This is a recording of the session I did at the Web 2.0 conference earlier this year. It’s about 30 minutes long.

Download the MP3 here.

You will need to do the exercises in this session with a training partner. It can be a friend, colleague, coworker, whatever – but do them with a partner or the value you’ll get out of the recording will be greatly diminished. Follow along with the directions in the session as if you were actually there.

Please leave comments and feedback here after you’ve listened to the session and let me know how it affected you.

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I had the pleasure and privilege to present at the Web 2.0 Open conference in New York City recently on the topic of Doing More With Less, a topic near and dear to everyone. The session itself is based on so much of what I’ve learned from Mark Davis of the Boston Martial Arts Center and his teacher, Stephen K. Hayes. Here’s the funny part about the session – I can’t replicate any significant part of it here on the blog.

The content is entirely provided by you, the audience. I’m more or less just a tour guide. No slides, no PowerPoint, not even a real presentation, just a guided experience in which you and your fellow audience members discover new things about yourselves.

I called the session the most technologically advanced session of the entire conference, and in a way, it’s true. The human technology was what we explored. I made the analogy that gear and tech will only get you so far. Hand a rank amateur a $50 point and shoot camera or a $2,000 DSLR and you’ll get about the same number of lens cap photos. The gear and tech can improve bad photos potentially to mediocre, but that’s about it.

Conversely, a truly skilled photographer? Give them either camera and they’ll create amazing works of art that nearly ignore the limitations of gear. Don’t believe me? Check out the cameraphone category on Flickr to see some amazing works.

In the session, we investigated four areas of doing more with less:

1. Redefining less. With friends, we examined what less was with our training partners, and then looking at less from a different perspective to gain some mental freedom from a poor resources mindset.

2. Finding authentic self. With friends, we examined things that have always been a part of our lives and how we can align ourselves and our careers, lives, and businesses with our inherent strengths to do more, plus looked at the difference between our current selves and our superhero selves.

3. Reclaiming responsibility. With friends, we examined aspects of our life that appear as luck, good or bad, and how we can change our perceptions from luck to being in charge of our lives.

4. Empowering our minds. We examined in a distilled fashion the idea of using your iPod to control your emotional state.

It’s nearly impossible to convey online any significant part of the experience, so if you weren’t able to make it, I hope you can attend a future version of this, or attend the seminars and workshops given by my teachers. If you were there, I look forward to reading your feedback in the comments.

You can also pick up some of the source material from Stephen K. Hayes as well.

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The process for choosing who will speak at SxSW is partly open to the public, where speakers propose panel discussions on the voting web site, then encourage friends, family, and anyone who will stand still long enough to vote for their panel. Panels that receive lots of votes have a greater chance of being selected for public performance at the festival.

Competition is fierce, with over 2,200 proposed panels and about 10% or so will make it through (if I remember correctly).

The consequence of this is that every proposed speaker has been shilling like mad to get their panels selected. Sonny Gill asked if there was a better way than this, than making it effectively a popularity contest, and I think there is.

Make the content stand on its own.

Here’s how I’d approach it. Speakers complete proposed speaking session topics, the same as now, except that they are forbidden from attaching any personally identifiable information to the topic. These are then loaded into the system, validated to ensure speakers followed the rules (anyone who didn’t, obviously, is disqualified outright), and then displayed to voters.

Here’s the catch: voters only see the panel topic and description. No speaker name or bio. No information at all about who’s delivering. The URLs themselves are randomized each time you enter the voting process so a speaker can’t find their panel in the pile and tell people to vote for it or even link to it. Voters vote for 5 at a time, ranking them in order of preference, and at the end, votes are tallied and the schedule is revealed.

This eliminates the popularity contest. This eliminates gender or race bias. This eliminates everything except what the panel is ostensibly about, which is the content, the discussion, the conversation.

Will this ever happen? Not likely. SxSW would never get nearly the same number of voters registering under an anonymous system, which means a smaller database to work with, nor would it create the same kind of buzz that the current system does, so don’t expect it to change. Every potential speaker is SxSW’s marketing department, unpaid. Every potential speaker is generating ridiculous Google Juice for SxSW’s web site. Why would you as a conference organizer ever give that up?

But, that said, if there ever were an opportunity for conference organizers as a professional conference to democratize their voting system, this would be the way to do it.

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I’ll be leading three discussions at PodCamp Boston 4, and I encourage you to drop in and say hi.

1. What’s now for what’s next?

What are the things we should be doing now to prepare for what’s next?

2. Marketing Makeover

Let’s get a few people to bravely volunteer their marketing programs and web sites, and we’ll all critique – constructively – together, from SEO to social media to old school. Think of it like Extreme Makeover, only about your marketing and no comments about your physical fitness or hair style.

3. Marketing Over Coffee Live

Marketing Over Coffee, the marketing podcast I do with John Wall, will be doing another live session this year, with special guests Chris Brogan and CC Chapman. Casual, fun, and actionable are the themes we’re going for. Come participate!

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If you can attend 95% of the conference virtually and not pay, or attend 100% of the conference in person and pay, which will most people rationally choose? Which would you choose?

Right now, social media, for all its glamour and buzz, is still a relatively small space compared to the world of business as a whole. As it grows, how long will it be before conference organizers have to clamp down on usage to avoid completely devaluing their conferences?

Will social media, in other words, burn conferences to the ground? Yes – and it should.

My answer as co-founder of PodCamp and co-organizer of PodCamp Boston 4 is one we’ve been researching and looking at for years. Whether live or recorded, the talking head portion of the conference is something that is part of the old conference model.

While I love speaking publicly, I also recognize that it’s not terribly valuable in and of itself. I could convey the exact same information with a video camera and a YouTube account, and in fact I’ve done this to a degree. 60+ people saw my PAB 2009 presentation live. Over 300 have seen it virtually. Did the attendees of PAB 2009 get more out of the public speaking experience than the people at their desks? No, not really.

