle of tables around each of these outlets. The placement of volunteers is very important. It is also important to know your volunteers well and their skill sets. We have some High School kids who are beginning to develop an interest in computers, and we have the IT Professionals who have been in this business longer than I’ve been alive and have already forgotten more about computers than I’ve ever known. Disperse the people who know what they’re doing evenly amongst the people who don’t, and sit the people with the least amount of skill next to those with the most. Besides the service and outreach aspect of the GDOS, the goal it most accomplishes is team building. I also make certain to take aside those uber-smart super geeks and tell them that I expect them to help out the people sitting around them.

When you first walk in the door there will be signs telling you where everything is, and there will be a table right inside the door with two volunteers sitting ready to check-in computers. Once the computers are checked-in, and EVERYTHING the user brings in is labelled the volunteers put the computers on a TO-DO table. When a computer is finishedOn one side of the room I setup a couple of laptops with burners hooked up to the Internet and a stack of CD’s between them. These are for download drivers or other utilities that may be needed.  When the computers are finished, there’s another DONE table where the volunteer puts the computers, then the volunteer calls the person, or finds them if they’re still hanging around to let them know the computer is finished.

As far as software I have prepared a CD with all the Win9X cabs, an XP Home CD, an XP Pro CD, some hardware diagnostic software (usually in a CD and a floppy), a Win9X boot floppy, recent versions of Ad-Aware, SpyBot and FreeAV, and a Bart’s PE CD with the previously mentioned malware removal tools with the most recent defs installed. I try to provide a few basic hardware components, optical drives, floppy drives, video cards, RAM, sound cards, NICs and whatever else I can come up with for testing purposes only. We do NOT provide hardware for anyone. If there is some bad hardware we tell the computer’s owner, and tell them where they can get replacement parts. If they get it and bring it to us we will install it.

When the day comes we show up early for some last minute setup, have some coffee and donuts and give some last minute instructions. Here’s a sample of the last minute instructions I give:

General Policies and Procedures for the Geek Day of Service!

SMILE!!! BE FRIENDLY!! Offer to carry stuff in and out for people. Please remember that the purpose of the Geek Day of Service is to show the love of Christ in a practical way! So be Jesus to these people!

DO NOT reload an operating system unless the user brings their own disks and product key!!! NO EXCEPTIONS!!!!!

Make certain EVERYTHING is labeled!

NO food in the Atrium. Drinks are OK, but please keep them away from the equipment. Lunch will be available in room A102 starting around 11:00AM. Please take some time to get something to eat.

Put your name and DETAILED notes on the paperwork before finishing. Many people will call me after the GDOS with questions, and these papers are all I have to go off for most of them.

Remember we are working on quality, not quantity. We will turn people away when I feel like we have enough to do. Once that call has been made there will be NO exceptions.

You may offer to do extra work for people outside of the GDOS, but please do not bring anything home with you from the GDOS. Make plans to meet at a later date and in a different place and make certain the user knows it is not a G4J sponsored task you are doing, but something you do of your own accord.

If you need to call a user, I have a cell phone and will gladly lend it to you for this purpose. If you have your own cell phone you are welcome to use it as well.

There are two phone lines available for testing modems. It is necessary to dial ’9′ to get an outside line.

Be careful what you say. If you are a novice in computer repair, please do not make comments about not knowing what you’re doing in front of the person whose computer you are working on.

We will tear down at 2:00PM. Please find a stopping point on whatever you are working on by this time so we can clean up in a timely fashion, and give the users time to pick up their systems before we leave.

If anyone asks, the next GDOS is April 29!

Then we pray and open the doors.

As a person walks in they should be greeted, by a non-Geek if we can get someone, who takes their info.  This person has been trained on how to ask intelligent questions to get useful info from the user instead of, “It crashed!”  It is explained to them that this is a volunteer-only event with participants of various skill-levels and as such we make no guarantees that we can fix anything, and we make no guarantees that all their data will be preserved, only that we will do our best.  We have some chairs setup on one side of the room and give the option to sit around, though it may take several hours to finish, or go home and come back at a pre-determined time.  All the gathered information is taped to the computer, and everything the user brings in is labeled with their name.  Then the computer is placed on the TODO table, and a volunteer comes up and gets it and brings it back to their workstation and starts working.  When finished, the volunteer notes on the paperwork what was done to fix the problem, they place the computer on the DONE table and contact the user to let them know it is finished and what was done to it.

