Podcamp Pittsburgh 3 Day 2

Podcamp Pittsburgh's second day continued. While I was up pretty late once again, left with Woychek, Papuga, and Missy at the Red Star about 11:30, we arrived plenty early to setup food again and make the morning's introduction.

It was nice to see Justin join us early this year, and did a sort of experiment on this morning. Instead of just talking to the audience, he opened the main room to questions in general. It basically turned the whole thing into a QA session to kick things off for the day.

The regular sessions started off with a Podfading panel involving Johnny Goldstein, Will and I from Wrestling Mayhem Show, The G Spod, and once again led by Justin. Next, I set up a camera to capture Missy and Dawn's Social Networking/Media 101 class and went to put a note on the broken pop machine when I was volunteered to fill in the Virtual Worlds session. Thankfully, Dave Fisher was thrown in there with me, and he knew way more about Second Life than I did, so I ended up in a session I never would have on my own, and have a whole new perspective on the subject.

Post lunch, I was a little more low key. I found my self wandering amongst several random conversations in the longest (but not bad) hour of the weekend, while Missy and Dawn did their 201 course. I sat in on the Rust Belt Bloggers roundtable to see what it was about. Silent Ninja, however, slipped into "stealth mode" (ask Norm about that one). The last hour, I went back to wandering, and peaking my head into Justin's Twitter for Business course, and conversations.

This had to be the most productive Podcamp Pittsburgh I've been to yet. It felt like last year was a lot of hanging out, and less time in sessions. Whether it was mind frame, or lineup of said courses, I don't know, but there are plenty of things I'm going to be applying based on this weekend.

I'm looking forward to a couple of spin off events from this. First is Mike Munz's Links & Drinks just up the road from me at Jose & Tony's. Then the planned Neighborhood Walk blogs via Rustbelt Bloggers, and the newly initiated Podcamp Pittsburgh meetups.

As I've linked before, I've established a Podcamp Pittsburgh Podcast, where I've posted almost all of the sessions I had in audio form from the weekend for others to learn from. I hope to work with everyone to put some interviews and roundtables up in this space to help the community. We'll see where it goes.

We invoke violence amongst the tech…

This was a video I had put up last Wednesday in anticipation for Podcamp Pittsburgh 3 that explains our...impact...on the Pittsburgh New Media scene. Enjoy...

Podcamp Pittsburgh 3 Day 1

Podcamp Pittsburgh 3 has come and gone, and I find head swimming in all of the new information I received this weekend.

Saturday found the Sorgs coming early, since Missy volunteered to handle much of the food wrangling for the weekend. The opening talk in the main room saw a LOT of new faces, that further amazed me from the night before. We heard from Justin, Chris, and Norm.

During the course of the day, I attended at least sessions that really stretched my thinking of how to approach the things I've been doing. Mike Munz, who I had a great conversation with the previous evening at the meet n' greet, did a fantastic session on "Making Social Media Visible", in which a lot of SEO (search engine optimization) and tricks came into play. I also attended our friends John and DJ G from the G Spod talking about podsafe music. I had taking a small amount of time looking at this subject before, but didn't like how some sites I found were laid out to work with. But this ioda that they use is fantastic for both my podcasts and music projects. Finally, I attended a session with Walt Ribeiro, who does "Your Weekly Music Lesson" on Revision 3. Walt has a LOT of energy, and I didn't see him skip a beat all weekend. The session talked about how he quit his job and made a go at making his show work and go into business for himself, and building that community, getting advertisers. Some may have been put off by his top speed presentation, but I thought it was fantastic. This was the guy who expressed his love for the medium the most, and dropped the best quotes of any session. Terms such as social media being "word of mouth on steroids" and "SEO the shit" out of your project.

I plan to release most of the sessions, especially those described above, on the newly established Podcamp Pittsburgh Podcast stream.

I also had the pleasure to partake in a couple of panels this day, including "Success!" sharing with Chris Brogan, Rachel, the G Spod, Should I Drink That, and moderated by Justin. It was a good time talking about the keys to why people still pay attention to us. (look for video soon). Of course, we also came back to do our "Grassroots Podcasting" session where we talk about where we came from as a show along with our Should I Drink That friends, lots of Wooo's, chops, and even a Rickroll by the Stoke Monkey! (of course there'll be video of that)

The evening brought us to Red Star, right next to Bar Louie (site of Bootcamp PGH post shenanigans) I had some good talks with Brogan about comic movies, Jen about Juggalos and wrestling, various wrestling talks, actually, and the fantastic 649 returned! This year yielding a mix of Bacardi, Segrams, and Yukon Jack. Tasty. And we came in at almost 20 served up. It was beutiful.

Well that's enough brain leakage for now. Just type "PCPGH3" into Youtube, twitter, google, flickr, technarati, etc to find a LOT of coverage from this past weekend! I'll be back with Day 2 tomorrow.

Podcamp Pittsburgh 3 Meet N Greet.

The Podcampers decended down on Alpahlabs this evening for some meet n greet. I was amazed at just how many unfamiliar faces were in attendance. I knew there were supposed to be a lot of new signups, but this was amazing. So I ventured over, and and had some Erie Brewinng specialties presented by who I learned was an SIDT Fan of the Show. I sat down with the Silent Ninja

and had some interesting grub, including my first experience with hummus. I talked with Mike Munz, who is involved with Dev house, a fellow who's name escapes me, who is in the same Game & Art program as Silent Ninja at the Art Institute, discussed his feelings on whether AIP was "worth it". I talked for a good bit with Karl Schieneman, who we interviewed last year at Podcamp, and his wife, about wrestling, some connections, and so on. I wondered over to the bar/food area and hung with some old podcamp friends, and some chopping ensued.

Justin and Woy talked for a bit and told us about AlphaLab and a couple of companies at work in there, uncluding GameHuddle, an "e-harmony for game matchups" and Chogger, a sort of ready made web comic site. Both really interesting projects.

Norm also gave me a sneek peak at the PCPGH3 swag before I helped carry it to his truck. The party split with the SIDT guys meeting up with someone at Jeckyl & Hyde, and a good number of the Podcamp alumni went to the Double Wide Grill. It was a good time of music, Canadian anthems, and Cider.

Here's to the kick off. Let's Podcamp the shit out of this weekend!