Welcome

I've decided to start a blog. If there's one thing I remember from my high school English courses, it's that you should know your audience and write for them. In this case, I will be gearing my writing towards my supporters. My goals are:

• To provide more frequent updates about my ministry
• To provide stories from the Campus ministry and other ministries, to show what Campus for Christ -- and Power to Change as a whole -- is doing

My intent is not to replace my newsletter updates with this blog, but to complement them with more frequent updates. In some cases they may be shorter, but I suspect this blog will also be an outlet where I can write in more detail to give a better picture of the day to day operations.

With that said, let me tell you about Waterloo project.

About two weeks ago the staff met to discuss various aspects of the project, from high-level goals to details like our daily schedule. One moment I really remember was when we were all in a conference room editing a shared google spreadsheet with our schedule in it. We simultaneously tried different schedules out, summed up work hours, answered questions in the chat (so as not to disturb the main discussion) and made it look pretty with colors. One person's change would just show up on the other people's spreadsheets (assuming the internet in that conference room worked for you). It was a striking example of how collaboration increases efficiency.

Two Sundays ago I moved in to this residence by Laurier University. The students moved in on Monday. The first three days were student orientation, mostly done at a local church. It was particularly interesting to see the leadership games done Tuesday morning. One team had to move an apple using only strings attached to a ring, while the other team worked on untangling themselves from a circular rope with their eyes shut. You could see who the natural leaders were, yet how important the followers were in completing the team.

On Thursday we finally met as an IT team. I gave a presentation about the technology landscape at Power to Change, what our goals are for Waterloo project, and what my expectations were for them. I've decided to implement a "core hours" idea, where I require them to work from 10:30 to 4:00, and require a total # of hours worked per week (we keep track using a project management tool called ClockingIT. The idea here is to give the students real workplace experience, and most programming companies (at least the ones I would want c4c operations to emulate) give you flexibility to work start mid-morning, provided you get the work done and work your hours.

Of the 17 students on project, the IT team consists of 7 students and one splitting his time between campus and IT. I'm expecting them to work 32 hours a week on IT, not including lunch. That leaves time for evangelism and other project activities. The skill level of the IT guys is quite high. Two have already worked for C4C in the past, and all are quick learners and have programming experience of some form. It's the first time I'm leading such a large group, so I'm both excited and nervous.

That's all for now; stay tuned for more.