The Operations-to-Documentation ratio in IT and video, at least for us, is very high.  This bothers me.  I know I’ve got on my soapbox about it before, and then I always have this renewed resolve to go and make it happen.  Soon after, some new idea pops into my head for reconfiguring this or implementing that and BOOM…documentation is now out the window for the moment (again).

Now I know that as the person responsible for leading IT at the church, I should be looking out for new and better ways of doing things.  At the same time, the pattern I see myself getting into bothers me … especially in the wake of these past 2 weeks with all the health junk I had to wade through.  What if that was more serious?  What if I missed 3 months of work, rather than 4 days?

After thinking through some of this and talking it over with my boss, I decided that after finishing up a couple lingering projects, I am going to shift my focus temporarily and spend a high percentage of my time focused solely on documenting and training for the systems and processes we already have in place.  Of course, routine things like the helpdesk and backups will still happen, but I look to set aside maybe 1.5 days for that.  As for the length of this venture, I’m going to make the push for probably 2 to 3 months.

This definitely wasn’t how I planned to approach documentation at the start of the year, but more and more I’m seeing that we’ve just got to catch up with it.  While I know that we’re not going to just "arrive" in this area ever, I think this will be a big help in getting us where we need to be.

I must say, I’m a tad bit jealous for the folks that got to hit the IT Roundtable at COR this week.  You can bet that there’s a line item in my 2008 budget for next year’s event, wherever it may be.

A question that was asked to me indirectly a few days ago was “what was the take-home for you?”  For me, it was a single line of thought:  What can I do to better serve our end-users and set them up (as best I can) for a win?

Here’s a couple things I came up with… this is not “what you should do” … this is where I’m at as an individual.

I need to manage my time better.  I get so bogged down sometimes…not always with work, but sometimes with just thinking about the work that needs done.  Trying to remember everything you have to can be a job in itself if you don’t manage it right.  I’ve spent the past couple days taking every job that comes to mind and putting it in my Outlook tasks as soon I as I think of it.  I’m going to try using the task list for planning my week out and seeing how it goes.

I need to document better.  Duh.  Our infrastructure needs to be operational whether I’m at home, at my desk, or in a hospital bed, and I need to make sure that my boss (or anyone else that is there to do my job) can do it without having to call me.  This is one of my biggest struggles right now in IT.  I get in such a hurry to get something done or to close a ticket that often times I forget to make a note on how I did this or that.

I need to learn more.  This is why I don’t flinch at the idea of spending money to go to other places (especially churches) to learn, because I am 100% certain that I still know very little about IT.  The 2006 IT Roundtable was (and still is) THE biggest turning point in my life as an IT guy, and though I’ve learned much since then, I am nowhere near where I should be.  My big struggle here is reading.  I’m an “action” guy, and it is SO hard for me to sit down and try to digest something.  I need to find a place to go and read that is as distraction-free as I can make it.

I’m sure there’s more than this, and I’ll bring it up as it comes to mind (after I put it on my task list).

If you’re charged with the task of maintaining your organizations Active Directory, check out this article from Microsoft TechNet Magazine, “11 Essential Tools for Managing Active Directory.”  The article covers 11 free tools to make your administration job easier, and free is always good.

It’s been a crazy week this week.

Jeff, my summer intern, finished up last week and is now headed to Mount Vernon for school.  He added a great deal to what we were doing here in terms of video, and he’s going to be missed a LOT.  Consequently, I’ve been picking up some slack in the video area. 

I’ve been kicking around the idea of turning this blog into more of a “general church tech” deal instead of strictly IT.  Why?  Well for me, it definitely matches my job a little more.  My title is IT Director for sure, but I have a good deal of involvement in all things technical around the building, from our Symnet audio network to our lighting, and even our HVAC system at times.  It keeps me busy, but it’s very rewarding from a learning standpoint.  I haven’t made a final decision on shifting the blog yet, but by the end of the week I’ll have my mind made up.

I’ve had the opportunity to get back into music lately, and I’m loving it.  For me, this means, playing bass guitar, drumming, working on ProTools projects, and sometimes even singing.  I’ve had the opportunity to fill in the past couple of weeks with the worship team, and it’s been nothing but a blast.