What we’ve been exploring with PodCamp year after year is how to take the other parts of conferences and amplify them, the parts you cannot get out of a talking head presentation. Side conversations in hallways. One to one interactions. Spontaneous group discussions. These are all things that you can’t bottle, and honestly, you can’t tweet, stream, or liveblog either. There’s simply no way for you, as a new media journalist, to be at 300 mini-sessions, or 3,000 micro-presentations, and if the conversations are valuable, you’ll be too busy participating to be archiving and broadcasting – and that’s as it should be.

What I think the conference model will evolve to, and where PodCamp is leading along with the other *Camp events, is the truly interactive community brainshare. Would I pay $500 to see Seth Godin speak? Sure. Would I pay more to sit down over beer with Seth and a few other folks at a roundtable and have him look at my marketing campaign, maybe sketch out some ideas on a napkin? Heck yeah. Multiply that times many tables over many hours and I’d walk away with a literal goldmine of useful information that’s tailored to me and my business. That’s what we want to bring more of to PodCamp – fewer talking heads and more sharing brainspaces.

When you walk away from a PodCamp, I don’t want you to say “that was a great conference!”. I want you to say, “I met and learned from some awesome people at PodCamp!” because in the end, your community is your strength. The conference is just a convenient place for the community to meet.

What do you think the future of conferences will be? Leave your thoughts in the comments.

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Talking with Olivier Blanchard about the ultimate evolution of social media and speculating what true mastery of communications looks like.

Geeking out with Dan York over yet even more new stuff about Google Wave, including rich media in Waves and Wavelets. Incredible. Stay tuned as he’ll have a video we recorded about what Wave will make possible that’s beyond our ability to grasp yet.

Chris Brogan going gangsta.

Talking with Chris Newton about some of the new back-end features of Radian6’s integration with Salesforce. Honestly, I’m not sure they even fully get what they’ve created, but if they’re both lucky and good, they’re going to manufacture a bucket of money. We’ll see if the idea discussed over dinner can turn them from a million dollar category business to a billion dollar category business. Let’s hope they do.

Hanging out with the Boston social media crowd.

The true power of events like this isn’t even in the entertainment or the presentation, but in putting lots of very smart people in one room and letting the chips fall where they may. Last night, as long as folks were paying attention and studying carefully what was being demo’ed, everyone was dealt a flush hand. If you were there, I hope you took advantage of the amazing conversations and know what the future looks like for the next 12-18 months in social media.

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Along the way, I presented an 18 minute talk on monetization and why it’s vital to new media. Longtime readers of this blog will find many of the themes to be as familiar as old friends.

I also did my usual Sunday morning semi-improv presentation, My Top 20 Social Media Tools. Unlike the other presentation, I’m not publishing this presentation in any context, and here’s why: you had to be there and ready.

The Sunday morning presentation is always a tough one for people to make. It’s at 8 AM, which, after a night of partying, only the hardcore attendees can usually make. Delivering a super-tight, all-meat presentation that many have expressed a desire to see is my way of thanking them for making that extra effort to show up.

It’s also part of a martial arts lesson my teacher, Mark Davis of the Boston Martial Arts Center, is constantly reinforcing with us. Very often in the black belt class, he’ll show a technique only once as a way of helping us train our minds to capture and catch as much information as possible, to be vigilant about paying attention.

Social media in some ways makes us reliant on the crowd, reliant on the tools, reliant on waiting for someone to retweet or blog or podcast an important event. That laziness – and it is mental laziness – softens our ability to capture vitally important things that happen which may never happen again. Think about your own life. Have you ever had the experience of missing a child’s first important event, missing a news story break on the street right in front of you, missing a key piece of information at a conference? I know I’ve missed information, especially in the dojo, because of a lack of focus. I know I’ve missed some terrific photos due to inattentiveness.

Thus, that presentation will never happen again, at least not like that. The slides won’t be posted, the video won’t be uploaded, the information never shown again. If you were there – fully and wholly there, meaning you were paying attention and not twittering, blogging, chatting, etc. – then you got some information I hope you find useful. If you weren’t there, then please make the effort to actually show up at events like Podcasters Across Borders or PodCamp rather than hoping someone will live stream/live tweet/live be there for you. You’ll find that there are many more gems from the weekend which will probably not be published from other presenters and attendees as well.

Also, big shout outs to all of the longtime friends and fabulous conversations from the weekend, from Marko Kulik’s photo advice to intense debates about the future of media with Whitney Hoffman, Tod Maffin, and Julien Smith, to the many other great conversations over the weekend.

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My friend Chris Brogan has an interesting quote – when times are good, people love strategy. When times are bad, people want tactics. I’ll take this a step further for conferences: people want something to take home. In this economy, people want a souvenir that they can take away that’s immediately usable, something that, when they sit down at their desk the day they get back, they can plug in and turn on right away and start making a difference, as well as show off to the folks who didn’t go.

Tony Robbins calls this sort of thing profound knowledge – information that once you have, changes everything. You can’t ever go back to the way you used to do things unless you try really hard. A good example of profound knowledge is the rule of thirds in photography. Put a tic tac toe grid mentally over your viewfinder in your camera. Put subjects at the intersections of horizontal and vertical lines, and instantly your photos are likely to become better. Now that you know that, you can’t ever go back to NOT knowing how to apply that rule.

I brought two souvenirs with me to give away at MarketingProfs, one of which I discussed in the panel, and one of which I discussed in the Twitter Therapy sessions. Whether or not you were at the conference (and you really should have been), you can have the souvenirs, too.

1. Customer service isn’t a burden. Customer service is a gold mine. If you’ve ever wanted for content to blog about, to podcast about, to share, to act on, you will never find a better source than the customers you already have and the problems they desperately want you to solve. I’ve recorded 900+ episodes of the Financial Aid Podcast and the customers of the Student Loan Network are my constant inspiration. I don’t need millions of dollars of research. I don’t need millions of dollars in marketing budgets. My customers tell me exactly what their problems are. Your customers are doing the same. The catch? You have to want to listen to them. Far too many people in executive suites are content to glance at their marketing dashboards and that’s as close to the customer as they’re willing to get. You have to be willing to dig – as you would in any gold mine – to get to the real treasure.

