We’re excited about Echo this year, and I hope you are too. And the truth is that there’s still plenty of time to register. Sometimes we even have people register when they arrive at the conference!

But while there’s plenty of time to register, time is running out on our Early Bird rates. These rates end one week from today — Thursday, May 24:

• Individuals — $249 each
• Groups of 2-4 — $229 each
• Groups of 5+ — $209 each

That’s a great deal, so don’t miss it. Check out the Echo 2012 site and register today!

Scott McClellan is the Editor of Echo Hub and the Director of Echo Conference. You can follow him on Twitter: @scottmcclellan.

I have a friend who, every so often, asks me the question I least want to answer and most need to answer. For a private and closed-off person like me, it’s the best and worst question:

How’s your heart?

I don’t know how he knows to ask — maybe he knows we have a lot in common or he just senses it. I don’t know how he chooses his moments, but it’s always at the right time.

It happened again yesterday morning in a text message.

How’s your heart?

I love it. I hate it.

I answer honestly … eventually. But first I have to resist the urge to placate him with my usual evasive garbage. You know, something like, “Everything’s good, man. Thanks for checking in!” (Full disclosure: Most of my exclamation points are disingenuous.)

This question — How’s your heart? — reminds me of a powerful talk I heard Jud Wilhite give last week at Catalyst Dallas. Speaking to 3,500 church leaders, Jud said this phrase again and again:

“Your calling before God is not to a spectacular ministry, but to a faithful and sincere heart.”

If I’m honest, I have a tendency to focus on what I’m producing rather than what is being produced in me. And even though he’s a well-known pastor, Jud could cop to the same tendency. That’s why the question my friend asked me is so vital and life-giving — it beckons me to return to the inward work of cultivating a faithful and sincere heart in relationship with God.

So, how’s your heart?

Scott McClellan is the Editor of Echo Hub and the Director of Echo Conference. You can follow him on Twitter: @scottmcclellan.

When I blogged about a great new iPad app called Paper a few weeks ago, I also mentioned my beloved Cosmonaut stylus. What I didn’t mention at the time was that we’d been working for months to get a batch of Cosmonauts for the Echo Hub Store. Last week, we finally got that batch, and you can see Cosmonaut here.

Cosmonaut is a beautiful stylus for iPads and other touchscreen devices that began in 2011 as a Kickstarter project (of which I was a backer). Now Cosmonaut is available to the masses, and as you can see from this feature on The Verge, it stands up well against competition from other stylus manufacturers.

If you can see yourself using a tablet to sketch ideas, develop design concepts, paint without getting messy, or even take notes in an app like Penultimate, check out Cosmonaut. In my experience, a good stylus just works better than a finger (sorry, Mr. Jobs). Cosmonaut isn’t for everyone, but it has certainly been a fun and useful part of my iPad experience the last few months. Maybe it’d work for you too.

Scott McClellan is the Editor of Echo Hub and the Director of Echo Conference. You can follow him on Twitter: @scottmcclellan.

You’ve gotta love Twitter. I know I do. One of my favorite things about Twitter is that it makes meeting someone for the first time exciting instead of awkward. For instance, I’ve been tweeting back and forth with Jim Gray for years now, and last week we finally got to meet at Catalyst Dallas.

Jim works for Integrity Music and Kingsway, the music divisions of David C. Cook, and during our conversation he told me about how to get 12 free mp3s from artists such as All Sons & Daughters, Paul Baloche, Leigh Nash, and Desperation Band from WorshipForward.com.

To me, great music is one of the best sources of creative inspiration. Good tunes help my brain function properly, and these artists make great tunes. Grab the 12 mp3s here and say thanks to the fine folks at Integrity and Kingsway.

See you next time, Jim!

Scott McClellan is the Editor of Echo Hub and the Director of Echo Conference. You can follow him on Twitter: @scottmcclellan.

The year after I stepped away from pastoral ministry was a difficult one. To help me process the feelings I was experiencing, I invited a counselor friend to coffee. His name was Ron, and he was amazing.

As a part of his life-giving words to me, he included this: “Gary. You are an artist. Because of this, you will experience higher highs than I ever will. But you will also experience lower lows than I ever will.” Then, he said something I’ll never forget.

“Don’t try to change that, because you can’t.”

And after I pursued that with him for the next thirty minutes, I began to understand that, in his counseling experience, artists tend to exhibit extremes. I had been trying to hide these extremes because the non-artists in my life kept trying to “correct” me.

What they were trying to tame, Ron was trying to leverage.

It’s Heaven and Hell.

As an artist, I will always react to difficult situations with more grief and sadness than most people. But the opposite is true, too. The smallest success or idea that allows me even the dimmest glimmer of hope will always cause me extreme joy. And I need to stop crucifying myself because of this. I need to stop trying to hide it.

I need to embrace it.

So do you.

