Last week, I spent an hour on the phone with Alex Williams, Eric Rice, and Michael Geoghegan discussing some of the real-worl issues relating to Podcasting and the growth of the medium.

The conversation goes on for about an hour, but it’s quite insightful for anyone that’s trying to get a handle on things and wants to hear from many different quadrants in one shot. During the show, I eluded to 3 phases of Podcasting that I think will come to notice for all that are entering the space.

Phase 1: Content

Perhaps the first thing someone considering Podcasting is forced to resolve is WHAT their Podcast will be like. There are many skills that have to be developed that support the development of original content. On top of that, a minimal degree of speaking behavior needs to be learned just to guarantee audible, intelligible results for the listener.

Phase 2: Creation

Assuming the Podcaster-to-be has resolved that they are comfortable with the material they want to present, the natural next step is exactly how to create that. Unfortunately, most of us are not audio engineers and we’re going to have to acquire some basic understanding of not just how sound works but also how it is captured and stored. This extends down to the selection of the appropriate equipment for the available budget.

Tomorrow night is the first official stop on the Beercasting America Tour. I’ll be recording out in Worcester, Mass and the NYC Beercasting Squad (event site here) will be doing their show here at home.

It’s all a little scary that it’s happening already, but it’s fun none the less. I’m looking forward to finally meeting Pete Caputa in real life as well.

If you’re local to either city, feel free to stop in and check things out. We’ll be doing the same topics in both cities so it should be interesting to finally get some new data to compare.

Speaking of topics, here they are:

Old and New (1)

Everyone loves to get new shit - could you even dispute that? Sometimes, you’re buying something brand spanking new, other times it’s antique, or “vintage” as the kiddies like to call it.

• Do you prefer new things or classic things?
• What’s the best new thing you would get?
• What’s the best classic thing you would get?

Music Memory Lane (2)

Everyone loves music, but not everyone has the same tastes. Music is the soundtrack to our lives and we’ve got crazy memories attached to most of our favorites.

• What’s your favorite song?
• What’s that song remind you of?
• Ever get busted singing it?

Nastiest Food (3)

Fear Factor is a show most people have either seen or heard about. It has a strong reputation mostly because of the sickening situations it puts “regular” people in. One of their common segments is forcing people to eat anything from testicles to caterpillars and there’s no way to not cringe when you see it.

• What’s the most disgusting thing you’ve ever ate?
• What things will you never, ever eat?
• What would be your price to eat it?

Alternative Sports (4)

Back in the day, there was the classic staple of sports (baseball, football, basketball, hockey). Lately, though, there’s all kinds of other sports that are getting attention. There’s stuff like the X Games and other Extreme Sports, others semi-sports like Pool, Bowling, etc. and even some others that aren’t really sports at all in the traditional sense like the Texas Hold obsession.

• What’s your favorite alternative sport to watch?
• What’s the worst/most boring/stupidest sport to watch?
• What sport would you broadcast if you could?

The small number in (#) represent the new topic IDs that will be used across all events. Soon you will be able to subscribe to these topics via RSS. If you wish to do one of these topics in your own show, please reference the ID.

It’s taken more time than I had hoped for, but finally the site has been created for the NYC Beercasting Squad.

The first official show involved just over 10 people and was the first broadcast using the new hardware rig. Hopefully, you’ll be able to notice the difference in the quality.

There are just too many links to re-post so check it out over here.

Well I’ve been a busy bee the last couple of days getting on the phone and reaching out to people I know across the country. I’ve been in search for the additional cities that I am going to take the tour through in February.

I got a great tip/invite from someone in Texas and that got me thinking, “Hey, that’s a good idea”, so I’m heading to Texas. Also, I wanted to get something in for the end of February so I am going to sweep through Florida as well.

If you’re in any of the cities below and want to attend and the event is linked, click to RSVP. If you’re interested in attending or want to suggest a venue, send an e-mail to greg AT beercasting.com and let me know.

