Dan Merchant (pictured above, dressed as Bumper Sticker Man) is one of the Echo 2010 keynote speakers, and we couldn’t be more excited about having him. If case you’re not familiar with Dan, I want to point out a few ways you can get to know him:

• • His movie, Lord, Save Us from Your Followers, is returning to theaters next week.
• • The Lord, Save Us DVD comes out in April.
• • A few months ago, I interviewed him in COLLIDE.
• • Video! Check out clips from the movie here and watch Dan interviewed on TBN below:

So, that’s Dan Merchant. Register for Echo 2010 and make your way to Dallas to hear him live.

We hope to see you there!

If you ask me (not that you did), we launched with a pretty nice lineup of keynote speakers and breakout teachers. However, the breakout teachers lineup is incomplete — we’re going to be adding to it non-stop over the next few months. Case in point, we added three people today (Matt Knisely, Nathan Davis, and David Womack). There are already a few more that we’re going to add next week. You get the idea.

All that to say, keep an eye on our Speakers page, this blog, and our Twitter account for the latest on the ever-expanding Echo lineup. Oh, and when you’re ready to add yourself to the (unpublished) list of Echo attendees, you can do that here.

Download the source file HERE.

The After Effects project and screen capture will be available right here on the Echo Blog shortly after the conference.

ECHO: What has it been like to represent an organization like iStockPhoto to church leaders?
TB: Its been such a great experience. I used iStock working in the church long before they asked me to come work for them so I knew what a good product it was and how useful I found it in accomplishing my creative goals for the church each week. So when they asked me to come on bored as an evangelist for them to the faith community I jumped at the chance. I like that I am an evangelist for iStock and not a salesperson. As an evangelist its my job to tell others about iStock and how much I love it and use it and to help them understand how it could help them do their job better.

ECHO: At Echo you’re going to talk about doing different kinds of creative work on a shoestring budget. Do you think a lot of people let a small or nonexistent budget scare them away from trying to create quality media?
TB: Yeah I think sometimes they think that it requires a big budget to do anything really great but today its just not true. Are there some things that are impossible? Sure, but you can do more these days with little or no budget than you think you can. Typically, it simply requires some resourcefulness on your part and often times just a lot of time. There are so many resources out there today that are cheap or free and we are going to spend our time talking about what those resources are and how to use them to create awesomeness.

ECHO: Is there anything (video production, for example) that it’s best to avoid if you’re on a shoestring budget? In other words, should you forgo a certain medium in favor of other media if money is tight?
TB: I don’t think video production needs to be avoided on a small budget but there are issues that come with trying to do video on a tight budget and that’s one of the topics we will discuss. Basically there are techniques that can be used to make videos look great without spending a lot of money and we will cover those in the session.
Having little or no budget does require that you prioritize those things you wish to accomplish because you can’t always do everything you want so you have to try and get done those things you want most. Because of that you may decide that video production either eats too much of the allotted budget and crowds out too many other things or that it’s not as important as other projects. Either way on  shoestring budgets, often video is more rare than in churches that have more to work with.

One of the things we’re most excited about for this year’s Echo experience is our panel discussion featuring Bobby Gruenewald, Carlos Whittaker, Conway Edwards, Cynthia Ware, and Scott Hodge. The panel will be a free-flowing conversation that covers current and future trends in the intersection of media, technology, and the Church. Each of these leaders has a unique and valuable perspective to share, and we’re looking forward to hearing what they have to say. The panel will be moderated by Scott McClellan from COLLIDE Magazine (but he promises to stay out of the way and let the panel do most of the talking).

If you have questions for the panel, come on out to Echo and we’ll try to incorporate some audience questions via Twitter.

ECHO: How did get into video production and learn the ropes?
SW: The first step in my journey was studying for a Radio Television Film degree at the University of Texas. I started taking production classes, getting to check out cameras, shooting documentaries for class projects, learning to edit old school by actually cutting film and editing tape deck to deck. I also volunteered and got involved with a local experimental film group that was shooting Super 8 films at the time. So I was beginning to learn, to experiment, to figure things out by getting my hands dirty. About that time, I started going to a little start up church called Gateway. I was at a church BBQ one day and the Associate Pastor, Ted Beasley, struck up a conversation with me. When he learned I was a film school student, he got really excited about us doing videos for the church. So, over the next few years, I made films for film school, experimental films for the Cinemaker Coop and short videos and multimedias for Gateway Community Church here in Austin. And that’s how I got started.

