PodCamp in 2009: Thoughts for organizers

Posted by Christopher S. Penn on Nov 25, 2008 in Conferences, PodCamp | View Comments

As we wrap up 2008 and the interesting year that it was, I wanted to throw out some ideas there for PodCamp organizers for 2009.

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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Social media and new media are not the same

Posted by Christopher S. Penn on Sep 4, 2008 in New media, PodCamp, Podcasting | View Comments

In the new media space, we use a lot of terms fairly confusingly:

Old media
Broadcast media
Mainstream media
New media
Social media
Personal media
Citizen journalism
Citizen media

Here’s a summary of how I think some of this stuff breaks down. Not authoritative by any means, just a perspective that helps me classify what is what in my own head.

Old media is stuff that’s been around for a while. It’s traditional media, like books, TV, radio, newspapers, etc. Note that this isn’t specific to brands or organization sizes – the New York Times is old media, but so is the Boston University Daily Free Press or the Wasilla Frontiersman.

New media is stuff that’s new, in a technological sense. It’s audio, video, and text publication methods and tools that were previously inaccessible for publication purposes to the average person in the past. Sure, you could run your own newspaper, and many did, but you never had a shot at the same level of reach that a blog or podcast today can have.

Social media is interactive media, and it’s a subset of new media, since the tools that enable social media didn’t exist before, and therefore are a subset of new media. Social media is by definition interactive. You can blog, podcast, crank out videos on YouTube, host Blog Talk Radio shows, etc. all by yourself and no one else has to be involved for you to be creating useful media. For example, Seth Godin’s blog is new media, but not social – comments are turned off. Is it still useful? Absolutely. Is it new media? Yes. Is it social? No way.

Social media is the opposite – it’s media that REQUIRES the participation of others. Twitter, for example, would never have existed without other users in the network. PodCamp as a conference would never have existed if it was only one person who showed up. Take any of the social networks, remove the people, and you have something not useful at all.

That’s why new media and social media are NOT interchangeable terms, and why I refer to PodCamp as a new media conference and not a social media conference. Yes, you can absolutely learn about social media at PodCamp, but you can also learn about the greater view of new media, too, and even, true to its namesake, podcasting.

What are your thoughts? Are social media and new media the same thing to you? Are they different? How do you view the landscape and make sense of it?

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Why PodCamp Works – Integrated Verticals

Posted by Christopher S. Penn on Aug 27, 2008 in New media, PodCamp | View Comments

Imagine for a moment that your industry, that your specialty, is a single post, a single beam. It represents your vertical, everything you’re good at, and also everything that’s wrong with your industry’s growth. It’s fishbowl. It’s vertical. It’s a silo, an echo chamber in which no new ideas flow in or out.

You keep struggling to find new ideas, new innovations. Event conferences in your industry are the same old, same old, with vendors marketing the same solutions to yesterday’s problems.

Now imagine you found a way to tie together your vertical with others.

Imagine you found a way to bridge the gap between your vertical, your silo, your fishbowl, and not just with one other silo, but with a ton of silos. Imagine a series of fishbowls connected, so many that you effectively have an ocean to swim in. Imagine you found the commonalities among verticals that were strengths, and that working with others in completely unrelated fields helped mitigate your individual weaknesses.

This is the mission of PodCamp. Bring together everyone from different worlds who wants to learn, share, and grow your new media skills. Bridge the gap between pools of ideas so that the best ideas are accessible to everyone, and the power of friends working together can overcome the obstacles that by yourself stood in your way.

Bring together the verticals and see what you can achieve.

See you at PodCamp.

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

Posted by Christopher S. Penn on Aug 11, 2008 in Conferences, PodCamp | View Comments

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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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Throwing down a challenge to PodCamp Philly

Posted by Christopher S. Penn on Jul 26, 2008 in Economy, PodCamp, Social networks | View Comments

I’ve been reading some very insightful comments about PodCamp Boston 3 over the past few days, and this one from Chris Cavallari really stuck out.

I especially liked this:

In my talks with other podcampers, one of the issues that came out of PCB3 was the desire to actually create something at Podcamp. At this point, many of us are veterans of podcamps and new/social media, and are looking to expand our horizons. The sessions, while mostly interesting and informative, are generally rehashes of things we’ve seen and done for several years now. Many of us want some kind of track where we can physically put the skills we’ve learned and honed to good use.

Here is the challenge that faces America right now – people are making hard choices between gasoline and food, between college and electricity, between losing their house and losing their life.

We can’t do much at a single PodCamp to influence global policy, not yet. We can attempt to keep the carbon footprint of PodCamp as small as possible, as PodCamp SA did. We can’t influence ExxonMobil or the other energy companies directly yet, though new media folks are starting to work their ways into the blue chips.

What can we do?

Two things are squeezing the average Joe right now – food and fuel.

Here’s the social media challenge for PodCamp Philly, appropriate for the city of Brotherly Love, Geno’s, Pat’s, and some of the worst poverty I’ve seen in an American city.

Let’s make a social media cookbook that we can complete and distribute by the time PodCamp Philly is over. The focus? Making food as affordable as possible.

I’m reminded to say that this is open to everyone, not just people attending PodCamp Philly.

What might this entail? Between now and the close of PodCamp Philly, find, create, revise, and publish recipes using the lowest cost foodstuffs available that still satisfy basic nutritional needs and don’t resemble gruel. Use social media and real life connections to talk to a grandparent that got by during the Depression. Find old wives’ recipes and dig up ideas from old church community books. Dig deep into your community and history to find the treasures hiding just out of sight, like how to make popcorn on a stovetop or jam from scratch. How to bake a loaf of bread yourself. How to make pasta or plant an herb garden.

Let’s unite all of our networks, all of our knowledge, and all of our generations we have access to. Let’s take this information, these recipes, and blog them, with instructions and cost breakdowns. Video them and publish the videos as tutorials. Record audio walkthroughs. Let’s rip a PDF of this that can be distributed to every soup kitchen and food pantry in America, something that they can then pass on to their customers. Let’s fire up iMovie and iDVD, Libsyn and Blubrry, and make some media worth distributing. Let’s grab Chef Mark Tafoya, Jennifer Iannolo, Nina Simonds, Kathy Maister, Ming Tsai, and ask the hell out of everyone doing a cooking show in new media to help us with this goal. Let’s get Second Harvest, United Way, and every corporation with some dollars to spare to get involved and sponsor this project.

Our goal? A social media collection detailing cheap, easy, healthy food so that a parent with 5 dollars in their pocket can do at least SOMETHING other than the dollar menu at a fast food chain.

Then, at PodCamp Philly, let’s put it all together. Let’s assemble it, put up the web site, search engine optimize it, use all of our social media powers to promote the hell out of it with every service we can get our hands on, and see just how far we can lob the thing into the air.

Are you game?

I’m reminded to say that this is open to everyone, not just people attending PodCamp Philly.

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