Podonomics

On a cold, rainy weekend here in Toronto, I’m glad that while I hibernated indoors, I was able to attend a conference online all about podcasting. I sat through 70% of the sessions at the International Podcasting Expo that started Friday night at 8pm and ended Sunday evening at 6pm. I had a chance to listen to many experts share tips and tricks on how to make a podcast even better.

For the sessions I did attend, I provided a summary. Here’s the list below:

• Leila Thigpen on Voice Techniques for Podcasters
• Pamela for Skype
• Difference Between Internet Radio & Podcasts
• Nicole Simon on Growing an International Audience
• Dave Nelsen on Interactive Talk Podcasts
• Rich Roszel on Upgrading Your Studio Equipment
• How to Plan a Killer Podcast
• Penny Haynes on Pulling RSS Feeds Through Your Website
• Steven Stewart on Nokia Podcasting
• Dr. Kathy King on Podcasting for Education
• Jerry Franklin, The Audacity Guy on Audacity
• Jason Van Orden on Guerilla Podcasting (coming soon)

Overall, I’m encouraged to see that more and more people are thinking about podcasting in a more critical light. I don’t mean that they’re being critical about podcasting, but instead, they are thinking way beyond the gadgets and content.

For many people who attended the International Podcasting Expo, they’re thinking about their podcasts as a way to grow a community, create a sense of belonging and add value to the global conversations.
This is truly refreshing.

Rob Anderson is the brains behind Co-op World, the tool used to handle all the live online sessions (including the recordings) for the International Podcasting Expo.

He explained how much it would cost to run a live online event through Co-op World and answered general questions about the platform.

• Someone asked if he was looking at incorporating a 3-D interface such as the one used for Second Life. Rob said that this would create a resource intensive environment and he created a web conferencing system so that no one is excluded from accessing the various sessions.
• The price to run an expo like the one IPE did, with $40+ sessions, all live sessions, all being recorded, it would be in the thousands of dollars. Rob will quote on an individual basis.
• The recordings of the sessions are crystal clear (depending on the person’s mic). I’ll be using a recording from the Expo for Monday’s Podonomics episode and you can be the judge yourself. You may want to consider using one of the Studio rooms to record a “live” session for your podcast.

What a great niche and what an awesome moniker. Jerry Franklin, the Audacity Guy, led a session at the International Podcasting Expo on basic editing techniques using Audacity.

While I know everything there is to know about Audacity, I did pick up these tips:

• Use the solo button in the track control panel to only listen to one track at a time when you have many tracks open. That way, you don’t have to move things around just to isolate the sound your really want to hear from one track.
• The Audacity Guy warned against editing out every um, ah or what he called “artifact.” It’d take too long, but more importantly, everyone will sound the same. Your goal is to make your guest sound authoritative and you want your podcast to move along, but don’t edit to the point where the personalities are removed.
• Don’t forget to save early and save often.
• The Audacity Guy took us through the envelope tool. Unfortunately, I was distracted by something my mother was saying to me, so I missed it. It appears the envelope tool can help you increase and decrease the volume of a chunk of your audio without having to use the selection tool.

Dr. Kathy King really understands the role of podcasting in the educational environment. She just gets it and her enthuasiasm about podcasting for education is just infectious. At the International Podcasting Expo, Dr. King shared some of these insights:

• Education just isn’t relegated to the classroom. Lifelong learning comes through the changes we go through in life. Dr. King said that this is called transformative learning and she wrote a book on it. These changes and how we deal with them can be great content for a podcast.
• Podcasts in education is professional development on demand (PODcast). Yet another variation on what podcast means.
• The value of podcasting in the educational context is the content, allowing teachers to reach further than what the classroom could offer.
• An excellent point - Not every situation warrants a podcast. Dr. King said that teachers may want to record their students and fear putting up the audio online because it will be accessible by everyone. Dr. King suggested that if teachers want to make the audio content private, don’t attach it to an RSS feed. Simple. Private content is not suitable as a podcast.
• Plan, Design, Track and Revise. If you’re not listening to your audience, they will vote with the click of the mouse and you’ll lose a listener who will never return.
• Break down the barriers. Not everyone understands what it means to subscribe to a podcast. Provide some tips, provide tutorials and make it easy for your listeners to listen and then subscribe to your podcast.

