The innovative Media Hub is here and is now live: http://www.episcopalchurch.org/gchub

For the first time, people anywhere can follow the General Convention of The Episcopal Church on the Media Hub website.

Colorful, eye-appealing, sharable and embeddable, featuring many ways to interact, with live video streams and lots of images – the Media Hub will enhance and expand the experience of The Episcopal Church’s General Convention 2009.

“The Media Hub is a pioneering way to keep track of all the actions, discussions, and ministry that happens at General Convention,” noted Mike Collins, director of digital media. “It”s a way of connecting that just hasn”t been done before.”

“This is the first time people in the pews can follow along from home or work,” Collins said. “It’s all on the Media Hub.”

What to expect

What can viewers expect from the Media Hub? According to the developers:

– Full multimedia coverage of The Episcopal Church’s 76th General Convention.

– Live video streams plus video on demand.

– Available in English with select programs in Spanish.

– Following General Convention on Twitter at @gcmediahub09. Tweeting about GC? Hash: #gc09.

– News stream, daily calendar, legislative tracker, live chat, flickr feed and more!

The Media Hub is sharable and the content can be embedded with partners, blogs, news outlets and friends

“Having produced coverage from previous General Conventions and last summer”s Lambeth Conference, I saw that people were going to multiple web sites for information,” explained Collins. “We wanted to create something that had everything we could think of that someone else might use to follow along.”

He continued, “We’re providing a lot of coverage in real time. That’s legislation, forums, hearings…we aren’t editing. This is live as it happens.”

The Media Hub concept was developed by Collins, and the Episcopal Church web development team built the site: senior web developer Wesley Bliss, developer Gregory McQuillan and designer/front end developer Chris Clement.

General Convention 2009 will be held July 8 – 17 at the Anaheim Convention Center in California. The Episcopal Church”s General Convention, held every three years, is the bicameral governing body of the church. General Convention is comprised of the House of Bishops, with upwards of 200 members, and the House of Deputies, with clergy and lay representatives from the 110 dioceses, at over 850 members.

The Episcopal Church, with 110 dioceses in 16 nations, is a member province of the Worldwide Anglican Communion.

The Episcopal Church: www.episcopalchurch.org

General Convention: http://www.episcopalchurch.org/gc2009.htm

Media Hub: http://www.episcopalchurch.org/gchub

IamEpiscopalian: http://www.iamepiscopalian.org/