This presentation was given at the 2011 Catholic New Media Conference. Below are my notes on the presentation:
From Craig Berry:
This presentation was given at the 2011 Catholic New Media Conference. Below are my notes on the presentation:
I've heard about this book here and there the past few months, but it's getting all official now, with a spiffy website, a trailer (hey, I thought only movies had those!), and A-list endorsements.
From the endorsements:
“This book demonstrates how New Media is already impacting the Church and outlines many practical steps for dioceses, parishes, and individual Catholics to embrace it more broadly…Everyone involved in Communications and Evangelization ministries for the Church should read it.” (–Cardinal Seán O'Malley, OFM Cap.)
I recently had the first of, I hope, many columns on Catholic online evangelization in the St. Louis Review. I will post the column here for archival purposes, but you can read the column on the Review website as well:
by Jeff Geerling
The status quo is no longer acceptable.
That was the gist of the two keynote talks during this year's Catholic New Media Celebration in Boston. The Catholic Church needs to become a leader in online communications and social media — and it needs to do so now.
Father Robert Reed, director of CatholicTV, an online and broadcast television network, suggested Catholics practice the craft of media production and web development as a skilled craftsman would fabricate a chalice: As the craftsman labors over every detail and creates a work of art, which leads the priest and those present at Mass to ponder the mysterious and divine Presence within, so should we communicate and design our websites so as to allow Christ's love and beauty shine.
There must be a professionalism to our craft. We cannot settle for anything less than the best, most useful, functional and interactive websites and service on the Internet.
Check out my post, Live-Blogging to Drive Traffic, Interest to Organizational Events, on Open Source Catholic. From the post:
The Steubenville St. Louis Mid-America conference is attended by over 6,000 teens every year, and there are many parents, friends, and other teens who wish they could participate as well. We have always posted information after the conference, but in St. Louis, for the past two years, we've started live-blogging and posting to social networks frequently throughout the conference, driving up traffic to our OYM websites.
We had triple the number of visitors this year than we had last year, and the residual traffic for this event is pretty strong, and keeps up interest for the event throughout the year.
