podcamp | David Lee King

Podcamp Topeka 2010 is in 30 Days!

October 6, 2010 By David Lee King

Last year, my library and WIBW Studios put on Podcamp Topeka 2009, and it was a success … so guess what? We’re doing it again! Yep – Podcamp Topeka 2010 will be held on Saturday, November 6 at the library.

What’s a podcamp? Here’s our blurb about it: “PodCamp Topeka is Topekaâ€™s annual low-cost â€œunconferenceâ€ focused on social media, podcasting, audio and video production, and the web. Our goal? To learn about social media from social media experts, to network with fellow bloggers, podcasters & social media creators â€¦ and to have a blast!”

So – it’s a conference focused on social media, multimedia, and the emerging web. Not a library conference (though library staff can learn tons from it).

It’s an “unconference,” so instead of the traditional speaker/attendee model that most conferences have, instead it’s more of a facilitator/guided discussion model for the sessions. Each will be different, and highly interactive!

We have a great keynote speaker coming to town, too – Patrick O’Keefe. Here’s his bio – “Patrick’s the founder of the iFroggy Network, a network of websites covering various interests. He has been managing online communities since 2000 and is the author of Managing Online Forums, a practical guide to managing online social spaces. He has been responsible for the cultivation of communities like phpBBHacks.com, KarateForums.com and PhotoshopForums.com. He blogs about online community at ManagingCommunities.com, his favorite record label at BadBoyBlog.com and more at patrickokeefe.com. On Twitter, heâ€™s @iFroggy.”

Who do we hope to attract to Podcamp Topeka? Well, YOU, for starters. If you read my blog, you’ll probably be interested in it. We ALSO hope to attract local business owners, social media users, multimedia creators, podcasters of all varieties, etc. From our regional Kansas/Missouri/Nebraska area. But yes – YOU are welcome to attend, too!

Can you tell I’m excited about it?

Organizing a Podcamp

September 21, 2009 By David Lee King

This past Saturday, Topeka & Shawnee County Public Library co-hosted (with WIBW Studios) our first Podcamp – Podcamp Topeka. Don’t know what a podcamp is? It’s an unconference dedicated to web 2.0 tools and social media (read more about them here). It was a blast! You can some of my notes from the day here, watch my video about it above, and you can read Brandon Sheley’s notes here (he attended and lead a session or two), and even watch a quick video from channel 49 news.

So – how did I organize this thing?

OK – first things first. It’s a podcamp – there’s really not much conference planning to do. The details revolve around meeting rooms, food, and potential schwag – not the actual conference schedule. The important planning revolves around how many people you hope to attract – you have to have enough space to accomodate them. Also how long each session should be – and be able to accomodate that. Then, it runs itself (more on that in a minute).

Use your contacts for help. I poked around a bit on the interwebs, and found out Ryan Deschamps, cool librarian and blogger at The Other Librarian, had organized some very successful podcamps. So I asked him for tips, and he emailed me some great advice on how to run a podcamp.

Sponsorships – the library provided meeting rooms and our other sponsor, WIBW, paid for food and t-shirts. How’d that happen? In this case, I know Jim Ogle, the general manager of WIBW, and also know he’s excited as I am about social media and 2.0 stuff. So I asked him if he wanted to help plan the podcamp, and he did … and he ended up being a sponsor, too. For future events, I’m told that some local organizations might potentially be interested in sponsoring the event.

Ask for Specifics. Know how much money you need up-front, then ask specifically for your needs! Much better to have a plan for what you need (and what they’ll get out of a sponsorship) than to vaguely ask for “a sponsorship” hoping someone will provide what you need.

Registration: it was a free event, but I asked everyone to register, since a head-count was involved for t-shirts and food. Eventbrite worked GREAT for this! Free and easy to use – we had over 100 registrations. I was able to email a reminder to all attendees 3-4 days before the event through Eventbrite’s admin side. They actually sent me a couple of pre-event emails making suggestions on how to run an event (ie., do you have nametags?), too.

What actually happened?

People goal: our goal was up to 150. We had over 100 people register, and approx 50-75 people actually attend. Not bad for a first time.

Interestingly, we had an odd but fun mix of people. We had a variety of skill levels from experienced user of 2.0 tools to extreme novices and an age spread from probably age 20 -85 (someone actually came up afterwards and told me how old she and her friend were). So we improvised a “Basics of Social media” session that turned into one of our larger sessions.

Food and t-shirts: I went ahead and ordered t-shirts and food for 150, not knowing how many would really show up. So we had … a LOT of food. And I have a box of Podcamp Topeka T-Shirts in my office…

Schedule: You can see it here – we ended up with quite a few great topics and sessions!

