Thoughts about My Church

I realize that 90 percent of you (that means 9 of the 10 total readers) already read this on Tim Stevens’ blog, but for you who didn’t…

This blog post came into my Google Alerts the other day, and by the first few lines that came through I thought, “oh great, another blogger talking trash about my church.”  I’m glad I took the time to read it though, because this guy actually seems to *get* it.  Furthermore, he’s writing on the Wesley Report site, which is apparently about “United Methodist News, Life, and Culture”

Check it out and then tell me what you think.

Filed under: GCC, blogging about blogging

Mark Beeson’s Thoughts on Obama

Like my friend Jeff, I don’t harbor any illusions that most of you are seeing this for the first time on my blog.  Also like my friend Jeff, I have a few friends in far-away places that may not see this if I don’t post it.  Again, like Jeff, I just wanted to show my support.

Whichever political side you fall on, please watch and listen with an understanding of what Mark is saying here.  Without bringing any politics into the discussion, he points out what he sees as positive things about the man, Barack Obama.

(wordpress.com will not allow me to embed this video, so hit up that next link, eh? Beeson’s Thoughts from Granger Community on Vimeo.

Filed under: GCC, everyday life , Barack Obama, Mark Beeson

Heading Towards Ubercart

For the few of you following along at home, waiting to see what sort of eCommerce decisions we’re making with wiredchurches.com, we’re taking some steps towards using Ubercart.  There were a few driving forces behind this desicion.

• We are leaning towards open-source software in the first place for a couple reasons:
  1. Ease of customization/not locked into a product we can’t tweak
  2. Ability to hire a developer to create functionality we need (esp. a good event registration system)
  3. No yearly license fees

• Ubercart seems to have a majority of what we need built into the core package (others are missing vital pieces)
• I personally loved how they set up the Downloadable Products administration (some major products don’t even have an option for downloadable products yet.  See previous point, and earlier posts)
• Ryan Szrama (one of the developers of Ubercart) found an earlier post which sparked a dialogue that led to connecting with Mike O’Connor of the newly formed commerceguys.com
• In our first conference call, Mike pitched Ubercart well, plus he lives in Jackson, MI which would allow him to work with us in person whenever it would be beneficial

We met with Mike this past Friday.  Since he just lives a couple hours away, he drove down to spend 4 hours crammed into a small meeting room with all of us.  We threw a thousand questions at him, and I think he got a pretty good idea of how complex we want our system to be (he also answered the questions).

That’s it for now.  We’re waiting to hear if Mike is going to run screaming from this project now that he’s met us and knows more of what’s involved.

Filed under: GCC, Software, the webernets , Add new tag, ecommerce, magento, Ubercart, wiredchurches.com

Cora wishes Kem Meyer a happy 40th birthday

Took this video on my phone for Kem Meyer’s 40th birthday blog hijacking.

Filed under: GCC, blogging about blogging, everyday life, videos , birthday, Kem Meyer

IE Tab and FireFox 3

*edit* i’ve noticed a lot of traffic coming here from people searching for “ie tab Firefox 3″ and similar.  if you need the .xpi, just leave me a comment and I can email you the file.

From what I can gather, I was extremely lucky to get the IE Tab extension for FireFox 3 during a tiny window when the download was working.  Everyone I’ve heard from on the issue says the .xpi won’t install for them.  In any case, I’ve got the .xpi on my computer and my wife’s computer, and it’s working great on both, so if you are wanting it, just let me know.

In other news, we’re sort of settling in on an eCommerce solution for the new and hopefully improved wiredchurches.com.  More info on that coming very soon.

Filed under: GCC, Software, the webernets , firefox 3, Firefox extension, IE Tab

The girls brought it at the Leadership Summit

Dana and I have been attending the Leadership Summit (satellite site @ Granger Community Church) yesterday and today, and it has been really great.  I don’t have the illusion that I could add any commentary on the sessions that’s any better than what other better bloggers are saying, but I do want to say this:

While all the speakers have been great, I’ve found that the the two female speakers have brought it straighter and harder than the guys.  I’ve REALLY enjoyed the interviews with Wendy Kopp of Teach for America and Catherine Rohr of Prison Entrepreneurship Program.  Both of these women are INCREDIBLY intelligent, driven, and honest.  They both “gave up” what most would consider amazing careers to follow their passion for helping others.  They were also both open and honest about being females at the top of their organizations and the challenges and opposition they sometimes face because of their gender.  I really hope that both of their programs get a great boost from their involvment in the Leadership Summit.

