Podonomics

I truly feel like I’m at the Oscars. People are scheduling meetups, after parties and networking sessions before, after and during the Podcast & Portable Media Expo (PME).

I now see the importance of attending industry specific conferences, whether I’m a speaker or not. You learn about new advances in your industry, but the invaluable part comes from the general schmoozing that happens after the sessions are over.

I’m a huge believer in technology. It runs my business. My podcast has helped me to make money. My blog has helped me to build my platform. I use technology to help companies market their brands and control their message. Technology has helped me to develop relationships with people who don’t even live in my country, often with journalists who were once unreachable. It’s a wonderful world to be in.

Yet, despite these benefits, nothing can take the place of the tangible interaction. Nothing. It’s the reason why newspapers, magazines and books will always exist. It’s the reason why expos, conferences and unconferences will always happen. Human contact with tangible things is valued above everything else.

One could argue that leaving a comment on a blog or calling a comment line to voice your feedback is tangible interaction. Sure, but there’s a delay, in essence, this can be called delayed interaction. You don’t get to read the person’s body language or see the unspoken nuances that come with tangible interaction. With delayed interaction, the spontaneity is missed. And what does Malcolm Gladwell say about this in his book Blink?

At first, I thought it was a generational thing. A man I know who is an entrepreneur and is now my client, insisted that we meet in person before he signed up with me.

He’s a baby boomer and I know that their generation doesn’t trust the automation process. Part of it is because they don’t understand, but a huge part is because it’s much more personal to deal with the person than the machine.

My dad, for example, is on the leading edge of the boomers. He just turned 59 and he refuses to use a bank machine. He’d rather go line up and be face-to-face with a teller.

He’s banked at the same branch for 22-years and anytime he walks in, he’s treated like a super star. My sister said that she went in with him recently and she was shocked at how giddy some of the female tellers acted. One even opened her booth and called my dad over just so he didn’t have to line up.

Think about teenagers and MySpace. There have been many stories of teenagers flying across the country to meet with a person whom they’ve developed a relationship with. Of course, for many of these stories the person waiting was a pedophile, but my point is that tangible interaction is what drives us to connect.

This all comes back to a sense of belonging. While I feel that I belong to a group of thought leaders in the media and marketing community here in Canada, I jump at the chance when someone organizes a dinner and invites me to attend. Here I am sitting in Ontario, California and I’m busy calling people to find out when they arrive just so I have people to have lunch with.

Seeing someone’s smile, seeing how they walk, noticing the quirky way they talk may seem like a recipe for a really great romance, but it’s actually a way that people connect. Belonging is what will keep these relationships going and it’s the reason why we’ll continue to go to conferences and expos, even though technology connects us much more easily and cheaply.

Technorati: podcasting, Blogging, technology, Business, conferences, Travel, pme, portable media expo

As you read this, I’m in the air on my way to the Podcast & Portable Media Expo. I decided to leave a couple days early to maximize my time while in Los Angeles. I’ll be meeting with other consultants and I may also take in the Podcast Academy event on Thursday before the meet & greet Thursday night with The Podcast Brothers and local media.

I’ll be presenting on the Seven Deadly Podcasting Sins to Avoid and will be basing my advice on the 7 deadly sins eg. wrath, envy, sloth, gluttony, etc. etc. Lots of stats and metrics will help me prove my points, although I’m still at a loss how I’ll cram all this information into just 45-minutes.

I plan on interviewing Ron Moore and Leo Laporte for Friday’s Podonomics episode. Because I intend it to happen, it will. So visit here on Friday to find out how both these men answer my questions.

Other than that, I’m looking forward to meeting up with Paul Colligan, Jason Van Orden, John C. Havens, Vic Podcaster, Andrew Baron and others (it’s a long list). And as per normal, I’ll be blogging from the event floor so you can live this experience with me.

See you in a few.

Technorati: podcasting, Podcast Expo 2006, paul colligan, Andrew Baron, ron moore, leo laporte, jason van orden, podcast academy

Here are some very important questions to ask a podcasting consultant before you hire him or her.

1. Do I even need to hire one? Assess your needs and figure out if you can produce a podcast in house. No need to hire on a podcasting consultant if you have the staff to do it. The big question is can you manage a podcasting strategy in addition to your full-time duties at your company? If the answer is no, get a podcasting consultant on board.
2. Can you show me yours? Find out if the podcasting consultant is podcasting, how long he or she has been producing his or her own podcast and when’s the last time it’s been updated. This is important because in order to hire someone to produce your podcasting strategy, you want to know that they’ve done all the mistakes and gone through the headaches themselves.
3. Have you done this before for a business that’s similar to mine? Producing a podcast for an entrepreneur is different from producing one for a non-profit organization. Both have different goals. Compare apples to apples by asking the consultant whether or not they have developed a podcasting strategy for a company similar to yours in sales volume, in number of employees or industry.
4. Is podcasting your main focus? Your business can’t afford to hire a consultant who also does technical writing and graphic design, all while holding down a full-time job as an insurance agent. You have the right to inquire about their other interests. If anything, use Google to find out more about the consultant you want to hire.
5. Who owns what is created? Even though the podcasting consultant is producing your podcasting strategy, you must own the creative pieces. If a podcast cover is designed for your podcast or if a script is written for your podcast, your company owns it, not the consultant. If your files are being hosted on the consultant’s servers, don’t ask for the passwords though. Just remember that you own the creative and the consultant owns the technical pieces in your podcasting strategy.

