Rock v7

Yes, itʼs the moment you've all been waiting for: Version 7.0 has been released! In fact, the current version is 7.2 and 7.3 is being pushed for quick release very soon. What a wild ride! One big thing we've learned, is that we don't want to do such a big release again - we'll be working on more frequent, smaller releases as we've said before. 7.3 will fix the last few big issues from the 7.0 sequence, so 7.4, while itʼs being developed already, is going to be going back to the more common full alpha and beta testing and release schedules. Thank you to all of our Alpha and Beta testers for coming with us on this wild ride! We will be working with these users a little more to dial in on getting even more thorough testing of big releases before they're released - we really appreciate the time you've put into this!

[editorial note: presently, all of the v7 releases are available only to Early Access organizations - these are organizations who support Spark financially. This is not only a "thank you" to those organizations, but also a way of being able to work closely with churches that we already have contact with, in the early days of deploying a new version of Rock. If your church isn't a financial supporter of Rock yet, hang tight for just a little longer, as broad access is coming soon. Learn more about Early Access or about being a financial supporter of Spark today!]

Sparkability Group updates:

One thing we've been working on recently is Family pre-registration- this will allow people to pre-register themselves on your website or at a kiosk before their actual visit. This is something that many churches have expressed a desire for, but The Crossing, Christ Fellowship, and NewSpring stepped up and funded the project through Sparkability.

We're also working on our caching model- we're refactoring that to be a little faster with some new technologies.

Events:

RX2018 is coming up, but Early Bird pricing is still open for a little longer. Don't wait to register! We're excited to release a more complete list of our tracks and speakers within a few weeks, and at that time Early Bird pricing will probably expire. Remember this is going to be a conference for much more than you database administrators - we really encourage you to bring ministry leaders to this conference this year because we're going to be having content aimed at their roles, as well. We are working on content for such topics as: data, leadership, finance, involvement, communications/web, development and of course everything you can learn and recipes you can get inspired by, from other churches using Rock.

Breaking news! We're going to have a pre-conference track on Sunday afternoon before the conference begins on Monday. This is for churches who are new to Rock, to give them some basic information so that they have a context to filter everything through which they will start hearing at the conference. Itʼs also going to be a great place for these churches to get their initial question answered - what migration looks like, etc. If you want to attend this track, look for information coming soon about registering for that as well; itʼs free, but we need to know who all is coming to that track, so we're making it a separate registration from the rest of the conference as a whole.

At the same time, there will be a pre-conference track for our 2018 Rock Stars and our sponsors - new Rock Stars will receive an invitation. And perhaps we'll be able to bring the Rock Stars into the "New to Rock" track at the end to really get the new churches hooked up with some great people with lots of Rock experience.

Finally, we are considering a post-conference "Deep Dive" track after the conference. So you might want to hold off on your ticket purchases until we can get final information out about what tracks we will offer before and after the conference - you just may be interested in some of them.

Sponsors:

Simple Donation
Simplify your payments with one supercharged processor when you use Simple Donation. Power your event payments, one-time and recurring contributions, and text giving, and meet your givers right where they are. Safely saving credit cards and bank accounts makes your member donation experience uncomplicated and very fast. With secure, safe and 100% PCI compliant tokenized payments, you never have to worry about maintaining PCI compliance. Committed to constant innovation, and offering real-time transaction syncing, Simple Donation is a simple choice.

Boxcast
Simplify your payments with one supercharged processor when you use Simple Donation. Power your event payments, one-time and recurring contributions, and text giving, and meet your givers right where they are. Safely saving credit cards and bank accounts makes your member donation experience uncomplicated and very fast. With secure, safe and 100% PCI compliant tokenized payments, you never have to worry about maintaining PCI compliance. Committed to constant innovation, and offering real-time transaction syncing, Simple Donation is a simple choice.