Geoffrey Lessel
Little Rock, Arkansas, United States
934 followers
500+ connections
934 followers
500+ connections
Activity
934 followers
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Geoffrey Lessel shared thisIt's crazy to think I've been working at Planning Center for half of these 20 years. What a great company, vision, and team—and product!Geoffrey Lessel shared thisThis week we're celebrating our 20-year anniversary! More importantly, it means 20 years of Sundays with you and all the moments in between. To mark this milestone, our co-founders Jeff Berg and Aaron Stewart have written a letter reflecting on our beginnings, the choice to stay an independent company, and what they've learned along the way. Read it on our blog! https://lnkd.in/eXrR2t5920 years of Sundays: A reflection from our founders20 years of Sundays: A reflection from our founders
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Geoffrey Lessel shared this"Who's been stuck in our Visitor Follow-up workflow for more than two weeks?" Church admins can now ask that question in plain English and get an instant answer from their Planning Center People data—no more opening workflows, sorting cards, or manually checking dates. The API Team just shipped an MCP tool that connects Planning Center People directly to Claude or ChatGPT. It respects existing permissions, queries live data, and turns what could be data hunting into a conversation. Proud to work alongside Joshua Kapsch, Greg Losie, and Gray Kemmey on this one. But let's be honest: I basically watched while they (especially Josh) did the actual work. https://lnkd.in/gj4Ztj2eNew: Connect Planning Center People to Claude or ChatGPT - Planning Center ChangelogNew: Connect Planning Center People to Claude or ChatGPT - Planning Center Changelog
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Geoffrey Lessel reposted thisGeoffrey Lessel reposted thisPlanning Center builds church management software to help its 90,000 church customers organize ministries, connect with their congregations, and plan services and events. Payments is a huge part of that experience for their customers. One thing that always impresses me is how much their team accomplishes with a relatively small team. It is a testament to the people and the culture they have built over there. This is what it looks like when two teams partner together; not just as vendor and customer, but rolling up sleeves and problem-solving side by side to build a better payments experience. Thank you Jeff Berg, Jeremy Ricketts, Erin Baker, Wassim Metallaoui, Dyllan Wilson, Mo Lawson, Drew Young, Nicole Duyao, Nathan Osborne and the entire Planning Center team for the collaboration. Here's to what's next! https://lnkd.in/g4Z3WKjgHow Planning Center Grew to Process $600 Million in Monthly Donations | StripeHow Planning Center Grew to Process $600 Million in Monthly Donations | Stripe
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Geoffrey Lessel shared thisI love that we are now a part of this! Very exciting.Geoffrey Lessel shared thisPlanning Center is a 220-person bootstrapped company serving 90,000+ churches, running on Rails for nearly 19 years with no outside investment, no major rewrites, and a team of 100 engineers. Today, they've joined the Rails Foundation as a Contributing member. Read the news here: https://lnkd.in/eH8K8qCA
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Geoffrey Lessel shared thisI've been building a listening tracker for physical media collectors (records, cassettes, CDs): https://gaveitaspin.com/. Sync your Discogs collection, log your spins, scrobble to last.fm, follow friends to see what's on their turntable, and dig (like) their spins. I'm opening up signups for a day or so to get some beta feedback. Free and no CC req'd. What you can do right now: - Import your entire Discogs collection (artwork, metadata, tracklists) - Log spins with star ratings and session notes - Auto-scrobble vinyl/CD/tape plays to Last.fm - Follow friends and see their spins in real time - Generate QR codes for records — scan to log in seconds (I actually use NFC tags) Built for the people who still press play on purpose. No algorithms deciding what you should hear. No autoplay. Just a small community of listeners who care about the physical experience of music. I've logged over 140 of my own spins so far and add features every week. Now it's time to get more users using it and giving me feedback. Signups are open for a limited time. It is 100% free during beta—if you sign up now you'll get a discount when the full version launches (if there ends up being a charge at all). You do need a Discogs account to get any benefit.