2. Try the 8 foot test. This is an easy test to do. Load up your web site on your computer. Maximize your browser. From 8 feet away, is there an immediate and obvious call to action that gets your visitors to do what you want them to do? Here’s an example I use in my demo – go to StaffordLoan.com and do the same. If you can’t tell what we want you to do (apply for a Stafford loan), then you need to see an eye doctor. If you don’t have a room big enough to walk 8 feet away, then load the sites up on your mobile device and hold it at arm’s length for a similar effect.

Hopefully, these two souvenirs are worth enough that they alone made it worth it for you to come to MarketingProfs. Hopefully, every other speaker and presenter gifted you with a souvenir or two as well, so that you went home with an armload full of stuff that will immediately make your business better.

My thanks as well to Ann Handley and the MarketingProfs team for putting on another great event and assembling a terrific panel.

Bonus: grab the eBooks I mentioned at the panel discussion here.

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The Conference FAQ

So what do you do?

I’m the CMO of Edvisors, Inc., a college student marketing company based just south of Boston. We operate Edvisors, the Student Loan Network, and a few dozen sites, and offer federal student loans, private student loans, online degrees, and student credit cards to the higher education audience. We’re always looking to work with new partners, and our 1.5MM+ audience is a great audience to share your stuff with. Grab me at the Forum if you’d like to talk more, or shoot me an email.

I also run the Financial Aid Podcast and co-host the Marketing Over Coffee Marketing Podcast with John Wall, the not-basketball marketing star. If you’re around Boston, I invite you to be a part of PodCamp Boston 4.

Do you have a business card?

You’re looking at it right now. If you’d like to contact me, there’s a handy form on this site. You can also email my GMail address, cspenn at gmail. I don’t carry a pile of paper cards because [a] they’re environmentally bad and [b] information changes so frequently, it’s easier just to give you my personal web site URL, www.ChristopherSPenn.com

Are you on Twitter?

Yes.

Are you on Facebook/LinkedIn?

Yes.
Yes.

I welcome all connections on all social networks.

Do you ever do other conferences, private speaking engagements, etc.?

Yes, through Edvisors. Feel free to contact me for more info on that.

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Many thanks to Jeff Glasson and Perkett PR for recording and publishing the video, and to Jeff Pulver for hosting the event.

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A while back, Mitch Joel posted his Pixelated conference series, a collection of seminars and sessions from conferences that contain the “best of the best” for any set of topics. I’ve been so busy doing stuff that I never got around to putting mine together until now. This version of Pixelated is focused on Business Marketing – ideas from sales, marketing, branding, and new media that should help any business do things a little better.

If this were a conference, a real life conference, I have no doubt that attending it would cost you thousands of dollars, at least for the first sessions. Thanks to the exceptional generosity of conferences and events who post their sessions, you can enjoy some of the best content on earth without leaving your chair.

Treat this as an actual conference. Take a day or half a day to watch the videos and give them your undivided attention. Have a bottle of water, a notepad, and an open mind as you watch the sessions, as if you were actually there.

Rather than just a pile of videos, I’ve also added brief annotations about why I think each session is important.

Updated: refreshed for July 2009, with some new sessions from TED and other shows.

Pixelated Business Marketing starts… now.

Seth Godin @ TED: This is Seth’s newest set of perspectives, based on his book Tribes. The evolution of marketing from mass media to hero culture of sorts.

Malcolm Gladwell @ TED: This session ranks super high on my list because Malcolm gets you to think outside the box. What product or service do your customers deeply want but don’t know it?

Joseph Pine @ TED: If nothing else, this talk should make you think about what experiences are and how to give them to customers, rather than products or services.

Dan Ariely @ TED: Dan’s book, Predictably Irrational, is the basis for this talk about how our decision processes are flawed, including why consumers buy things they really shouldn’t.

Garr Reynolds at Google Talks: Garr is the author of Presentation Zen, a phenomenal book that asks you to look at how you present information and how you can make your presentations better, more impactful, and less boring.

Seth Godin @ Inbound Marketing Summit: Seth is a master marketer. His talk goes over how you can make your products or services more remarkable.

David Meerman Scott from Inbound Marketing Summit: David’s book, the New Rules of Marketing and PR, power part of this talk as he goes over how the ground is changing underneath traditional business outreach.

A few of my sessions.

Podcasters Across Borders 2009: I talk about why monetization is vital to new media.

Inbound Marketing Summit: I talk about whether or not your business should be podcasting.

Marketing Profs Digital Marketing Mixer: Social media prerequisites. Things you have to have in order before you start down the shiny object du jour.

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1. Use the tools! 2008 showed rapid growth in every social network of note, and as organizers, the more you can help people meet and greet prior to the event, the better. Set up Twitter accounts for your event, groups on Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, and many others, use search and readers and RSS to keep tabs on word of mouth. There’s no shortage of opportunities to help your participants connect in advance. At MarketingProfs’ Digital Marketing Mixer, every speaker’s Twitter handle was bundled on a handout – no reason that every participant at a PodCamp who’s active in social media can’t make a directory listing in the event’s wiki.

2. Separate lecture from conversation. Mitch Joel pointed this out in his Pixelated conference series, where he and others gathered together the talking head portions of major conferences. Figure out what makes your local PodCamp special and what’s just talking head stuff, and provide talking head stuff well in advance so that participants can maximize their time together. Grab videos of folks like Mitch, CC Chapman, Chris Brogan, and many other PodCamp favorites far ahead of the event and share them so that when participants arrive, they’re ready to collaborate and share, rather than passively listen.