Filed under: GCC , Catherine Rohr, Leadership Summit, Prison Entrepreneurship Program, Teach for America, Wendy Kopp

More eCommerce Fun

After much searching, tinkering, installing, re-installing, re-re-installing, etc., I’ve sort of narrowed down some options that look like really good possibilities for open-source, fully featured eCommerce solutions.

Magento: Very obviously an extremely professional product.  Though relatively new, it’s got TONS of support and buzz.  Right now I see two drawbacks: it looks like it’ll take a good bit of tweaking and designing to make it look REALLY good (it looks “just good,” though professional, out of the box), and it does not yet support “virtual products” (aka digital downloads).  For the first, we’ve got a crack team of website gurus here at GCC, and if they ever feel over their heads, we can hire some outside help to get it up and running.  For the second, the Magento team promises that virtual products will be an option in the next release, slated for sometime this July (and the alpha I tried out does indeed have it as an option, just not a working option yet)

PrestaShop: Looks very, VERY nice out of the box, was EXTREMELY easy to use/customize.  Probably wouldn’t need any outside help to make it look how we want, with plenty of flash (the aesthetic, not necessarily the technology).  Downsides: it’s currently in Release Candidate 4 for the stable 1.0 version.  Hopefully that means full stable coming very soon.  Downloadable product size limited to 7MB, so we’d be restricted to users downloading PDFs with links/passwords to actual product.  Also, on my first run (today), the whole backend/admin panel suddenly stopped working.  Not sure what’s going on.  Time for one of those re-installs.
*update* before even posting this, I checked again, and was able to get to it.  I blame our lack of good connection here at work, as it had been timing out

Drupal with Ubercart: Actually has pretty much everything we need.  TONS of free modules, ability to have calendar with workshops scheduled, final releases of the software, all the options we are looking for.  Drawback: it just doesn’t seem as professional as the other two.  Oddly enough, it seems like a CMS that has an eCommerce layer on top of it (hmm, wonder why that is).  Things are relatively clearly laid out…. it just doesn’t FEEL as nice as the others (we’re talking admin panel here).  The store itself should be pretty easy to make it look nice.

SO HERE’S MY QUESTION: Has anyone used any of these, and can provide feedback/advice on the good, bad, and ugly of using them in production?  These seem to be three of the top dogs in the open-source eCommerce community, but are there others that are so amazing that I simply must check them out?  Let me know!

Filed under: GCC, Software, the webernets , digital downloads, Drupal, ecommerce, magento, open-source, PrestaShop, Ubercart

my friend is famous

hey! my friend Kyle is famous! he’s the guy on the left in the picture in this blog post.
Wait, if he’s famous because his picture is on Jeff Bell’s blog, then does that mean Jeff is famous?

hmm………

….

Hey! My friend Jeff is famous! He’s the guy in the header of this blog!

Filed under: GCC, pictures , elkhart, GCC, granger community church, Jeff Bell, Kyle Shoemaker

Downloadable Video on WiredChurches.com

I’m pretty pumped.  A project I’ve been a part of is finally a reality!  It was fun to be a small part of this project with a team that worked really hard to get this done in a short amount of time.

We’ve got downloadable video available through wiredchurches.com now!  We’re offering up the highest quality we’ve got to share, so for some of the older videos, that means 640×480 resolutions (or standard tv resolution), but for several of the newer ones, we’re offering the full high-definition 1280×720 video.  In less geeky terms: It’s really cool.

Here’s a little promo page for the videos, but there are more available than what’s linked to there.

*edit* promo page expired, but go here for downloadable goodness.

