I lead my first Podcamp session this past weekend. I was told “All attendees must be treated equally. Everyone is a rockstar. ” So I designed my presentation to have lots of room for questions. I made it loose by asking people to come up and help illustrate points. But realize there are good rock stars and then there is Axl Rose, Amy Winehouse, Pete Dougherty, and Mindy McCreedy. Would you want them to take over the presentation?
I did a presentation titled “Podcasting in Plain English.” It was geared towards people just getting into podcasting. A person who knows NOTHING about podcast. I thought I was going to have 60 minutes, and I had 50. That is 100% my fault, and in the end the 20 minutes I was going to have for Q&A was 10. I accept responsibility for this, and apologize. However, everyone made it to their next session on time.
Apparently Owen Winkler did not like my presentation. While he did say it was “decent,” he states on his blog that he didn't like my analogy for bandwidth stating,
“For example, “bandwidth” is not “number of cars on a bridge,” but rather, “the width of the bridge, which increases its capacity to hold cars.”
To this I say: Bandwidth – if you don't have unlimited (Which was my point) – can't “Change its capacity.” You either pay a bill when you go over your limit, or your site gets turned off. We call cars going over a bridge “traffic” that we would measure by weight. This bridge can only have 50 tons an hour. We call files going over the Internet Bandwidth that we measure by file size. “You can only have 10 gigs of files per month.”
Another question that came up was if you could create a podcast without an RSS feed. I explained that by definition a podcast is delivered via RSS feed. If you put an audio file on your website, and send the link via e-mail it's “audio on your website” – NOT a podcast. People did this in the late 90s. Everyone had a flash button that people clicked on to hear audio. That is not a podcast. When Stephen Pierce took his audio generator buttons, and put that content into an RSS feed, it became a podcast. No RSS feed? No Podcast. From wikipedia “A podcast is a series of digital-media files which are distributed over the Internet using syndication feeds ”
oh no let's keep talking about this and waste some time and see if it changes? Oops there goes me being the Rock Star again…
Then there was a discussion on if you need a blog to create an RSS. When I get a copy of the audio I'm sure you will hear me say, “Yes you do, – then I catch myself – No you don't.” I mentioned that you can use tools like Feed For All, or NOTEPAD to create your RSS feed, but the easiest way (and again, the target audience here is newbies looking for “easy”) is to create a WordPress Blog. Well apparently Owen was insulted that I didn't mention Habari who was a sponsor. I'm sorry I don't know Habari, and apparently Owen loves it. That's why Owen mentioned it in his presentation and I didn't in mine. I also didn't mention Space Blue (as I have no idea what they do either). I see when talking about Habari's sponsorship he states “not sure what we were expecting for our money.” We? So let me get this straight the guy who works on/with Habri was upset that I was singing the praises of WordPress. OK, this is starting to make sense now (and at least now people know about Habari).
Apprently I ended this “do you need a blog” discussion with “OK, but you really need a blog” and this deeply offended Owen. This was not following the rules of podcamps. I was acting like a “rock star.” (You're right Owen, the housewife from Dayton will start using Notepad tomorrow). It was not my intention to offend, and to that I say, “I'm sorry.” Meanwhile in Owen's presentation about “tools” he was talking about coding tools for writing ajax and java script. To this I point to podcamp rule “The event must be new-media focused – blogging, podcasting, social networking, video on the net.” When somone pointed “hey lets talk about the recording software that everyone is using,” that got “Shot down” and the coding discussion continued. I'm sure the people who were just starting their podcasts enjoyed the session on troubleshooting code. For the record, Owen had some great input on choosing hosting.
Apparently after I “shot him down”, he says “I should tell you that I did not try after that first session (to chime into sessions) many speakers were set on a path to talk about what they signed up for, and didn't seem to want to be interrupted from their task.” This has prompted him to say people shouldn't sponsor future podcamps, and people shouldn't attend. I'm sorry you feel this way, but on the other hand, people know about Habari now!
So I'm confused.
I understand you don't want 60 minutes of lecture with no chance for questions. You need a leader to help stear the conversation into appropriate, and useful areas that will not waste the attendee's time. I will agree, my presentation could've been more “open” but you will hear on the tape where I frequently ask “Any Questins?” Looking back I should've asked, “what are you using?”. If a presenter “guides” the conversation is he/she acting like a Rock star?
I’m sorry you were offended by my brief opinion of your presentation. Taken as a whole, your presentation was good for its intended audience. My post wasn’t entirely about you though, and I’m sorry that I used you as an example to illustrate my other general problems with Podcamp Ohio. Please allow me to clear up a few things, both about my thoughts of your presentation and what I thought of podcamp in general.
