Tony Dye

Roundtable Notes

Fall 2006 Roundtable Notes

Spring 2007 Roundtable Notes

Spring Event Recap

Here's a recap of posts related to the Spring Church IT Event (aka Roundtable)

• Prayer Request and list of churches represented
• Pre-Event activity
• First Post from the Monday Event
• Technology Day
• Roundtable Day Overview
• Roundtable Survey
• Virtualization
• Intranets
• Staffing
• Monitoring
• Mac Support
• Training/Documentation
• Backups/Disaster-Recovery
• Multi-Site/Multi-Campus
• Policies & Procedures
• ChMS Day
• Wrap-up, Lessons Learned
• My Personal Event Highlights
• Other Roundtable Links
• Roundtable Door Prizes
• Are we a Group? {post event discussion}

Participant Feedback (and lessons for future events)

CITRT Notes: Policies & Procedures

Policies and Procedures

Mike Gold: who has procedures?

Wish: on-line site (not paper!), something that can be referenced, audited. SOP. Basic how-to materials. Change Management procedures need to track who's been communicated with, have they agreed?

Define the process for the volunteer, or the only person available.

Skelta (Indian company). Workflow's are visually built. Concurrent licensing based on how many people are in a workflow process.

Mike Gold: Willow initiates a new staff process by emailing helpdesk (not necessarily before the person arrives). Helpdesk/HR confirm start date. IS Needs request from to be filled out by the supervisor. (that request comes from HR) When completed, sends an email to the helpdesk which auto-creates a ticket. Further requests for confidentiality agreement, email covenant, data covenant, security form. Staff member vs. volunteer represents different pieces and forms. As many as 14 sub-tickets to create the account.

CITRT Notes: Multi-Site/Multi-Campus

Multi-site / Multi-campus

Trace Pupke: SeaCoast. 9 locations; 2 more this fall. Each starts small with a core group, rental space. Main systems to start are "a laptop" for weekend projection. As they grow, need bandwidth, site-to-site VPN, storage, replication; later a local file server. Zero IT staff in remote sites. Single DB administrator.

Discussion

3Com phone system is only used by one other campus (with fiber connection). Expect to expand to others via VOIP.

Approx half are permanent locations

Bandwidth? Typically a DSL connection. Site to site vpn from those connections.

NOT using VPN appliances

Mike Gayle: anyone doing international sites?

Mike Gold: using SharePoint now for collaboration, working toward a remote office, conferencing. Intentionally not tying it together "too much." Not using wan acceleration [yet]

Mike Gayle: Calvary, Ft. Lauderdale. Two campuses, fiber connected. Multi-plex high-def, audio, etc. to each site. Use ~70 foot screen at each site. Do a Tivo-style broadcast, not real time, but still while main site is broadcasting. Need a great tech team to support all the technology. Evertz for streaming/DVR.

Digitized, not compressed. Nowhere close to maxing the GB fiber. But, using the same fiber for data, phones, so could be a problem later. Go to QOS? [Mike Gold: yes!] Lots of expenses for the fiber and the stuff at each end

Very difficult to consider relocating because of all the connections back to the home location.

Terry Chapman: 5 campuses now (including Miami FL). Saturday night is recorded, used next morning at all campuses, including Miami. AND, FTP an ISO of the same thing as a backup.

Mike Gayle: Satellites are great for expansion, that otherwise wouldn't be possible

Rich Kowalske: use of Polycom? Yes. Terry Chapman and Mike Gold.

Mike Gayle: biggest negative (ratio of 1 to 1000 positive): "local" worship is less professional. Negative only for those who were previously at main campus.

Discussion: ChMS perspective -- all one church, or shared database?

Mike Gayle: international is separate, all else is one Shelby database.

Terry Chapman: one church, one database (but a challenging decision).

Trace Pupke: One church, one database.

General: how can you be multi-homed, all one, know what people do and where, all at once?

Terry Chapman: does tag where a person joined.

Brett Anderson: how do you deal with Shelby remotely?

Trace Pupke: RDP.

Mike Gayle: issues even over local fiber!

Mike Gold: how do you handle phones & phone support at remote sites?

Terry Chapman: only two total phone switches, one in Dallas, one in Miami, but all outbound 911 is a local call.

Trace Pupke: outbound DID has the local info. Not good experiences with VOIP over DSL while simultaneously pushing/pulling large files.

Brian Slezak: 100MB wireless, VOIP over that.