ECHO: What kinds of things can Echo attendees expect to learn in your breakout session, Church Video Tips and Tricks?
SW: I plan on keeping things really practical at my session. We’re going to talk about basic things you can do with the camera, with the lights, with audio, with editing to get solid results. These will be tips and tricks I’ve picked up from slogging it out in production for the last ten years. What can you do to get better footage for your videos? What can you do to shoot better interviews? What can you do to make your edits have more power and impact? These are the things I’m going to talk about. And I’m going to talk in terms that can be easily understood and easily put into practice.

ECHO: What were some of the challenges you faced while creating church media resources at eleven72? What was the most rewarding part about creating those resources for local churches?
SW: Some of our biggest challenges at eleven72 were creating really good, useful, on point videos on a budget. We had to be really creative in distributing our resources so that we could produce short films and videos that had the production value and quality of story, acting, etc, that people in our culture expect and that we could feel good about.
The most rewarding part about creating video resources for local churches is knowing that your videos get to play a part in that awesome Sunday experience in hundreds of churches; That you were able to help them pull off their service, to help a pastor make his point, or to give a congregation pause to laugh or think about a particular subject. That your videos are a part of the process that God is using to draw people to Himself, that’s the greatest reward (and honestly quite humbling). It’s also really fun when you run into people who saw one of your videos or when you have relatives call and say that their church used one of your videos or when you see that someone in the Philippines or in Uzbekistan or South Korea downloaded one of your videos and to kind of have your mind blown by the fact that your videos are being shown in churches all over the world.

ECHO: From your involvement with the Visual Story Network, it’s obvious that you’re a proponent of visual media. Do you think some in the Church maintain a perception that printed and verbal media are better suited than visual media to communicating spiritual messages?
CT: We advocate the model of preach, print and portray. For 1500 years, preaching was the primary communication platform of the Church.  The body of Christ adjusted well with the advent of the printing press and that accelerated the ability to communicate to a broader audience.  We now live in a visual world where it is critical to be able to portray Christ and kingdom.  Preach, print and portray can and should be complimentary.  The problem is too many people are still limited to preach and print and are missing tremendous opportunities to expand their impact.

ECHO: As Americans, we tend to focus a lot on the English-speaking, North American Church. How did you develop a global perspective for visual storytelling and the communication of the gospel?
CT: I was on a trip to North Africa in 2000 and I witnessed first hand how visual media was helping change the way the students viewed Christ.  That was when God began to orient me into the realm of media.  My heart has always been for those furthest from the Gospel.

ECHO: What kinds of things can people expect to learn in your Echo breakout session, Going Global: A Movement of Visual Story?
CT: We believe in 5-10 years it will be possible that every person encounters Christ and His kingdom every year through relevant visual media.  We’ll describe what it will take for that to become reality.

ECHO: Tell us a little bit about the State of the Church Online project.
DG: The State of the Church Online project was created to answer the question “What are the best practices for churches online?” In order to answer this question we are five months into our research and are beginning to document the findings. There are two areas of focus, the first is a church’s website and the second is the church’s social media engagement with sites such as Facebook or Tangle and private community providers such as MemberHubs, Church Community Builder, Unifyer or Cobblestone.
In the Church Website Study, we have over one hundred churches representing 20,000 members who have participated, over a thousand survey responses and 20 years worth of combined Google Analytics data to help us understand what is working, what people are doing, where they came from and what church members seek when they visit a church website.  At the end of the day we hope to share as much of this data to churches so that we all can benefit and the Kingdom advances.  I released some of this information in a series of webinars I did that are posted on Vimeo.  Articles will be published at Church Website Guide.
On the Social Media & Community Study we also have over a thousand survey responses and have numerous Christian social media sites and private communities participating.   We will look at analytic behavior on these sites as well as surveys and interviews of people and ministries using them.  We are excited to participate in this with several other leading companies who all desire to see the gospel shared.  We should have some initial results on this study in July in time for the Echo Conference.  This project is led by Kevin Ring of Unconventional Method. Kevin brings years of experience leading research projects – designing and executing strategic customer/competitive research and analysis across multiple industries, including work with companies such as Google, Yahoo!, Citibank, Hewitt Associates, Gallup, Bank of America and other Fortune 500 companies, ministries and non‐profits.