Filed under: GCC , downloadable video, wiredchurches.com

Working Music

I’ve been searching for a while for good music to work by, and just some new music to listen to in general. The other day on the way back to work I swung by the library to graze the CD section. I got 5, but the two that I’m going to have to go buy now are “Let It Be… NAKED” (the re-release of The Beatles “Let It Be” album with all the orchestra stripped out (as it was originally recorded)) and The Afters album “Never Going Back to OK.”  I’m really digging their style, and it’s some good music for blocking out distractions and working like crazy.

Coming to the close of one big project, and trying to to some major stuff to tie up another project by the 16th.  Good times, good times.  I can’t stress this enough: I’m loving my job.

Filed under: GCC, everyday life , The Afters, The Beatles

oops, I did it again

It’s a really good that that when I’m at home I’ve got a wonderful wife to talk some sense into me when I get too focused on something. The last two nights here at the conference, I’ve found that I get wrapped up in making something big happen, and I forget to go to bed. I really REALLY didn’t intend to stay up late tonight after staying up too late last night. Here it is, 2:40 in the AM and I just realized how late it really was, that I’m hungry, and I’ll be getting very little sleep again tonight. The good news is, my part of this project is nearing completion!

There…I just took a picture of my very sleepy self on my phone and emailed it to myself. Now to insert it in this post…. aren’t you all so very glad I took the time to do that before going to bed?

It’s a viscous cycle isn’t it? I realize I’m up too late, so I write about being up too late, which keeps me up even later. Ok, now i’m just rambling, It’s 2:49 am.

good nightttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttt

Filed under: Dynamic Church Conference, GCC, blogging about blogging, everyday life, mogul, pictures, wifey , DC08, sleepy

i’m DYNAMIC!!

These next couple days I have the privilege of attending the Dynamic Church Conference in Frisco (Dallas), TX.

Already I miss my wife and my daughter, but I’m looking forward to learning a lot about Fellowship One and spending some quality time with some co-workers.

I’m glad the hotel’s got free wi-fi, and I’m planning on actually getting a lot of work done. I got a nice chunk of stuff done between Detroit and Dallas. There are some very big projects that are about to come to completion. More on that hopefully very soon.

Filed under: Dynamic Church Conference, GCC , DC08, dynamic church

Six Ways to Sunday

BLAAH!! Working at home today. Feel like I’m doing ten things at once. My dad used to say I was going six ways to Sunday (wait, usually he said my hair was going six ways to Sunday. I think it applies here too). Thought I’d step back for a second and write this to try and get some organization.

Some of the stuff I’m working on right now:

• Researching the fine details of using different PayPal options to take payments on a website daryl and jeanna are working on (top secret stuff right now…..)
• Working on a password protected “downloads site” (good things are coming very soon!)
• Discovering all the nooks and crannies of our free (since we’re a non-profit organization) dreamhost.com hosting (it’s really amazing what all they include)
• Trying to find some good eCommerce options (as mentioned previously) so we have more than one option to choose from when the time comes
• Starting to plan out the best way to set up an FTP server for jason to meet some large file transfer/sharing needs
• Not forgetting that the attendance database I was working on is almost done…. just need to make pretty graphs……

HEY! That was six!

Filed under: GCC

Looking for an eCommerce Solution

WiredChurches.com is looking for a new ecommerce solution.  We are currently using NetSuite, and it just doesn’t fit our needs in many ways, and seems to add unnecessary work to every task we want to do.  Here’s the basic rundown of what we need in our next solution (above and beyond your basic eCommerce necessities):

Event Registration

We host workshops throughout the year, as well as the increasingly popular Innovate Conference.  We need to be able to not only sell the registration, but also collect info from the customer at the time of purchase (info on each person who will be attending, etc).  We also need to be able to see reports on the attendees (easily see how many are coming/where they’re from/etc).

Tiered/Group/Bundle Pricing

We need a simple way to add “early-bird registration” pricing, as well as group pricing for each product or workshop.  It would also be nice to have bundle pricing (i.e. register for Innovate together with the pre-conference workshops at a discounted rate).

DIGITAL DOWNLOADS!

Ideally, would could store large (very large) files within the system, to be made available for immediate download after purchase.  If absolutely necessary, they can be stored separately, but we need to at least track who bought what.