Chris McGuffin: wireless between buildings, boring under parking lot coming.

CITRT Notes: Backups/DR

Backups / Disaster Recovery

{there was some discussion while I had to step out for a phone call, so these notes are "joined in progress"}

Have a 40TB SAN hosted, somewhere (data center) and support multiple churches? Vs. church-to-church backup to each other?

$40K divided by 10-20 churches?

First backup is a killer. Probably don't use network to do it

Utilizing SanMelody at each site, SanSymphony at host site.

Multi-campus churches -- do they need a third-party off-site?

Terry Chapman: 25TB today! Need one of Jason Powell's "ghetto-tastic" disks

Jason Lee: SonicWall has incredible pricing for non-profits. But can it go that large?

Mike Gayle: add the deltas to your storage needs. The single backup is not the size.

Jason Powell: Just using Robocopy to his house!

Mike Gayle: looking at evault. Open file agents, manage the deltas, etc.

Mike Gold: anyone using Netap or Centari

Brett Anderson: using MozyPro.com

Can you trust a hosted backup solution 100%? Probably not -- should not be your only solution.

What about Double-Take on some "old" NT/Windows Server solution?

Jason Powell: "just" use DFS replication

Jason Powell: Risk analysis. What's the risk, what's the cost?

Mike Gold: Disaster Recovery vs. Business Continuity. Requests to recover one email from one former staff member -- what's the value?

Jeffrey Thompson: Issue of how long to do backups, and when? Switch to backup-to-disk, but then disk to tape later.

Mike Gold: Buffalo drives - 500GB, cheap. DriveImageXML? (open source)

Biggest learning (perhaps through bad experience)?

Don't use a domain controller for a backup server!

Don't ignore any failed backups. Even just one "little" incremental, just one day...

CITRT Notes: Training/Documentation

April 17, 2007: Roundtable day

Another set of notes that hasn't been cleaned up yet

• What should a Knowledgebase look like?
• Just one place (or just one search)
• "intentional" knowledgebase
• Where should "disaster recovery" documentation sit?
• Jot service. 
• How do you deliver training to the user at the time they need it?  (in a form they need it)
• JasonL: don't assume complete self-service.  Train and reinforce with backup materials.
• JasonL: "Top 15 nuggets" to know about {whatever}
• Mike Gold: user-generated content.  Educational training.  Provide tools to the user departments to create the tools to train the next person.  Use the excitement of video/podcast type delivery.
• JasonL: What is the baseline for hiring? 
• TonyM: New hires: 4 hour orientation, approx 2 are IT related
• Mike Gayle: full day orientation for new staff; all HR.  Then "levels of training" to get permission to use the next level.  "Super user" training: train-the-trainer within the specific area.  Provide certificates upon completion.
• Train on church database, etc., "at their level."  2-hour blocks seem to work (even if real training takes 8 hours total)  camtasia for video training
• Video, PPT, synched: table of contents, fast forward capabilities.  Be sure to specify that you're a ministry/non-profit for a great discount.
• Peer support vs. super-user support.  Expect that the super-user is part of the training department
• Invest in pre-training as you approach major roll-outs (Office 2007, for instance)
• How can we share training resources with each other?
• How do we avoid the location specific issues?  How do we create a partnership?
• Training best practices.
• Even if we can't use the specifics of somebody else's training, there is still a gain from the concepts
• Training Wiki for us to share, with screen shots that can be manipulated.  "expect downloading/editing"
• How do you find people with time to be super-users?  Mike Gayle has had good success with this!
• Be sure to get supervisor approval before soliciting the potential super-user!
• How do you build the culture of "helping co-workers" (vs. a burden)?  Most people want to help.
• Give the super-users more rights.  More trust, more rights, more training, and so on.
• Distributed expertise -- facilitate the entire organization by having the experts in multiple places.
• How do you help a user think it's their great idea?

CITRT Notes: MAC Support

April 17, 2007: Roundtable day

Oops, didn't get these cleaned up. Here's the notes in very raw form -- hope to replace it soon.