3. Go paid. The economy has made life tough for the end user and consumer, but even tougher for the marketing budget. Plan your PodCamp to run 100% participant-paid at the door. If you get sponsors, great, but don’t bet the farm on them, and don’t financially extend your PodCamp beyond what money you already have in the bank. Continue to publish your ledgers publicly so participants can see how every dollar is allocated, but strongly consider going paid and having the event be wholly “sponsored” by the participants.

4. Support your local community. Pick a local charity and find a way to divert time, energy, or resources to it so that your community is a little better off for having a PodCamp.

5. Stay lightweight. Keep expenses to a minimum. We’re all adults for the most part who can locate the nearest Starbucks, Dunkin, or McDonald’s. The magic of PodCamp isn’t in refreshments or epic sponsored parties, but in bringing together people to learn, share, and grow their skills. Some facilities will allow you to unbundle catering from facility rental, which can keep costs way down, as food & drink are typically the most expensive part of any conference.

6. Add pieces along the way. Start with barebones expectations for attendees. As funding becomes available, you can add amenities later. Set expectations low, and you’ll never disappoint.

What things have you learned from PodCamps and other conferences in 2008 that you would pass on to PodCamp organizers for 2009? Leave your comments below!

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- Speaking to an overflowing room about the prerequisites of social media. I got a real kick out of seeing so many people so eager and energized to learn more about social media and how to get started. Conversely, whenever the conference organizers have to make an announcement that extra chairs are being brought in and it’s STILL standing room only after more seating is installed, I know as a speaker I have to bring my A game up to an A+, to live up to the trust and energy that the crowd brings.

- Speaking on a panel with Gary Vaynerchuk and Greg Cangialosi. Great fun, some powerful takeaways from Gary (including stuff I’ll be trying with the Financial Aid Podcast), and intense energy. If you don’t watch Wine Library TV and read Gary’s blog, you’re missing out, even if you don’t care a whit about wine. Gary’s that passionate and engaging about a subject he loves and deeply cares about. Fun trivia fact that Greg Cangialosi pointed out at the beginning – Gary and I attended the same high school, 1 year apart.

- The HubSpot booth. The folks over at HubSpot, in case you don’t know, have a great little tool called WebsiteGrader.com, which does some very basic SEO assessments of any web site. What made their booth fun was them letting spectators stand around and chat with other participants about their sites. At the conference, there was a representative from a prison management software firm, a virtual mortuary firm, an executive dating firm, and many others, all of whom I wouldn’t have learned about if I hadn’t just hung around and chatted. Really interesting to see how people perceived the relevance of Internet marketing to their industries (so many people say, “But my industry is different because…”) and then watch their eyes light up when you show them how to Google prospective customers and partners.

- Late night discussions with Julien Smith. If you don’t know or follow Julien, you should. He and Chris Brogan are writing their first book, Trust Agents, slated to come out in mid-2009. We chatted on everything from trust to marketing to conspiracy theories.

- Sunrise over the Arizona desert. There’s nothing quite like watching the sun peek out over the horizon, illuminating the landscape. The Arizona desert is beautiful, if hostile.

- Meeting some great new people. I’ve got a pile of business cards to go through, but I had some fantastic and funny conversations with old and new friends alike. Big shout outs to Kati Ryan, Becky Carroll, Bryan Rhoads, Paula Drum, Ace Bailey, Rohit Bhargava, Chris Glenn, Pam Martin, Maly Ly, David Alston, Ron Ploof, Leslie Banks, Sonny Gill, Sharon Philippart, Mandy Clive, Frank Eliason, and the many, many others whose conversations made the conference terrific.

- Being on vacation. I actually booked the MarketingProfs event as vacation time away from the Student Loan Network. It helps me to separate out the vitally important work at SLN from time when I allow myself to just sit back and enjoy an experience. Ironically, I’ve got more potential business partners and business from vacation than I’ve gotten from some financial aid events, and I hope to be able to bring those opportunities to Financial Aid Podcast listeners and readers in the near future.

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It’s brilliant and gets the idea of conferences wrong.

Conferences aren’t about sessions, talking heads, and lecture format, which is what online video captures best.

Conferences are about interaction, collaboration, and meeting people, at least to me, all things that one-way, online video is terrible at.

What is Pixelated, then? It’s pretty much a Gigadial podcast or a Google Reader shared items for video – hand-selected content that you think is important.

Does this make the idea bad? Not at all. It’s especially insightful when you see a Pixelated from someone you respect, like Mitch, because it’s a way of seeing what they think is important. Like seeing their iPod playlist for business, if you will.

But it’s not a conference or an unconference. When you finish a Pixelated, you probably will not have increased the size of your business network or collaborated to create a new meme like bacn or lolsaurs.

Make your own Pixelated. Call it a conference if you like, but realize that it doesn’t fulfill those vital roles of collaboration and interaction, not yet.

How would you add interaction, collaboration, and networking to Pixelated?

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Why pro conferences are different than PodCamps and why neither is better

Some interesting discussion this morning on the differences between PodCamps and pro conferences like the Affiliate Summit, which I’m speaking at on a panel on Tuesday, August 12. A difference to highlight, from the registration page of the Affiliate Summit:

PHOTOGRAPHY, RECORDING & VIDEO TAPING: Sessions may be photographed, recorded and/or video taped by Affiliate Summit. By your attendance, you give Affiliate Summit permission to be photographed, recorded or videotaped and agree to the public display and/or sale of the photographs, recordings and/or videotapes. Personal recording or videotaping of any kind during the event is prohibited.

This is part of what separates PodCamp from pro conferences (that and the price tag, PodCamp Boston 3 was $50, $99 at the door, the Affiliate Summit is $949 for early bird, $1,949 at the door). That said, there are several very good reasons for pro conferences to prohibit recording, considerations that went into PodCamp and were ultimately rejected.