So that’s a little snapshot of what I’ve been up to, in case you’ve been wondering why the posts have ramped down as of late.  If I do end up changing this to a “general tech” blog, you can bet I’ll have more to talk about.  We’ll see how that goes.

With everything going on last week in the land of video, I had this one thought in the back of my mind… it was like a splinter, causing me to cringe out of nowhere and sometimes causing severe discomfort.

That thought?  DST updates.

I don’t think it could’ve happened on a more hectic week.  What with 10 video pieces to crank out, all airing on or BEFORE Sunday, I was really wondering “where on earth is this going to fit in?“  I already had plans to set up WSUS, but I wasn’t sure how that was going to work out, and after reading all the KB articles on the Exchange Calendar Tool, I was about sick to my stomach wondering how this was all going to come together.

I decided that we would go the WSUS route to get our updates.  I set up a VM, and ended up taking the host machine to my house to download the updates (yes, I have MORE bandwidth at home than I do at the office….for now).  After I downloaded what we needed (and then some), I took the server back to the office, reconnected it, and set a GPO to point all of our computers at the new WSUS server, now loaded with every critical and security update we would possibly need at the time.  After doing some random spot checks, it appeared that on Friday, every last server and PC (except our lonely Win2k box in the control room), had received the DST update and was ready to roll.

*whew*… ok.  So far, so good.  Now, it was time to update Exchange and all of our calendars.  The Exchange patch installed with no issues, but I had MAJOR issues trying to update everyone’s calendar using Exchange Calendar Update.  I decided that since there were only about 30 calendars to update, and since everyone worked in the same office area, I would load up the Outlook calendar update onto a flash drive and spend my Monday visiting everyone and updating their calendar.  Was this the most desirable course of action?  No, not by a long shot.  I’m all about remote administration, so this was not in my Top 10 List of Things I Wanna Do On Monday.  However, it worked out very well.  The update tool worked like a charm, and by the end of the day, everyone’s calendar was back in order.

Was this smooth?  To me, yes.  The process went MUCH smoother than it could have.  It amazes me sometimes how God shows up on the scene when we humans think that we’re pretty much hosed.  I honestly don’t know HOW the update process went as smooth as it did… it just did.  I’m amazed, but really, should I be so surprised?  No… that’s just how God works.  I just kinda stand there with my jaw dropped.

If any week could be described as the “perfect storm,” this past week was it.  Between video projects, 3 different events, and rolling DST updates out to all of our PCs and Macs, this past week was absolutely nuts.  When you see the end result though, and when you see the stuff that took all week to do affect other people and cause change in their lives, that makes up for all all the time that had to be spent on it.

This week we had First Wednesday, which is always amazing.  The theme of this month was ‘Deal or No Deal.’  You can read John’s scoop on FW here. 

On Friday we had a night set up especially for our volunteers.  Tim Hawkins was on the scene and had everyone there in absolute stitches.  I must admit, it’s been a long long time since I’ve laughed that hard.  The BEST thing about this evening though?  EVERY volunteer was able to enjoy the evening with no obligations whatsoever.  We trained a few staff on using cameras and some of the control room equipment so that we didn’t even need to use our volunteers for IMAG.  All the food was cooked and served by staff.  All-in-all, a great night.

On to Sunday!  The Elements series has been amazing so far.  This weekend was no different.  Danny gives an excellent account of what went down, and he’s much more eloquent than me anyway. :)  Our live production teams did an AWESOME job, both in the control room and on the floor.

Was this week crazy?  You bet.  But the end result was life change for everyone involved.  That makes up for it, ten-fold.

For the past few weeks our management team has been working on realigning our staff and making some role changes in our organization.  This has happened once already since I’ve been on staff.  It’s a healthy thing to do, because you have to change to stay effective.  Sometimes those changes are small, and sometimes those changes are not-so-small.  Being the lone IT guy, I’ve gotten a little used to the organizational changes not having much of an effect on me, which is why I got rocked at our weekly staff meeting today.

Our executive director had our new org chart ready and presented it to us today.  When he got to the Business Operations division (which is where the IT Department sits), my jaw dropped.  We now have a second person working in the IT Department!

