PodCamps
August 17th 2007 11:33
I’m in the UK on the 1st and 2nd of September and am going to at least one day of the PodCamp near Birmingham.
I’d never heard of a PodCamp until this morning, so I’ve been reading up on what they are. PodCamps were founded by Christopher S Penn and Chris Bogan in 2006. There are usually a number of them held in the US, but
fewer in the UK. The Birmingham one is the next, and then there’s one in Kilkenny, in Ireland.
The definition of a PodCamp is that it’s an UnConference, which I take to mean that it’s less formal than a Conference. To achieve this informality there are seven rules, which include the freedom to participate, freedom of access, and equality for all involved. And the one I like most of all: all sessions must obey the Law of 2 Feet - if you're not getting what you want out of the session, you can and should walk out and do something else. It's not like you have to get your money's worth! If only such a rule could apply to normal conferences, I might go to a lot more of them! (Don’t you hate getting stuck in a lecture or meeting where you just can’t get out of the place, and your bored silly?)
Now you may not have picked up on the fact that a PodCamp is free to those participating. (The Birmingham one is being sponsored by a number of businesses such as Cheeze, Podcast Nation and Digital Central.) That’s another plus of course, but it also means that people who would normally have limited access to such a gathering of minds can manage to get there.
People arrive at PodCamps with varying levels of knowledge and understanding about the new media community tools. (That would be me!) Some of them have never blogged before and others have never recorded an audio pod cast or produced a videoblog.
A link from the page I’ve already highlighted goes to the Shared Tools and Common Knowledge section. This is probably even more useful than the first page in that it goes into more detail about the sort of information that goes on at one of these camps.
As Chris Brogan says: “This page creates a resource list of 101 information for people who want to know the bare basics of using these new media community tools. I thought perhaps we could list resources here, but most importantly, also create screencasts, video tutorials, and other resources to help people understand and explore the tools and knowledge of our community.”
When I look at the list of tools, I find that some of them are familiar, so I may not be so ignorant of the scene as I thought: audacity and skype are both tools I’ve used. However there are heaps of others (including a whole list for Mac users alone) which are unfamiliar but look as though I could make use of them, such as Why and how to use RSS for reading blogs and websites; How to explain RSS the Oprah way (!); and How to Podcast with Skype.
I’d never heard of a PodCamp until this morning, so I’ve been reading up on what they are. PodCamps were founded by Christopher S Penn and Chris Bogan in 2006. There are usually a number of them held in the US, but
Chris Brogan
The definition of a PodCamp is that it’s an UnConference, which I take to mean that it’s less formal than a Conference. To achieve this informality there are seven rules, which include the freedom to participate, freedom of access, and equality for all involved. And the one I like most of all: all sessions must obey the Law of 2 Feet - if you're not getting what you want out of the session, you can and should walk out and do something else. It's not like you have to get your money's worth! If only such a rule could apply to normal conferences, I might go to a lot more of them! (Don’t you hate getting stuck in a lecture or meeting where you just can’t get out of the place, and your bored silly?)
Now you may not have picked up on the fact that a PodCamp is free to those participating. (The Birmingham one is being sponsored by a number of businesses such as Cheeze, Podcast Nation and Digital Central.) That’s another plus of course, but it also means that people who would normally have limited access to such a gathering of minds can manage to get there.
People arrive at PodCamps with varying levels of knowledge and understanding about the new media community tools. (That would be me!) Some of them have never blogged before and others have never recorded an audio pod cast or produced a videoblog.
A link from the page I’ve already highlighted goes to the Shared Tools and Common Knowledge section. This is probably even more useful than the first page in that it goes into more detail about the sort of information that goes on at one of these camps.
As Chris Brogan says: “This page creates a resource list of 101 information for people who want to know the bare basics of using these new media community tools. I thought perhaps we could list resources here, but most importantly, also create screencasts, video tutorials, and other resources to help people understand and explore the tools and knowledge of our community.”
When I look at the list of tools, I find that some of them are familiar, so I may not be so ignorant of the scene as I thought: audacity and skype are both tools I’ve used. However there are heaps of others (including a whole list for Mac users alone) which are unfamiliar but look as though I could make use of them, such as Why and how to use RSS for reading blogs and websites; How to explain RSS the Oprah way (!); and How to Podcast with Skype.
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