This past Saturday, we had our 3rd PC Workshop and it went well. The consensus of our team is that this was the best one yet.  We officially had 5 computers come through although it was more like 6 computers and 1 printer.  We helped everyone that came in except one but we did offer assurance that she had a known Vista issue that no one else had solved yet, not even Microsoft. We’ll follow up on that.
This workshop went well on many levels, not only did the morning go well, but setup is much easier these days. I keep 4 monitors in the server room just for this occasion so it’s just a matter of loading them on a cart and wheeling them down the hall, rather than bringing them from home. I’m all about less effort, plus I’ve got a core team of about 5 that I can count on and we all just jump in and get ‘er done.
Several months ago, I was telling someone that I wanted to build a team for A/V, plus PC support and other various tasks that I’m responsible for and they basically said it couldn’t be done and there was nobody else in the church interested in doing that.
Whatever! That comes from the “we’ve never done it that way before” mentality and I really don’t buy into that. By the way, I’ll be writing more about that point in the near future. For the record, I now have a list of 17 people that are interested in being involved in the tech ministry! I knew there were a few but that’s more than I expected, God is good.  That is the result of very little effort on my part, I especially did not beg for help in any way, I just talk to people and invite them to join us. The difference is I am more interested in someone’s heart to serve rather than their skills and knowledge. I can train anyone who is motivated to learn and more than likely, I will learn right along with them.
By the way, I scheduled this PC Workshop quicker than I planned because I am getting more and more people coming to me and asking me to fix their computer and the reality is, I don’t have time to take on any side work on my own, those days are over, at least for now. So, the PC Workshop is a great way to serve people, both in the church and in the community. We’ll do the next one probably around mid January and keep on an every 2-3 month schedule.
One thing I’m pondering right now is how to follow up with these people. First of all, is it necessary to follow up and if it is, how do we do that? I have everyone fill out a brief form so I have contact info and what we did for them. I’m open to thoughts and ideas on this. Maybe a thank you note, maybe a thank you e-mail, maybe a new computer that works!
The highlight of Saturday was probably the Compaq that would not boot, we suspected it had either bad memory or memory that was unseated. Compaq’s can be very compact and it took at least 3 of us, maybe 4, to literally strip every component out of the case to get to the memory. In the end, we got it back together with only a few extra parts that I deemed as unnecessary and it booted just fine. I’ve got some pics of us tearing into that and other various shots but they are on my other computer and not yet uploaded. I’ll try to get those up soon.
An interesting fact about these PC Workshops that I did not anticipate is that we all seem to rotate through everything going on. As I’m looking at one thing, someone may ask me about what they are looking at, I’ll move over there, someone else will step in where I was and it kind of flows like that. So when I say 3 or 4 of us tackled this Compaq, that’s how it was, one of us would work for awhile on it, then someone else would come along and help. Although there was a time on the Compaq where there were 3 of us together trying to get something done on it.
I think our team is getting more settled into things and we are more efficient than we were the first couple of workshops and people seem to be very appreciative of our help.