Tony Dye

CITRT & Events

For all things Church IT related, check out CITRT.org

Events Ahead:

• July 17, 2008, 10:30 PM: Church IT Podcast (proposed new schedule, not yet confirmed)
• Way ahead - Oct 8-11, 2008: Fall 2008 Church IT Roundtable, Charleston SC

Our Race to Asterisk

Perimeter Church is pretty clearly going to be using Asterisk, or some derivative, very soon.  VERY soon.  With all the excitement of our CRM roll-out, and our general fiscal year-end wrap-up activities, as well as our deployment of Exchange 2007, SharePoint, our new search tools, storage upgrades, revamping our backup tools, enhancing our web site, and dozens of other big things, you'd think we'd be comfortable saying "that's enough for now."  Oh no!  Not us!  We are ALSO doing a very rapid construction project which has major IT implications.

This project involves purchasing an existing building adjacent to our property.  Our current facility is the large area in the lower left, the "new" building is in the upper right:

The new building has actually been a around a while, and it's been nearly vacant.  Part of that is because it's been poorly maintained.  Part of that is because the building has a mold problem.  Not a trivial one.  Our solution is to basically tear the building down.  All the way to slabs and girders.  No interior walls.  No exterior walls.  No windows or doors.  A fresh, naked, building.  Then rebuild it.  Oh...did I mention we started about three weeks ago and plan to move in before the end of August!  Yup, that's the schedule, start to finish in less than 90 days.  Amazingly, the contractor is right on schedule.

Here's the building just at the start of stripping off the bricks.  (A bit of clearing in the top left corner)

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Most of the facing off.  Not done yet.

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Just about "naked."  A little more gutting to do, some areas to treat, some water-protection to apply, but almost ready to start the rebuild process.  This picture was taken in late June.

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Now, you may be wondering what this has to do with our Race to Asterisk.  Well...we're not using any copper in that new building -- only fiber connectivity.  That's a good bias toward a VoIP phone system.  Our current phone system supports VoIP, so I could just buy more [expensive] phones to add to it, but why spend money on old technology when for not a lot more, we could move to Asterisk?  Yeah...we couldn't think of any good reason either, so we're jumping in.

Our first thought was that we'd use Asterisk *just* for the new building, and configure it as a front-end to our existing system.  Do-able, but a lot of work.  When we thought through it, the labor & service charges to integrate the two phone systems just might be the same, or even more, than the cost for the roughly 300 phones we'd have to purchase to make a full move to Asterisk.  So...new plan: get to Asterisk, soon!

Oh yeah...did I mention that late August deadline?  This is going to be a very busy time...

Fellowship Tech Opportunities

(Delayed posting -- sorry)

From: Simmons, Curtis
Sent: Monday, June 30, 2008 11:47 PM
To: Jason Powell
Cc: Dye, Tony
Subject: RE: Seeking a Great IT Professional

Seeking IT Pro with Passion for Tech and Local Church
Are you searching for a career with true meaning? A job that allows you to use your God given talents to empower the local church through advanced technology? A job where everyone you work with shares your passion, drive, and intense work ethic while keeping in check the priorities of God and family before work.
Fellowship Technologies is currently seeking an IT professional with passion for technology and the local church. Click here for a detailed description of the role and experience required. Please pass along if you know someone.
Please send inquiries and qualified resumés to careers@fellowshiptech.com.

Curtis Simmons
2 Corinthians 11:28

ProVision Final Countdown

We've started our final countdown to going live on ProVision CRM Monday, July 7.  Will it be perfect?  Of course not.  Will it be fantastic anyway?  We believe so.  Is there so much do to in the next few days that we may all go crazy?  Absolutely!

2008: Halfway Done

It's July 1 already, which means 2008 is already halfway over!  183 days down, 183 remain.  Wasn't it just Christmas a few days ago?

Switchvox/Asterisk Reminder

One more reminder: Switchvox/Asterisk presentation & demo THIS WEDNESDAY, July 2, Perimeter Church, noon until 3PM or so.  We have plenty of room if you're interested.  Just let me know.  TonyDye [at] perimeter [dot] org.

HP has Entered the DeDupe Market

Look out DataDomain, Exagrid, and all the others. HP is now in the DeDupe market, and the story is that they're trying to complete with NAS pricing on the lower-end product, the D2D2500. 

Wordle

Just for fun... 

Create an artistic word cloud from any text.  http://wordle.net/

Simple vs. Easy

There are a lot of things in life that are SOOO simple.  Why is it that so many simple things are NOT easy?

• Simple: Reading an hour a day
• Simple: Prayer and Bible Study for 30 minutes day
• Simple: Listen to people when they are talking to me
• Simple: Turn off the computer, TV, whatever, to focus on people
• Simple: Post to my blog 3 or more times a week
• Simple: Keep big blocks of empty time on my calendar
• Simple: Handle everything in my mailbox every day (get it to zero)
• Simple: Maintain a prioritized list of projects so we can focus on the most important things first

I'm sure you could add a lot more to the "simple" list.  Now...how many of these are easy?

Want to add to the complexity:  Which of these things are compelling?