Excuse the very late notice for this - the budget for Podcamp West ended up having more room than we anticipated and we wanted to do something fun to kick off the festivities.

Yesterday, Vic Podcaster, Brian Solis, and I baked the plan to have a small pre-party on Friday, November 17.  We’re going to The Mint, just a block or two away from the camp venue to have several pitchers of beer as well as some finger food.  Things will get started at 6:30pm and continue on until at least 8:30pm.

In case you don’t remember, this is the same spot that Vloggercon ended at.

Please RSVP here so we can tell how to prepare best to serve you ;)
http://upcoming.org/event/127408

For the past couple of months, Vic Podcaster has been working tirelessly to bring together the West Coast’s version of PodCamp, aptly called Podcamp West. Vic and I originally hatched the plan over chinese food in Boston’s South Station after the original camp had concluded.

San Francisco has seen its share of podcasting and videoblogging events, to say the least, however, there’s something quite different about Podcamp West. With a camp, the unconference model provides us with a way to move the hallway track to the main stage. It begs to argue that an unconference on podcasting is a unification of the rants and raves of thousands of podcasters everywhere. At the same time, Podcamp West is not just about videoblogging but everything related to the art and trade of podcasting.
If you are in SF, you definitely want to stop by on Saturday and Sunday for a good time and interesting conversation.

Where: San Francisco
When: 18-19 November, 2006
Timing: 12 PM - 6 PM
Days: Saturday and Sunday
Venue: Swedish American Hall
Map: Click here
Address: 2174 Market St. San Francisco, CA

I just wanted to send a quick message to Adam Curry and Family.  I was saddened over the weekend to download a brief podcast paying tribute to his mom who recently passed.  Though we’re connected through copper wires, it certainly doesn’t diminish the connection you come to have with someone you hear from regularly.

My best to Adam and the Family and hope they continue to have the strength he has demonstrated.

Tomorrow, October 6, at 1PM EST I will be conducting the second segment of the Podcasting on Windows. The next topic will focus in on the hardware and software required to get a Podcast flowing from your computer to the listeners ears.

The show will last for approximately 45 minutes. There will be a twenty-minute interview with buddy and audio geek master Jake Ludington. Following that, I’ll be sharing my desktop and workflow and demonstrate how to put Adobe Audition to the paces to produce podcasts quickly and easily.

There’s no cost - our sponsor GoToMeeting.com is making it all happen, in collaboration with Corante.com. Here are the details to participate:

To join the web conference: https://www.gotomeeting.com/join/172828395

To join the teleconference (for audio):
Conference Call: Dial-in #: 563-843-7500
Passcode: 8524544507

GoToMeeting(TM)
Online Meetings Made Easy

Hope to see you there!

From Stowe:

Just a reminder that Greg Narain and I are kicking off a series of webcasts at 1pm ET today, called Podcastng on Windows (see here for details). The series is sponsored by GoToMeeting. Today, we start with an introduction to podcasting, and Greg will enlighten us all on his Beercasting project, which has been very successful so far.

(PS If you wrote down the codes to join the teleconference, please do not use the ’sub pin code’ — thanks!)

I’m teaming up with Stowe over the next few weeks to do a series of Webcasts on Podcasting. We’ll be using GoToMeeting (our sponsor) as the sharing platform and will walk people through the ins and outs of podcasting on the Windows platform.

It should be fun and informative. If you’ve never checked out GoToMeeting, you definitely have to. This will be a great way to see how it works.

Our first one is scheduled for next Thursday, September 22 at 1:00 PM EST.

More info is here.

I came across this article yesterday and wanted to post it sooner but life gets in the way.

It seems that a company named Melodeo, hmm sounds much like Odeo (which is the new company it seems), is introducing an application that makes it possible to subscribe and download Podcasts directly on your phone.

Intersting, but impractical. I’ve got a Nokia 7610. It takes 1MP pictures. Trying to send one of those pictures up and out into the ether is painstakingly slow. Would it seem “easier” to download a 20MB podcast? Not just yet, in my book.

However, one thing that does make me curious is whether or not content should/would be downsampled to make the downloads more manageable. It seems that compressing the MP3s that we’re using down to something painfully low, it might just work out considering the player.

Any thoughts? Anyone preparing low-end versions of their podcasts?

Well the much anticipated launch (by podcasters anyways) of iTunes 4.9 has come and passed. I thought I would share my experience as a first time user, but someone who’s dealt with podcast downloads before.

