Echo Conference

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.

Watermark Community Church is hosting Echo again this year, and we couldn’t be more thrilled. First of all, the staff at Watermark is tremendous — they’re knowledgeable, hard-working, and generous. Second, the place serves good coffee. Third, construction is basically complete on a whole new section of the Watermark facility and it’s absolutely beautiful. I uploaded a Flickr set here (photos by Ryan Jarrell), and you can see a few pics below. As you can tell from the images, the new building at Watermark is a great place to hang out and relax, so be sure to bring a laptop and a good book to this year’s conference.

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 …

Officially, yesterday was the last day to get the Super Early Bird rate ($199) to Echo. Good news: we’re extending it by a week!

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.

If you’re reading this post in a RSS feed reader, click here to check out our new site.

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.