ECHO: So far, have you been surprised by any of the results from the research?
DG: Yes, but maybe surprised isn’t the right word.  On the church website study, based on the behaviors we are seeing, I believe most churches are designing their websites for the wrong primary audiences.  For example, many websites do a poor job of connecting new visitors and encouraging behaviors that are of value to the church.  We will seek to employ a triperspectival design process to quickly and effectively present the church’s vision (normative), impact the visitor toward sharing this vision (existential) and seek to encourage behaviors (situational) that the church desires.  These behaviors could include:

·        Low Value Behaviors: Subscribe to RSS, podcast, engage the church Twitter account.
·        Medium Value Behaviors: Sign-up for an Email, complete a Web Form or join the church’s Facebook group.
·        High Value Behaviors: Show up to a service, home group or other relational meeting.

The strategy will target new visitors but also seek to move the existing church community deeper into relationships and involvement.  We put together a Church Web Strategy Cooperative for early adopting churches who would like to participate and re-envision their web engagement based on this market research.
It is too early to say much on the Social Media & Community Study, there will be a much clearer picture in time for the Echo session.

ECHO: In what ways does Kaleo Church, where you’re a pastor, leverage media and technology?
DG: In many ways I have been waiting to learn from the studies so we have put a lot of things on hold until we could implement a new strategy.  The biggest thing we are doing is moving our community into Cobblestone, this private church community allows us to administrate our Missional Communities (groups of 10-20 people doing life together), classes, discipleship, connect people to serving opportunities and much more.  Secondly, we’ve always had a strong presence online so Kaleo Church has been an effective tool connecting people in San Diego to our community.   One sample of this was targeting people seeking a pastor to marry them (http://www.ekklesia360.com/church-assimilation-and-growth/) where we’ve seen people become Christians.

ECHO: Can you give us a preview of one of your Echo breakout sessions, Beyond the Web 2.0 Noise: How to use the Internet to Disciple & Create Real Community?
DG: Personally, I believe using technology to disciple and create community is where a lot of churches are wanting to move.  Technology can assist the local church so that people can spend more time on the relationships and rather than the facilitation of small groups or discipleship communities.  In this session we will look at what churches are doing, what is working and what may be a waste of time.  The session will include the data from several of the leading products used by churches, case studies and much more.  Again, while we have the data from congregational surveys I want to wait until we collect user data and do follow-up interviewing before I say too much.  I guess my encouragement would be if you want to know, attend the Echo Conference!

ECHO: I find the combination of a web development career and a theology degree pretty interesting. How do those two things complement each other in your life and work?
JD: It feels like a pretty big responsibility. God has give me the chance to deeply study the greatest of all messages while also allowing me to work with one of the most powerful of human mediums. Along with a beautiful wife and wonderful son, I am a blessed man!
Early on, the worlds of technology and theology didn’t interact for me very often. Then I took a class on “Theology and Society” and read some books on the history of technology, and my eyes were opened to see that technology has been a major force in the world and in the church.
I continue my job in the technology world because I think technology has a place in the redemptive story of the Scriptures, restoring some of what was lost in the fall. At the same time, I think it can influence us in subtle ways, and we sometimes get a little too excited about its potential. Technology is shiny and fun, but when it comes to transforming lives it is terribly underpowered and overpriced compared to the Holy Spirit.

ECHO: Your technology & faith blog, www.donteatthefruit.com, is relatively new. What kind of feedback and response are you getting so far?
JD: So far the blog seems to be doing pretty well in terms of getting traffic and comments. There are several excellent resources out there on using technology for ministry, but not too many that look at technology from a theological perspective and ask questions about how it might shape who we are as humans created in God’s image.
Regarding numbers and web traffic, Dwight Shrute’s blog used to crack me up because below every post it said, “95 comments already.” That little word - already - seems to perfectly expose how we can sometimes get caught up in numbers and speed when talking about our blogs, followers, and friend counts. It’s tempting to think that popularity in numbers means that we’re actually doing something godly.

ECHO: Your Echo breakout session is titled, “Using Technology Without Technology Using You.” What is one way to know if technology is using you?
JD: I think a good thing for all of us to do is sit down with someone whom we normally thing of as not “getting it” about technology and really listen to what they have to say about how we in the technological generation look with all our gadgets and internets.

ECHO: Is there a new technological tool or trend that you’re particularly interested in or intrigued by? If so, why?
JD: There seems to be a trend of high profile individuals quitting facebook, twitter, blogging, and so on. These folks aren’t just cutting back or taking a break – they are deleting accounts altogether. I think this is important for all of us to take note of because if those who are at the top have trouble controlling these technologies who are we to think we’ll be immune if we reach the same level of success and popularity?
The other trend I’m happy to see is that people are taking note of authors like Shane Hipps and magazines like Collide which are attempting to think well and Christianly about technology and media, neither blindly rejecting it nor always eating the fruit.