YWAM Information Technology

YWAM was born at the dawn of the jet age and the mobility of our leaders and staff has been a key success factor for us as a mission. Now as we are in the Internet age where news, ideas and innovation are moving quite a bit faster. Key leaders like International Chairman, Lynn Green, are urging us forward in our use of technology. One of YWAM's key IT developers, Colin Forbes, looks at the beginnings of ywam.org and some of the lessons he has learnt over the last eight years.

ROBERT: I am talking to you while you are in Harpenden England, where you work as part of YWAM's International Chairman's Team and you are from Canada. Is this your first time to work outside your home country?

COLIN FORBES: No, not at all. Getting here is a long story. My first time to work outside Canada was in the Urkraine in the mid 90s. During one of my trips home to Canada in 1997 my mum asked me to help her to setup a database driven website for her advertising business. As I looked into it, I realised that this was quite doable using free and low cost tools. My efforts to help her taught me a lot, so on the plane going back to the Ukraine I realised, ‘Hey, we could do the YWAM Go Manual as a searchable database on the web.’

Back in the Ukraine I wrote to a few main YWAM bases about my idea and got ... no response! A year later in 1998 back in Canada I decided to create a prototype. It took me two weeks to bang it out and put in two fictitious locations in the Middle East. This time, I sent a few emails to YWAM leaders with the URL and I got a quick response! Basically the email said, ‘Thanks for your interest but we don't need fly by night YWAMers who will not follow through on their ideas.’ I responded with "I don't start things that I don't finish!" and thankfully I got a telephone call the next day from the leader apologising for his comments.

R: So you have been working on Information Technology (IT) stuff with YWAM since 1998?

CF: Yes, out of that phone call, I made a six-month commitment to begin programming ywam.org. I worked on it on-and-off until 2000 when I left the Ukraine and married my wife Halyna. Since 2000 until just six weeks ago I have been based in Canada with trips to Colorado Springs to meet with the others on the ywam.org team.

R: When you signed up were you given a technology framework to use?

CF: I convinced them to switch to ASP which I had used in my prototype of ywam.org It was -- and is -- a good stable technology. We began with an Access database but quickly outgrew it [Access can handle about ten concurrent users] and so we moved to using a Microsoft SQL Server as our backend.

R: With the technology in place what was your first milestone?

CF: Lots of blood sweat and tears! The biggest issue was sorting out security issues. In many cases, I had to contact every YWAM location and find out what they would want, and not want, listed. From the beginning, I can say that it really took five years to figure out the rules of governing information and how to run security.

R: What where people’s primary concerns?

CF: Leaders were concerned that we did not put up public information that would put people at risk. We had to figure out a system of isolating what we can list and what we can't. Out of that came changes to our survey process and realising that the paper survey was not cutting it for us.

R: I remember that.

CF: In the middle of this time we lost Graham Dryden from the team. He was our main researcher. If we didn't know what was happening in YWAM we realised that the website would not be too interesting.

R: When did you realise that research and the ywam survey were part of the same project as the on-line Go Manual?

CF: This emerged, I signed on to help build the data driven part of ywam.org. We realised that the research component was necessary. Actually our biggest issue was site design.

We have used six design companies or groups. Some were consultancies that started to work with us and went out of business, some were YWAMers wanting to help but got too busy. In the process we lost the original source of the design several times so we had to start over.

R: Lessons learnt?

CF: It is great to have people doing design in-house, and always get & keep the source files!

R: I guess in the process you have drunk quite a lot of coffee over the last eight years.

CF: Actually, my favourite is coke not coffee. I have emptied quite a few cases of Coke on this project!

R: I see you have a can of Dr Pepper in your hand.

CF: Yeah, that and Cherry Coke for a change.

R: Can we talk about lessons learned? What are some of your take away messages from the last eight years.

CF: Make sure you get to keep the source code! I guess too, I am more careful who I put faith in. Companies don’t always deliver. I have learnt that programming is the easy part, relating to people is where the challenges arise.

R: Has your approach to people changed?

CF: I guess I am more sceptical. I do not necessarily believe everything that I hear. I tend to take things with a grain of salt. I have actually become more like the person who sent me the email. I want to know if people are serious before investing too much.

R: What have you learned about how do you get along with YWAM leaders?

CF: Inside YWAM we need to give people the benefit of the doubt. We need to hear their heart and be patient if they lack technical knowledge. I like to see where people’s giftings are and release them into those giftings. Not everyone can design or programme but maybe they are great at content management.

R: When we talked the other day you mentioned a need to develop sustainable solutions.

CF: We want systems that are easy to maintain. We need to stick with technology that is stable and going to be around. Technology can become obsolete quickly and people can come and go. So it is important to look for standard solutions so that others can fill step in later on.

R: As you know, YWAM is very decentralised, what are we doing to help us work together?

CF: One thing that we are working on is completing an online UofN school registration system [A-Form]. As this starts to get used, it will allow us to eliminate present duplication of information and waste of time and effort trying to keep it all synchronised. This is a huge step forward. It also integrates and follows the business rules of ywam.org, uofn.edu and the UofN Records System. This is the first joint project like this that I know of in this area.

R: Excellent.

CF: Cutting edge.

R: YWAM has staff from many nations and our staff speak many languages. What is being done on ywam.org to be more accessible for people who don't speak English?

CF: With our last site redesign we re-laid the foundation of the whole site. We now have the capability to serve pages in multiple languages. We now store content using XML and convert it to HTML using XSLT. We can now change the look and feel of the site without touching our content. In addition, we can now email the XML content to a translator and have them translate it while other translators are working on other content. Also, we can lay it out for PDA devices and phones. It makes the whole site more manageable. Our article library is now has French and Spanish articles.

R: What things do you see in the future, what have you been dreaming about?

CF: One thing that I have been dreaming about is a feature on ywam.org where someone can find good options for them in YWAM by answering a short list of questions about timing, ministry area, geographical interest and the like. The site could recommend a way of finding your place in YWAM.

Bottom line, I want to see people getting released into things that God has called them to.

I love God and I love YWAM.