First, finding those podcasts. There’s a new link added amongst your libraries that handles Podcasts. Click on it and you’re taken to a library view of the podcasts that you have already subscribed to.

Naturally. that’s empty when you start off. However, down in the bottom there’s two quick little links: ‘Podcast Directory” and “Report a Concern”. I haven’t found a podcast to complain about yet, but if anyone wants to volunteer ;)

Launching the Podcast Directory link takes you to an iTunes Music Store-esque destination. iMS uses these interesting sliders, in case you haven’t seen them, that allows you to slide through some album-art like chips. The main sections go something like this (the viewable ones at this moment are listed below):

• New & Notable
  • The Gears Behind Ears
  • KCRW’s The Treatment
  • ABCNews.com - ABCNews Shuffle
  • 2005 NECC ADE Podcast
• Public Radio
  • KCRW’s Left, Right & Center
  • On The Media from NPR
  • WGBH Morning Stories
  • KCRW’s The Road Less Travelled
• A flurry of promotional clips for ESPN, Jamie & Danny, etc. with a ad centered to “Publish A Podcast”.
• Indie Podcasts
  • Inside Mac Radio
  • Cinecast
  • Dawn and Drew Show
  • 5 Minites with Wichita

In any event, I started this post about a week ago but never got to finish it. I’ve kept 4.9 installed but it lacks the features I was accustomed to with my old stand-in Nimiq. It’s probably related to my initial doctrination with the original batch of Podcatchers, so I am sure that millions of newcomers will get it.

To balance that, I’ve heard that servers are overloading with the new attention brought to podcasting by the iTunes update.

Josh Dura pointed to some news on the new multimedia/enclosure support that’s been added to del.icio.us. Since then, I’ve been blinking rapidly with the possibilities of this. Perhaps I should explain myself.

Until now, there were two problems, in two different domains:

• Podcasts are generally discovered by talent or theme, not topic.

  That comment will raise hairs on many necks, but it’s something I believe to be true. For newcomers to podcasting, they generally start at a directory or with a directed search as guided by an “insider”. The challenge for newcomers, as has been covered many times before, is that to tell if you like someone requires a good deal of work (finding shows on the right theme, downloading and listening to determine the fit, etc.). However, we’ve also got lots of shows that are situated around streams of consciousness or broader themes (generalization again).

  What has been missing, largely due to the huge effort required the prepare detailed show notes and the lack of available indexing tools (podscope.com aside), is the ability to determine what a show covers. Some may consider this to be a suitable challenge, however I there are many, many use cases where random banter won’t cut it.

• Audio could be tagged, but not downloaded easily

  Since our podcasts and other forms of web multimedia live, well, on the web, they all theoretically have a unique URL. This is where del.icio.us comes into play. People are tagging URLs all the time inside this service and their recent round of funding will surely deliver greater reliability and new features.

  The disconnect, though some creatives have worked around them, was that the links to the audio were not presented in a format that made it possible for Podcatching clients to download them - we could see the smoke, but not the fire.

So here we are today, and things are very different. Now, del.icio.us has added enclosure tags to their generated RSS feeds. This will provide us all with a unique ability to reach people who were:

• Not looking for podcasts, but could benefit from them
• Looking for more granularity, but unable to find it

All we need to do now, really, is start to register our podcasts with del.icio.us and provide tags that are relevant to the conversation had. Now we’re getting topical views of the podcasting space. What’s best is that all the “traditional” arguments for tagging as a whole come with it, and then some:

• Quick and easy to designate, as compared to writing show notes with time stamps, etc.
• Human-mediated (for the time being) provides that key human filter that helps us determine what’s appropriate (note, I’m not commenting on quality in any manner).
• Reputation-enabled by default since I can choose to let people I “trust” to recommend the topics for specific podcasts. Now I’m choosing editorial talent.

Personally, I am most excited since the SparkCasting system has been doing this all along. Every show has been about a specific topic and there are internally tags associated with each.

In summary: very cool indeed

Todd Maffin is speaking right now about Podcasting 101. He’s got a great presentation that I am hoping we’ll be able to snag some time to share with others.

As Todd points out, radio is the most visual medium there is, since there’s no visual to go with it. Here are the phases he’s identified:

Phase 1: Content
Phase 2: Record (Creation)
Phase 3: Post (Composition)
Phase 4: Promote
Phase 5: Feedback

I’ve noted in parenthesis where we map to each other. I definitely think the last 2 Todd’s mentioned are quite worthy. I’ll be expanding on that in the fuure, however, I tend to push those to a second phase of the process, beyond the file.