Another drop of water outside the podcasting fishbowl

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Podcasters Across Borders was incredible this weekend, with so many great presentations, so many good friends, and lots of discussion about podcasting. It was the quintessential community-centered event, deep inside the fishbowl, in the echo chamber, and that’s a good thing.

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: https://www.PodCampBoston.org/register

Comments

8 responses to “Another drop of water outside the podcasting fishbowl”

  1. Dave Delaney Avatar

    It was a true pleasure meeting you man. On the flip side to your post, I had a PAB t-shirt encounter too. When Sam and I were waiting in the airport in Toronto to depart, a woman approached and asked about the shirt. I explained about the event and she said her husband has several podcasts!

    I asked her to tell me about them, but was called to board the plane as soon as she began to reply.

    Great times @ PAB as always.
    Cheers
    Dave

  2. Dave Delaney Avatar

    It was a true pleasure meeting you man. On the flip side to your post, I had a PAB t-shirt encounter too. When Sam and I were waiting in the airport in Toronto to depart, a woman approached and asked about the shirt. I explained about the event and she said her husband has several podcasts!

    I asked her to tell me about them, but was called to board the plane as soon as she began to reply.

    Great times @ PAB as always.
    Cheers
    Dave

  3. julien Avatar

    if we don’t get press coverage (huge amounts of it), we don’t get these people, possibly EVER. so let’s start doing some remarkable shit– without it, we’re dead in the water and the fish in your proverbial bowl will drown.

  4. julien Avatar

    if we don’t get press coverage (huge amounts of it), we don’t get these people, possibly EVER. so let’s start doing some remarkable shit– without it, we’re dead in the water and the fish in your proverbial bowl will drown.

  5. Christopher S. Penn Avatar

    Okay. I’m listening. 🙂

  6. Christopher S. Penn Avatar

    Okay. I’m listening. 🙂

  7. Chris Avatar

    (Commenting on an old post… oops!) I wish I had known you guys were so close. Oneonta is about 40 minutes away, would have been great to say hi.

    The “what is a podcast” thing is unfortunately all too common in Central New York. There isn’t much focus on technology – people get their information from the stunningly incompetent newspapers and television and then ignore the rest. Kids use the internet for MySpace/Facebook and Flash games, and adults use their computers for email and solitaire. It’s pretty scary sometimes seeing how so many amazing things are ignored because no one is tuning in.

  8. Chris Avatar

    (Commenting on an old post… oops!) I wish I had known you guys were so close. Oneonta is about 40 minutes away, would have been great to say hi.

    The “what is a podcast” thing is unfortunately all too common in Central New York. There isn’t much focus on technology – people get their information from the stunningly incompetent newspapers and television and then ignore the rest. Kids use the internet for MySpace/Facebook and Flash games, and adults use their computers for email and solitaire. It’s pretty scary sometimes seeing how so many amazing things are ignored because no one is tuning in.

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