K Greenwalt (her real name, I promise) is now working in IT operations and will be doing training and software support for our staff.  K is also our Fellowship One superhero and has a pretty good knowledge of our systems, so this was a pretty logical move.  Her background and strong ability to train is going to be extremely valuable as our staff begins to “live” in Outlook.  This to me is HUGE…not only because we now have a second person on board, but also because they’ve already been on the inside and have a good feel for how our office operates.  I’M PUMPED!!
Hopefully, this will give us the ability to begin moving forward with some projects we’ve had to sit on for awhile.  I’m very excited! (Have I mentioned that already?)  Welcome to the IT Department, K!

I’ve been meaning to write on this for awhile now.  Last year was filled with all sorts of challenges and opportunites, and I wanted to touch on just a few things from 2006 that have made life in NewPointe’s IT world more enjoyable.

1. Virtualization.  Hands down, the best thing to happen to our servers.  VMware is totally reshaping the way we do server deployment and recovery planning at NewPointe.  The ability to have multiple installations of Server2003, XP, or even Linux running on a single box is HUGE, especially when money and space are both a little tight.  You can even do a physical-to-virtual conversion on your existing servers.  I haven’t had a chance to try that out yet, but I’ve already got a test box ready for it.
2. Helpdesk system.  It used to not be a big deal to just take word-of-mouth requests.  Anymore though, it’s all but impossible to remember them.  Our Facilities crew has felt the same way for some time now.  Right after we moved into our new building, we had the opportunity to roll out WinRT (the Windows-ported version of Request Tracker) to our staff.  They have all done a terrific job of embracing the system, as direct email and walk-in requests have all but disappeared.  WinRT’s interface is friendly enough for anyone to use, and it’s got enough features and flexibility to support most smaller organizations and get them started.
3. Volunteerism.  With a new building comes a new network, but we had a pretty unique situation that almost left us with a very limited infrastructure.  In the end (about 8 weeks prior to opening day), we had to pull our own cable to extend the network and phone system out of the office area.  It was volunteers that made this possible, because there’s no way that I could have pulled that cable myself, especially through the ceilings (I have acrophobia in a big way).  I get a stomach ache when I think about how crippled our network would be had we not had volunteers step up and make it happen.  We owe much to our volunteers for this as well as many many other things in our facility.

There are plenty of other things to talk about in 2007, but these are the 3 items that really brought positive change and momentum for us in the past year.  I’m looking forward to seeing what 2007 has in store for us.

Here are our stats after being online with Katharion for a full week.

I had to chuckle a little when I realized that Katharion is handling more mail for Parimeter in a single day than it is for us in an entire week.  I also noticed that our spam-to-legit email ratio is pretty low.  Interesting…  maybe we have a bunch of users that are getting email feeds off of forums or something.

I’m still very impressed with how much garbage Katharion is keeping off of our email server.  This not only saves our users time and frustration from sifting through their inboxes, but over time we’ll save quite a hunk of bandwidth as well.  Right now we only have a non-line-of-sight wireless connection, so that hunk of bandwidth is pretty valuable. :-)  (That in itself is another story for another time).

So far so good!  I’ve yet to hear any ill remarks about Katharion’s services, and judging from our experiences, it doesn’t yet look like there’s a good reason not to go with them. 

This past week our senior pastor’s notebook died on him.  No warnings or anything, it just stopped running and would not start back up.

After some investigation, we had the culprit narrowed down to  something between the power socket on the back of the machine the and motherboard.  I put a call in to Lenovo tech support and within just a couple minutes I was on the phone with a living breathing person who was in Atlanta (I’ve called Lenovo tech support before and this is SO nice).

The phone call took place around 10:00am Tuesday last week.  On Wednesday, DHL dropped my return box off.  I boxed the dead computer, did the small amount of paperwork, and called DHL to schedule the pickup.

DHL picked up the notebook on Monday (grrr), and by Wednesday, it was BACK in our office ready to be put back to work.  Lenovo’s techs (in Tennessee, mind you) had worked on the unit the day it got there, finished it, and overnighted it back to me.  Impressive! 

It’s very refreshing to be dealing with a company who values customer support like this.  Who else is knocking it out of the part on the support end?  Tell me your stories!