Planning details: PBWorks (used to be PBWiki) worked great. Here’s our Podcamp Topeka Wiki.

Advertising: This is interesting. We advertised in our library newsletter, in 2.0 tools (twitter, facebook), on our website, at a social media group’s Ning site, and were lucky enough to get a TV spot or two (since WIBW was a co-sponsor). We asked attendees to fill out a “how you heard about this” flyer – only 22 people filled it out. But look at their responses to where they heard about our podcamp:

TV – 4
friends – 2
twitter – 2
facebook – 2
our website – 2
didn’t say – 2
social media KC Ning group – 2
online – 2
invite – 2
Google – 1
tscpl email – 1 (guessing it was our enewsletter)

That’s a pretty large spread of responses!

And finally, Feedback. What did attendees think of the day? Honestly, most of the feedback I received was some form of this – “What a GREAT day! When’s the next one?”

So – we’ll have to start planning the next Podcamp Topeka, I guess!

Notes from Podcamp Topeka

September 20, 2009 By David Lee King

Yesterday, I spent most of my day at Podcamp Topeka – the first event I have ever organized. Judging by the comments, tweets, etc … it was a success!

If you want to read reactions from people who attended, search for #podcamptopeka on Twitter (ok – or just click this link).

I’ll post something next week about planning this type of event and what we could have done better. But for now, here’s a run-down of the sessions I attended – sorta sparse notes, but it’ll give you an idea of the day:

Session 1: Balancing Personal/Business Use of Twitter

you have ability to destroy yourself online
One guy doesn’t cuss in Twitter because it turns some people off
TV News guy – doesn’t say some stuff that he wants to
talking back & forth – sharing yourself is important
remembers he represents a company – always has that in the back of his mind
News guy again – because of sharing themselves on Twitter, they get news tips from people
Helps get stories written because he’s connected to twitter – because of the relationships they’ve developed
TV News guy again – they are talking to other local TV stations! Very different than five years ago
discussion about community/following people locally vs anyone for business

Session 2 – Comment Boxes and Community

I shared about the library
anonymous or profile?
Local newspaper tends to have crazies – not much registration/monitoring there
getting people to register – are there any non-bribery ways to get people to register? One idea – Business gave away free stuff to get sign-ups
other ways to share? Comment box, polls, ratings, etc – without just sharing in a text box
viral marketing campaign (I think she was from a radio station) – had some hateful comments – ended up having to block someone’s IP address
how to get more comments? Ask questions, ask what do you think
separate actual story from comments
part of your job should be commenting on other people’s sites
personal responses are great – gave example of that
personal is the new hand-written note
marketing is conversation now
deleting one comment vs turning off whole thread – which works best? We generally agreed that turning off the whole thread (like Flickr sometimes does) seems like punishing others for one person’s mistakes
twitter is instant gratification

Session 3: Selling Yourself in 30 Frames per Second

T-Rave presented from t-rave.com – He’s very passionate about videoblogging!
trying to sell your brand – many times, that means selling yourself
when you were a baby trying to get attention and affection, you were selling yourself – so you do this all the time
big fan of gary vaynerckuk of winelibrary.tv
Word of mouth – that’s how T-Rave sells his product/himself
Using video is a great way to bring in viewers to your website/blog
t-rave.com attracts people of all ages (from 13-65), all states, international – check your demographics
People of all ages, all nationalities like video
You can feel connected by being approachable – on twitter, on video
be the same online, in video, in real life
passion + drive – interest, consistency, responding back to comments

Session 4: Basics of Videoblogging

T-Rave again
Went over various software to use
talked a little about cameras
talking about uploading to a service – how long it takes
Talked a bit about copyright and free music – likes jamendo.com for a free music service.
Uses Viddler quite a bit. They featured T-Rave the second week after he started making videos.
mentioning tubemogul.com – great place to upload video to more than one account automatically
Has a variety of cameras from the Flip to a large semi-pro camera
Very open to having people contact him with questions, suggestions for cameras, etc.
He does 5 videos a week – different theme every day. He did this for 6 months.
some discussion of posting video to Facebook vs another video service
Live Streaming video: upstream.tv, livestream
Good questions/discussion

Session #5: Monetizing a Podcast

Rob Walch, Podcast 411 and Wizzard Media spoke about podcasting
Come to Jesus – most of us will never really make money on this

Ways to make money with podcasts:

1st way to make money:

CPM – typical rate is around $10-15 per thousand downloads
More niche = higher CPM, but lower download numbers
Video gets a little higher CPM rate than audio alone
Not generally “quit your day job” money

2nd way to make money:

CPA model – or direct response ads
Netflicks – they pay $25 for everyone who signs up for an account that comes from the ad
Right audience at the right time can = some good money

3rd way – sponsorship model