Where we’re at

Just when I though I would never have to see / use a floppy disc again, we had to install a piece of older software that originally come on floppy discs purchased about ten years ago.

We were able to get a CD to replace the 8 floppy discs, but the license information was still stored on one of the floppy discs. The installer from the CD asked at the end of the installation to insert the disc into drive “A:” and hit okay. The only problem is the computer did not have a floppy disc drive.

My first thought was “this will be easy” – we will just make make an ISO file with the software on it and mount it as an image.

It ended up being a bit harder than that- as you cannot mount to drive letter A since it is reserved.

I then had to go into the registry to HKLM\System\Mounted Devices and look for “\DOSDevices\A:” and rename the “A:” to a different drive letter to free up a letter “A:” to me mounted.

I then realized that a floppy cannot be an ISO – and I would need to find some sort of floppy emulator as well as piece of software to turn the floppy into a floppy image file.

We ended up finding WinImage to create the floppy image – and used Virtual Floppy Drive to mount the image. We were then able to run through the install CD from start to finish with out actually having a physical floppy drive with the license information on it.

Earlier this week I was listening to a podcast from Andy Stanley’s leadership series. This specific episode stated:

“If we got kicked out by our board, and they hired a new guy, what would the new guy change or do different? Let’s walk out the door and walk back in, and make those changes.”

It was a good reminder than we always need to be doing the best we can to accomplish the mission and vision of our church- and need to realize what is not working.

Andy Stanley also mentioned to acknowledge what’s not working, and own up to it.

It got me thinking about what changes we need to make in IT that will allow us to go further, and progress faster than we currently are. Specifically at some of our systems we have in place, and our processes within our membership system that need some improvement.

Do you have a good way to organize training information for your staff?

Many of our previous solutions have been ineffective and hard for our staff and ministry leaders to use.

With the addition of documents in the 2008.3 release of Arena ChMS we are trying something new-

We have posted all of our training documentation and training videos on the Arena system with-in our Intranet.

We are hoping that by making our training information as well as our general procedures for entering data more easily available to our team – we will be more effective in how we manage our data.

The Videos are all saved as .SWF files so they open up in a player. It would be really sweet if this module could eventually recognize certain file types (such as flash) and open up a player by default.

Is public wifi now an expectation?

It has been a thought on mine over the past few months as we have been planning our budgets for our next fiscal year at New Covenant. At this point we have never had public wifi at NCBC or even a real plan to install it.

Over the past six months we have received many comments from our key ministry leaders, as well as members of the congregation asking when / how they can get access to our wireless network. Our answer up until this point has been no. We have not had a secure way to do it.

With companies such as Burger King, Starbucks, local shopping centers, and other public places now offering this service – should we?

To answer my own question – probably. It seems its simply expected that we have it. People no longer think to ask if we have it – they just pull out there laptops- and look for a wireless connection. They are almost blown away when they realize we do not have one.

After some careful planning, we are on track to install a wireless system this Spring that covers our entire facility and will be open for public access.

So – is it an expectation?

As our staff continues to grow we have had some issues with staff finding important documents on our network. They would usually ask a supervisor or our business manager to send these to them.

With the release of Arena ChMS 2008.3 we have been able to implement a “Staff Documents” area of our Intranet. We will continue to add important documents and work on the organization – but this seems to be a great start.

Some of the documents include:

- Insurance Reimbursement forms

- Accident Reports

- Time card

- Misc IT forms

Here is a quick screen shot of the module. It uses security built into the document types.

Looking for a tool to help improve communication among your staff? Check out Yammer.

We have always had a problem knowing where each staff member is in the facility, and when they were coming into the office. 

Yammer allows everyone to update their status by sending an email, text message, logging into their web-site and by using there iPhone and blackberry applications.

So far it has exceeded by expectations- and our staff team seems to like it.

The Computer application runs on the Adobe Air platform- and is easy to install and update. The software is fairly similar to twitter (think “private twitter” for your organization)

We are currently using the free version which works well. We can create groups for our different ministry departments, as well as upload files and photos now.

Web-Site

Adobe AIR Application