Will also present for food: Internet Ministry Conference

It’s official: I’m presenting at the 2008 Internet Ministry Conference hosted by GospelCom.

Gospel Communications has teamed up with the Internet Evangelism Coalition and now the two conferences, GospelCon and the Internet Evangelism Conference, have been merged. The conference serves two dual purposes: one is to train GospelCom’s ministry partners how to use technology to do their ministry, whether it’s finding a useable open source CMS, using design to communicate effectively, or writing better post titles. The second purpose is to train believers to do evangelism and ministry more effectively whether it’s learning how to write your personal testimony more effectively, how to share your faith online, or how to use social networking tools wisely.

I’m delighted to be invited to present this year. I’d like to think it’s because I’m a superstar blogger and made a name for myself here at BlogRodent, but that’s not the case. The invitation came about by divine appointment.

As I’ve whined about frequently enough, I’m currently freelancing and doing free-agent consulting stuff. (In other words, I’m unemployed.) So, in the course of talking with potential employers, I contacted GospelCom for an open position they had for an online training developer position. 160+ resumés later, I was invited to be one of four final candidates to come visit the GospelCom headquarters in Muskegon, Michigan, to give a 15-minute presentation in order to demonstrate my “mad training skillz.” (Note the quotes, please. :-) )

If it tells you anything, I wasn’t hired. On the plus side, though, the hiring manager, Brian Melles, said mine was the only presentation of the four that actually got him excited. He was so excited, in fact, that he extended an immediate (though tentative) offer to expand the presentation and to deliver it at this years’ Internet Ministry conference.

Wahoo!

So, now it’s official. I’m on the speakers’ page, and I’ve got two presentation tracks lined up.

I’d tell you more about the content of my main presentation, but I’m still lining up permissions for the content to use. I’ll give a hint, though: I’ll be using a story from Brian Bailey’s excellent book, The Blogging Church, to illustrate my theme.

Registration is open. The conference currently costs $300 to attend for two days, or $450 for the full enchilada (early-bird registration).

Will I see you there?

Here’s my entry on the speakers’ page.

Rich Tatum has been working with Internet and Web technology for over 15 years. While the Web was still young and populated by gophers and telnetters, he founded an Internet users group, served as the first webmaster for the Assemblies of God headquarters, and later served as webmaster, Internet operations manager, and online media managing editor for Christianity Today International. He currently freelances, writes Pentecostal commentary as the BlogRodent, and parents two great kids as either “Daddy” or “Mr. Pretzel-Man” with his lovely bride in an obscure Chicago suburb.

Sessions:

Influenza Blogging: Become a viral blogger by getting influential and relational Integrity on the Internet

I’m sure you’ll be hearing more about this in the future.