I’ve just had a metaphorical kick up the backside.

Some of you may know – most probably don’t – that I’ve harboured a desire to gather techs be they hardware or software fans or even both. Whether they be sound or video or AV, or IT or media or film or ….! Basically there is no limit and minimal restriction – if you are a tech or know a tech then please read on or get the tech to read on.

I don’t want to gather them to build a community.

I don’t want to boost my reputation.

I want to build a worldwide database of techs and their abilities.

I want that database to be restrictive in only two ways.

1. You must be a christian walking the walk.
2. And you must be a tech head who’s willing to serve.

With that out of the way you’ll be wanting the why – well let me outline the vision a little bit:

A desire to serve the smaller Church, charity, non-profit, small business and others whom don’t have access to dedicated and / or regular support – be that via volunteer or paid basis. To see this be a vehicle to serve the Church and community so that God’s love may be seen by our actions. To see this be a vehicle that will draw together those from different backgrounds; denominations; race; creed; upbringing; etc. To see this work so that the local Church may better fulfill its own destiny.

I have let this vision slip but I have never stopped believing in it.

I want us to be an army of techs able, willing and ready to meet the tech needs of our local churches – wherever that may be.

But I’m not asking you to do this for nothing – though that is of course your right and your blessing to do so – in fact all this was born out of my desire to see the local churches to me be better served by local techs. I personally know 3 or 4 local techs with varying skillsets and if I thought harder could probably think of and find a few more. I wanted my home town to have the best tech served set of churches in the world. I wanted us, on meagre budgets to help our local and smaller churches be able to walk alongside (not compete) with the bigger churches.

I don’t want an us & them situation.

I want us all to pull together.

I want us all to use our talents and abilities to help further God’s kingdom. After all, as a tech not serving in a large church I often wonder whether I’m in the right place or not. I wonder why others get to play with new ideas & kit and I struggle to keep 6 to 10yr old PCs going with no budget and wonder why I’m placed where I am.

I want techs to have a purpose.

I want techs to know they are valued – even if that value has a monetary gain for them.

If you want to read the full vision then have look here.

So what say you?

Do you want to use your talents and abilities for more than just your day job?

If you do work for the church then consider:

• the potential to earn more
• or to serve others less fortunate

If the answer is yes then all I need at this stage is for you to contact me and give me some very basic information:

• Name & Contact details
• Location – doesn’t have to be precise, just an area, county & country at this stage
• The capabilities you’d be willing to serve others with – whether free or paid

If you aren’t happy to divulge this info yet then please do get in touch so we can begin to build a relationship.

Without God and your willingness then this won’t happen.

So one final thing …

Please pass this along to any techs you know

Tech Call to Arms is a post from: Church Techy

It would appear that an upgrade to WordPress 3.3 has severely mangled my blog.

The theme and back end operations are all to pot – so over the next few days / weeks I’m hoping to fix it. In the meantime I apologise for the changes you’ll no doubt see …

EDIT: It would appear that a downgrade to 3.2 has fixed most of my problems – still only have html edit available but will see what the WP boys n girls come up with as a fix.

Apologies is a post from: Church Techy

Today, just before I enter 2012 I thought I’d re-hash that post to remind myself why I do what I do.

I need that ….

I need to remind myself.

I need to throw the challenge out there so that others might be challenged too.

So…. without further ado, here’s my 10 (some are a repeat)

1. It is what I’m called to do.

2. As an “armour bearer” my prime role is that of servant. If I’m not serving then I’m not living.

3. I don’t know any other way to be.

4. I love to serve, freely and willingly. This is my ‘pay it forward’.

5. As someone who serves I expect to be “forgotten” until such time as a crisis hits – I have no problem with that. Though sometimes I have to remind myself.

6. It’s not about me – I’m not out to make my name stand out in lights.

7. My mum, may she rest in peace, raised me this way. It’s in my nature and nurture.

8. Doing what I do helps to perfect my craft allowing me to better to do my paid for job.

9. Because I will be rewarded for it – Colossians 3 v 22-24

10. God expects it – Joshua 24 v 15

And a bonus freebie …

1. 11. Because I was asked and my character is such that if I can I will.

- So what about you?

- Why do you do what you do?

- Can you list 5 reasons?

I’d love to see your responses to this, even if it’s as a blog post of your own.

Groundhog Day is a post from: Church Techy

First thing to say is that I haven’t been very good at blogging on any of my sites, with one exception. In the last 6 months it seems time has just run away from me and as we approach 2012, now is as good a time as any to consider and take stock.

First thing though is to say thank you to all of you that come here and read this little blog – or indeed any of my ramblings.

Second thing to say is that whilst I don’t get many commenters, I do see the stats from various plugins and analytics that tell me you do in fact come here in reasonable numbers. And whilst we aren’t talking ProBlogger type numbers, they are enough to encourage me to keep on.

But I do wonder what it is that stops you from commenting.

Anyway.

Two or possibly three prime reasons for lack of blogging.

I’m not religous enough about recording ideas for blogging and end up in a rut of nothing to write.
My one a day photo blog (and the hobby behind it) has been taking pretty much most of my time since September.
I’ve found a new hangout – it’s called Google+

Those things said, I am still very much committed to blogging here and bringing you my thoughts, ideas and perspectives and I trust you all continue to enjoy.

Let me finish by wishing you all the very best for the Christmas season and I’ll be back in 2012 with more.

