Roundtable Reflections, part 1

I've had the privilege of participating in all four of the past "national" Church IT Roundtables and I'm already excited about the early plans for #5 this fall in Charleston.  There has been such a variety of styles in the past, yet each has hit my personal, yearly, "top ten" list, so I'm trying to figure out what it is that's made them each so great and what, if anything, we should consider doing differently in the future.  There are probably as many different answers as there are people who have attended, so I'm not expecting great agreement on my thoughts.  If something resonates with you, great.  If you've got better ideas (which shouldn't be too much of a challenge for all you creative people), please share them!

1. Relationships
This continues to be the #1 highlight for me -- getting face-to-face time with people who I know (virtually) and respect, but finally getting to match up the names with faces.  Talking technology, roundtable style (or however) is great, but so is the "off" time of meals and just hanging out.  Now having just said how great this is, it's also one of my greatest personal disappointments.  I've just looked through pictures, and lists of names of attendees, and realize that I don't know everyone!  That's not your fault, it's mine.  I've got to force myself to be more intentional about engaging with everyone.  (not an easy thing for this old introvert)  One big suggestion, and maybe I'm the one who could do it: as part of the check-in, take pictures of everybody and tie them to a name, church, city, blog, etc., then publish some sort of a pictorial directory (a blog post would do) when we're done.

2. Presentations vs. Roundtable Discussions
I love the roundtable format.  At the same time, I want some new, "unexpected," input.  And, the roundtable tends to wear me out!  (that's not bad, just a fact)  I liked having MinistryTECH adjacent to the Roundtable this spring, as that provided a good mix of each format.  Three straight days of input may have been too much -- I'll touch on that later.  My point is, if we've got multiple days available, let's mix them up a bit between RT format and presentations (and social times, too).

3. Technology input
I just said I liked having presentations, but now I'm going to turn slightly negative to the MinistryTECH model, and suggest some changes.  The MinistryTECH presentations were good.  However, they weren't great, and it took me a while to figure out why I wasn't overly satisfied.  Quite simply, hearing from other church people, while good, is sort of "old news."  So, my suggestion for the future, look also for leading edge technology presenters.  I'd love to have someone from Moonwalk, C2C, Google, VMWare, DameWare, Postini, Meru Networks, maybe even a Dell or Equallogic or IBM, or any of other exciting companies, talk to us about what they see.  Or, bring in a real wild-card, like Tim Ferriss!  Sure, we're a small group that may not show up on their radar, but you never know if you don't try.  I'd be willing to make some contacts.

4. Worship together
We've had various worship experiences at the different venues.  There have been many comments on how great it is to worship together.  How about we make this even more intentional and put some real time into it.  The Willow Creek Leadership Summit model may be a good one -- a start on each day, and little pieces mixed in throughout the event.

5. Enough of the same old exhibits
I'm sorry to say this out loud.  I appreciate all the vendors who help sponsor our various events.  But, I'd be perfectly happy if you left your booths back home.  It's not a case of you showing bad stuff, I just don't care, and I can't imagine many of the others attending these events really care to see yet-another Church Management System presentation, or whatever.  I like the vendor interactions -- specifically the technology guys.  Dean set the standard!  So, for the rest of the vendors, the challenge is to you -- how can you be more of participants and less of sales booths?

This post is getting longer than I'd planned, and I'm not done.  So...I'll continue later.

Comments

[Justin Moore]

Tony,

Thanks for taking the time and energy to put all of that in writing. You summed it all up quite well for me. Excellent post.

[Tony Dye]

Thanks Justin. Part 2 is coming. I promise!

[Shawn Ross]

Tony,

Have you considered a VoiP vendor, such as Switchvox (www.switchvox.com)? I previously mentioned these get-together's to Tristan Degenhart (tristan*at*switchvox.com), and she mentioned some definite interest. Switchvox makes a product that builds on vanilla Asterisk (and provides support). If you're interested in someone from that kind of a background, Tristan would definitely take your questions, etc.

Shawn

[Tony Dye]

==>Shawn: Yes, we've considered "commercial" variations of Asterisk, including switchvox. We're not to that point, yet, so continuing to explore basic Asterisk is enough for me, for now. Thanks for the lead for the future!

[Clif Guy]

I love your pictorial directory idea. Like you, there were a number of people I didn't meet and even more I did meet but never committed to memory their name, face, church, and blog (if any). So next time we meet I'll have to make my apologies for not remembering. ;-)

[Tony Dye]

==> Cliff: I'm looking back at the attendees of all four Roundtables, and drawing a complete blank on some of the names. Can I possibly be that forgetful? Ouch!

[Shawn Ross]

Tony, let me clarify a little my previous post:

- I haven't been a big-time attender of the CITRT events to date. I LOVE the idea of mixing it up a little, and adding worship into the mix. Not forgetting the CHURCH in CITRT is a great thing.

- When speaking of Switchvox, I was talking about pt. 3 (and maybe 5). From a "Shelby, ACS, FellowshipOne, etc....." vendor standpoint, Switchvox (and other, smaller, newer) companies may be more willing to send a technology-type person. I know that my experience has been that some of the smaller companies don't always have "departments" for things like trade shows, etc. My Switchvox sales rep is really an engineer (and co-founder). Finding companies that have a hungrier or smaller approach to getting their services talked about are usually more "one utility man for everything". However, getting them to show up could be harder ;)

[Tony Dye]

==>Shawn: Silly me, I was just thinking about Asterisk in general, and "heard" your comment more associated with our very serious consideration of moving to Asterisk. Duh -- you were actually commenting on my post! OK, I'm embarrassed. (fortunately, I'll get over it quickly) Yes...Switchvox would be a great company to come to a roundtable technical session. I'll pass this along to Trace for potentially connecting for this fall. Thanks!