Podcamp Report

You want the thrills, the spills, the goss, the moss (?) not loads of boring words.

Me and John went up on the Friday night to have a meal and get settled in for the early start the next day…wandered into the Fountain Inn and fairly quickly wandered out. So Saturday…

Arrive and who do I see almost immediately? Scott from the Night Nurse Show! Linda amd myself had worked on him, Linda with the offer of pop tarts and myself with my wondrous (err) upcoming DJ set and a tip about accommodation.

Dean was surprised to see me also:

I avoided the session full of Thatcher’s Children trying to mormontize or appletize their podcasts or whatever they call it. So first session for me I went into was the Social networking one about Twatter, sorry Twitter and deFaceBooks. There was a man with ‘Loudmouthman’ on his t-shirt.

“I wonder why” thought me, about 5 seconds later and for the next hour, I found out why. I think he was being the honorary Ewan (sorry Ewan ;-).

I chatted more with Glyn of Open Rights Group and Dean Whitbread about copyright and music industry and how it related to podcasters, and thought ‘we should be having this in THERE’ so I hosted a session called ‘Music Rights and Podcasting’ which was very cool and very ad-hoc and probably was crap, but hey-ho I was entering into the unconference side of things.

I was actually secretly trying to start an anarchist Podcast Copyright Rebel Alliance like the TolPuddle Martyrs or proper ninja podcasters that actually know and carry out the first secret of Fight Club, or something.

Alas, the revolution was postponed for coffee and more gossiping, I mean networking…err…and free pens and tshirts. SWAG!

Oh no damn those sneaky capitalists…aargh…gimme! gimme! No!NO! Must resist!

Do you like the hi-tech way of updating the plasma screen? I was so disappointed the Wiki couldn’t update through osmosis via post-it notes.

Met Paul Knight, and he got on very well with Scott as you can see here ;-). And he likes the metal and does great crazy videos as PJK Productions including the PodCamp promo which is very funny. Very recommended. Said he had a big gay following, well he does now, well 2 😉

What you all want to know is about the piss up later, really? Well there was a band called Esteban (we like the MCOG reference):

There was drinking.

There was dancing.

And some DJing from me, which hopefully you’ll hear in a podcast soon as well as the Music Rights session if the libel laws get changed (ears burning already!). Sadly Rob from Top of the Pods and Claire had to go before my set, which was a shame. But I had fun playing some very silly tunes, and about 5 of mine.

Sunday was a bit bleary, got down there about 11ish and several sessions were in full swing. Glyn from Open Rights Group did a interesting session about what they do especially relating to podcasting, parody, mashups and some frightening info about e-voting in the UK. I did an interview for the podcast after his talk which will be on the next podcast.

My most favouritest session was the one at the end with Chris Vallance who works for 5 Live and also podcasts but also uses citizen media, Youtube and podcasters in his shows, and gets inspiration from podcasting shows and techniques. What was refreshing is a lot of established meeja people speaking at these things seem a bit condescending or trying to cash in on the novelty factor to me; Chris was the opposite, very open to learning from other people, amateur or professional. We talked about tips and techniques in interviewing and creating shows. I took an awful picture of him in response. C’est la vie.

I did find it interesting that a certain company wasn’t even mentioned in all but 1 of the sessions I was in, and it was I that mentioned them ? 😉 Not intentionally, I think they never came up as the likes of Twitter, Facebook and vloggy stuff seemed to be the love/hate buzzwords this year. Maybe their time has passed?

So it was time to go after that, well after a few hours wait in a chavvy pub with Scott and a horrible train journey with a screaming kid whose parents didn’t seem to give a shit, that is, and then home to London.

But otherwise a great PodCamp, my first and much more of a community effort than PodCastCon2006 I think (Stealth Disco excepted), I like the fluid nature more. It fits far better with the DIY nature of podcasting, if you don’t like a session then do one yourself – there’s the room, GO!

In fact I was thinking it was like the Second Life of Conferences, like SL there isn’t a rule or games, you either wander around thinking ‘what do I do now?’, hang out or go and create something yourself for others to share.

I wish it had been more dynamic and fluid, but it’s early days and people are getting used to the format. Like podcasting, people have been forcefed passive entertainment and learning and ‘discussion panels’ than do anything but, so it’ll take time to get people used to that loose format. I like the format though, and think there is a lot of scope and interesting times ahead – here’s to the next one (I hope)!