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Geoffrey Lessel shared thisGo check out this app from my friend Jesse J. Anderson! It is amazing.Geoffrey Lessel shared thisHey, I made an iPhone app for Bluesky called Flux. It’s a clean and beautiful (and highly customizable) way to use Bluesky that’s meant to feel like social media used to, without full screen videos screaming for your attention. Check it out at https://fluxapp.blue
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Geoffrey Lessel shared thisThis is definitely true!Geoffrey Lessel shared thisEveryone in engineering management at Planning Center still writes code. Including me, the CTO/CEO I block off every Tuesday and Wednesday afternoon for technical work, and usually can spend even more time than that. I protect that time in the code because it matters. We don't have "professional managers" in our Engineering department at Planning Center. Every manager, and senior manager was an engineer first and still is one. Some ship features. Some fix bugs. Some do code reviews or build prototypes. We trust them to figure out what staying in the craft looks like for them. But they stay in it. This isn't by accident, this is how we have designed Planning Center. The best engineering managers I've worked with are the ones who'd rather be building. They step into leadership because they care deeply about the craft and the people doing it, not because they want the title. At Planning Center, we talk about our three loves: We love our Churches, we love our Team, and we love our Products. This philosophy serves all three. Our engineers get managers who understand the craft. Our products get leaders who can still build. And our churches get software made by people who never stopped caring about how it's made. This is how we build.
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Geoffrey Lessel reposted thisGeoffrey Lessel reposted thisWorking closely with Daniel Murphy and Geoffrey Lessel has all the makings of a dream job. Come be our first Technical Product Manager, and help us shape the APIs that help thousands of churches help their people. https://lnkd.in/eRFYbyM9
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Geoffrey Lessel shared thisEver wanted to LISTEN to my book on #Elixir, Phoenix in Action? Now you can! I'm excited for this...Geoffrey Lessel shared thisIf your 2025 bingo card includes "running on fumes," you can probably go ahead and check that one off at this point. There’s still time, though, to find a little balance before the year wraps up. Start with a new liveAudio title — all 40% off with the matching code: Dependency Injection Principles, Practices, and Patterns by Steven van Deursen and Mark Seemann ↳ https://hubs.la/Q03R9FGc0 — use code ladi40 RxJava for Android Developers by Timo Tuominen ↳ https://hubs.la/Q03R9DVN0 — use code code larx40 Phoenix in Action by Geoffrey Lessel ↳ https://hubs.la/Q03R9GFJ0 — use code laphoenix40 Graph Databases in Action by Dave Bechberger and Josh Perryman ↳ https://hubs.la/Q03R9D3w0 — use code lagraphdb40 Deep Learning for Search by Tommaso Teofili ↳ https://hubs.la/Q03R9FKZ0 — use code lateofili40 Investing for Programmers by Stefan Papp ↳ https://hubs.la/Q03R9FyL0 — use code larefact40
Geoffrey Lessel commented on a post
4mo
Congrats!
Geoffrey Lessel replied to a comment
5mo
Rob McBryde I am indeed! No regrets doing something new for a while (well maybe small ones) but it's really good to be back.
Geoffrey Lessel replied to a comment
10mo
Dang, thanks Noah! High praise. ❤️
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Geoffrey Lessel reacted on thisGeoffrey Lessel reacted on thisI'm excited to announce that Mark Ranallo is our new VP of Engineering at Planning Center! Mark joined Planning Center in 2011. He has watched this company grow from a small team to over 200 people serving tens of thousands of churches. He understands how we build things, why we build them that way, and what it means to care about the people doing the work. That kind of institutional knowledge is rare. About two years ago, I pulled Engineering out from under Product. We needed to invest in making our engineering culture top notch. I added the CTO title to my existing CEO responsibilities and we got to work. The goal was straightforward: build healthy teams that produce quality code and ships great features. It worked. And now the department has grown to the point where it deserves its own dedicated leader. We're also entering a moment in software development that none of us fully understands yet. AI is changing how engineers work, what teams can ship, and what great looks like. Having a VP of Engineering who can lead through that, not just react to it, matters a lot. Mark is that person. I'm retaining the CTO title. I'm an engineer at heart and I always will be. The way we create software to help churches help people is something I'll never stop caring about. But now Mark is leading the department, and I couldn't be more excited about what that unlocks. Congrats, Mark. Fifteen years in the making.
