• 47. Meet fellow Echo attendees from all over the world. (Keep your fingers crossed for cool accents.)
• 48. Krispy Kreme.
• 49. Search for places that echo at Echo.
• 50. Fashionable lanyards.
• 51. Final Cut Pro needs someone to show it who is boss!
• 52. See a live demo of ProPresenter 4.
• 53. It’s good to sweat for 45 straight hours. Right?
• 54. Ain’t no hug like a John Dyer hug.
• 55. Play a game of Slug Bug with your friends; substitute iPads for VW Bugs.
• 56. Meet podcast superstars Dale and Scott from The Collide Show.
• 57. Walk around to the exhibitor booths and get free stuff.
• 58. Inspiration!
• 59. Meet others who have iPhones and work with church media.
• 60. THREE After Effects User Groups.

Well, there you have it — 60 reasons to come to Echo! We hope to see you next week!

If you have some extra time during the day July 28th-29th, I’ll be hosting three After Effects User Group meetings (one each day) as an extra-curricular event to coincide with Echo Conference.

The Echo Conference is a church media conference that will be hosted at Watermark Community Church.  There is a registration fee if you would like to attend the entire conference, however, the After Effects User Group meetings are free.

Red Giant Software is providing an obscene amount of stuff for us to give away!  All you need to do is get there!

SCHEDULE:

Wed. July 28th, 1:15PM - Basic After Effects => Anyone may attend this group, but it will be specifically geared toward those who have never opened After Effects or have played around but just aren’t sure how to move from blank project to rendered animation.

Thurs. July 29th, 8AM - Intermediate After Effects => This meeting will involve a use-case with green screen footage, a graphics package, and a few Red Giant effects to build an announcement video. If you are getting comfortable in After Effects and just want to see how someone else uses AE and solves production issues, this meeting is for you!

Fri. July 30th, 8AM - Advanced After Effects => After Effects is far more powerful than Keyframes and Effects.  In this meeting we’ll first look at Shape layers and some various uses.  Then we’ll get into Expressions in After Effects:

•  What’s the expression language?
•  How can you figure out what the parts of an expression are for?
•  Some helpful uses of expressions
•  Where can you learn more about expressions?

LOCATION:
ROOM 339
Watermark Community Church
7540 LBJ Freeway
Dallas, TX 75251

CONTACT:

If you have any questions, please call me, Trent Armstrong, at 214.810.2262 if you have any questions. You may also email me mannerscast@gmail.com or follow me on Twitter @Trent_Armstrong.

Cheers,

Trent, Founder - Dallas After Effects User Group

• 31. Come hear a new talk from Donald Miller. Even we don’t know what he’s gonna say.
• 32. Find out what Dan Merchant wants the Lord to save us from.
• 33. Come see the premiere of several short films.
• 34. Do you like YouVersion? Come talk to the LifeChurchers about it.
• 35. Kem Meyer will show you how to have less clutter and less noise.
• 36. See if Carlos Whittaker will take video of you in his backseat… while he drives.
• 37. Learn everything you want to know about After Effects from Trent Armstrong.
• 38. Meet and hangout with the whole Echo/RT Creative Group team. We can’t wait.
• 39. This will be the biggest Echo ever!!!!!!!
• 40. Get new ideas for using media and technology at your church.
• 41. Learn about 316 Networks — share your story around the world.
• 42. Ask Todd Wagner tough theological questions… he loves it!
• 43. Get a copy of COLLIDE Magazine … I’m sure we’ll have them lying around.
• 44. Meet David Womack, an Igniter Media creative.
• 45. Hang out with peeps from Fellowship Church, OakHills Church, 121 Community Church …
• 46. … Oak Leaf Church, Bethlehem Baptist Church, Christ Church Plano, Bel Air Presby and more!

If you haven’t registered for Echo yet, now’s the time!

• 16. Get the pre-order rate on Echo 2010 DVD.
• 17. See how many people forget their Echo Info Booklet the second day.
• 18. Sit by the fireplace in Watermark’s new Town Center. (It won’t be lit, we promise.)
• 19. Speaking of the new Town Center, see what happened to 1,000 cattle. #leathercouches
• 20. Check out Barton Damer’s shoes. They’re always awesome.
• 21. See if Tony Steward truly is passionate about missional strategies or if he’s just pretending. (He’s not pretending.)
• 22. Have a deep conversation with Gary Molander of Floodgate Productions.
• 23. Have Donald Miller sign his latest book. Or a book by another author if you want to make it awkward.
• 24. Ask Blaine Hogan to re-enact one of his scenes from Prison Break.
• 25. Remind Michael Buckingham that papyrus is more than an ugly font.
• 26. Purchase several Echo shirts and include them in your weekly rotation.
• 27. You know we will have good food.
• 28. Stay at the lovely Westin — they aren’t hosting a kiddie beauty pageant this year. We hope.
• 29. See the amazing things Clover is doing with websites and learn what Greenhouse 2.0 is.
• 30. Come see why local Best Buys ran out of HDTV plasmas.

