If you like the Church and are in any way interested in New Media (and you should be if you want to help the Church’s mission), I hope to see you at CatholiCon and CNMC this year.

CNMC is the weekend of October 1st, 2011. I’ve been to it the last 2 years and it’s been such an amazing time and I got to hang with so many of my favorite Catholic media personalities. I’m also honored to be doing a couple of workshops this year for it (so come on out and heckle me). Here’s the blurb from the CNMC website:

The Catholic New Media Conference (CNMC) is a festive, educational, and international conference focused on evangelization and building community through the use of new media. This event is designed to connect, guide and inform Catholic communicators as a response to the Church’s call for new evangelization.

“The 2011 CNMC will focus particularly on social media, its impact on culture, and how the Church and its institutions can effectively use it,” says Fr. Roderick Vonhögen, CEO of SQPN.  “We will be exploring how social media can be used with quality content; authentic catechesis and, a true sense of mission,” he says.

All interested in Catholic communication, new media, and social media are invited, including young adults (18+), ministry leaders, and priests and religious, to whom Pope Benedict appealed in his 2010 World Communications Day message, to “become an ever more pastoral presence on the web.”

Additionally, there is a new conference this year called CatholiCon (by the purveyors of the famous Catholic New Media Awards). It’s taking place Aug26-28 in Houston, TX. I’m especially excited about this event, not only because I’m privileged to be the emcee for it (and because I get excited about this kinda stuff in general), but because of everything they have planned for it. Some great speakers lined up, workshops, Mass and more.

Here’s their blurb from their website:

CatholiCon brings all of the traditional forms in which The Church communicates as well as the new forms of media that bring the Gospel to the emerging Digital Continent.

In addition to Sacred Chant, Art, and the Liturgy, we’ll also explore the New Evangelization as it is taking place in podcasting, vidcasting, blogging, and social networking.

It’ll be expo style, which means that attendees will be able to browse the floor, looking at the latest in new media gadgetry, hang out in a coffeebar environment, or attend the keynotes and workshops.

We’ll worship together, we’ll learn together, and we’ll certainly have a lot of fun.

It’s really neat to see these events popping up and growing in attendance each year. The network and friendships we’re building is truly amazing and it’s enabling us to do bigger and better things for the Church - together. It’s fun, too. Spaces are filling up for both of these conferences, so you may want to register ahead of time on their websites if you’d like to go! I hope to see you all there!