The UCC's communication team is gearing up to cover General Synod with an array of traditional resources and new technologies.

For those attending the event, the time-honored printed daily wrap-up edition of UCNews will be available each morning in the entrance hall to DeVos Place Convention Center.

What's new for attendees, and those following General Synod from afar, is the many new technologies being deployed to offer more complete and real-time coverage.

UCNews' online site will be dedicated to General Synod coverage, with articles appearing as quickly as they can be filed and posted by the staff of six reporters, three photographers and two videographers, along with web and editing teams that are working in both Grand Rapids and Cleveland.

News story headlines will be fed to the UCNews Twitter feed – giving notice of new stories and event updates as they happen. These messages contain links to stories as they appear in UCNews online.

Keeping You e-Posted (KYeP) will offer a daily edition dedicated to General Synod news and events, with an exciting mix of stories, video links, personality profiles and blog links.

Connie Larkman, UCC strategic media coordinator and KYeP editor, thinks this daily email update will be invaluable to its readers. "With over 50 thousand subscribers, KYeP is our most effective electronic communications tool to date," she said. "It made sense to offer this daily edition to our subscribers – whether they're at Synod or not."

As at the previous two Synods, a live Internet video-cast of the plenary hall sessions, major speeches and worship services will be available online.

The presence of "social media" will be strong at General Synod 27. Unlike traditional forms of reporting, where news creation and delivery is controlled by a small group, the communications team is encouraging everyone to participate in the information process.

Dozens of bloggers, including many Conference communicators, have committed to posting their stories and reflections of General Synod to their myUCC blogs. Highlights from these blogs will be lifted up in KYeP and the daily printed UCNews.

Attendees are encouraged to use Twitter to post event updates, people sightings and blog notices to the "#gs27" hashtag (no quotation marks.) Hashtags let anyone post tweets – the insider's name for Twitter updates – to an identifiable channel that others can follow. The communications team will use the "#gs27" hashtag to announce last-minute schedule changes and unexpected events.

"Many people think Twitter is just a toy," says the Rev. Gregg Brekke, UCC news director and editor. "But as the recent Iranian elections have shown, and my personal experience has proven, when news is breaking it's a powerful journalistic resource."

A September post-Synod edition of United Church News will offer news and analysis after the event. This publication will be the final print edition of United Church News as all UCC news goes online and the communications staff transitions to the twice annual member magazine to be published beginning Spring 2010.

"General Synod is the proving ground for the foundations of electronic communications we have established over the past few years," says UCC communications director, the Rev. J. Bennett Guess. "It is the culmination of the best we have to offer in print and web journalism along with video presentation…

"It's the future of UCC communications – and the future is now."