Dynamic Church Conference 08: Day 1

Today was the kickoff day for the Dynamic Church Conference, the annual gathering put on by the fine folks that bring us FellowshipOne.  Today was a great day for a number of reasons.  First, it was great to connect with old friends.  I saw a lot of folks from Sunset, my former church in Oregon, and met a couple of new people from there.  A find crew, the whole lot!  Oh, to those of you that follow me on Twitter, I'm tagging my tweets with #DC08 for easy reference in Tweetscan.

I met some new friends (waves to Luke in Arizona), got to hang out with some virtual and IRL friends (hello, Terry Storch...I love the fact that you started applauded when they presented the XML API) and connected with my friends from Fellowship Tech.  It was great to see Mark, Steve, both Jeffs, Curtis, Tammy and others.

The breakout sessions today were great.  I enjoyed listening to Cynthia Ware talk about the new media and how it impacts churches.  I have my notes elsewhere, and I may post them up later (and even some video, heheh), but a very fair summary would be that Cynthia is calling on churches to embrace technology, not find ways to avoid it.  So many churches just "don't get it", they think that somehow they have to control all information that goes in and out...and they are so wrong.  They cannot control their brand (their impression upon others), they can only guide it.  If upper management isn't willing to guide it, then others will do it for them.  That is the world we live in.  It's not a bad thing though, it's actually quite good.  As Cynthia said, the world and the way it communicates has changed so dramatically over the past few years that it's hardly recognizable to those that cling to the old ways.  Amen, Cynthia!

Since a good portion of my readers are propeller heads, I won't bore you with the juicy details of the upcoming API release from FellowshipOne, but let's just say that it's exciting enough to get a room full of developers to applaude.  To get developers that excited about anything...well, it has to be special! ;)  Essentially what it means is that FellowshipOne is opening up the door to developers that want to interact (to push and pull info) with their data that is held in the F1 databases.  That's a great step!  Many of us have been waiting anxiously for this to happen, and it's coming to be. 

So today was a great day for connections, instruction and getting an idea of what the future of church management software (ChMS) looks like.  I've seen the future of this technology folks, and I believe it lies with FellowshipOne.  If your church isn't using this, you are spinning your wheels.  To loosely quote Jeff Hook in his opening keynote address, "churches need to do everything they can to catch up to this point, because the future is upon us and it's changing quickly".  Goodnight, all.

Oh, a very quick post script: my phone is dying a slow and painful death.  I'm holding out for version 2 of the iPhone to replace it with, so in the meantime, if you call or text me and I don't seem terribly responsive, don't take it too personally.  I still love you.   It's just my phone that doesn't like you enough to let me see the messages. ;)

Comments

[Paul Frazier]

O my. I am so glad i read to the end of that post. The i what? Iphone...Matt are you coming over to the dark side?

[Matt Singley]

@Paul...I know. I can hardly believe I put it in writing. However, I will adopt the best technology, not just by brand. With the rumored addition of Exchange support and 3G, it will be the best phone, not just the prettiest. So, I'm in!

[Matt Metzger]

unfortunately i'm getting a lot done (see recent post on my blog about staying up too late) I'll keep an eye out for you and say hi.

[Stacie]

Thanks for the comment. Conference has been pretty cool so far.

Great blog. :)

[James Higginbotham]

Thanks for the summary! I couldn't make it to the Thurs or Fri sessions, but I'm headed to the 10am REST discussion - hope to see you there!