Great Plains Integration

It would be amazing if it also integrated well with Microsoft Great Plains.

 

I’m actually just doing the research for this project, there are some very hard-working and talented people who will be using the system on a day-to-day basis who may want to add other items.  You know who you are, just email me or reply to this post.

We’ve already got some possible solutions we’re looking into, but if you’ve got any ideas on this topic, we’re still very open to suggestions.  Tell us what works and what doesn’t.  Thanks!

 

Technorati Tags: eCommerce,digital downloads,Great Plains,event registration

Filed under: GCC

Jeff vs. Mario

Mario vs. The Drums

Be sure to watch the whole thing. Each section is a piece of art in itself.

I’m quite proud to say I’ve known Jeff Myers for quite a long time. He’s an absolutely great guy, and an amazing drummer. Good job Jeff!

Filed under: GCC, videos , drum solo, drums, mario

Good job guys!

Red Letters

The musicians blew it out of the water with this one. If you close your eyes, you can easily imagine it’s Kevin Max in parts. Good job guys.

Filed under: GCC, everyday life, videos

slight update

Soo… things at work are going GREAT, and i can’t say that with enough enthusiasm. I REALLY REALLY love my job, the people I work with, and the cause that we’re working for (bringing Up There, down here). I’ll be posting more at a later time.

Secondly, I would like to say that although I’ve only heard one of their songs, and read the lyrics for one other song, I’m already a fan of Flight of the Conchords. It looks like I’ve got some season 1 of their TV show to be catching up on. I’m excited.

Filed under: GCC, everyday life , flight of the conchords

WOOHOO!

Kyle came down to fix the internets in our hallway and stopped by my desk to insist I do the rubik’s cube for him. My first solve was a bit slow for me: 1:25, but then I did one more, and I got the first sub-minute solve I’ve had in a LOOONG time. 59 seconds baby!!! woohoo!

yes. I’m a geek.

oh well, back to Fellowship 1 screencasts.

Filed under: GCC, everyday life, pictures

first day on the job

I’m wrapping up the first day on the job here at GCC, and thought I’d post some quick comments.

• Already I love the work environment here.
• The people have been GREAT!  Very friendly and easy to be around.
• Jason has taken good care of me, making sure I have everything I need, giving me the tour and all that.
• I already have a few little projects to do, and I’m excited to get started on them.  It’s nice to be excited about your work!
• The actual drive home for lunch takes the same amount of time as from ND, but it’s so much faster to get out to my car from my desk here.
• It’s really nice to have a window by my desk where I can actually SEE OUTSIDE.  I’ve spent too long in tech caves.

That’s it for now.  Hope those of you in Michiana are enjoying the nice weather we’re finally having.  

Filed under: GCC

YAESP (yet another Easter service post)

Yes, yes. It seems like half of the GCC bloggers are talking about how great the easter service was. And it was! It was both really impactful, and really cool at the same time. Mark Beeson sure knows how to get his point across. I don’t know if playing Simon and doing the wave with glow-sticks was his idea or someone else’s, but it’s definitely a service that will stick in our heads for quite some time.

One thing I feel like the other posters have omitted is mentioning how absolutely KICKIN the music was during the Simon game. Sure the game was more for fun….more of a warmup….but it *rocked* and for me contributed a lot to the whole experience. I just want to give BIG props to everyone involved in making that happen. As far as the sound in the room itself, I would assume it was Adam Callender and his team. It was also great to watch the service back online, and have my speakers blown. The quality of the webcast audio has gone way up lately. I hear that may have a lot to do with Adam as well.

Anyway, I just thought I’d toss my dos centavos in.

Filed under: GCC , Easter, Simon

Why I feel like that…

WOOHOO!! I very recently accepted a job at Granger Community Church! Officially, I’ll be an IT Project Specialist. Unofficially, it means I’ll get to work with a bunch of really cool people, and spend my days doing what I can to help GCC as we work to let the people of Michiana know that they matter to God, and they matter to us.

I want to say a special thank you to my wife for being amazing and supportive as we both take a step into the unknown in many ways. I can’t wait to get started, but pray that I can keep my head on straight as I finish up here at ND.

Filed under: GCC