I was honored to appear on Dustin Faber's 16-bit Catholic podcast this week. We spoke about CNMC 2012 (see my summary post) and some recent news concerning politics and bishops. Give the episode a listen here!
This year's Catholic New Media Conference (held in Arlington, TX), came by so fast I didn't really have time to prepare any blog posts before hand, post pictures during the conference, or summarize individual sessions.
In years past (2011 and 2010), I've tried to dump pretty much everything I learned on my blog... but this year's CNMC was so much more broad-reaching that there was no way I could keep up with all the great content!
The Jesuit Conference today announced the release of the Jesuit App, a mobile app that lets people find Jesuit locations in the US, see Jesuit news, and view Jesuit prayers and spiritual works.
The Jesuit Conference hired me a few months ago to build this app for them, and it's the third iOS app I've built, and the second Android App. I built the app on top of the open source Catholic Diocese App, and hope to continue making that project more flexible, and even easier for Catholic Dioceses and organizations to adopt for their own great mobile apps.
In a break from normal events, I talked with a Twitter friend Dustin Faber tonight about gaming. Many people who follow this blog and follow me on Facebook might know I enjoy video games, but they might not know how much I enjoy them :)
My brother and I both played a ton of arcade and early computer and console games growing up, and I currently play games in the Halo series and a little Minecraft from time to time. Not as often as I did before I met my beautiful bride, but still here and there when I need a diversion.
Sarah Reinhard is starting a new column, Tech Talks, on CatholicMom.com, where she interviews Catholics in tech (like myself). I was excited to be asked to participate in the first interview: Catholic Techie Jeff Geerling.
Speaking of tech-related things, this weekend I worked almost a full day on porting the Catholic Diocese App over to Android, and I'm getting pretty close. I have most of the functionality working, but there are quite a few rough edges. More to come!
I'll be attending the 2012 Catholic New Media Conference in Dallas/Fort Worth from August 29-31; will I see you there? This year will be the largest CNMC yet, with a ton of great speakers and separate tracks for different days of the conference.
This year's theme is Marketing Your Message, and the main track of the CNMC Professional Day will be filled with keynote speakers talking about this theme. At the same time, Matthew Warner and I will be leading a Tech Summit, meant for Catholic app and web developers, designers, and Catholic development companies, talking about apps, APIs, web development, and collaboration.
I'd be remiss to not mention a very well-written article in the Denver Catholic Register by Julie Filby: Catholic apps make faith aids mobile.
In the article, Julie does a great job explaining apps and their growing prominence in the lives of the faithful, along with some tips from Mark Hart and I:
Today’s technology offers Catholics many tools for praying, communicating and learning about their faith. One such tool comes in the form of “apps.” [...]
While members of the younger generation used to be the primary users of apps, driving sales and popularity; today all age groups are using them.
This market is still a moving target, and I'm anticipating some great new apps for the faithful—as well as some great updates to old ones—in the coming months. In fact, thanks to the generosity of @kliftonjk, I have two Android devices on which I'm developing an Android version of Catholic News Live!
I didn't have much time today to post this earlier (I was driving home from a trip which took me through five states in six days, and had to do this on the road), but this afternoon I was on the excellent 'Catholics Next Door' radio show on the Sirius XM Catholic Channel.
I was happy to speak with Greg and Jennifer Willits about flockNote, about parish communications, and about helping Catholic organizations get connected to their flock in various ways.
Then I continued driving home from Chicago :)
I don't know if they have an online archive of their shows, but if I can find a link to the audio at some point, I'll try to provide it. I'm also not too familiar with satellite radio, since I've never subscribed (Pandora + free radio has worked for my musical tastes), so I don't know if there are any rebroadcasts or ways of listening to past shows...