PodCamp NYC 2008
Last Saturday I spent the afternoon at PodCamp NYC, a gathering of podcasters and new media enthusiasts that took place in New York's finest borough (yes, Brooklyn), to pick up a few tips and tricks. Here's a quick recap:
The most valuable session that I attended was an introductory overview of audio production lead by Matthew Ebel (available here). Matthew provided a lot of great tips on producing podcasts, including a couple of mic recommendations that are worth sharing: the Blue Snowball, a professional USB condenser mic with both cardioid and omni polar patterns, and the RØDE Podcaster, a broadcast quality USB mic with a cardioid polar pattern (see the presentation for more on why these distinctions matter). For those interested in a more portable mic, there's the Snowflake, a compact USB mic that's also by Blue. All of these mics are both Mac and PC compatible.
Another session I attended, on RSS, wasn't particularly noteworthy except that the speaker didn't show up. About ten minutes after the session was supposed to begin the group rallied together and someone volunteered to lead the session with help from the audience. It was great to see folks come together and press on, a testament to the "BarCamp" or "unconference" user generated conference model.
I also attended a session on new media marketing with Chris Penn, who hosts the Financial Aid Podcast, co-hosts the Marketing Over Coffee podcast and blogs here. I don't know much about Chris, but he struck me as a guy who has a lot of practical information to share based on his own experiences with new media, something I'm beginning to appreciate more and more as I struggle to find the right tools and approaches to developing, delivering and marketing new media content with limited resources. -M
Many thanks for the kind words!
Hey, thanks for the great comments! I appreciate it!
Pax,
Matthew