Podonomics

Leave it to John C. Havens, the About.com Podcasting Guide, to come up with these clever titles. He’s hosting a live podcast recording on Talkshoe to answer your questions about Podcamp.

John is one of the orgainzers behind Podcamp New York and he asked yours truly (I’m one of the organizers behind Podcamp Toronto) to join in on this interactive podcast, along with 2 more Podcamp organizers. They are:

• Bryan Person of Bryper.com, online media guru, podcast consultant, and co-organizer of Podcamp Boston (”original flavor”).
• Vic Podcaster of Hot From Silicon Valley, new media/startup expert and co-founder of Podcamp West.

If you’re interested in learning more about Podcamp and why you should attend, join us on this interactive podcast recording live on Wednesday December 13th @ 10pm ET. Here’s the details on how to join us.

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The Meshcasts (Rob’s term) are up on the Mesh blog. Thanks to Uncle Seth for that wonderful song called To Be An Angel that I used in both the intro and outro.

I was having a devil of a time trying to find something that could capture the energy of Mesh and then I stumbled upon that song.

As I perused a few blogs that made mention of the Meshcasts, I couldn’t help but notice a miscegenation of the word Mesh with other Web 2.0 terms. Meshcast is just one, so let’s have fun with this.

Here are a few of mine:

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Borrowed the title of this post from Rob, who borrowed it from Leo. The Mesh mini-podcasts are coming. Seven in total, all under 10-mins. Not sure when they’ll be posted, but I’ll link to them once I see them on the Mesh blog.

Unfortunately, I was using an omnidirectional mic which picked up everything. Silly me, I should’ve taken my condenser mic instead. Because of this, there was little I could do in post-production to remove the background chatter and music.

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I heard through the grape vine about 3-months ago that DigitalEve Toronto, the rebranded Webgrrls founded by a few Canadian women about 5-years ago to encourage women to pursue careers in technology, was going down the tube.

Wired Woman seems to be going strong with 2 chapters (although they had about 3 or 4 chapters about 2-years ago).
Well, rumour no more. I just visited the DigitalEve Toronto website and they have a final message from the board of directors. The final word?

It has been decided by a unanimous vote by the board members to officially close the Toronto Chapter due to lack of interest and income.

Jeepers, Batman! Although frankly, it comes as no surprise that Digital Eve Toronto has closed up shop. In my opinion, women’s technology associations are no longer relevant for many reasons.
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I’m a little late with this, but I wanted to share that the boys are at it again. Mark, Mathew, Stuart, Mike & Rob have decided to organize Mesh in 2007.

If you want to meet the guys behind Mesh, they’re having an informal meetup in Toronto on November 15th. I’ll be attending and would love to meet some of you.

Plus, I’ll have my mobile recording gear in tow to do some interviews with those who attend. I mean, Mark asked if I would and of course, I couldn’t refuse. We’re going to turn the recordings into podcasts and feature them (and you) on the Mesh blog. Cool, huh?

I’ll be asking you both intelligent and silly questions. Nothing embarassing, I promise. Just be yourself because someone else is already taken (Mitch, I just love this quote you came up with).

So, if you’re looking for good eats, great company and your 15 MB of fame (thanks for coming up with that one, Michael), come on out and let’s pre-Mesh in the city.

If you plan to attend, leave your comments so I can keep my eye out for you.

Technorati: mesh2007, mark evans, mathew ingram, stuart macdonald, rob hyndman, mitch joel, michael seaton, podcasting, web 2.0, mike mcderment

I stumbled upon this great blog post on how to blog a conference. One thing that stuck out are the tips the author provided on how to podcast a session.

Somehow, writing about a session and recording it to turn into a podcast are treated separately. Most conference organizer would frown upon attendees recording each session then publishing it as a podcast for all the world to listen.

The reason? Conference organizers typically get the speakers to sign a release form to get their permission to record (and then sell) the recording of their session.

As a podcaster, you don’t have this permission from the speaker. So, to avoid any legal hiccups, podcasters should focus on getting the behind the scenes stories.
Forget about recording the sessions. Instead:

• Interview speakers after their sessions (Josh suggested this).
• Interview attendees and ask for their opinions about the conference.
• Interview exhibitors and find out what’s so interesting about the product or service they’re showcasing.
• And then, interview someone who just visited a booth and get their honest opinion about the product or service.
• Attend an after party and capture the energy, noise and voices.

All these can become great podcasts that don’t infringe on the agreements conference organizers made with the speakers, plus you get to provide content from a unique angle that compliments all your blog posts while reporting from a conference or expo.

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.