OK, we’ll be back with more reasons next week. In the meantime, register if you haven’t already!

• 1. See Carlos Whittaker’s tattoos up close.
• 2. Ladies, Donald Miller is a handsome fella.
• 3. Jon Acuff has publicly challenged the aforementioned Donald Miller to a pop-and-lock contest
• 4. Echo is an incredible opportunity to see what others are doing with media in their churches.
• 5. The weather in Dallas at the end of July is downright balmy.
• 6. Get an up close and personal tour of the new Watermark facility.
• 7. Two words: Free stuff.
• 8. Camron Ware and Stephen Proctor might try to project something on you.
• 9. Watermark Coffee brews locally (and fresh) roasted beans from Oak Cliff Coffee Roasters.
• 10. Experience what it is like when there are more people tweeting than talking.
• 11. So everything you tweet can include #echo10.
• 12. Try to destroy AT&T’s 3G Network in Dallas with your bevy of Apple gadgets.
• 13. Ice. Cream. Truck.
• 14. Actually meet all of the people that you think you know.
• 15. Hear messages tailored for artists and creatives delivered by artists and creatives.

Stay tuned for more reasons to come to Echo, and feel free to add your own reasons as well. See you soon!

Big Finish Media is one of our esteemed premier sponsors for Echo 2010, and we couldn’t be more thrilled to partner with them. We’re excited to announce Big Finish will host a screening of the one-and-only, critically acclaimed, award-winning film Lord, Save Us From Your Followers on the opening night of Echo. Dan Merchant, the director of the film and one of Echo’s keynote speakers, will also be at the screening.

Tim Abare, who leads Big Finish (and is also the co-executive producer of Lord, Save Us), has 20 years’ experience working with respected leaders in business, entertainment, and ministry. Big Finish was created to help churches, filmmakers, publishers, authors, content providers, musicians, and others find and mobilize their audience. Just check out the roster of people Big Finish has worked with:

ABC News, ABC Television, Barna Films, Bearing Fruit Entertainment, CBS Television, Columbia Pictures, Compassion International, Entertainment Events, Fox Searchlight, Icon Productions, INSP, Max Lucado, Man in the Mirror, North American Mission Board, PAX Television, Prison Fellowship, Real Impact Missions, Reformed Theological Seminary, Regal Theaters, Smalley Marriage Institute, Student Leadership University, Teen Mania Ministries, Twentieth Century Fox, Warner Bros., World Relief, and many others.

Tim and his son, Brad Abare, will do a breakout session together at Echo called Go Big or Stay Home. They will share real-life stories and give you three takeaways that will help your big ideas fit into the bigger picture and maybe even the big screen. While you’re at Echo, be sure to visit the Big Finish booth to find out more about everything they have to offer.

As you can see, there are lot of great chairs and couches for lounging, tweeting, and playing WoW.

There’s also a nice fireplace. But we probably won’t get a fire going during Echo — it’ll already be 1000 degrees outside.

This last one gives you an idea of how much new lobby space we’ve got to work with. We should be able to fit a lot of palettes there once nap time rolls around …

A few people encountered errors while trying to register yesterday and we wanted to make sure they got the best possible rate. On top that … and I don’t know if you’re aware of this … it’s the week leading up to Easter! Many church leaders are incredibly busy this week, so it made sense to us that we should extend the Super Early Bird rate. Now, that rate is good through April 8.

As always, if you have any questions about Echo, feel free to get in touch with us here.

We hope you think the new site is pretty, but more than that, we hope you’ll check out all of the Echo 2010 information. You can get started on the Details page or on the Speakers page. Then, when you’re ready, you can register for Echo 2010 here.

Happy browsing!

If you pre-ordered a 2009 Echo DVD set, your order has been shipped. For everybody else, now’s the time to grab your set. As I mentioned a couple weeks ago, the DVD set includes some great stuff:

• Keynote Sessions from Ben Arment, Mark Steele, and Phil Cooke
• The Church Panel (featuring Carlos Whittaker, Bobby Gruenewald, Scott Hodge, Cynthia Ware, and Conway Edwards)
• The After Effects User Group
• Breakout Session MP3s
• Breakout Session PDFs
• 8 Motion Graphics Tutorials by Barton Damer and Trent Armstrong

Head over to the Echo Store to order yours.