OK, so the Adobe Connect webcam thing at the RoundTable didn’t work, but at least not because we weren’t prepared. In this case, the cause was something we couldn’t have known in advance. Turns out that 60 users simultaneously in Adobe Connect sessions by themselves chew approx. 1.5 Mb/s. When you try to add 4 webcams to that over a pair of T1s, it’s all over, baby. (See Justin Moore’s good-natured ribbing about our bandwidth quality!) So now we know. By the way, it totally slammed Internet access for our staff as well, and they were a bit cranky about it. 😉

Second issue, even if the technology had worked, my “touch point” idea might very well not have worked anyway. Turns out getting everyone to stop at the same time and interact with the other rooms is a cat-herding exercise.

On the plus-side, the rooms are small enough to have really great conversation. My group in Room A has been outstanding. I’m thinking this breaking-up-into-groups idea is generally on the right track. Also, I think it was good to collect topics in advance and have all rooms generally discussing the same themes and topics at the same time. Even though we can’t see/hear the specifics in the other room, there is something cool about knowing they’re all having similar discussions. That simple fact has created a shared experience in an unexpected way.

Tomorrow we’re going to try to get everyone in one big Connect meeting, spanning across all the rooms. Not sure if UMCOM has a room big enough to hold all of us simultaneously, but we’ll see. Thanks for your flexibility.

The banquet and worship tonight were, for me, exactly what I needed at that moment. I hope most of the attendees had the same reaction.

Our own Matt Bradshaw built a cool web application that generates a web page from a list of feeds and auto-refreshes. We have dropped in feeds from people at the conference we know are blogging. Check it out at http://bitshepherd.com/planet/citrt/.

Overall, I’ve had a great day and I’m thankful to all of you who have come to be a part of it. Day 2 is tomorrow. Geeks for Jesus!

If you want to know about the Asterisk open-source phone system, ask Andrew Mitry. Amazing stuff.

If you’ve been trying to comply with my request to fill out Jason’s survey but have been unable, it’s because Zoho is down. This is outside of Jason’s control. (He’s sorry.) Please keep trying. Maybe they’ll be back up soon???

Churches:
Asbury United Methodist Church, Tulsa, OK
Bethlehem Baptist Church, Minneapolis, MN
Christ Fellowship Church, Palm Beach Gardens, FL
Church of the Resurrection, Leawood, KS
Churches in Covenant, Carrollton, TX
College Heights Christian Church, Joplin, MO
Crestview Baptist Church
First Baptist Church, Atlanta, GA
First Baptist Raytown, Raytown, MO
First Presbyterian Church, Bellevue, WA
First United Methodist Church, Wichita, KS
Grace Covenant Church, Cornelius, NC
Granger Community Church, Granger, IN
Indian Creek Community Church, Olathe, KS
Kansas City Baptist Temple, Raytown, MO
Lakeview Church, Indianapolis, IN
Lincoln Berean Church, Lincoln, NE
Living Word Lutheran Church, Grapevine, TX
Northwoods Community Church, Peoria, IL
Perimeter Church, Duluth, GA
Pinelake Church, Brandon, MS
Pleasant Valley Baptist Church, Liberty, MO
Rhema Bible Church, Tulsa, OK
Seacoast Church, Mt. Pleasant, SC
Sheffield Family Life Center, Kansas City, MO
St. Mark Coptic Orthodox Church, Fairfax, VA
St. Michael the Archangel, Leawood, KS
West Side Christian Church, Springfield, IL
Westbrooke Church, Shawnee Mission, KS

Other:
Christian Computing Magazine, Belton, MO
The IT Roundtable, Dallas, TX
MinistryTECH.org, Edmond, OK
Trinity Technology for Ministry, Kansas City, MO

Vendors:
ACS Technologies, Florence, SC
C&M Support Services & Consulting, Elkhart, IN
Circle Builder, Santa Monica, CA
Fellowship Technologies, Irving, TX
iBiz Initiatives, Lenexa, KS
MBS, Inc., Huntington Beach, CA
Ministry Management Solutions, Orange Park, FL
Shelby Systems, Cordova, TN
The ACTS Group, Houston, TX
United Methodist Communications, Nashville, TN

If you don’t want the background, jump to the bullet points below. If you do want the background, here goes …

You may recall that after the last RoundTable in Houston there was general agreement that our growing group needs to include more people, but at the same time keep it small so that we can continue to enjoy full participation of every attendee around a table. This presents a paradox. Perhaps even a conundrum!

How we’re going to include more people and keep it small

For this RoundTable we’re going to beta test my idea to address the aforementioned conundrum. We’re going to break the 60+ attendees into four separate rooms of approximately 15 people each. In order to allow interaction between the rooms, we will have “touch points” during the sessions where we will be able to pose questions to attendees in other rooms and see/hear them responding.

The technology we’re using for this is Adobe Connect, generously provided by UMCOM Tech Shop. This will be a brave experiment that could fail spectacularly, or possibly be cool. If it works, Woo Hoo! If it proves to be cumbersome or we have technical or facilitation problems, we can always punt. With everyone’s input, we hope to devise a way for future meetings to keep it small for the best possible info exchange, to continue to include more people, and to allow at least the possibility of having a national meeting by linking multiple regional sites (an idea inspired by the Willow Creek Leadership Summit).