1. Protection of speaker intellectual property. This is a big deal. PodCamp has been absolutely blessed by speakers like David Meerman Scott, Mitch Joel, David Maister, and many others, who normally charge tens of thousands of dollars to speak at a conference. The presence of any kind of recording online causes them real economic harm – it literally costs them money, since it makes them a less valuable speaker. Why? Exclusivity counts for a lot. Imagine being a conference planner and trying to advertise that your pro conference has information that’s exclusively available at your conference… and then finding out that your keynote speaker can be found on Blip.tv or mDialog for free. You’re less likely to book that speaker as opposed to someone who’s always behind a paywall.

2. Protection of conference revenue. One of the biggest sellers at a conference? The conference DVD, often for up to 2/3 of the price of the conference. If you pay $1,949 for the conference and the DVD is available for $695 or you can see it on YouTube for free, which will you choose? More important, if recordings are freely available online, why would you go to the conference in the first place?

3. Protection of conference attendees. As we said at PodCamp Boston, the conference is the hallway. At top-tier pro conferences, there are a lot of folks floating around who, quite frankly, don’t want to be recorded for any reason unless they’re compensated to be, and that’s fair. That’s their choice. Some of these folks have exceptionally valuable information that isn’t intended for the world to consume, and the premium they charge for that information is their prerogative.

All of these considerations are valid, and make good sense for a professional conference model. That’s an important distinction, because a lot of folks in social media believe PodCamps, BarCamps, etc. are the evolution of the conference, and that the models which power PodCamps, BarCamps, and unconferences are the right way to go for professional conferences.

They are not.

Professional conferences and unconferences are two completely different animals, two completely different models. Professional conferences work on a revenue model that emphasizes profitability. Speakers get paid and share proprietary information, attendees pay and derive value from sessions (not to mention craploads of handouts, printouts, etc.) and access to VIPs, vendors and sponsors pay and get lead generation lists and access to top level corporate folks. Everything works.

Unconferences emphasize a revenue model of meeting costs. Attendees occasionally pay, sponsors pay for exposure, speakers don’t get paid, but the net effect is that everyone pays much less than a pro conference. An “expo floor” booth at an unconference will probably run a company $1,000 or less. An expo floor booth at a pro conference will cost at least $10,000, if not more. Because no one’s making money beyond meeting costs, expectations are lower and people are more free. Again, everything works.

Which model is right? Both are right for their roles, and both are supremely wrong out of context. A professional conference that let recordings be free would do itself significant economic harm. A PodCamp that sold its registration list for $25/head would be demonized by its community. It’s inappropriate for members of either style of conference to criticize the other for not being more like them, since each plays a vitally important role in the events ecosystem, and each attracts the crowd that wants to be there.

There’s room enough for everyone, pro conferences and unconferences alike.

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As I continue to learn more about digital photography and graduate from clueless hack with a nice camera to somewhat clueless hack with a nice camera, one of the lessons I’ve learned so far is that very often, representing the whole can be done through representing the essence.

What the heck does that mean?

Here’s a few photos from my recent trip to Block Island. The island itself is 6 miles long and conveying a sense of the culture and energy of the island is difficult in whole. Here’s a picture of the beach:

Tough part is, this is such a broad picture that it could be any beach in the world.

This photo conveys a lot more about the spirit of the island:

Notice that it’s using fonts and layout that are reminiscent of a 1950s ice cream shop. Here’s another shot:

What I’m learning is that sometimes just a picture of something as seemingly inconsequential as a sign in a shop or a wood fence on a dune conveys a lot more feeling about the place than trying to take a giant panoramic photo of it all. The small picture brings out the essence of what’s different about the island, what sets it apart from the thousands of other islands in the Atlantic ocean.

Likewise, look at your social media efforts. You can try to be as broad as possible, trying to keep up on every network, running around like crazy on every platform, but that ultimately makes you the equivalent a collection of wide-angle, subjectless photos. You see everything but nothing’s interesting. Sure, take a few panoramas at the start, but then dig in and find the essence of the kind of social media experience you want to have, and focus your efforts where you want to be. Find out what’s different.

If there is one feature that distills the essence of social to you, what is it? That will tell you what network you need to be on. Is it presence? Twitter and its clones. Clubs and groups? Facebook. Exploration of people’s interests, one on one? MySpace. Career-focused, professional networking? LinkedIn. There are plenty of others, and other ways to perceive each of these networks – these are just how I use the properties.

Pick the conferences and events you want to attend based on the essence of the experience you’ll get out of it. Want a “fishbowl” new media event? Podcasters Across Borders. Want to meet a never-ending flow of new people? PodCamp. Marketing? Look to MarketingProfs. Inspiration? TED. Each conference and event has an essence, and if that essence is what you want, then when it comes to making hard choices about what conference to attend, you’ll have a better idea of where to allocate scarce time and money.

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… or at least until the next conference to which we bring lightsabers.

Hat tip to Chel Pixie and Whitney Hoffman for the camerawork.

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Podcasters Across Borders 2008 has wrapped up, and I’m back in the office. Another terrific weekend, full of great friends and interesting discussions. A few takeaways from this weekend that I picked up:

Sylvain Grand-Maison showed a great slide of song structure and podcast structure – comparing the two, and suggesting that the same ideas that make a song worth listening to could make your podcast worth listening to.

Jay Moonah did a great demo of how the medium is the message by having a blindfolded volunteer identify the quality of a promotional message by the paper it was printed on.

Tod Maffin from the CBC explained about “IT” or the quality that makes a podcast terrific. One of his suggestions was to speak more intimately, reminding us that a significant portion of people listen to podcasts with headphones or earbuds; speaking to them as if you’re shouting across the room (radio) is a mismatch for how people listen.

There were plenty of other discussions I had this weekend, and I’ll be making some changes from a technical perspective as well as a marketing perspective for the various media adventures we all participate in

Oh, and I won a Blue Snowball mic, which was a nice treat, and soon to be a nice treat for the listeners of the Financial Aid Podcast.

Many thanks to Mark Blevis and Bob Goyetche for putting on another fantastic conference.

