October 13, 2002

Technology Update

I enjoy the “people” part of my life much much more than the technological side, yet I’ve learned that good technology helps in reaching out to folks. We were blessed by a generous technology grant that has allowed us to do some things that our regular budget couldn’t afford. Some of these things are obvious -- others are more “behind the scenes.”

First, the phones. If you’ve called recently you may have noticed that you can now reach any of our staff members directly. If they’re at their desks, you get to talk with them right away, if not you can leave a voice mail message. Since the new phone system was put in I figured that I’m saving 20-40 minutes a day not playing “phone tag”, and people are less frustrated since they can actually talk with us.

Next, we’ve just completed the installation of a new computer server that allows all our offices to be connected -- though the school, the religious ed offices, outreach, the rectory and the parish center are separated physically, they are now joined together with this new network. This allows for a different kind of communication that wasn’t possible in the past.

One thing we can do on the network is to access the parish census records so we can stay in touch with people much more easily. But we quickly discovered that our census records need a serious update. a lot of things change in families over the years and our records don’t reflect those changes. And it turns out that we’re missing people! There are parishioners who have been here for 50 years who don’t show up on the computerized census database (through no fault of their own) and I realize that we must do something about this.

We recently received a donation of ten used computers -- and though they are older models, they are better than some of the ones in our offices. We can also use some of them in new offices. The only problem is that they come without monitors. If you have a working monitor that you no longer use and would like to donate it, we’ll put it to good use.

Finally, our web-writing class was very successful and we now have about 20 parishioners who will soon begin working on this website. I'm glad you're checking out our website right now!