PamM: xServe in the rack!  Communications and Media Arts hitting that server.  AD integration - easy!  Macs can get to PC shares, but not vice versa.  PCs can "see" xServe files.  "too much administration"
Discussion: imaging, administration.  Different departments needing access to videos.  No SAN, yet.  Previously, MACs had trouble getting to PC shares.  Fear: this is the PC network, this is the MAC network.
JasonL: why xServe instead of AD extensions?
PamM: using it for streaming
Discussion: not using xServe for imaging
JohnD: Integrating Mac onto PC network is automatically an issue.  Mapping to home directories was fairly easy.  Perimeter limits users to particular PCs they can log into.  Randomly creating a PC login problem: MACS randomly choose another host name.  Solve by going into hosts file.  (go back to your unix days) "and then it just works"
Mike Gold/discussion: using ProTools?  Some pain.  Authenticating with AD.  ProTools seems to break the AD authentication.  Trace: ADmitMac - domain join (same people as Dave).  Not cheap.  Resolves printing through Windows print servers (if there are print drivers).  Would this work with PaperCut?
JasonL: Centrify.  Extends AD to allow controlling of Mac environment.  Similar to GPOs.  $1500 for 10 Macs + server license (starting point, at least)  Add on that you load onto the Mac.  Not clear how much can be pushed from AD to the Mac.
JohnD: reminder that VNC is built into Macs for remote control
Mike Gold: IT support staff going to Mac training (certification program)
JeffreyT: FBA just brought in Macs about 6 months ago.  Jeffrey living on one now.  Mostly in the Mac world?  Maybe.
Discussion: administration.  We (IT) must use them!  Certification programs.  5 years ago Macs were a question.  Now they're an expectation.  Harvard CIO on "pure" MAC - no MS-office.  How productive can he be?  Had to give into Entourage.  Didn't like the heaviness of the MAC!  A lot of changes since OS 9.x.  Creative people want/need the Mac.  Personal/productivity, perhaps not.
JasonL/Mike Gold: Cost is about double to by a Mac vs. PC.  (much of this is in support costs)  Doesn't make sense for basic office apps.
Mike Gold: in the future, the computer becomes like a cell phone, a utility/commodity.  The network is the future (Sun: the network is the computer).  Also a cultural expression.
JasonL: We need to explain why we choose our tools, why we equip you with different tools, help the user see the value of the different platforms.
Mike Gold: with Vista, PC costs are coming up toward MAC costs.  Without using the MS products on MAC, and just using the native tools, the MAC cost goes down.
JasonP: hard rules on "if your job requires X, you get a MAC."  Can we get there?
Mike Gold: back to the network.  [hopefully] less support of machines and apps, more utilization of the network resources.  Consider MS vs. Google.
Discussion: Where to draw the line.  "If you need it" is right, but who knows?  How does TCO fit in?  What is "need?"  (video editing, audio editing, Music)  Also need to be clear that there will be challenges in a Windows World.  North Point does lock down MACs.  Apparently nobody else!?  Another inequity.  Some evidence that Mac users are more tech savvy.  (some debate) 
JasonL: how do you bring a Mac user along who believes they are a high-end user?
TonyM: use the board; case by case decision

CITRT Notes: Monitoring

Network Monitoring

Tony Montez: What tools do you use?

Jeffrey Thompson: Big Brother

Discussion: Nagios, Mon.itor.us, Level Platforms, Solar Winds (Orion), Op Manager

John Dolan: what are you monitoring?

Discussion: network traffic, network mibs, event logs, services (up/down), cacti, prtg, mrtg, tcpdump, ethereal, packetizer

Tony Dye: What do you need to see (that you're not seeing)?

Ed Buford: dealing with rolling blackouts. Found a physical loop! (didn’t cure the problem) Lighting technician using an MS loopback tool. (one wireless, one wired)

Mike Gayle: Anyone using Fluke? They'll do a demo analysis. (Bryson Medlock has someone in his church with one) Cost around $12K. Want a drill-down tool -- identify by segment, switch, port, whatever…

Tony Dye: analyze by pulling link cables

John Dolan: 3Com Network Supervisor (free), Network director (not free)

Chris Todd: Procurve Manager with all HP switches (30 day trial)

Mike Gayle: Can install a new copy of 30 day software on a new virtual machine. Rebuild/replace every 30 days. (but, of course, Mike didn't say any of this)

Brian Slezak: WhatsUpGold: identify when network links are up/down. Again, 30 day trial, with the VM trick

John Sullivan: tried MOM, too much effort.

Tony Dye: how do you monitor the monitor? What if monitoring goes down? What if the observer of the monitoring goes down!

John Dolan: anyone highly confident (95%+) of notifications? [nope!]

Jason Powell: how do you know what to monitor? "wait til the day after it fails"

John Dolan: the templates are a guideline, but they may not be YOUR guideline.