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Jeff Pulver writes a great recurring blog post about how to prepare for an upcoming conference. His method of making a conference a productive experience for you is one that is infinitely valuable, and I highly recommend adopting the framework for your own conference experiences, whether at one of Jeff’s highly recommended VON conferences or unconferences like PodCamps.

Here’s my action plan for PodCamp DC, based on Jeff’s method.

Join the community. Taken care of.

Set your goals. My goals for PodCamp DC are twofold – to share as much as I can of the stuff I’ve been working on with all of the folks in new media who want to hear about it, and to learn from folks doing important work about what they’re doing and how I and my network can help. Social media has given me a rare opportunity to be a part of a community of millions, with thousands just a click away on networks like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and more.

I especially would like to meet folks who are interested in taking their existing communities in the political and government relations realms into the new media realm. There are a lot of people in new media who can be especially helpful to your work, and I’d love to be able to connect the two worlds together a little.

Say hello. Here I am. There are a lot of ways to get in touch with me. A few include:

• LinkedIn.
• Twitter.
• Facebook.
• You can even email me right on this site.
• Leave me a voice message at 646-452-3376.

My friend Chris Brogan recommends posting a recent photo of yourself before each conference so people know what you look like. To be honest, I haven’t really changed all that much in a decade or so, so this photo is perfectly up to date.

Change my email habits. I’ll definitely be checking email less frequently, probably in the early mornings and evenings. As much as I can, I’ll try to stay in touch.

Study the map of the conference. In this case, Google Maps is the main game, as I’m staying in one spot, helping with the UnKeynote in another spot, and presenting in a third sport. Here’s my public PodCamp DC map.

Be aware of the event schedule, and be in control of your own schedule. Both will be tough, but I think there will be plenty of time for, as Jeff calls it, serendipity.

Originally, PodCamp DC was scheduled for two days, but logistics and other considerations demanded a full one day instead. As a result, I’ll have a little extra time on Sunday if folks want to get together to chat, do some informal stuff, maybe grab a cup of coffee or lunch before I fly back to Boston. If you’d like to schedule a meeting on Sunday, please hit up one of the contact links above, and I’ll do my best.

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I went to NewBCamp to share a little and see someone else’s take on the UnConference idea, and I’m pleased to say that NewBCamp is very much the same energy, enthusiasm, and excitement that embodies the PodCamp series of events. I think the Providence area has got its own UnConference series, and it’ll be interesting to see if NewBCamp and BootCamp can work together, since they’re so closely aligned.

Even a veteran can learn lots of new stuff, and I’m certainly no exception. Sara’s session, Speed Mentoring, is an absolute gem of a session that I would love to incorporate into PodCamps. It’s like Speed Dating, but instead of relationships, a few people self-designate as mentors in specific topics, and then folks in the room can cluster towards topics that they’re interested in or that they need help in. Those small, focused discussions were revelatory in their own right, but I think the Speed Mentoring concept is a nice twist to conversation.

I had the opportunity to fine-tune and present a more story-like version of my New Media 101 session. Matthew Ebel was kind enough to stream it on uStream.tv, and recorded part of it here:

A full version with better audio will be produced and released soon.

The day concluded with a concert at AS220 in Providence with Matthew Ebel. Over 90 minutes, Matthew took us all on a fantastic musical tour of his work, including a new version of probably my all time favorite song of his, I Will Wait For You.

NewBCamp was a fantastic experience, and I hope to see it flourish and accomplish its twin missions of introducing new people to technology and bringing a boost to the Providence technology and new media sectors.

“The sun’s coming up in the morning, and I’ll be there…”

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For more of John, check out Marketing Over Coffee, too.

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Top 5 Reasons to go to VON.x

1. See great speakers give you an idea where things are going for them
2. Watch a professional conference team put on an event with operational excellence that would make your ops team envious
3. See Jeff try to broadcast his entire conference from a Nokia N95
4. Pulver’s All Conference Party. If you’ve been to one, I need say no more.
5. Cisco gives away laser pointers at their booth on the VON expo floor. Frickin’ laser beams.

With luck, you can make it to VON.x. Wish I could! Register here.

Catch you on the other side!

It’s… Amish ChrisBrogan!

Click here to view the embedded video.

Special thanks to Howard Greenstein and Kathryn Jones, as well as Eric Skiff and PodCamp Philly.

Click To Play

Mitch Joel is a rockstar. An honor and pleasure to present with him.

Events like PAB are essential for podcasters to recharge, to regroup, to get together and share and reaffirm that podcasting is still the exciting venture it was when they started. It’s a source of energy, a source of inspiration to help people motivate or remotivate themselves to produce new media.

On the way home, Bryan Person and I stopped at a McDonald’s in Oneonta, New York. There, a senior in high school who had just graduated came up to me at the table (Bryan was still in line) and asked, “Hey, my friends and I saw your shirt – what’s a podcast?”. (for the record, I was wearing the PAB2007 shirt, skillfully designed by Nico Pin of Snowy Day Design)

Full stop.

Here’s someone who is probably as ideal a candidate for new media as you can get, and they don’t know what a podcast is. When I said “it’s an MP3 internet radio show” she got it immediately as to what it was, but didn’t know what kind of content was available.

We have a lot of work to do.

The conclusion of PAB kicks off the promotional season of PodCamp Boston 2 for the PCB team. We’re rested, recharged, and ready to bring new media to the mainstream, and the best way we can do that is to do as much outreach as possible. PodCamp Boston 2 will ideally be the largest, best, most exciting PodCamp ever – until the one that follows it. We’re going to take the lessons of previous PodCamps and put together what we hope to be the best community UnConference we can, and we’ll need your help.

In the weeks to come, we’re going to be talking a lot more about what we need for PodCamp Boston 2, but immediately, we’d love your help in directing people to the registration page. The URL is easy to remember: http://www.PodCampBoston.org/register

Mark and Bob – FANTASTIC job. Thanks for having us.