The more people I come in contact with, the more I realize how rare it is to meet someone who gets genuinely excited about anything. It’s almost like people are scared to exhibit any real desire, for fear they’ll be shot down, or misunderstood.

For fear they’ll be corrected.

But make no mistake about it. The best art is borne in the joy of heaven, or the pain of hell.  God-fearing artists will experience both, and God will beautifully interact with them in both places. But to create from Hades – to try to become artistically motivated from a place of perfect balance between heaven and hell – will cause artists to create safer art that is less impacting on the viewer, and frankly more boring.

I think it would feel like castration.

So while artists need to stop living and dying based on every whim of our emotions, we also need to come to grips with the fact that, for many of our Tribe, we will always exhibit high highs, and low lows.  And when we place our ordinary lives on the daily altar as living sacrifices, we need to make sure and place this tendency on the altar as well, for God to mold and transform as He sees fit.

We may battle in this illogical space for the rest of our days.

But we should also learn to embrace its beauty.

Gary has been married to his wife Angela for 22 years, and is the father of three daughters. He is the author of PURSUING CHRIST. CREATING ART., a book that explores life at the intersection of faith and creativity. Gary is the co-owner of Floodgate Productions and Floodgate Creative, and is the Founder and President of The Floodgate Foundation.

Until last week, I’d never heard of Ashok Gadgil. Thanks to this Co.EXIST article, I now know Gadgil is a professor who helped invent a means of disinfecting water using ultraviolet light. Thanks to Gadgil, five million people in India, Liberia, Nigeria, the Philippines, and Ghana have clean water every day.

Five million people. And although Gadgil’s work is recognized inside the science and engineering communities, he’s relatively unknown throughout the rest of the world. Even in the regions where his work saves lives on a daily basis, nobody knows his name.

Contrast that with the story of “Sully” Sullenberger, the fast-acting pilot of US Airways Flight 1549 who successfully landed the plane in the Hudson River after a run-in with a flock of Canadian geese. There were 155 people on that flight and Sullenberger made sure they all lived to tell the tale. Unlike Gadgil, Sullenberger’s heroism became a huge story.

What I don’t want to do is criticize the media or our culture. Nor do I want to diminish Sullenberger’s accomplishment in order to build up Gadgil’s. Rather, I mention both of these men in order to point out that sometimes people who save lives become national heroes and sometimes they don’t.

Just like Gadgil, the creative work you do gives life to people, whether anyone outside your inner circle recognizes it or not. My guess is that Ashok Gadgil is okay with that, and I hope you are too. My guess is that Gadgil’s secret is that he believes in what he’s doing.

Believe in the work, do the best work you can, and give life to people. Let that be enough. In the event that you become well known like Sully, handle it with humility like he did and go back to work.

Either way, we work for the Lord (Col. 3:23). Either way, we’ve got work to do.

Scott McClellan is the Editor of Echo Hub and the Director of Echo Conference. You can follow him on Twitter: @scottmcclellan.

No, the title doesn’t have a typo; to parse means “to examine closely.” Isn’t that what we do when we edit videos, messages or stories? Sometimes we sit in dimly lit rooms or coffee shops, sifting through the same material over and over just hoping the content might stir us. In most cases we leave with a rather strong desire to pass out.

Where to begin?

This question is haunting. It usually pounds over and over through our heads as countless hours are wasted digging through mounds of raw content. I have been here many times. My hope for this article is to equip you with a few tips I have leaned heavily on and that have proven most helpful in crafting stories. By no means do I know every technique or trick, but these have served me well.

Let the Premise Guide
If you spent the upfront time developing a premise and used that as a lens when shooting, you should have a fair idea of where to begin. Even if that is not the case, you could start to look at your content in light of your premise. Everything should be prioritized as to how well it sticks with or supports the premise. Many cool shots, pictures, stories, and interviews I might choose as favorites have been discarded in my quest to align with my premise. If something goes out of bounds of my premise, however awesome, a sacrifice must be made for a cleaner, richer story. Bottom line: if it doesn’t fit the premise and move you emotionally, cull it.

Learn to “Audio Chunk”
Making sense of interviews takes some experimentation. Most of my interviews are 40 minutes long and I need to have a final product, emotionally compelling with key content, just 3–5 minutes in length. With some projects, like my recent video of a serve trip to the Dominican Republic, multiple subjects ( in this case) are interviewed ranging from 20-40 minutes each! My end goal does not change and I still need to tell a compelling story in five minutes. With audio, the key is to listen to it entirely before you begin.