On the paperwork that is filled out there is also a Liability Release Form that must be signed and dated.  It reads as follows:

 

Geeks-4-Jesus

The Geek Day of Service

Release of Liability

This release of liability is being executed in connection with the Geeks-4-Jesus’s (“G4J”) sponsorship of a computer diagnostic clinic at our College Heights Christian Church known as The Geek Day of Service at which members of G4J have volunteered (the “Volunteer”) their services to provide general computer repair, maintenance, upgrade and other computer related services to the general public without charge as a community service.

I understand that G4J has not made any independent investigation or inquiry as to the skills, training, experience, abilities or qualifications of any of the Volunteers who have offered to provide these services and, consequently, I understand that G4J does not make any representation or warranty that any Volunteer has the requisite skills, training, experience, abilities or qualifications to work on my computer or to perform any computer related service or other task for me.

I hereby release and discharge G4J from all civil and other liability for any act or omission on the part of any Volunteer, including, without limitation, any loss, injury, or damage resulting to my computer hardware or software or other equipment or loss of data due to the negligence, malfeasance, or misfeasance of any Volunteer. Without limiting the generality of the foregoing, in no event shall G4J be liable for any direct, indirect, punitive, incidental, special, or consequential damages arising out of or in any way connected with any loss, injury, or damage resulting from any negligence, malfeasance, or misfeasance of any Volunteer in providing any service, whether based on contract, tort, strict liability, or otherwise, even if G4J has been advised of the possibility of such damages.

Further, I hereby release and discharge each Volunteer from any civil or other liability for any loss or damage to my computer hardware or software or other equipment or loss of data, provided the injury or damage was not caused by any wanton or willful misconduct on the part of the Volunteer in performing such services.

Dated: August 12, 2006  ____________________________________

Signature

____________________________________

Typed or Printed Name

I think that sums up most of the day.  I usually try to find someone to provide lunch for the volunteers, and there’s a lot of cleanup when it’s all done.  We normally open the doors at 8AM and stop taking in new computers by noon, or by the time we’ve received 3 computers per volunteer.  The goal is to have all the computers out by 2PM, and everything put away and cleaned up by 5PM.  Our biggest GDOS was after putting an ad in the paper for two weekends prior to the event, and we ended up with about 25 volunteers, and nearly 75 computers we worked on.

I know Jim Walton from ChurchTechMatters.com does something similar at his church, and others have too.  If you’re interested in doing something like this at your church and need any help/advice I’d love to help.  I’d also like to hear about any events you’re doing.

Part Two:

The LAN Party was a blast.  Ended up with about 11 people there, my kids included.  We never got around to trying any games in Linux, and I think a few people may have been disappointed by that, but we were just too busy having fun.  The night start off with some Counter Strike, then a little Team Fortress.  Later we moved on to Warcraft III, where my 10 y/o son put me to shame, and we ended the evening with Worms.  I guess we’re all getting older or something because the party was over by 2AM, so I went inside and played Halo for an hour, then went to bed.

We’re moving next month, and our new house has a smaller garage, so I’m not sure what that will mean for our garage LAN’s but I definitely want to try to pull something like this together more often.  There’s talk of a big New Year’s Eve LAN like last year.  We’ll have to see how that comes together.

Tonight I’m hosting a LAN party in my garage.  We’ve talked about playing OSS-only games, but haven’t planned well for such a thing, so it may not work out.  Instead we’re going to play the usual CountStrik, WarCraft III, and probably Worms.  I’ve downloaded a Linux Live CD designed specifically for gaming and we may give it a try.  I’ll let you know how it goes.

So we’re starting a series going through Judges at church. The following video was shown Sunday morning to encourage people to read through Judges on their own.