Nov
19
What’s My Line?
November 19, 2008 |
It’s the ThirdThursday and so that means all hands on deck for Desktop upgrades. I have some organizing documentation ready to go so that assignees can take the list for a specific machine and go to town. The list matches my master list and as we go we’ll discover what we really have for software that’s part of our standard for each of staff and console machines. There’s also a cable or two (or three) to pull from the telephone room to the server room in anticipation of some future projects, including the connection to the new building, the server gigabit network (the Jesus1 network) and the potential to do a kvm-over-cat5 run for the backup server.
But wait - there’s more! We held a small but successful Church Tech Round Table last Saturday, where invited ITFolk from four other churches sat down with Fearless Leader and I to talk tech. Here’s the text from my thanks note that I sent out Saturday evening:
“Wanted to thank each of you for taking time out of your weekend to invest in the Lord’s Kingdom. Personally I feel heartened by what happened. As I prepared for this I hoped that we could talk about issues related to delivery of ministry and services and not necessarily technology. We achieved this without any fights over hardware, OS or applications! I hope that everyone left with a feeling of renewed enthusiasm and a lead or an answer on something that they’ve been working on.
I will get back to you once I work out a more organized way for us to stay in touch.”
I think the outcomes are heartening. Monday night I made a presentation to Board of Management to spend considerable effort this year developing a formal requirements document for a church information system (ERP? CRM?) for Brunswick Street Baptist Church. Although I have no definite answer yet, I was excited by the level of understanding that members displayed (both of what I was talking about and its importance) and so you’ll want to know about that.
But wait - there’s more! The final part to this report is that I asked for Board of Management develop a formal position description for what I do. As is absolutely reasonable they asked that I tell them what I (think I) do now. I’ve asked the Round Table (from last Saturday’s meeting) and discovered that they don’t have such descriptions within their organizations either - but would be interested in what comes out of my request.
What is it that you think I do? What should the position name be? What should the roles and responsibilities be? Who should the position report to? What’s my line?