Before I learned to Audio Chunk I tried transcribing and logging every interview, yet it always felt like a massive waste of time. So I started to develop my own method of making sense of lengthy interviews. My “chunking” process looks something like this:

1. Remember the premise!
2. Get familiar with the questions asked and focus on the questions/responses that are closest to your premise.
3. Open the file into a sequence.
4. Start at the beginning. Right from the get-go I select my cutting tool and start to cut. First thing will be to cut away all of the silence and the filler words such as um, like, or ah.
5. Cut chunks and label them individually. A good example: “When I started coming to church, wow… God did a number on me!” I would label this “Pivot point.” Chunks can be as large as a story the interviewee is recalling, or as small as people introducing themselves.
6. Once you have chunked and labeled everything, you should add a new empty audio track in the same sequence.
7. Start dragging and dropping the premise-building chunks into a new order on the audio track. The new order may look nothing like the original interview, but this is where the magic happens.
8. Now listen to your new 4-5 minute compilation of chunks. If something doesn’t work, drag it off, move it around or bring in other chunks. Do this until you have something that really matches your premise and has an emotional pull to it. The finer nuances like breathing and space are left up to you.

If you are anything like me, a light bulb might have just gone off in your head as you realize how simple this technique makes editing interviews. It suddenly becomes tactile and easy to work with.  When the next video project comes your way and you discover interviews will serve as a key component, instead of passing out from exhaustion, you may have some fun employing these new techniques.

If you’ve found a technique for parsing a ton of interview footage that has worked well with you, why not share it below in the comments?

Sloan Inns is a filmmaker for Keystone Community Church and for Boy Meets Girl Visuals. In addition to filmmaking, Sloan leads worship and is constantly explaining that his accent comes from South Africa, not Australia. You can find more of his work on his Vimeo Channel.

One of the things we love about the Echo lineup every year is the fact that they’re a dynamic bunch. They’re always doing stuff. This year’s lineup is no different, and so I figured I’d give you just a few updates on what some of this year’s Echo speakers and teachers are up to:

• Jeff Goins just released a new ebook, You Are A Writer. Grab it.
• Our buddy Barton Damer was featured by HOW Design.
• Jeff Sheldon released the new Premium Line of Ugmonk apparel.
• Charles Lee’s Ideation Conference started today in Chicago.
• Gary Molander and the Floodgate team released a new short film for Mother’s Day.
• And the prolific Carlos Whittaker is working on some new tunes, so keep an eye out for his next record.

Like I said, they’re always doing stuff. And keep in mind, that’s just a sampling of the new and timely stuff our Echo speakers are working on. All of them are still doing great things in their day-to-day lives, which you can find out more about here.

Our lineup of wonderful and creative people is just one reason why Echo 2012 is going to be a great event. If you can join us, we’d love to have you. In fact, take advantage of our Early Bird Rate before it goes away in two and a half weeks! You’ll be glad you did.

Scott McClellan is the Editor of Echo Hub and the Director of Echo Conference. You can follow him on Twitter: @scottmcclellan.

My favorite video this week has to be this one from Christianity Today‘s This is Our City project:

Paul Miller, a writer for The Verge, is leaving the Internet for a year:

Speaking of The Verge, the team imagined what would happen if Instagram created a real camera:

Do you like beats? I do. Meet the Roland TR-808, the legendary source of premier beats from the last 30 years: (HT Devour)

This one’s called “Food Ad Tricks.” Enough said: (HT Devour)

Here’s a fascinating visualization of bike traffic in Budapest: (HT Explore)

Mother’s Day is just around the corner, and Centerline New Media has something nice to say about that:

And finally, my coworkers from Igniter Media put together a nice list of reasons to love your mom:

That’s it for this week. See you next time!

Scott McClellan is the Editor of Echo Hub and the Director of Echo Conference. You can follow him on Twitter: @scottmcclellan.

It has been three weeks since I read this post by Glenn Packiam, and I’m still chewing on it. The more I think about it, the more its implications continue to expand in my mind. Ultimately, I couldn’t help but share it with you because of how what Packiam is saying could change the way you approach being a communicator.

When we’re crafting a message about spiritual truth, we need to think bigger.

Glenn Packiam’s post starts this way:

“The past few Sundays, I’ve found myself saying to my congregation that if they could leave a service and apply what I’ve just preached, then I’ve failed them.”

If you’re like me, you re-read that opening line to make sure you didn’t get it backwards. Then maybe you wondered if Packiam got it backwards. Do me a favor and read the entire post.

I don’t think he got it backwards. I think he’s right on.

“As pastors,” Packiam writes, “we are not merely dispensers of good advice; we are proclaimers of the Word of Christ.” As such, we have the opportunity to tell stories and share messages that transcend acrostics and step-by-step sin management strategies. The kind of message Packiam is talking about doesn’t inspire action items, but rather it inspires surrender and acknowledgment of weakness.

Like I said, read the post. And the next time you preach (regardless of whether you’re working on a sermon, a video, or whatever), think bigger.

Scott McClellan is the Editor of Echo Hub and the Director of Echo Conference. You can follow him on Twitter: @scottmcclellan.