Dialogue: too much, not enough, "boy who cried wolf," how do you differentiate the important from the noise?

Mike Gold: Sarbanes-Oxley - are there alerts that we can't delete? What do we do when we get them? Have to be able to explain them. Over time, realize repeating alerts "aren't important." but are they? How to document/report?

Mike Gayle: Have to do both internal and external monitoring. Make sure there's an external.

Discussion: back to monitoring the monitoring. Token passing from church to church? You want to know if there is a pattern. "how long" has something been down?

CITRT Notes: Staffing

Staffing

David Crist: Single IT person supporting ~145 users. How to justify more staff. Adding video/web; what's the needed infrastructure. "How do you justify those needs?"

Tony Montez: do you track the work now?

David Crist: yes,maybe. Not enough time to track the details of the time

Tony Montez: Can you justify the time and use of the people you have today. Key: measurement! Keep the metrics.

Tony Montez: For groups with large staff, how did you get there?

David Crist: big failures sometimes lead to justification. Chaos leads to growth?!

Tony Montez: compare numbers with each other? (church surveys)

David Crist: Are there "industry standards" for support needs per person supported.

Mike Gayle: Do the skill set needs change over time? (yes) How do we transition people out? New technology requires new skills -- expand or hire?

Mike Gold has an advisory board. Helps bring the clout/focus/direction to what you're doing (or trying to do) "Have your own board of directors." Don't get your own board if you're looking for people to be nice to you… "curses from a friend vs. kisses from an enemy"

David Crist: trying to unify technology. IT, Communications, AV, etc.

Mike Gold: "Partnership" goes a long way. Video people are doing more networking. Network people are doing more web. Different/blending. How do we communicate?

Mike Gayle: key is relationships, not organizational structure. Consider the "how much storage" question -- what about USB drives?

Jason Powell: Key progress from IT and Tech-Arts share same office space. If you live together, you figure out ways to talk to each other!

David Crist: confrontation is not always bad. Sharing space can create the needed friction.

Terry Chapman: Tech Production is still separate. Lots of communication, all stay in the loop.

Mike Gold: the more the "others" get into the same [networking] area, the more "they" experience our same pain!

Jason Lee: "Playing by the rules" vs. "I want you to have the tools." there's no way to compromise in my mind -- can we compromise in your mind? Goal is serving -- equipping other group to succeed. Force open dialogues, even hard ones

Mike Gayle: How do you know the balance? How do you handle "coverage" weekends, evening, middle of the night? How do you avoid the burn-out from 24x7? Have to say 'no' somewhere. May mean that not everybody is going to like you.

Tony Montez: ask people what level of support they want, and how to pay for it.

Terry Chapman: "what level of support is acceptable?" Staff to the most important things (the weekend). Lots of things need to say 'no' to. Staffing: wait as long as possible. Make sure there's a strong justification to take from ministry the dollars to provide IT support.

Bryan Johnson: When thing are requested "out of scope" (out of what we're currently doing), go back to "if we had it, what would we do with it?" Dig in and often the requester will end up saying 'no' to the request!

Mike Gold: from a Randy Alcorn book, "it's not the initial purchase that will get you, it's the add-ons" (not a direct quote). Adding staff is a lot more than the cost of a salary. Phone, computer, licenses, office, etc.

David Crist: Keeping the inverted pyramid balanced.

Mike Gold: do the documentation! The documentation part must be part of every process.

Dialogue: documentation, "never a later," culture of doing it right. "slow down and do it right"

Jason Powell: Hiring of Ed came from helpdesk statistics. # tickets coming in, time open, backlog, etc.

Mike Gold: use statistics instead of drama.

Tony Montez: documentation always serves you well. Be sure you tell the end users what was decided by management. Use staff meetings to inform. Shares metrics with the board once per year.

David Crist: how do you raise the issues (the documented issues) to the senior management?

Tony Montez: encourage/help/push up the chain

Jason Lee: Ask what metrics are needed (by management, by self). What does the supervisor want/need to see? Ask! How do I help you (supervisor) go to the next level? Shock tactics may work once (not once a year, just once) Example of Exchange failure, no backup. That was the one opportunity. Don't let the surprise recoil on your boss! Ministry: be working yourself out of a job! "Love languages" use the language that's needed by the recipient.

Mike Gayle: Keep the focus on ministry (rather than trying to emulate the corporate IT world). Changed the name to "IT Ministry." Remember, the people trying to get your help have good intentions, they are trying to serve God. Most recent 'take' (not spin), when firefighting, keep staff on even keel. Calm/comfortable response (even if Exchange crashed without a backup). Be the calming effect in the storm.