State of Blogging is a post from: Church Techy

So let’s start off with their own words:

Passing exams required towards getting your CCNA certification is easy, using uCertify’s top rated test Prepkits. Here’s how:

 - Full coverage of exam objectives (updated 2011) including Hardware, Security, Networking, and Operating Systems
- Practice questions that follow the exam pattern
- Comprehensive practice questions modeled on real world scenarios
- Detailed answer explanations for both correct and incorrect answer options
- Chapter by chapter study guide and study notes for exam 640-802, 640-816, and 640-822 not only helps you pass the exam, you actually learn the stuff you are supposed to know!
- Interactive Quizzes

They also state you get a years worth of updates for the price and one other ‘unique’ feature is the ability to ask / interact with other students and / or UCertify staff.

Whilst all this is laudable the reality is that the price is cheap and there is a probably a good reason for this.

Let me clarify by saying that the package could well help you become CCNA certified, but you’re going to need to put in some effort outside of this tool to do so. It is at best a dis-jointed affair that doesn’t guide one through from the basics to the end result. You have to navigate an interface that is not intuitive and doesn’t lead you – as I believe it should.

On top of this, the ‘extras’ I mentioned maybe of some value or not.

I couldn’t find anywhere that stated how often you get updates, just that you are entitled to a year of them. Secondly, in my usage I could see some questions from other users of the prep kit but nowhere did I see any answers from uCertify staff. If that’s to be the case, then they should just remove this feature.

One feature that does appear to work well is their exams and the method of tracking the results and what you need to brush up on. However, even this has a shortcoming in that it doesn’t have any simulation type questions which (it seems to me) are one of the biggest stumbling blocks mosy examinees face.

Ultimately I can’t recommend this product to anybody who is coming at the CCNA cold – and by that I mean with no knowledge or prior experience of the subject. If however, like me, you want to brush up on or take some tests because you need to re-sit the exam (as it’s changed out of all recognition in 3yrs) then this may be worth the $150.

That’s got to be your call.

CCNA Studies is a post from: Church Techy

However there are some oddities I’ve yet to get used to, amongst them are:

• why mobile access via whatever paltform / browser is so poor
• why it takes 2 clicks from a notification to get to the linked item (to be fair you can comment straight from the notification window itself)
• and more …

but, rather than concentrate on the negatives here are some resources / tips to aid:

- as with any social network be careful of what you say and to whom you say it.

- carefully consider who can see what portions of your profile – under each section you can opt who can or can’t see it a la facebook

- whilst in edit profile mode check your photo settings and set your defaults there – myself I’ve turned off auto-share of auto-tags and geo-location stuff.

- 5 tips from Duct Tape Marketing.

- and loads of tips from Local SEO Guide

Oh – and if you need or want an invite then do drop me a note with your email address – though I don’t think they are needed anymore.

My google+ thoughts is a post from: Church Techy

But did you also know that aluminium will do the job just as well?

I did. But when I first moved onto the estate I have lived in since 1987 I didn’t appreciate the downsides of aluminium. Of course back then we didn’t have high speed internet access. The best one could hope for was 56kb if you could afford the modem and if the other end matched it. Skip forward a few years and I was delirious to get 512kb and my wife was impressed.

However, a few more years on and the downside hit. Here’s a rough paraphrase of the conversation.

Me: Yes please, I’ll have that up to 8Mb service.

BT: Sorry sir, your line is too long.

Me: No it isn’t, I happen to know my line length will allow approx 6Mb.

BT: ermm, let me with technical sir.

… skip forward a few weeks because technical don’t do phone calls and I’m told that aluminium “can’t carry the high data rates that copper can and the best we can do is 2Mb“. Well way back when 2Mb was impressive but that hasn’t been so for years. So I was stuck.

Well not for much longer.

Fibre to the cabinet aka FTTC aka BT Infinity has landed in my neighbourhood and as of Monday no more 2Mb.

Hello 34Mb down 8Mb up – approx.

Not all broadband is equal is a post from: Church Techy

Not that I’ve seen it yet but I’ve been told a fixed amount per month will be set aside or made available for improvement of the church’s IT. I took that a step further and told the pastor that whilst the first year probably would be spent mostly on improving / getting us up to scratch it wouldn’t just be that. I see myself as the guardian of things technical within the church in whatever format they come.

So that could be IT. But equally it’s support of the worship team by use of projectors and associated hardware. Or how about support of the lighting, sound, media, drama teams and so on. In short, if it affects the church and it involves a plug (a crude but useful pictorial analogy) then it involves me.

So how does one, after 23yrs of scratching for pennies go about working out what to do with a budget?

For my part it was quite easy.

I set out a list of requirements as I saw them.

I then discussed these with someone in the church most affected by & understands them.

I wrote a list of pros and cons for each item and assigned a weighting to it. So for example getting wi-fi into the church was given a lower priority than sorting out the physical infrastructure.

Adding an extra domain controller was given a higher priority than the infrastructure.

And backups were given the highest weighting.

In my mind it came down to this… if the building went up in flames tomorrow or similar then how quickly could I get the church back up and running? Remember we are talking about 5 full time jobs and probably as many again part time roles that need to be supported and paid for. If we can’t run the business (not the church) then these people become unemployed.

After deciding the priorities – which basically boiled down to a disaster recovery plan it was fairly easy to decide on where the funds need to be spent. For this we then needed to price each item up and decide if its an on-going month by month cost or a one off expenditure.

Our final step was to see how we could fit these items in to the budget assigned.

So to recap:

• take stock of what needs doing.
• discuss with others
• create a pro / con list for each item
• assign a weighting
• price and purchase

In short we need to ensure the church’s data is backed up (beyond its current process) and that we take steps to minimise downtime to the entire staff first followed by individuals afterwards.

Next year we can start looking at longer term projects and adding the bonus stuff in.

So what about yourself?

• Do you have a budget at church for tech / IT / media?
• Do you plan how to spend it?
• Have you any suggestions for a budget newbie?

Budget Planning is a post from: Church Techy