ITDiscuss

I think I've alluded to ITDiscuss before, and I know I just mentioned it in today's "history" posting, but let me go ahead and ramble about it for a moment.

Nearly 10 years ago, a very few of us in the Atlanta area expressed an interest in some sort of forum for Church IT managers to share needs, ideas, questions, or whatever.  Rene' Watson and Christel Johnson (now doing work in VA) were among those who helped push this idea forward.  For the first year or so, the list was small and activity was slow.  It was a small enough list that I personally maintained it, manually, on our Exchange server.

A few years later, Jeffrey Thompson of First Baptist, Atlanta, came on the scene.  He was a fan of mailman, so we switched things over, first to a Linux-based server here at Perimeter, and later to a server that he manages through his commercial endeavors.  We also started mentioning the list to others that we met through various seminars, conferences, and whatever.  The list grew from a handful to 50, then to about 100, and I don't even know how large it is now.  Also, the list grew "out" a bit from a pure Church orientation.  Many people who had been part of church IT moved out to the commercial world, but asked to remain connected.  Friends and co-workers joined in.  Vendors joined in.  You get the picture.

Well...the list somewhat overlaps what you see in various Church IT blogs, and yet it's somehow different, too.  If you think it might be of interest to you, I invite you to check it out.  There are two ways to take a look.

First, the simple, "old fashioned" way -- join the mailing list.  Here's the link.  Alternatively, Jeffrey has now configured a web-forum variation of the list.  You can check it out here.  (don't tell Jeffrey, but I highly prefer the mailing list :-)

Comments

[Jeffrey Thompson]

I keep up with your blog now Tony so I'm aware you like the email list better. And that's OK! I prefer the web board myself. It has a great search feature! Everything is written down automatically (and categorized by Subject) for you by posting the email list to the web discussion board. So when you think of a topic that was mentioned on ITDiscuss, you can always go back and search for the topic. Now we have the best of both worlds (email & web board). I've been pleased with the result. Also, I think a web board may better support the IT Discussion since others have something to refer back to as well.