I’ve finally caught back up enough from my trip that I can take a moment to review my notes and reflect on what I’ve learned. While I heard many different opinions of the MinistryTech event I felt that it was a huge success, especially for a first attempt. The format made for pretty general sessions and I think that next year it may be in their interest to offer at least a small amount of more in-depth technical content to attract some of that crowd. Beyond the content of the event, the networking opportunities were wonderful and it was worth the trip for that alone.

Day One

The event was hosted at Henderson Hills Baptist Church in Edmond, OK. The campus was beautiful and was definitely well-suited to hosting an event. I arrived early and wandered through the vendor expo to get a good look at who was supporting the event. I’m sure I’ll miss someone important here, but the vendors that stand out in my memory follow. (I have left off a few OKC-area local-only vendors)

The first session was Tony Morgan presenting on “Why Techies Scare Me.” This was a top ten list presented with a touch of humor with some great points made about why Church IT can intimidate church staff, and particularly the leadership. Tony did an excellent job of making his points and set the mood of the event completely for me. A lot of the points he made resonated through every presentation.

Prior to session two we had our first opportunity to network. I was able to meet up with a ton of people who I only knew through chatting online or through their blogs. Due to a change in scheduling I attended Jason Powell’s VMWare presentation. He had some serious laptop issues which made for a challenging demonstration, but it was nice to the success he has had using the free VMWare Server instead of using ESX/Virtual Infrastructure.

The remainder of the morning was lunch followed by more networking and the Peer to Peer sessions which provided even more time to get to know everyone. For the afternoon session I attended Jon Edmiston’s session entitled “Information: the I in IT.” This session focused heavily on how his church focused their IT strategy tightly around their church strategy and some creative ways they were using data analytics and integration to accomplish their needs. Most impressive was the use of geocoding and mapping within their data analysis to better understand their membership and the integration they have done with plug-ins between Asterisk and Arena ChMS. It was a good presentation and avoided too much pitch vs. the valuable content.

The final presentation of the day was “Determining IT Strategy in a Church” presented by Jeff Hook of Fellowship Technologies. Walking right along the ongoing theme of the event he focused heavily on aligning IT Strategy with the church’s needs. Jeff is an excellent speaker and his presentation completely avoided any sales pitch in my opinion, however much of the presentation centered (as with Jon above) on strategy which was core to ChMS needs.

Day Two

Day two started off with a last-minute change of plans from Terry Storch of LifeChurch.tv. His original presentation was entitled Tech[NO]babble but God moved him to speak on his move into working for the church with a presentation called “I’m an idiot.” This definitely hit home with pretty much everyone at the conference since they have all made a choice at some point to leave the mainstream business world for the Church.

Session two was “IT & AV Synergy” with Anthony Coppedge. The presentation focused a lot on themes that are common between IT and AV but was not quite what I was hoping to get out of it. Regardless, I ended up taking tons of notes in this session and I was highly intrigued by his approach to budgeting. Unfortunately I was not planning to attend his second session so I will have to wait on the CD to come in and listen to the second session at that time.

Session three and four flowed naturally into each other. These sessions were Tony Dye with “The Church IT Paradox” and Clifton Guy with “Users or Customers?” respectively. Tony and Clifton both sold themselves as looking at IT from completely opposite styles with Tony being all about policies & procedures with Clif more about always saying yes, but in the end they really end up saying a lot of the same thing… Let the ministry drive IT, not the other way around. Clif clearly has a much more open approach to this than many, but there was value and truth from both presentations.

Paul Braoudakis wrapped up the event with a presentation on “Becoming a Change Agent” and threw in several minutes on a topic we could all relate to, the “early adopter tax” we all pay by getting the latest greatest gadget right when it comes out.

After Paul’s presentation we went for a tour of the LifeChurch.tv OKC main campus. It was interesting to see the campus, but primarily what technology they use for their production and broadcast.

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