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).

It was not a good idea for me to stay up late in the last days of my vacation, because I had a LOT of trouble getting to sleep on Monday night.  I woke up at 3:10am Tuesday morning with about 3.5 hours of sleep under my belt, packed my things, and headed for Granger.  I actually made it about 100 miles before I had to pull over and get some truck driver-grade coffee in Norwalk.

I pulled into Granger about 9am and checked in at my motel.  About 5 minutes later I received a call from our office…our Quickbooks server had quit working abruptly and of course, as you would imagine, it was payroll week.  Fortunately the solution was simple:  I restarted the QuickbooksDB service on the server and things were rolling again.  Still trying to figure out how it stopped though.

I spent the remainder of the day at GCC, working on some various items, one of those items being the audio recording/streaming for the Roundtable.  We will definitely be recording the Roundtable, and hopefully we’ll be streaming, too.  Check back around 8:50 to find out.

I don’t think I’ve ever been as tired as I was last night when I finally stumbled (yes, stumbled) into my motel room to get some much-needed shuteye.  I’m feeling very rested up this morning, though, and man am I stoked.

Tune in later for more Roundtable updates.

Yeah I’m pumped.

I’ve been seeing posts all over the place (here, here, here, oh and here) about local Church IT Roundtable events happening across the country.  I think this is AWESOME.  I had the opportunity to attend the first CITRT at Granger last year, and I benefited in a huge way from it.  I wasn’t able to go to Houston for the spring Roundtable, but from all the notes I’ve seen elsewhere, it was a great time for those who were there.  (Trust me, I’m not going to miss the “Fall Edition” )

With that in mind, I’m going to throw this out:  Are there any IT Directors/Coordinators/Volunteers in churches in the Central/Northeast Ohio area that are reading this blog?  If so, are any of you interested in getting together for a roundtable-type discussion?  I’m really interested to hear what anyone has to say on this.  Leave a comment if you’d be interested and we can start talking about what this might look like.