Call for 2020 CITN Regional Roundtables

Each year CITN hosts regional events in the Early Spring which are a 1day roundtable format and hopefully close-ish to your home. We try to have enough sites across the country that attendees don’t have to drive more than 3-4 hrs to attend a regional event.

For 2020, we’d like spring regionals to be the last week of March with a preferred date of Tuesday, March 31st.

CONFIRMED Host SITES to date:

  • Houston’s First Baptist Church - Loop Campus
    7401 Katy Freeway
    Houston, TX 77024
    @John.Gunn + BEMA/@CGreenTX
    When: Tuesday, March 31st

  • ChapelHill - South Atlanta Campus
    4330 Washington Rd
    East Point, GA 30344
    @iamkarlp
    When: Tuesday, March 31st

  • Children’s Hunger Fund
    13931 Balboa Blvd.
    Sylmar, CA 91342
    @Grandmofflopez
    When: Wednesday, April 1

  • Alderwood Community Church
    3403 Alderwood Mall Blvd.
    Lynnwood, WA 98036
    @Kjellandrew
    When: Tuesday, March 31st

  • Church on the Rock
    900 Birdie Hills Rd.
    Saint Peters, MO 63376
    @tommyprater
    When: Tuesday, March 31

  • Bay Presbyterian Church
    25415 Lake Road
    Bay Village, Ohio 44140
    @tschordock
    When: Tuesday, March 31st

  • Fellowship Greenville
    3161 S. Hwy. 14
    Greenville, SC
    29615
    @iXthus
    When: Tuesday, March 31

  • Bridgeway Community Church
    Columbia Campus - Charity Auditorium
    9189 Red Branch Rd
    Columbia MD 21045
    @djrock93
    When: Monday, March 30th

  • Lincoln Berean Church
    6400 S 70th St
    Lincoln, NE 68516
    402-483-6512
    @mrock
    When: Tuesday, March 31

  • The Moody Church
    1635 N LaSalle, Chicago, IL 60614
    https://goo.gl/maps/H9Jd3usAvUYNjsBW6
    @jonny
    When: Tuesday, March 31st

  • Stones Crossing Church
    7000 W Stones Crossing Road
    Greenwood, IN 46143
    @asudduth
    When: Tuesday, March 31st

  • Hope Community Church
    Morrisville Campus
    1000 Perimeter Park Dr
    Morrisville, NC 27560
    @Bill_Morrison
    When: Tuesday March 31st


Who can host a regional event?
What does it take?

  1. Host has previously attended at minimum 1) Church IT Network National event and preferably also a regional roundtable.
  2. Facilities to host 20-30 people (and permission support from your church / organization)
  3. A Willing Heart :slight_smile:
  4. See 1.

If you can answer YES to all of these questions and would like to be considered as a 2020 host site, please leave a comment below in this thread.

Here’s what a typical regional event looks like …

Schedule

The event itself looks something like this:
Evening before - optional meet-n-greet dinner and hang time.
Day of - 8:30 registration. 9:00 kickoff. Lunch. 5:00 roundtable ends. 6:00 optional dinner.

Promotion

CITN leadership will promote from our venues (This forum, twitter, facebook, insta, mailchipmp, etc), but you’ll need to find ways to reach IT peeps in your area not familiar with CITN. Mailers, personal phone calls, whatever you can do to reach out … do it!

Registration

  • CITN will provide centralized online registration for each site.
  • To cover your costs but not make it so cheap that its not a “value” that people commit to, we’ve set $35 as the price for a 1-day event.

The Day

Opening

  • Welcome

  • Prayer at some point before discussion starts, and perhaps a brief challenge or devotion time lead by one of your pastors.

  • Capture discussion topics/questions on the fly … spend 10mins max writing down topics/questions from the audience on a whiteboard or whatever so everyone can view. Have people quickly vote for each topic, then work your list from most interest to least.

  • Identify at least one person to take notes, most people get caught up in the conversation and then later ask for links or names of tools or products, it has proven very helpful for one person (or people rotating) to take notes and publish those notes for the entire group to go back to later (also helpful to share those notes with the entire CITN community).

The Moderator’s Job

  • Start working through each question/topic. Feel free to merge questions together, address questions out of order when there’s a natural segway … again nothing’s written in stone. Let the discussion be organic vs. mechanical.
  • It’s the moderators job to discern which questions are most beneficial for the whole group and which would be best answered by “experts” during a break. For very narrow specific questions ask the audience who has been there, done that and have them pair up with the requester during a break … unless many people are interested in the answer too.
  • Try to not let any one topic take up too much time. Some topics could take all day :slight_smile: The moderator will have to, from time to time, ask that the group move on to another topic.
  • Stress that people be on time after breaks … you’ll have to be persistent on this as geeks tend to like to yak a lot with each other :slight_smile:

Closing

  • Take a group photo and tag #citn on social media.
  • Push people to connect with other CITN peeps on this forum, as well as our slack channel.
  • Invite everyone to the National Event in the Fall.

Door Prizes

  • Everyone loves a freebie even if its just some silly swag.

Thanks!

1 Like

I’d be happy to host if it makes sense to hold a regional in northeast Ohio. I do meet all of the criteria, have permission from my church (I’m also the person who would grant that permission), and we easily have the space. PLUS, we’re right down the street from a Dave & Buster’s!
We’re located in Bay Village, Ohio…a western suburb of Cleveland right along Lake Erie.
The church is less than one mile from Interstate 90.

1 Like

Working on a Houston location for the Texas regional!

1 Like

Houston’s First Baptist Church would be happy to host the Texas regional roundtable.

2 Likes

Community Fellowship in West Chicago, IL can host. We’re in the far west suburbs of Chicago.

1 Like

@CGreenTX ^^^ Just FYI

Yep! BEMA is planning to provide support to make it happen. We’re thrilled to have John host! :slight_smile:

1 Like

Church on the Rock would be happy to host one in the St Louis MO area.

1 Like

@John.Gunn You’re confirmed for the Houston Regional. Thank you! Could you please email jason.powell at churchitnetwork.com for more info.

Compass Christian Church in Colleyville can host for DFW area.

Hi Jason!

Pushpay would be interested at hosting in our office in Redmond, WA (Greater Seattle). Before I go make the request of our leadership, I wanted to make sure that it would be okay for a business (and proud partner of CITN) to host!

Bridgeway Community Church in Maryland would love to host! We have 2 campuses, one in Owings Mills, closer to Baltimore, and Columbia, in between Baltimore and DC.

Checking on available space, should know shortly and we will host at Lincoln Berean in Lincoln, NE if needed.

I see that ATL is firm as a location. If Birmingham is needed, I can look into hosting.

Responding for Fellowship Greenville in Greenville, SC. We would be interested in hosting a Regional CITN conference. Early Spring is a wide open time frame so it is hard to give a definite answer.

Alright, we have space reserved and ready to go for Tuesday, March 31, let us know if you need us to host, we are ready

Should have final approval tomorrow, but looks like we are able to host in Los Angeles, CA Area at Children’s Hunger Fund, Sylmar, CA.

Is there any scope for hosting a meet in the UK?

I’ll come if you host! :grin: Harvest Church in Lexington SC is also an option, so I’ll toss us out there as a secondary one if things end up changing for you, Paul. Either way, it would be great to have one in the SC area! ATL is more of a drive than I’d prefer for a shortish event…