Very Cool Technology

Steve Hewitt wrote about a coming technology in his blog recently that I can't wait for! Click here to see the demo.

Fall Church IT Roundtable

Clif Guy and his team did a great job of hosting about 60 church IT geeks this week. The discussion topics, the worship, the food... way to go COR team!

Mr. Excel's New Book-- For Free!

Mr. Excel publishes a two-minute podcast of Excel tips daily, and they're very good. He just released a new book of his tips, and is offering it as a free download at www.mrexcel.com/pod600.html.

Local Admin, or Not?

While at the Church IT Roundtable today we got into a spirited discussion on whether or not users should be local administrators when they login. I'm a strong proponent for letting them be, as long as the network has desktop and notebook images (via Ghost or some similar program) to overcome problems that could arise.

A question was asked by one of the church IT directors: Why do we feel so strongly like we need to lock systems down?

Here's my response:

• While not wanting to knock Microsoft, we do need to recognize that their operating systems (Windows) have a lot of security holes. They know about many of them, and there are apparently many they don't know about.
• Microsoft has taught us to engineer our networks to make up for those holes. By teaching us to not give users administrative security rights, Microsoft is teaching us to restrict our users to make up for their limitations.
• Using programs like Ghost to image systems eliminates the issues that a user with local admin rights might experience because they allow you to re-write the local hard drive in a matter of minutes.

The reasons I prefer to give users admin privileges are:

• It empowers users to do what they need to when IT is not available to help,
• It allows updates to be installed as needed without IT help, and thus
• It reduces the workload of the IT team.

I see it as a win-win. What do you think?

Automating Online Forms

A colleague wrote me asking what the best solution is for automating the myriad of fillable forms there are on websites. I have wrestled with this too, and have come up with the solution that works most consistently for me, but am always looking for new ideas that work!

My Solution
The best system I've come up with so far is a twofold approach:

1. I use eWallet to keep a secure copy of all my credit cards, etc on my PDA and notebook so I can access and copy anything I need easily.
2. In addition, I use Firefox as my browser, and it does a pretty good job of maintaining fillable form information for fields that are similarly named (IE has never performed well for me in this area).

Though not a perfect solution, it works. What are you using that works?

So, What Would Jesus Do?

While working on a desktop computer today Microsoft confronted me with the error message at the left. Being a believer, feeling challenged beyond my understanding, and wanting to honor Christ in all areas of my life, I asked myself, "What would Jesus do?"

Well, choosing yes or no produced the same results... the question would re-appear after about five minutes. Time to re-image this system!

Vendor or Team Member?

I often talk with hardware and software providers on behalf of The Church. Along with Chris Booth at CCB, we have been a force in helping them understand the importance of The Church as a niche and motivate them to reach it.

The Three Sides of My Role
I find myself presenting three facets of my drive and motivation when talking with hardware and software providers:

1. I'm fortunate to be a widely published author with some influence in the marketplace.
2. I'm a vendor representing a large number of churches and ministries.
3. Functionally, I act as the CIO (Chief Information Officer) for many churches and ministries.
   

It's the last one that's hardest for them to understand, but it's what really drives me in my decision-making process. Since our firm has, from its beginning, chosen not to make any money on hardware and software recommendations, even as a vendor I really act more as a CIO than anything else.

Like any CIO, I'm interested in best practices and strategies for my organization. My organization happens to be more theoretical in that the decisions I make impact many churches and ministries. I'm good with that, and consider it a sacred trust. More than that, I see it as part of my calling to serve The Church as God called me to many years ago.

Maybe that's what has helped to set apart our firm, MBS, from so many others. We never try to sell ourselves when speaking at a conference or writing an article. Instead, we share knowledge to help others make wise decisions. We're about serving; plain and simple. Doing anything less would be in defiance of God's call on our lives.