Oh, and Neil Gorman’s session video is up on the podcast site.

Rarely is it when a podcasting conference has MORE energy on its last day than its first, but PAB2007 is the exception. Neil Gorman’s presentation ROCKED.

Bob Goyetche tagged me in this round.

1. Why are you coming to PAB?

I’m coming to PAB because I suddenly found a sizeable chunk of time that was relatively free, and PAB has a great reputation as one of the paid podcasting conferences worth attending.

2. A little homework now: Which PAB registrants would you like to meet? Why?

Well, I think I met nearly 3/4 of PAB registrants at PodCamp Toronto or PodCamp Boston, so I’m definitely looking forward to reconnecting with folks.

3. Who is your “dream interview” for your podcast? Why?

It’s not who so much as how. I’d love to be able to shadow someone really successful and powerful for a day or so, like this guy I heard about named Larry. Larry has juice – one call from him can get situations moving that would otherwise be total losses. I’d love to know how Larry accumulated his juice.

4. Who would you like to interview at podcamp?

Umm, don’t you mean PAB? And honestly, I don’t really want to interview anyone at PAB. I just want to show up and have a good time.

I’m amused, however, that this PAB meme was clearly from a PodCamp one

5. What is your, “Can’t miss it” session at podcamp?

It’s not sessions – there are can’t miss people at PAB. And no, I’m not going to name names, because I don’t want to slight anyone else.

6. What is your favorite podcast?

Mine. If it wasn’t mine, I would stop doing my show. I have to love the show I do.

7. What is your favorite web resource?

Google.

8. Who is your favorite podsafe musician? (eg. Sean McGaughey).

Depends.

Favorite male artist: Matthew Ebel
Favorite female artist: Natalie Gelman
Favorite male-fronted group: Rayko KRB
Favorite female-fronted group: Uncle Seth
Favorite label: Binary Star Music

9. Ginger or Maryanne?

No idea. Who are they?

10. Bob, Mark, or Tod?

Yes.

I tag anyone attending PAB who hasn’t already been tagged.

Anyone else from Boston driving? Want to carpool? I have a fuel-thrifty Prius.

Here’s the thing I noticed all over Stockholm, and other European PodCampers confirmed in other countries – there were an awful lot of people listening. They had headphones jacked into devices all over the place.

FEW of those devices were iPods. Of the ones that were MP3 players, the iRiver T series seemed to be the player of choice.

For every MP3 player I saw, I saw 10 mobile phones being used as media devices. Mobile phones that were spinning up music, content, and everything primarily from telco carriers.

I also learned that there are an awful lot of handsets equipped to be able to listen to podcasts – most of the Nokia N and E series phones supposedly can – and that the only thing missing is a way to get the listener to subscribe easily. Right now, asking the user to key in an RSS feed is far below optimal, but if we can figure out a way to get one click subscribe working on those handsets, then podcasts can join the music on headphones everywhere.

If you had the opportunity to have your show – audio or video – on half a million more devices, to half a million more listeners, would you? And how much would that be worth to your show?

A quick shout out is earned by Andy Nyman and the Swecasters for being co-organizers, and of course to Jeff Pulver and VON, and Audana for sponsoring.

Other random things… apparently, Swedish fish actually were Swedish at one point. The Swedish Chef from the Muppets was not Swedish, but may have been based on an actual Swedish chef. Swedish meatballs are called köttbullar and are served at IKEA. This I did not know.

Rehearsal went well last night for the Podcast Marketing presentation. I’m much happier with the current version, which is a lot more coherent, as opposed to being just a bag of stuff.

If you’re going to be in Stockholm, email me – FinancialAidPodcast at GMail dot com – and we can try to grab a cup of coffee and see the sights of Stockholm!

I’ll be arriving late Friday afternoon, probably an hour or two before the party at SLATE. I’ll be at the party at SLATE both nights, as well as supporting podsafe musicians with Natalie Gelman’s concert at Stain Bar Friday night and Brother Love’s CD Release Party Saturday night. Amidst all the activities, I’ll be doing some presentations, running around having fun, and trying to be helpful as best as I can for the largest PodCamp yet.

• I will in all likelihood not be on Twitter that much.
• I may or may not even have consistent Internet access.
• If you’d like to get a message to me, email FinancialAidPodcast@GMail.com or call the show’s hotline, 206-350-1208. I’ll be checking email for sure.
• If you have my cell phone number – good luck. That damn thing does everything except actually function as a phone, and I swear that my shaver gets better reception.

I will be sharing at these sessions:

• 9 AM – Thinking Differently
• 10 AM – Let’s Make Something in the Spirit of PodCamp with Chris Brogan
• 1 PM – Podcasting 101 with Garageband on the Mac
• 2 PM – Bum Rush the Charts case study
• 3 PM – Marketing 2.1 – 7 tools you can use to market your show

I’ll also be at the Student Loan Network booth on the second floor mezzanine at these times:

• 7:30 – 8:30 AM – Setup and registration
• 12 PM – 1 PM – lunch, hanging with Uncle Seth and Natalie Gelman playing live

Please stop on by to say hi and enjoy what we’ve got at the SLN booth. There will be the usual corporate stuff like business cards, but we’ll also have:

• The Mashboard: grab a sticky note and a marker, and Twitter offline on a big wall about ad-hoc sessions, meetups, ride board, etc.
• Networking Bowl: Put 3 business cards in, take any 2 out, then go find those people.
• DIY Business Cards: Forgot yours? Don’t have any? Draw your own – you might just reinvent your personal brand.
• Jingles for Dollars: Uncle Seth and Natalie Gelman will be selling CDs at lunch. Buy a CD, and you’ll get a coupon for a 3 – 5 second personalized jingle for your podcast or company. Originally we were going to record them on the spot, but it’s going to be wicked loud there, so unless you want that live feel, I’d go for the coupon.

