After reading all the great postings about the conference, I really wish I could have gone. Hopefully they will be doing this again next year! For some great summaries of the conference take a gander here, here, here, here, here and here.

Before the conference started we had a few guest posts from other podcasters and bloggers talking about the conference and how technology has changed evangelization. We promised to let you, our readers, pick which post was the best. Please leave your votes below. The winner will get a $50 gift card to our store! Voting ends July 5th.

• Greg Willits from the Rosary Army
• Mark Shea
• Mac and Katherine from Catholics in a Small Town
• Kathryn from Catholic Family Kids

So, this is our first attempt at a podcast. Don’t expect anything fancy or technically perfect. In fact, the twelve-year-old that I interviewed for this has far more experience at podcasting than I do. A little bit of humbling is never a bad thing.

Go find out more about the CNMC sponsored by SQPN. And be sure to check out the Catholic Family Kids and Catholic Family Podcasts.

Mac and Katherine of the Catholic in a Small Town (8000 souls) podcast talk about podcasting and how it has helped them spread the Faith and grow spiritually themselves.

If you haven’t explored the world of Catholic podcasting, SQPN is a great place to start.

This is our second posting from bloggers who are attending the Catholic New Media Celebration in Atlanta this month. We asked them the question “How has new media like blogging and podcasting changed evangelization?” Here is Mark Shea’s answer:

I suppose the quickest summation is this: before the appearance of the New Media I was hardly doing Catholic evangelization.  Now I do it all the time.

See, it’s like this: I’m a writer.  Writing before the Internet involved a lot of paper, postage, ink, and time.  You actually had to mail the article to an editor, who then had to do stuff to the paper (either send it back with a polite “No thanks” in the Self Addressed Stamped Envelope or send it on to copy editing to change your esoteric piece titled “Encountering the Mystery of Christ in the Most Holy Rosary” into “My Friend the Rosary”).  Weirdness happened in typesetting.  Editors tend to buff out things they don’t like.  All this took time.

Then came the internet.  Sending article and book MSS became extremely easy (except for Luddites).  That sped up the time in which I could write and turn around articles.  It also made possible the birth of the USENET group and other forms of online “community” where people could chat about the Faith.  This meant new opportunities to meet friends, interesting questions–and jerks.  Conversations ensued.  Those turned into ideas for articles and books.  Those turned into articles and books.  Those turned into a wider audience and people with new ideas for exploiting the technology such as www.catholicexchange.com, which hired me to write for them.

Then help with book projects on various motion pictures such as The Passion of the Christ. Then do radio spots.  Then do podcasts.

All that led to lots of talks around the English-speaking world from Australia to England.  And all the while I was busy writing.  I started a blog called Catholic and Enjoying it which wound up being read by a not-inconsiderable number of folk and which put me in touch with a lot of other bloggers, info sources, and media types, who in turn afforded me more opportunities to talk about the Catholic gospel (aka “the gospel”) on various fora and in various venues.  I’ve talked about the gospel on college campuses, in pubs, on cruise ships, in people’s houses, on the air, in airplanes, on the tube, at parishes, at Protestant churches, with atheists, and a lot of other places that I can’t think of offhand.

And not just me.  The blogosphere has made possibly 50 gazillion creative initiatives for spreading the gospel and doing corporal and spiritual works of mercy.  Some folk will hear, on That Day, “I was a tsunami victim and you raised funds for me on your blog.  Enter into the kingdom.”

This post is the first in a series by bloggers and podcasters who are speaking at the Catholic New Media Celebration. The conference will be held in Atlanta on June 22.

Between now and the conference will be featuring guest posters who will talk about the conference and the effect of “new media” (blogs, podcasts, vidcasts, etc.) on evangelization. When all the posts are up we will hold a vote for the best post and the winner will get a gift certificate from our store.