As you may have read on vaious other blogs, Northwoods was the place to be the week of Jan 7. Bill English, the man who wrote the book on Microsoft’s Sharepoint led 35 or so Church IT workers through the ins and outs of Sharepoint.

Fady got the ball started rolling on this one, and things progressed quickly after that. A location was chosen and registration opened. Once we had the time, the place, and the people it was time to get ready.

The big players on the back-end:

Linda Cleveland - Instrumental in the registration/preparation process for the attendees.
Melanie Gray - Made sure there was room for everyone, and that everyone had what they needed.
Linda McMillen - Kept us fed like noone else could.

The training was a great success in my opinion. My mind was filled to capacity and then some. I went into it thinking that sharepoint was just a simple collaboration/portal. But I have seen its true colors. Photo dump to follow.

Thanks again to everyone who came out, and a special thanks to Bill. Its not often you find someone in the private sector leading a Christian business.

I just finished up my first roundtable, and it was a great time! We were hosted by Jason Powell and the fellas at GCC, and for my first one it was a fabulous experience. Just a bunch of people sitting around talking and sharing. The combined knowledge base of this group has to be enormous. I have a great set of notes and some action items now, hopefully the Kansas City roundtable next week will be just as good. It’s a wondeful thing for a group of people to come together and share in the happiness and the struggles.

I was able to get a ton out of this roundtable, and I hope that I was able to contribute just a little as well. Now I can’t wait for Kansas City!

At 12:30 on Tuesday (9/25) Jason and I set off for Granger, IN, heading for the IT roundtable. A couple of hours into the drive we somehow managed to drive into a monsoon. As is it was raining like crazy, I felt the front of the car raise slightly as we began to hydroplane. The car then drifted slowly to the left, the back to the right, to the left again then we went into a spin. We did a 180 (half turn) into the right lane between two semi’s, then slid off of the road into the ditch.

Amazingly we weren’t hurt and little happened to the car. There was definite evidence of Gods protective hand during this. I have thanked God every day.

I may put up a small video so you can see what happened…no denying the hand of God.