Jason Lee: recent statements (from other staff): "do you mean you think IT is a ministry?" "Do you mean IT wants volunteers?" Business world IT is very different from IT ministry. [what is Church IT?] Never forget reaching people for Christ.

Bryson Medlock: How do other churches use volunteers? A lot of people available to IT, how to use them?

David Jenkins:"Volunteering is in our DNA" 7000 volunteers a week. 500 staff cannot run the place! Find opportunities for the congregation to be involved. Let people use their skills and talents. Part of the reason for growth. Computer Connection Ministry ~45 people. Started with infrastructure, migrated, now into refurbishing donated computers. Now a visible, helpful, ministry.

David Crist: "technology is different." requires particular skill sets.

David Jenkins: set up the qualifications, be sure your security is in place. Assign people jobs specific to your needs and their skills.

Terry Chapman: difficult matching individuals to needs. Start with a large pool of potential volunteers, refine from there. Work from particular projects, identify a few weeks or months in advance. Volunteer leadership should come from the pool

Mike Gold: sometimes had competitions from trying to show number of volunteers recruited!

CITRT Notes: Intranets

Intranets

Rich Kowalske: how easy to implement SharePoint?

Trace Pupke: just in trial now

Stephen Wareham: KevinMc has a lot of sharepoint now (will be here tomorrow). ~5 years ago, Stephen was one of two church intranet developers. Who now has an intranet? (most don't!) Why do you want one?

dialogue: easy access to employee info, documents, workflow, internal blogs

Mike Gold: Willow used a lot of SharePoint. Can be very unforgiving -- sometimes easier to blow away and recreate. A lot of on-line info available. MS likes to lock people down -- SharePoint comes from the same group as Office. Stick with "services" as long as you can before paying big bucks. Lots of free pieces available. Two types of Intranet users: those who hate it, those started creating multiple sub-sites (a sickness!) and need to be reigned in.

Stephen Wareham: using infopath?

Mike Gold: no. XML concept is brilliant, MS model doesn't fit.

Stephen Wareham: Why was Perimeter MS successful? (7 years ago, still in use!) Goal was interoperability. Get the disparate systems talking to each other. Give the staff access to read-only info they need. (events, ChMS, staffing, etc.) Focus on non-technical people (pastors). "Make simple things simple!"

Jeffrey Thompson: ServiceU SOAP interface seems a great way to integrate events into whatever else.

Dialogue: self service. One-stop-shop. How is data exposed? Need the xml interfaces.

Jason Kergosein: a group like this (CITRT) has some leverage with vendors to ask for interfaces

Jeffrey Thompson: itdiscuss.org now has a wiki for sharing ideas on needs, etc.

Bryson Medlock: how about a source repository to go with the wiki?

Mike Gold: Is the Intranet an "audience" of your main web site? How do we move to community? Intranets help bridge the gap for communication flow.

Stephen Wareham: EMS + Shelby: replicated each to SQL (minor data warehousing) and pulled from there into web pages. Used existing data areas to blend the systems -- three char department codes inserted into Shelby, EMS, HR, etc. to "integrate" the systems. "duct tape"

Rich Kowalske: Was this view only?

Stephen Wareham: yes (with some very special exceptions). Shelby and others have restrictions on "opening the box"

NickN: Address the "how do I…?" issues on the Intranet.

Stephen Wareham: "exposing" data to lots of eyes helps audit it! Make it easy to recognize problems and tell them to others.

Bryan Slezak: was Intranet a demand from the staff?

Dialogue: no. Mostly a response to implied questions

Tony Montez: similar: the informal requests, not being able to find files, for instance.

Mike Gayle: All putting effort into extranets (to attract people in), now wanting intranet to look as good as extranet. Adding people, training, licenses, all for internal -- not for ministry!

Stephen Wareham: start by tapping what you have. Avoid duplicated data. Let people update web content 'without knowing what they are doing.' A new hire not showing up in the department list is a huge red flag. Expose it. Provide "automatic" auditing.

Mike Gayle: More of an issue of making the Intranet a "pretty" and fresh destination.

Gina Buresch: Using SharePoint to help different groups to communicate - to share files. Finding SharePoint to be very powerful.

Rich Kowalske: [to Stephen Wareham] did you use SharePoint?