Here’s the updated (tentative) calendar:

• Tuesday, January 4 (completed)
  • New York City
    7:30 PM
• Tuesday, January 11
  • New York City
    7:30 PM
  • Worcester, Massachusetts
    9:00 PM
• Tuesday, January 18
  • New York City
    7:30 PM
  • Washington D.C.
    7:30 PM
• Sunday, January 23
  • Seattle, Washington
    6:00 PM
• Tuesday, January 25
  • New York City
    7:30 PM
• Wednesday, January 26
  • Portland, Oregon
    7:30 PM
• Monday, February 7
  • Houston, TX
    7:30 PM
• Tuesday, February 8
  • New York City
    7:30 PM
  • San Antonio, TX
    7:30 PM
• Wednesday, February 9
  • Austin, TX
    7:30 PM
• Sunday, February 20
  • West Palm Beach, FL
    7:30 PM
• Monday, February 21
  • Ft. Lauderdale, FL
    7:30 PM
• Tuesday, February 22
  • New York City
    7:30 PM
  • Miami, FL
    7:30 PM

The year is just about over and it seems like the best time to run down how I am starting out the New Year. I’ve been working hard at getting the mixture right for my Beercasting project. There’s lots of moving parts involved in putting something like this together, but I am getting a handle on it.

One of the greatest challenges, technical things aside, is getting people motivated and behind the cause. Since I’ve started promoting things in New York just to my immediate group of friends, there’s been a steady and smooth uptake in attendance. But I’m never satisfied.

January marks the beginning of my Beercasting America Tour. I’m trying to focus the tour around places I’m already heading, but plan to expand on it in February to include another batch.

So here’s the schedule. If you see your city listed and can recommend a location, want to attend, or both drop me a comment here.

• Tuesday, January 4
  • New York City
    7:30 PM
• Tuesday, January 11
  • New York City
    7:30 PM
  • Worcester, Massachusetts
    9:00 PM
• Tuesday, January 18
  • New York City
    7:30 PM
  • Washington D.C.
    7:30 PM
• Sunday, January 23
  • Seattle, Washington
    6:00 PM
• Tuesday, January 25
  • New York City
    7:30 PM
• Wednesday, January 26
  • Portland, Oregon
    7:30 PM

The first stop on the Beercasting Tour next month is going to be in Worcester, Massachussets on January 11th. Most from the Massachussets area are probably asking “What the hell you doing in Worcester?” Well, the answer to that is pretty simple. My good Internet buddy (soon to be real-life acquaintance) Peter Caputa is located out there and he’s shown me that there’s an active and interested audience there.

To make things more interesting, Pete’s company WhizSpark and I are collaborating on using their event management system for tracking the tour.

Pete’s done the dirty work and setup the event site here:
http://www.whizspark.com/es/viewevent.aspx?eid=569

If you are in the area or can easily get there, I’d love to have you sit in on a session.

A couple of weeks ago, I drafted my now scorned “Of Power Laws and the Pod Squad” piece. The basic idea of the article is that a new trend is emerging, Podcasting, and the A List has formed incredibly quickly, the Pod Squad.,/p>

The purpose of that post was two-fold. First, it acknowledged that we have a unique opportunity before us to learn about Power Laws and how they work in the wild by watching Podcasting grow. Secondly, I proposed that, as is always true with any A List, that it will be a force to be reckoned with for newcomers.

This initial post got circulated quite a bit, well above the average for this site, and the comments were on both sides of the fence. I initially wrote it not to attack or condemn anyone but simply to collect the voices that were whispering in my ear. Unfortunately, it also served to ruffle some feathers.

Now we’re moving on. And others are paying attention which was really the real goal. A recent MSNBC article (via Newsweek correspondent) seems like it could have been written reading the comments on this site. Here’s a blurb:

The alphas, or “A-listers,” as they call themselves, commonly cross-link to one another, with the effect of having one of their comments amplified and commented on. In the case of podcasting, they conducted a deep asynchronous conversation about the practice. Was this a new form of personal, do-it-yourself radio? Could it replace radio? Even though its workings were fairly esoteric—no one is close to making podcasting as simple a process as Apple has made music downloading—the accumulated buzz from the blogs became deafening.

The inevitable result was that podcasting suddenly became the hot topic in geekdom. In early October bloggers began keeping track of how many Google results you would get if you queried the word “podcasting.” Day by day it rose… 5,950… 7,510… 13,000. By the end of the month it was more than 50,000, and by mid-November the number was 387,000. By that time the din of the blogosphere was too loud for traditional writers to ignore, and articles about podcasting appeared in the L.A. Times, The New York Times and BusinessWeek.

