Last night I had dinner with Alfred Johnson, head of sales and marketing for Shelby Systems. He flew in to Kansas City just to spend a few hours with me. I took him to the quintessential barbecue place of Kansas City – Arthur Bryant’s. Alfred could eat only half his sandwich. Yes, the beef sandwiches at Arthur Bryant’s really are that big! It’s ridiculous.

Sounds like Arena is coming along nicely. I’m not sure how much of our conversation I’m at liberty to discuss but I can say that Alfred has Web 2.0 and social networking on his mind.
I’m wondering if Dave Winer is right (see this and this). Will Twitter become a de facto standard for identity on the web? If so, could that eventually allow ChMS providers to integrate seamlessly with things like Facebook and Circle Builder? Hmmm …

I’m writing this post from the Charlotte airport. Tonight I’m having dinner with Robin Clayton and Ben Jordan of ACS Technologies. Then I’m visiting ACS all day tomorrow to talk strategy. Standby for a report on that trip.

Brent Cohen e-mailed me a link to this story on CNN saying that GodTube was the “#1 Fastest Growing Website in U.S. in 1st month of Launch.” I commented about GodTube back in March. Do you suppose my less-than-favorable comments were a bit too hasty?

I know most of you out there reading this blog must also be wrestling with the question of how to leverage all of these new developments in Web 2.0 stuff. In particular, right now we’re implementing blip.tv for streaming sermons. Instead of going where the Christians are, we’re using a secular site. What are your thoughts about that? Should we also use GodTube?

The deadline for hotel registration to get the RoundTable rate is tomorrow for the Wyndham. The deadline has already passed for the Holiday Inn.

RoundTable attendee, Kansas City-area church nerd, and all around nice guy Jason Wilson has obtained his church van to help transport people to/from hotels and Resurrection. We also have other local church IT people who have volunteered to make a few runs back and forth to the airport. So if you need transportation while you’re here, please leave a comment on this post and we’ll see what we can do to arrange it.

If you’re coming to the RoundTable, you best be gettin’ your registration in. Registration closes at the end of the day Monday, September 24.

The RoundTable is in two weeks! We need to start collecting topics now so we can get organized a bit in advance. Give me your ideas by commenting on this post. To jump-start your thinking, here are some posts by Tony Dye about what was discussed the last time:
http://tonydye.typepad.com/citrt/2007/04/hot_roundtable_.html
http://tonydye.typepad.com/main/2007/04/cit_roundtable_.html
http://tonydye.typepad.com/main/2007/04/more_roundtable.html

What burning questions do you have for your fellow church IT people?

Travis, Brian, and I are now in the thick of preparing our RFP to upgrade our Church Management System. We are in back-to-back meetings all day long, conducting requirements gathering interviews and getting demos from the short list vendors, not to mention planning a little event and trying to keep up with routine duties.

If you have tried to reach me by phone in the last couple of weeks, you have my sympathies. I strongly suggest e-mail to clif.guy at cor.org as a better way to get a response. Even then, it might be a few days before you hear back. Sorry to be such a pain.

To discuss anything about the RoundTable, contact Amy Facemire at 913-544-0743 or amy.facemire at cor.org.

To discuss anything about our Next Generation ChMS project, contact Travis Morgan at 913-314-6464 or travis.morgan at cor.org.

To learn how a Jew from Kansas City worked with an archbishop from Baltimore to build a web site for the pope, you need to attend the RoundTable where you’ll meet Brent Cohen.

Although that sounds like the setup for a joke, it’s the true story of Brent receiving a phone call in 1995 from Cardinal Keeler, then Archbishop of Baltimore, leading to an ecumenical collaboration and culminating not only in a web site being built but also an opportunity for Brent to meet John Paul II in person.

If that story doesn’t interest you, ask Brent about how Haley Barbour (now governor of Mississippi but then chairman of the Republican National Committee) at first didn’t see a need for the RNC to have a web site. No doubt Joe Trippi would be highly amused. Brent did end up building the first site for the RNC after Haley saw the light a couple of years later and called Brent.

I was entertained by these stories over lunch with Brent on Wednesday. He now lives in the Los Angeles area, but was born and raised in Kansas City. He was back in town for a family reunion during Rosh Hashanah. He is a strategic thinker and friend of Rick Warren and Eric Busby and is beginning to explore church IT, ChMS, and how they relate to his new company, Circle Builder. You will enjoy meeting Brent and likewise he wants to learn as much as he can from all of you.

If you haven’t registered for the RoundTable, do it now. Registration closes at the end of the day Monday, September 24.

Appian Way reader and RoundTable attendee Justin Kramp asks:

Clif — Thanks for putting so much effort into this. I’m really excited for the event. Any chance you’d post a list of vendors participating in advance?

Great question, Justin!

Vendors that have registered so far are:
United Methodist Communications Tech Shop
ACS Technologies
Circle Builder
Fellowship Technologies
MBS, Inc.
Ministry Management Solutions
Shelby Systems
The ACTS Group

I heard through the grapevine that some of you tried to register for the RoundTable but the registration site was down. Sorry about that. When we came in to the office on Tuesday after the holiday weekend we saw the site was down. We don’t know when over the long weekend it went down. It took our vendor a couple of hours on Tuesday morning to resolve the issues and get things working again. If you tried to register but were denied, please try again. You don’t want to miss the RoundTable because of a server outage. Computer geeks, of all people, should understand that!

So far 32 awesome church IT people and 10 amazing vendor people from around the country have registered. Wee hoo! We have heard from another 28 who said they are coming but haven’t registered yet. Come on and register, please! It’s difficult to complete our preparations when the event is only 3 weeks away and we don’t know if we will have 50 people or 80 people. 😉

So that we can get final counts to our caterers, etc., registration will close at the end of the day on Monday, September 24. Register now!