technology
March 17, 2009 | 
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If you haven’t heard, I’ve been asked to be a part of www.ChurchTechMatters.com as a contributing writer. For me it’s a bit of a stretch to write for such a well known site. but God is helping me along the way. Today I posted my first article there on Casting Vision & Growing Teams. If you haven’t stopped by www.ChurchTechMatters.com recently please do, there are lots of great resources and information for Church Tech volunteers.
Please take some time to read my 1st post on Casting Vision & Growing Teams and leave a comment so I know you stopped by.. God Bless..
CTM was founded in October of 2004 as the weblog of Jim Walton. Over time, the site grew to become a valuable resource for both church staff and volunteers, looking at both technical and non-technical topics. Church Tech Matters has been the generous outflow of Jim’s experience, passion and observations as he has served as a volunteer technical leader in 2 churches, as well as a consultant to churches seeking to use technology effectively.
After four years of outreach and growth, Jim has opened the doors of Church Tech Matters, to broaden the site’s reach, and increase its effectiveness. Jim is now leading a core team of dedicated, talented and passionate tech volunteers from around the world as they write about their experiences and reach out to an even larger audience.
The site’s purpose remains unchanged: To equip the church to effectively use technology to reach people for Christ. What changes is how that purpose will be realized. Church Tech Matters is now a site dedicated to church tech volunteers, written by church tech volunteers, and the people who lead them.
Please join us as we begin this next chapter of the journey Church Tech Matters. New features and resources are on the way, as we seek to build a community for the volunteers who make technology in the church sing. The newest addition to the site is a forum, a place for you to ask questions, answer questions, interact with the Church Tech Matters authors and more.
Jim’s involvement with Church Tech Matters continues, but he has stepped back and let go of the reins, so to speak, to allow this site to become more than it ever has been.
You’re invited to join this experiment, by subscribing via RSS, or via Email. You should also join the site forum at http://forum.churchtechmatters.com/. You can also join the CTM Facebook group, our LinkedIn group (coming soon) or follow us on Twitter @church_tech.
Please join us as we kick off this site for church tech volunteers written by church tech volunteers.
According to https://www.dtv2009.gov/ the wireless spectrum could be “auctioned off” to commercial vendors and your microphones may not work properly and/or interfere.
Once the DTV transition is completed, some television channels will be turned over to fire and police departments for emergency communication and others are being auctioned to companies to provide new wireless services.
The guys over at Sweet Water have done an outstanding job putting together some great info and resources on the DTV/ Wireless transition.
2009 will bring big changes to the way some wireless systems operate.
If you need assistance or have questions check out Sweet Water’s site for more info…
Find local TV and radio stations wireless towers in your area ; check out the antenna locator
Can’t attend the NH.rb User group meeting because it’s too far to drive…to cold to get out of your house… well you can attend the meeting virtually through our live video blog…. while still in your bunny slippers @home
Just visit http://www.nhruby.org/live to join in the chat/blog…@ 6:50PM EST
from their site…
Pleased to announce the NHRuby January meeting, which will take place on Thursday, January 15th at RMC Research in Portsmouth (directions). Jonathan Linowes of Parkerhill Technology Group will be coming down from the mountains of Lyman, NH to speak to us about a tantalizing trinity of interesting topics:
- A demo of his pet project, ReviewRamp, presently in Beta. ReviewRamp is a SAAS (software as a service) application for collecting and reviewing on-line submissions such as business plans, conference paper proposals, and grant applications. Users create projects in ReviewRamp which have their own custom submission forms, review scoresheets, and summary reports. Implemented in Ruby on Rails.
- A review of how Jon is using Cucumber plain text stories for development and integration testing. Jon started using rSpec Story Runner over a year ago and recently migrated to the newer Cucumber implementation. Real examples from the ReviewRamp project.
- A presentation of DynamicRecord, a database engine Jon is developing for ReviewRamp. DynamicRecord extends the Ruby on Rails’ ActiveRecord (AR) object-relational mapping (ORM) module, enabling creation of dynamic attributes that look and behave like standard AR ones without the need to add tables or columns to the database.
we had a leaders meeting @ our church tonight to talk about how our body is doing… an I thought it was a great way to learn from the body.. but sometimes hiring an expert in the field may also prove beneficial…funny how God can keep putting things in our path that is relevant to what’s going on…. When I returned home from the leaders meeting there was a new post in my feed from Anthony Coppedge about the similar subject..
Although it’s great for churches to preform these self assessments; I agree that sometimes an outside prospective is very helpful…moreover; it’s just awesome how God continues to reveal to me his plan piece by piece;. God continues to put things like Anthony’s blog post today and Jim Walton’s post this past weekend in front of me showing me his plan for me a little at a time… he is in everything…What a great God we have…
Isn’t it amazing how God can use others to help us…
In a recent post over at Jim Walton’s site; Jim talked about having a heart for volunteers and an idea of how team can grow.
As the volunteer tech team leader for our newly created tech team ministry @ dec I continue to resist God’s plan for me in this ministry. I know that he has more in-store for me and the tech team ministry.. I’ve been praying/agonizing for God’s guidance over the last several weeks about where I fit into his plan and then Jim’s post comes along… Funny how God can do that 
The largest challenge we face is recruiting and retaining volunteers; we’ve had some response and even had a large turnout for our Tech Work day back in Nov. However, there is still something lacking from our ministry… more people… other than me…you really can’t have a team of 1… So, I’ve been reading blogs, purchasing books an seeking God’s guidance in prayer about how we can grow our team and serve God and our community, and he continues to answer by providing me with more reading, more searching, and more praying for his guidance. Jim’s idea of having a video chat room full of techy leaders discussing the topic of volunteers.. was yet another way God continues to reveal to me that he wants me in this teams plan… what that looks like exactly only he knows… but I can tell you is that I will continue to pray, read and seek his guidance… thanks Jim for fanning the flames a bit more..
Did you know that you can make custom home pages for your twitter account?
You can view it on my twitter home page @goldeneye
There are some great tips @ http://www.twitip.com/
I made my own custom background using Photo shop by using one of my photography photos I took last summer in TX.. added a few images/text and uploaded it to twitter.. once uploaded I noticed that I should have change the color scheme too… so I did… now you’ll have to just head on over to twitter to see…
So i found this kewl new tool for posting your blogs to twitter
The site uses your openID to log in and allow you to create feeds for your twitter account, then your new blog postings show up as tweets…
so this post should show up in in my tweets within a hour of posting.. we shall see…
So today was a day of multi-tasking.. 15 laptops, 7 work stations 4 servers and a partridge in a pear tree!I wonder most days how I make it through with all the work that needs to be done… I was able to have some help by Erika…. it was good because I was listening to my bible 
study.. “Don’t waste your life, by John Piper”. She was asking questions and seams intrigued with the “bible study” concept.. though I’m not real good with evangelizing the talk was good and I hope that it leads to more “God talk”….
