PodCamps Everywhere
Chris Brogan...
I'm so thrilled by how many PodCamps are launching all over the place.
Bryan Person wrote about it on his blog, and until I saw them all lined
up, I wasn't really seeing the whole picture. Wow! You really like the
idea.
Christopher S. Penn and I did a lot of work on the fundraising side to
make sure we had enough money to cover the venue (thanks, Adam and
MOS), the food (better next year, really!), and some of the other
stuff. That took the most effort from a logistics/planning perspective.
The "trick," as it were, in making the event itself so great dealt 100%
with humans. You. We got you to come to this event, and you brought
your "A game" information. You came with passion, and you met passion
in the audience. Together, you landed in conversations that weren't the
starting point of the session, or that would never be replayed exactly
the same way again.
Something to consider: too many podcamps can certainly bring that mix
of great humans down thinner, UNLESS you uncover all kinds of local
talents that have the same kind of energy and invigorating engagement
as the folks you interacted with at the Boston event. It's not that
your locality (pick any of them) doesn't have local stars. It's a
question of how many you'll engage through your event, how many will
take a Grateful Dead methodology and follow the Camps around, and how
many other events these people will attend.
A hedge against this: building neat facilitation tools/methods to bear,
and building some pre-seeded sessions to get things rolling in the way
you hope they'll go.
**ONE BIG NOTE: We very intentionally reached out heavy to the video
community. You should consider doing the same. Getting video people
into the mix changes the way audio people consider their content, and
vice versa. Some really neat conversations came out of an all-audio
group hearing one question from a video-only person. It was
fascinating.
Keep the great conversations going. SO MUCH is coming about in relation
to what's been happening through PodCamp. It's exciting as all hell.
I'm looking forward to attending as many of the PodCamps as I possibly
can, but hey, I've got a day job, too. : )
--Chris Brogan...
coFounder, PodCamp