Sound Out Media

I’ve been asked by the Knowledge Media Design Institute at University of Toronto to write a few paragraphs about the best sessions at Podcamp 2009.

In a few days these sessions will be up on-line, so you can experience them yourself even if you couldn’t be there.

Too many to choose from,  but here is my top four:

Building Relationships with Word of Mouth and PR Practitioners While Maintaining Credibility with Your Audience – with two bloggers, two major PR agencies - Did you know that some of the big PR agencies are spending time and money courting bloggers?  Just like they court reporters in Trad Media? with Anita Clarke, David Jones, Eden Spodek and Matthew Stradiotto, and Keith McArthur.

Heresy, Hipocrisy, and Sin - the things you need to do to make money as a media creator, or how to better serve a business. -with Chris Brogan, the cofounder of the very first Podcamp in Boston.  Everybody was raving about his presentation .. wish I could have been in two places.  Instead, I was at:

Social Media Monitoring and Analysis - Dave Fleet - also excellent - a whistle-stop tour through finding, measuring and analyzing and taking action through social media tools - which was also excellent.  Social Media measurement is becoming more and more important, and many sessions this year were devoted to this tricky subject.  Dave is one of the founders of the Toronto Podcamp and is one of the Canadian visionaries in Social Media.

Fostering Creativity - How passion, creativity, and a little hard work can take an idea from conception to execution - Michael Mistretta — people in the hallways told me that this was the BIG SURPRISE at Podcamp.  Michael is only 16 years old and this was his first public presentation.  So many people were impressed by the depth of his ideas .. one of the surprising things is that he (at 16) was telling us (a lot of 35+’s) not to live our entire life on the computer.  This, at a time when so many stories in the Trad media are about kids who don’t have a non-computer life ..

So hard to pick just three.  But we also learned that blog posts shouldn’t be too long.  So I’ll end there.  Overall impressions — Podcamps are changing .. a few years ago, it was all about podcasting with a big emphasis on production techniques.  Now we’re focussing more and more on Social Media, and how we are getting our content out there.

I spent a lot of time this year going to workshops about the numbers … how to find out who’s coming to your site,  techniques so that you show up at the top of Google searches. And Twitter.  Barely a whisper last year, Twitter is now mainstream … (Facebook was the Big Buzz last year).

If you missed Toronto Podcamp, there are Podcamps in several different cities.  Next one is in Nashville (March 7th).  Also coming up — Atlanta, Salt Lake City, San Antonio. And closer to home, London Ontario (April 25)

The best free advice you’re going to get anywhere ..