Source: MSNBC.com, “The Alpha Bloggers”

In other parts of the web, Dave Slusher, of The Evil Genius Chronicles, has commented on the previous post as well as given some attention to it in one of his podcasts. I sincerely thank him for doing that. He’s made many good points on the matter and seems sincerely concerned with helping grow this thing.

He has made a couple of points that I think should be addressed. In his comments and podcast he asks “What do you want me to do?”. The simple answer is nothing. There’s nothing to be done since you’re not doing anything wrong. The not so simple answer is to fight the clumps whenever you can. It’s hard to do that because it requires familiarity with tons and tons of other stuff out there and he’s only got so much bandwidth. I don’t blame for thinking that’s hard to get done. He relates this problem quite adeptly when he describes “the old days” when he could listen to pretty much all the podcasts out there compared to now where there’s thousands upon thousands available. His point on this matter is that we should go out there and “bust the Pod Squad”.

On the same point, I’ll tie in some comments that came from many on the mailing list. The crux of their opinions is “screw the Pod Squad, I Podcast because I want to”. I think that’s admirable and probably the best force to rely on in terms of keeping your Podcast up to date. Of course, that’s not exactly why all of us are in this and that form of recognition is desirable, if not required, for success. To those people, it boils down to marketing. The Pod Squad is still very approachable and if you want to get in touch with them you still can with ease. Get your message to them creatively and memorably (they’ve only got so much time). That will come back to help you two-fold.

A second comment Dave made in his podcast was that “A-Listers are made all the time”. I don’t actually think that’s true. I do think that new people become popular all the time. It’s easy to become popular, but quite the opposite when it comes to hacking your way to the top of a Power Law curve. Gaining popularity or notoriety does not earn respect or authority. It does not earn residual nodes - nodes that persist over a period of time. Being on the A-List, as far as Power Laws is concerned, is all about the number of nodes behind you. Anyone can be Flavor of the Day, but still everyone mostly remembers Chocolate and Vanilla.

The last observation about Podcasting worthy of mention is the shear speed at which it is growing. Many people have drawn parallels to blogging as they digested my first piece. I think they are completely right, except for one part - the timeline. Blogging has been around for YEARS. The people in the A-List of bloggers have been doing it for many many years. The people in the A-List for Podcasting, however, have been doing it for many months. When those timelines are juxtaposed, it’s quite clear that there’s a multiplier applied to this calculus.

Quick announcement for NYC Beercasters. Tomorrow night is the last session for the year and we’re hoping to go out with a bang. If you’re interested in attending please do. If you’ve got any kind of digital recording device, please bring it. Here are the details:

Tuesday, December 28, 2004
7:30 PM onwards

One And One
Corner of 1st Avenue and First Street
212-598-9126
http://oneandonenyc.com

If you are lost or have questions call 973-204-5499.

Topics for the session include:

• New Year’s Resolution: What are the Best and Worst Resolutions?
• Could racism be a mental disorder?
• 2004 Is Over: What Do You Remember Best? What Troubles You Most?
• What natural disaster terrifies you most?

See you all there!

For anyone that one’s to tune in to some interesting conversation, here’s the Beercast’s from this week. I’ll post the Flash-enabled versions in a bit.

• You Dumped Her? What WERE You Thinking? (12MB) - Download!
• You Bought What? Too Bad. You’re Returning It. (12MB) - Download!
• Retuhned It, To The Fucking Video Shop Tommy.. The Fucking Video Shop! (12MB) - Download!
• All I Got For Christmas Was a Stocking Full of Coal (12MB) - Download!

Happy Listening and Happy Holidays!

Well sports fans, tonight is the next Beercasting NYC session. If you’re interested in attending please do. If you’ve got any kind of digital recording device, please bring it. Here are the details:

Tuesday, December 21, 2004
7:30 PM onwards

One And One
Corner of 1st Avenue and First Street
212-598-9126
http://oneandonenyc.com

If you are lost or have questions call 973-204-5499.

We’ll be grouped in parties of 4-6 sitting around the microphone.
Right now we’re thinking we’ve got about 5 groups so be prepared for
some fun!

Topics for tonight include:

• Why does the “lesser” mate dump the “better” mate?
• Are women better shoppers? Why do men take so much heat?
• What’s your biggest “buy-then-return” scam?
• What do you love/hate most about Christmas?

See you all there!