Some interesting things happening with Nokia and podcasting. Steven Stewart, a fellow Battlestar Galactica fan, presented some insights on what Nokia is doing to support podcasters through its phones.

He gave us tips on how to optimize your feeds for Nokia customers, how to create your own OPML file, how to search for podcasts using Nokia and how to download podcasts to your Nokia cellphone.

I really like the direction that companies such as Nokia are taking to make it easier for people to download and consume podcasting content. Anything that moves us away from the cumbersome task of using the computer and the multitude of podcast directories to find really great content, I support it.

I just love wireless.

Penny Haynes, founder of the International Podcasting Expo, gave tips on how to add content from RSS feeds to your website. This is good for those who have multiple podcasts and blogs and want to show the content from those feeds on one website.

Some tips from Penny:

• Make sure you use PHP to display RSS feeds on your website. Using ASP or javascript will not be picked up by search engines.
• Download a zip file that contains what you need to upload to your server so you can add RSS content to your website.
• At that point, all you’ll need to do is insert a line of PHP code into your page and then the content will appear.

I’m first up this morning at the International Podcasting Expo. I’ll be talking about one of my favourite topics at 9am ET - How to Plan A Killer Podcast. I may will also get to do a “live” recording for Podonomics at 2:15pm ET looking at how podcasters are creating multiple streams of podcasting income.

If you’re interested in attending Day 3 events, just head over to the International Podcasting Expo website and click on Schedule in the left hand navigation bar. Some of the sessions are free to attend (the ones in yellow), including my live recording at 2:15pm.

If you’ve got the time and you’re making some income from your podcast, please join me. Again, go to Schedule, look for “Are You Making Multiple Streams of Podcasting Income?”, click on Studio LiveCast, then follow the steps to join us.
To access the other sessions in blue and purple, you’ll need to purchase a ticket at $25. Click here to do so.

Update: It was well attended for a 9am session. About half were attending from Europe, including Nicole Simon and Karin Hoegh, who I both met at the Podcast & Portable Media Expo in September. Bruce Murray was in attendance as well, one of my favourite East Coast podcasters and fellow Canuck.

Here’s one of the sessions I was looking forward to all day. It was so good, the session went for close to 90-minutes.

Rich Roszel is a studio designer, audio consultant and live studio engineer who spoke at the International Podcasting Expo on how to upgrade your podcasting equipment.

He suggested:

• One of the most obvious, yet overlooked instant improvements - turn off the A/C, turn off the fans, move your mic away from the noise source, such as a noisy computer, a ticking clock, a bubbling aquarium.
• Not to soundproof your room until you determine whether your room is “live”, meaning your voice echos. You can break up the reflection of your voice against the walls by adding bookcases to your room, clothing or pictures. If you want to pay, Rich mentioned Auralex, Sonex or Clearsonic.
• Rich talked about mics and why he prefers a condenser mic over a dynamic mic.
• And way too much information that I can’t write about only because I was totally engaged and focused on what Rich had to say.

Dave Nelsen spoke about how to use TalkShoe to make your podcasts interactive at the International Podcasting Expo. It’s an interesting service because you can schedule some time to record your podcast in front of a live audience and turn that recording into a podcast.

Listeners can participate by sending a chat message or talking to the host live through a web-based application. Very interesting idea.You can create your own free profile by visiting TalkShoe.

Nicole Simon, whom I met at the Podcast & Portable Media Expo, gave some tips on why podcasters should cater to an international audience at the International Podcasting Expo.

Nicole said that because people are very interested in things happening outside of their local area, this is the main reason why podcasters will discover people outside of their country will take an interest in their shows.

Some other tips from Nicole:

• Enter yourself into international directories. You may be #1 in Google US, but nobody in Google UK. Ask your listeners what directories they use and they’ll help you out.
• Get a Frappr map and encourage your listeners to pinpoint where they are. This helps build a community around your podcast.
• iTunes displays podcasts according to the the listener’s country. That means that your #1 listing in iTunes for the Canadian store won’t be #1 if the listener is based in the UK. So don’t be too quick to brag about it.
• In terms of payments or donations, PayPal is the best to use since it accepts worldwide payments.