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Geoffrey Lessel liked thisGeoffrey Lessel liked thisToday Symbolic.ai introduced its first mobile app, available in the app store here: https://lnkd.in/gaF8HQBc The app is a companion to the platform and addresses an urgent need for secure, fast native AI file import. Use the phone and the app to create an audio or video of an interview, speech or event, and send the encrypted file directly to Symbolic. It will be transcribed with high fidelity, synthesized, quotes extracted, and a high quality draft article produced. The productivity return is enormous. Paying for discrete transcription, research, editing, packaging services and not keeping context across the workflow is a waste and thing of the past. Fast, secure content creation and import from mobile devices is now part of the leading AI publishing platform for Corporate Communications, News, and PR. https://lnkd.in/gpfs3V-BIntroducing The Symbolic Mobile App - Symbolic.ai - Powering Publishing with AIIntroducing The Symbolic Mobile App - Symbolic.ai - Powering Publishing with AI
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Geoffrey Lessel liked thisGeoffrey Lessel liked thisPiCO is hanging out with us today. Thanks Planning Center!
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Geoffrey Lessel reacted on thisGeoffrey Lessel reacted on thisJust as we saw during the internet revolution, the professional world is rapidly bifurcating into a) those amazed and excited by AI, and committed to making it work for them (while recognizing the challenges), and b) those who are afraid, skeptical, or unwilling to try. I see professionals every day reinvigorating their careers, learning and having fun. AI is a tool created by people, for people. The payoff is real and substantial for those willing to make the commitment.
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Geoffrey Lessel liked thisGeoffrey Lessel liked thisPlanning Center builds church management software to help its 90,000 church customers organize ministries, connect with their congregations, and plan services and events. Payments is a huge part of that experience for their customers. One thing that always impresses me is how much their team accomplishes with a relatively small team. It is a testament to the people and the culture they have built over there. This is what it looks like when two teams partner together; not just as vendor and customer, but rolling up sleeves and problem-solving side by side to build a better payments experience. Thank you Jeff Berg, Jeremy Ricketts, Erin Baker, Wassim Metallaoui, Dyllan Wilson, Mo Lawson, Drew Young, Nicole Duyao, Nathan Osborne and the entire Planning Center team for the collaboration. Here's to what's next! https://lnkd.in/g4Z3WKjgHow Planning Center Grew to Process $600 Million in Monthly Donations | StripeHow Planning Center Grew to Process $600 Million in Monthly Donations | Stripe
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Publications
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Phoenix in Action
Manning Publications
See publicationPhoenix is a modern web framework built for the Elixir programming language. Elegant, fault-tolerant, and performant, Phoenix is as easy to use as Rails and as rock-solid as Elixir's Erlang-based foundation. Phoenix in Action builds on your existing web dev skills, teaching you the unique benefits of Phoenix along with just enough Elixir to get the job done.
About the Technology
Modern web applications need to be efficient to develop, lightning fast, and unfailingly reliable. Phoenix,…Phoenix is a modern web framework built for the Elixir programming language. Elegant, fault-tolerant, and performant, Phoenix is as easy to use as Rails and as rock-solid as Elixir's Erlang-based foundation. Phoenix in Action builds on your existing web dev skills, teaching you the unique benefits of Phoenix along with just enough Elixir to get the job done.
About the Technology
Modern web applications need to be efficient to develop, lightning fast, and unfailingly reliable. Phoenix, a web framework for the Elixir programming language, delivers on all counts. Elegant and intuitive, Phoenix radically simplifies the dev process. Built for concurrency, Phoenix channels make short work of developing real-time applications. And as for reliability, Phoenix apps run on the battle-tested Erlang VM, so they’re rock solid!
About the book
Phoenix in Action is an example-based book that teaches you to build production-quality web apps. You’ll handle business logic, database interactions, and app designs as you progressively create an online auction site. As you go, you’ll build everything from the core components to the real-time user interactions where Phoenix really shines.
What's inside
Functional programming in a web environment
An introduction to Elixir
Database interactions with Ecto
Real-time communication with channels
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