Stephen Wareham: Classic ASP, not SharePoint. Also a custom solution for workflow: eForms. Tools to enable processes.

Rich Kowalske: How is old app maintained?

Tony/Stephen: keeps on rocking, with minor tweaks.

Stephen Wareham: HR is a key database to expose (especially supervisors). Do dynamic approval routing -- pass it up the chain as needed.

Jeffrey Thompson: anyone using InfoPath/SharePoint? KevinMc is, wish he were here.

Jason Powell: Focusing on volunteers, not necessarily internally. Can SharePoint be used to create both an intranet and a volunteer extranet, sharing most of the same data? Microsoft licensing issues.

Tony: sharepoint/crm intranet/extranet: "make the right data available to the right people at the right time"

Mike Gold: licensing - 2003 licensing is perhaps more flexible. Create a separate domain for security. License for concurrent, not named user. Let the names users get to it (but legally, not the other way). Bamboo Solutions (?) has tools for managing users. [has charitable licensing] 2007 gives options to separate back-end database from AD. SharePoint designer includes tools for web registrations with protection against bots. "Infrastructure" person did the work, not "development" person! (cut and paste, rather than code) Mike recommends going with 2007 to start with. [info to be distributed later]

Jason Powell: what data will volunteers be able to see?

Mike Gold: Initially doing user-provided content, similar to youtube. Not published back out. Using approval processes. "Fun thing about SharePoint…" "almost anything you can imagine." Challenge is avoiding AD and those licenses.

Jason Kergosein: alternative to SharePoint: DNN. Many plug-ins, shopping carts, wikis, etc. Many third parties to develop custom apps if what you want isn't available. Web users don't need AD. Can access various databases. Jason is pulling data from Shelby.

Jason Powell: With SharePoint, who's responsible for managing site permissions?

Mike Gold: The more that can be put into the hands of the user, the better. SharePoint supported a user-administered site for volunteer management. Application deployed within hours of concept! SharePoint enables departments/people to develop their own custom needs, applications. Huge danger: completely changes the rules of backup/DR: files represent key data that's not part of your "corporate" data

Tony Dye: so this is separate from corporate data?

Mike Gold: if you can give people enough exposure to the existing databases, they won't create alternatives. These are supplemental data. More of workflow environments.

Jason Powell: since it's in SharePoint, then it is searchable.

Fady Eldeiry: If the webpart exposes the right pieces of your main databases, SharePoint is giving you the way to customize the look, but not the data underneath. Permissions/Sites/sub-sites: users can request access to other sites and email manages the requests/grants. Supports people who are involved in multiple ministries. One user has many views.

Jason Powell: what if you have a "bad break" and a volunteer is asked to step away from a ministry?

Fady Eldeiry: Easy to do *one you know*

Jason Powell: back to the question" how do you know?

Jeffrey Thompson: considering intranet for new staff training/orientation. Video sessions, culture.

Mike Gold: Yes. (refer back to Mark Stephenson's talk last night) Did a test of how to use Postini, mostly ignored. Choosing the right length for the presentation is a challenge.

Rich Kowalske: how many churches have staff developers?

Mike Gold has them. Mike Gayle uses web team (6 developers, a couple of designers, plus some mangers). Terry Chapman one web developer, one design guy (web, not specifically Intranet) Tony Dye: contracted out?

Mike Gold: One-and-One (1and1.com) solutions (hosting) great resource for getting started. User interface, adding users, etc., no long term contract. Pay 3 months in advance (or similar). For outsourcing of an Intranet site.

Chris Todd: Google Apps for low cost. Customize the tools, brand them, your own domain, etc. Including gmail (in your own domain)

Bryson Medlock: up to 100 users for free! (can request more, not stated how many you can get)

Stephen Wareham: also check out webhost4life.com (SharePoint, DNN, etc.)

Stephen Wareham: (referring back to Jeffrey's comments on audience) Try targeting the receptionist. If the receptionist can "find the answer" then you're going in the right direction.

Chris Todd: can google mini work with access permissions?

Tony Dye: yes, but not easily. We've chosen to stay simple.

Chris Todd: search/permissions is a consistent problem.

Tony Dye: *want*single database/KB with permissions, search only shows what that person should see. All the way to admin passwords, personal credit card info, etc.

Mike Gold: the marketing demo looks a lot better than the actual product.

Tony Dye: can SharePoint be an everything site?

Jason Powell: entire Microsoft site is SharePoint? (do we believe it?)

Mike Gold: issues with storing large objects into a database