“Bandwidth” is the width of the bridge. It’s the rate of possible flow. It’s the difference between 20 users at 56kbps and 20 users at 1mbps. One eats through available transfer faster — this is the word you wanted, “transfer”. Bandwidth absolutely can scale. Some hosts offer fixed bandwidth, while others burst when more visitors connect. Unlimited transfer is absolutely not the same as unlimited bandwidth.
I was not insulted that you didn’t mention Habari. The reason Habari sponsored the event was to become more well known, which unfortunately, sponsoring the podcamp did not do well as well for us as we had hoped. Unless you count this post, which I think doesn’t reflect well on anyone.
Nonetheless, if you’re presenting podcasting to a novice audience, omitting the many great newbie-friendly free and commercial hosted services is a big oversight. That was what I was trying to add during your session at Podcamp, and in my opinion the tone of your response was dismissive, which was even worse than the omission.
In any case, you needed only to look at the sponsor list to see these alternatives, which was the point I was trying to make in my post.
Ideally, you might also link to the list of WordPress contributors if you’re into discovering motives. My name’s on that list, too: http://wordpress.org/about/
“The event must be new-media focused – blogging, podcasting, social networking, video on the net.” Yes. The tools that allow you to publish and create that content very much apply. It was actually the intent of my session to discuss these tools. Rather than focus on tools everyone knew, we did talk a bit about rarer tools like Aptana, which participants seemed interested in. I would have loved to talk about recording software. I also had a list of graphics packages, blog packages, server software, blog services, compression packages… There just wasn’t time with all of the talk about HostGator.
I think it’s clear if you read my post that my disappointment with the treatment of the sponsors by the event staff is the primary reason I would not recommend sponsoring the event. Even some of the event staff has conceded that. While I think the format of the sessions was disappointing in general (consider the differences between your presentational style and my round-table style), that wasn’t the reason to withdraw sponsorship, as you seem to have read.
I hope that clears up any misconceptions you may have had about what I wrote, and maybe leads to improvement on all fronts next year. Thanks for the linkage.
I almost went to that ‘tools’ session — sounds like I was better off not going.
Podcamp Ohio was my first podcamp, and I thought that the presenters (at least the ones I went to) did a good job of keeping the sessions on-topic but soliciting feedback from the attendees.
If Habari was expecting ringing endorsements of their product across the board at a Podcamp, they don’t understand the concept of an UnConference, and maybe they should sponsor Expos or true Conventions from now on (I hear there’s one at Ohio State in February). Maybe they should have sat in on Todd Cochran’s session to see how to do a session without turning it into an ad for your service (I think he mentioned Blubrry once or twice, and those were in passing).
Owen,
Thanks for clearing that up. I guess I’m a bit too sensitive. I wish I could get a copy of the audio (my batteries died in my recorder mid-presentation – great planning Dave…). I’m all about “constant improvment” and if my tone of voice was dissmissive, I again apologize. Hopefully we can meet again at another Podcamp or expo in the future. Thanks for the clarifcation on bandwidth/transfer
Warren,
Thanks for the feedback. Owen’s presentation was informative, it just was not what I was expecting.
Dave,
Wow – lots to digest in this post – but as a new person to podcasting, I want you to know that I appreciated your presentation style. There are lots of “what ifs” with technology and if the purpose, in less than an hour, was to explain the basic infrastructure – you met my needs. In fact I’m here on your blog looking for the slides and ran across this conversation.
I also attended the tool session led by Owen and walked away feeling that I was not the target audience member for that session. Although, I took notes and learned – in BOTH sessions, as a newbie, I understood what you were saying without effort.
Not to be Pollyanna, but I’m frankly grateful to all the presenters who gave of their time and knowledge to help those of us in the audience.
Thanks!
Deborah
webwriter
OH – so where can I find the slides. And Dave, I recorded your session. It is still in my recorder. I’ll download and email to you. Where can I send it?
Deborah
Dave, Wow – lots to digest in this post – but as a new person to podcasting, I want you to know that I appreciated your presentation style. There are lots of “what ifs” with technology and if the purpose, in less than an hour, was to explain the basic infrastructure – you met my needs. In fact I’m here on your blog looking for the slides and ran across this conversation. I also attended the tool session led by Owen and walked away feeling that I was not the target audience member for that session. Although, I took notes and learned – in BOTH sessions, as a newbie, I understood what you were saying without effort. Not to be Pollyanna, but I’m frankly grateful to all the presenters who gave of their time and knowledge to help those of us in the audience. Thanks! Deborah webwriter
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