Since we’re using Connect to provide the A/V link among the four rooms, we figured it would be cool to use it to enhance the experience within each room too. Each participant will join an Adobe Connect meeting that includes the other people in the same room. That Connect session will be displayed on the projector in that room. Any participant can become a presenter in Connect, allowing them to demo, explain, or illustrate something by showing web sites, applications, etc. on the projector. Is that clear as mud? Even if you don’t understand the explanation, hopefully it will make sense once you see it.

Adobe Connect is an online meeting tool that will help us:
* more effectively exchange information in each room
* simulate a distributed RoundTable with meeting rooms in different cities

Connect requirements:
* Mac (any OS; Safari 2.x)
* Windows (XP/SP2 or Vista; IE6 or later, or Netscape/Firefox)
* Adobe Flash Player
* a broadband connection
* cookies enabled

To use Connect:
1. Set your screen resolution to 1024×768 (so if you present, your screen will match the projector’s resolution).

2. Download and install the presenter client:
* Windows: https://admin.acrobat.com/common/addin/setup.exe
* Mac: https://admin.acrobat.com/common/addin/AcrobatConnectAddin.z
* Alternate: http://www.cor.org/Information_Technology.41.0.html

3. Test Connect by going to the Chat Lobby at this URL:
* http://umc.acrobat.com/chatlobby
* Login convention: (1stname).(Lastname) – (church initials) (for example: Clif.Guy-COR)

4. After a successful test, you’re ready to go to your assigned room and join the meeting for that room:
* Room A – http://umc.acrobat.com/itroundtablea
* Room B – http://umc.acrobat.com/itroundtableb
* Room C – http://umc.acrobat.com/itroundtablec
* Room D – http://umc.acrobat.com/itroundtabled

5. Once you log in, Connect will set a cookie. It’s a good idea to add a bookmark so you can quickly re-enter your meeting room the next day.

Speaking of renewal strategies, I think Mark Batterson’s idea about a “church planter in residence” program is right on the money. We need a good way to use our resources to support church planters and make them more effective.

One of Church of the Resurrection’s three primary visions is renewing the mainline church. For those of you who have never heard the term “mainline” it generally refers to long-established denominations with moderate theology. It includes the following seven denominations and others like them: Episcopal, Lutheran, Methodist, Presbyterian, United Church of Christ, Disciples of Christ, and American Baptist.

These denominations, including Methodist, have been declining since the 1960s. When you take a hard look at the numbers, it’s depressing. Of the mainline denominations, the largest is Methodist. And Resurrection is among the largest Methodist congregations. So we have a special heart for these denominations and their congregations. We long to see them remember their calling, reverse their decline, and return to missional effectiveness.

My wife is a Disciples of Christ (DOC) church planter. Because of that, I’m privileged to see the DOC’s 6 year-old church planting initiative from the inside. This initiative has been very effective, to the point that it’s starting to have a real, positive impact denomination-wide. A few years ago I was personally involved in efforts to revitalize a 60 year-old DOC church. Let me tell you, that was difficult work and it produced only minimal fruit. While church planting is very, very challenging, the DOC experience suggests it is a better strategy for denominational renewal than any program I’ve seen for revitalizing existing congregations.

Up to now, Resurrection’s primary mainline renewal effort has been our conferencing ministry. We hold one main conference each year, Leadership Institute, and host a number of other conferences for the Methodist denomination and other mainline groups such as the Beeson Institute of Asbury Seminary. This is a great ministry and I’m certain it has produced some excellent fruit, yet it seems to me that church planting will be even more important in fulfilling our mainline renewal vision.

Last year, we began by starting our first satellite campus, Resurrection West. Just a few weeks ago, our senior pastor, Adam Hamilton, asked me to start working on plans for an Internet Campus for Resurrection, as one of several other satellite campus locations we are planning. I’m very excited about this, but I also recognize a number of huge challenges. I’ll continue to post and, no doubt, ask questions as we work through the issues. Any of you with experience doing an Internet campus, let me know. I’m very interested to hear your strategy and how it’s going.

Many of you coming to the RoundTable from outside the Kansas City area will be arriving through the day on Tuesday. If you’re making plans for what to do when you arrive, here are some things to consider …

Check in time for both conference hotels is 3:00 pm. If your arriving early afternoon, you can go to your hotel, check-in and then come to the church. Our official welcome starts at 3:30, followed by a campus tour around 4:30.

If you are arriving earlier in the day, you’re welcome to come hang out at the church. Be aware though that in addition to the RoundTable, we’re hosting our biggest conference of the year next week. So if you come early, expect us to put you to work!

If you are arriving too late to make the tour, we’re having dinner at a restaurant close to the church at 7:00 pm. You can go straight there and join us.

Sunset Grill
14577 Metcalf Ave
Overland Park, KS 66223
Google map is here
Call my cell at 913-642-1875 if you get lost!

If any of you coming to the RoundTable could help with the following transportation needs, please post a comment and we’ll hook you up. Thanks!

Andrew Lang needs a ride back to the airport. His flight leaves Thursday night at 7:40 pm (will need to leave the church around 5:45 pm to make it in time).

David Szpunar needs a ride to the church from the airport. His flight arrives Tuesday morning at 8:20 am.

David Szpunar needs a ride back to the airport. His flight leaves Friday morning at 9:00 am (will need to leave the hotel around 7:00 am to make it in time).