If you want to say hi, please do. I don’t bite. I’ll be wearing my PodCamp Boston organizer shirt, which is depicted here:

Finally, I want to give a huge shoutout to the organizers of PodCamp NYC. I’ve been following the evolution of this PodCamp since it was announced, and despite more than a few roadblocks (like venue change, etc.), the team of John C. Havens, Adam Broitman, Laura Allen, Eric Skiff, Jason Van Orden, Caroline Desrochers, and everyone who is pitching in to help have done a FANTASTIC job managing the chaos. The sheer number of people registering to attend despite it being a holiday weekend is a true testament to the power of this event and the work they’ve done in building the community’s trust in it to give up time for it.

Oh, and be sure to print out the UnOfficial Guide to PodCamp NYC. I checked with Kinko’s and they wanted to charge $6,428 for 300 copies, so that was a no go.

As with all PodCamps, it’s free to attend (excepting PodCruise Miami, which is technically free to anyone on the boat, but you have to pay to get on the boat) and will provide a great community gathering place for podcasters, bloggers, and new media folks around Europe.

Warning in advance to participants: I apologize for being American, and therefore functionally unilingual, though I think I can ask about the restroom (washroom/privy/loo) in a couple of languages. As we roll with the process, those of you in the international community, please help Chris and I with our unintentional but highly probable cultural faux-pas, like formatting dates incorrectly and other stuff. We thank you in advance for your help.

• Andrew Gallagher. Technology Coach,NYC Department of Education.To learn more about posting and hosting PodCasting on the Internet. I have used GarageBand to produce some PodCasts, but have yet to learn how to post them on iTunes.
• Anne Fraser, Participant. I have enjoyed listening and viewing podcasts and teaching teachers and senior citizens the advantage of podcasts in their lives. I would like to learn more about podcasts and how they are useful to people of all ages.
• Ava Barzvi I’m just starting to think about starting my own podcast, after helping others promote theirs!
• Ben Velez. Marketing. Looking to learn the basics to set up and grow my own podcast.
• Bill Rowalnd. Eager participant, newbie interested in learning more about this creative medium.
• Carol Cox. Science teacher, The Dalton School. Looking to learn what is new and how toapply it to my classroom work with the little ones – I teach gr. K – 3.
• Cynthia Meyers. Professor, College of Mount Saint Vincent. Wants to learn more for teaching a New Technologies course.
• Darlene Liebman. Producer, HowCast. I want to start a podcast, but not sure how.
• Dave Mangano. New podcaster, who wants to network and learn from others about developing content and building an audience.
• Dina Rosen. Asst. Professor, Kean University. Looking for information on practices and research related to podcasts, especially as a learning tool.
• Faith McLellan – Participant. Looking forward to learning the ropes!
• Gary Taylor Assistant Headmaster, Wooster School. Learn about social media and marketing opportunities vis podcasting.
• Gene Desepoli Looking for a good understanding of what I need to get started in podcasting re: equipment and services like libsyn, wordpress, etc.
• Greg Cannon Participant looking for ideas, inspiration, and some ideas on possibly starting a podcast.
• Jacqueline Cantwell. Law librarian, Brooklyn Supreme Court of Law. Our library is thinking of starting podcasting. I need to get up to speed on technology and content presentation.
• Jacqueline Dolly Senior Director, Marketing and Communications, Junior Achievement of New York. Wish to learn more about podcasting and techniques/strategy.
• Jill Neimark, Participant. I look forward to learning How to Podcast.
• Nancy Sharoff. Ellenville Elementary School. I’d like to learn more about podcasting and how to incorporate it into a 5th/6th grade math class.
• Scott Russell. I hope to learn more about the Podcast culture and get ideas to motivate my efforts to create a Podcast of my own.
• Tynisha Thompson I am hoping to learn more about podcasting and network with some of my podcast heroes, like Leesa Barnes and Jason Van Orden. I’m hoping to get the kick in the pants I need to start my own podcast this year.

Now, what’s the common thread? These people are a selection from the registrant list of new people in podcasting, either looking to get started, or just fresh out of the gates. They are tomorrow’s rockstars. They are the people who are going to bring fresh ideas, fresh concepts, and fresh talent to podcasting, to keep it new and exciting, to dream up ways of using new media that aren’t even on our radar scopes now.

If you come to PodCamp NYC looking to meet rockstars, you will. But if you come to PodCamp NYC looking to meet tomorrow’s rockstars, you’ll get an inside edge that no one else has.

• PodCamp NYC, April 6 – 7
• PESC Technology and Standards Conference, April 22 – 25
• PodCamp Philly, September 7 – 9
• PodCamp Boston, October 26 – 28
• VON Boston, October 29 – 31

Other events may be on the agenda, but for now, these are the ones I’ve already got on the calendar. See you around!

A conference, probably. A dry, boring conference where people discuss academic topics that, unless you’re passionate about the field, you might not enjoy. Symposium brings images of people standing at a lecturn with 300 slide PowerPoint decks and 90 minutes to speak, followed by 30 minutes of question and answer.

Imagine my surprise when someone suggested I go look up what Symposium meant in Ancient Greece, where the term originated.

From Wikipedia: Symposium originally referred to a drinking party (the Greek verb sympotein means “to drink together”) … Symposia were usually held in the men’s quarters of the household. Singly or in pairs, the men would recline on couches arrayed against the walls of the room. Food, wine (usually mixed with water and served by nude young men), and entertainment was provided, and depending on the occasion could include games, songs, flute-girls, slaves performing various acts, and hired entertainments. What are called flute-girls today were actually prostitutes or courtesans who played the aulos, a Greek woodwind instrument most similar to an oboe, hired to play for and consort with the symposiasts while they drank and conversed. Symposiasts could also compete in rhetorical contests, for which reason the term symposium has come to refer to any event where multiple speeches are made.

Heaven help the next person who suggests a Podcasting Symposium. If it’s the Ancient Greek style, it’ll make a heck of a video podcast.

Bring on the Symposium!