Any others?

Technorati: podcasting, corporate podcasting, sales, consultants, Business

My friend, Dave Forde, has made a call for speakers for the business and corporate podcasting conference he’s organizing in Toronto for February 21, 2007.

If you podcast for business, read his guidelines, then submit your speaking proposal.

Technorati: podcasting, corporate podcasting

This morning, 17 boiler workers at the Ford plant in Oakville went off the job, essentially closing down production of the one of the largest manufacturing plants in Ontario and preventing thousands of assembly line workers from starting their shift.

The reason? They found out that 4 of their colleagues were going to lose their jobs. Instead of seeing those 4 jobs go, all 17 boiler workers stood in solidarity, walked off the job and created a visual distraction from the QEW, one of Canada’s busiest highways, and grinding it to a crawl.

Blogosphere has already flexed its mighty muscle and can be a nasty beast if you rub it the wrong way. Podosphere has yet to show how powerful it can be.

Apple’s cease & desist letters to Podcast Ready is others is podosphere’s first test. How will it rally around those companies who have received these letters from Apple? Will podosphere be like those 17 boiler workers - small in numbers, mighty in spirit - and finally show that it’s the David to Apple’s Goliath?

Technorati: podcasting, podosphere, apple, blogosphere

I’m having difficulty finding corporate podcasting guidelines. I know that IBM has developed podcasting guidelines for their employees, but, who else?

Technorati: podcasting, corporate podcasting

Apple has started its quest to hand out cease & desist letters to anyone using the word “pod” in their company name. Some of the casualties are:

• Tightpod - A company that markets a line of decorative, patterned laptop protectors.
• Podcast Ready - A company that helps the user download podcasts to their non-iTunes podcast player.
• Profit Pod - (not even related to podcasting) A device that tracks arcade machines for money and then wirelessly transmit the information to a PDA or notebook computer.

When money’s no longer an issue and your legal team is struck with boredom, hit the very people evangelizing your products and services with lawsuits.

Hmmm…this reminds me of the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and Napster. Instead of looking at the reasons why people want to download music for free and developing a paid model with Napster, RIAA instead takes Napster to court, gets it shut down, then starts to sue individual downloaders.

Absurd. Apple is fighting the very thing making its products and its company a success. Utterly strange.

Technorati: podcasting

The Podonomics podcast highlights corporations and businesses using podcasting and other social media tools to generate sales leads. In Episode 3, Leesa Barnes chats with Bryan Person, one of the organizers of Podcamp Boston, in how they were able to generate a positive cash flow and fill the event beyond capacity using inexpensive social media tools.

Click the Arrow Below to Listen

Bryan answered these 5 questions:

1. What was Podcamp?
2. What were some of the challenges in organizing an unconference?
3. How did social media play into generating buzz for the event?
4. How did the event turn out?
5. What was your return on investment?

Episode Resources
Podcamp Boston Wiki
Podcamp Boston Metrics
NewCommRoad
Bryan’s blog

Episode Credits
Music by Juggling Suns
Voice by Jay Moonah

Other Ways to Listen

Download the MP3 || Subscribe to the Feed

Technorati: podcasting, podcamp, bryan person, unConference, corporate podcasting

 

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Remember a few weeks ago I said I may be planning a Web 2.0 related event here in Toronto?
Well, after my experience at Podcamp, I put out a call to a few people on the GTA Podcasters mailing and 3 people bit the bullet. Jay, Dave & Brent are the first people to join me in bringing Podcamp to Toronto.

If you’re a podcasting consultant, enthusiast, hobbyist, or just pod-curious, head over to the wiki and add your name to the list. We need a venue, a few sponsors, panelists, presenters, attendees, etc. etc.

We’re looking at having this event towards the end of February, sometime after Dave’s corporate podcasting event. Maybe February should become podcasting awareness month in Toronto?

Update: My favourite Montreal podcaster, Julien, has joined as an organizer.

Technorati: podcasting, podcamp, podcamptoronto2006

I was over at Mathew Ingram’s blog reading his comments about why podcasting may be worst than vlogs. Mathew isn’t crazy for saying this, but I do agree with him that there’s alot of really bad podcasts out there. I even presented on a podcast gone bad at Casecamp back in July.

And while I’m not the one to kill people’s enthusiasm for podcasting, I cringe when I hear one that’s poorly recorded or edited, especially if it’s being used as part of a company’s communications strategy.

The #1 reason why podcasts are poorly produced or lack a purpose is because the podcaster who hosts the show is also the one who does everything to produce it. They plan, record, edit, mix, publish and promote their podcast and eventually become exhausted. Something always suffered when you have to do everything all the time.

Some of the best podcasts out there isn’t being done by one person. They may plan the content, they may even record it, but the technical aspects of their podcasts - the editing, mixing and publishing parts - are done by someone else.

One of the commenters on Mathew’s blog, Rob Hyndman, a technology lawyer based in Toronto, said something that really stuck out:

“Content may be king, but it’s also quite the taskmaster.”

Ah, and it’s for this reason why podcasting is a good business for me. I know that eventually, the company that starts off podcasting on their own will podfade or want to hire out the complicated, technical stuff.

Does that make me a pariah? Preying on the what will eventually become the downfall of many companies who podcast?

No, I call it good business for all. And that should help lessen the number of pointless podcasts out there. Perhaps Mathew will have a different view at that point.

Technorati: podcasting, mathew ingram, rob hyndman, corporate podcasting, marketing