Disconnected - My 3 Rs For Early 2008

So, welcome to 2008! While I’ve never been much of a guy to make large-scale promises or resolutions at the dawning of a new year, especially public ones, I’ve always been able to find something I’m willing to toss onto a wall to see if it sticks. Some of my personal hopes and goals for [...]

So, welcome to 2008! While I’ve never been much of a guy to make large-scale promises or resolutions at the dawning of a new year, especially public ones, I’ve always been able to find something I’m willing to toss onto a wall to see if it sticks. Some of my personal hopes and goals for 2008 include local volunteering and folding 1000 paper cranes. I’ll elaborate on both of those as the days and weeks unfold, but I want to take this chance to look at my digital goals in this upcoming year.

If you follow me closely, you’ll know that I turned off my Twitter account at midnight, just after a, highly appropriate, tweet consisting of “</2007> <2008>”. I’ve had a lot of very interesting responses to my doing this, but the most common has, by far, been along the lines of “Are you crazy?!”, “Are you joking!?” or “Is this… forever?”. Watching people react to seeing someone close up shop on Twitter has given me a really neat perspective (And lots of notes) on the Twitter community. I feel I should answer the three questions most asked though - Possibly, not at all, and no, it’s not.

One of my first tasks for the year is to renew my digital world. Over the next days and weeks, I’ll be going through each and every blog, podcast, video podcast, twitter feed and so on that I follow and -evaluating their value to my life. Twitter, as much as I love it, is a non-stop distraction to me, and so I feel it’ll just be a lot easier if I step out of the stream for a while. I still get @ messages, and DMs, and will randomly hop on to read messages, but the “always on” aspect will be turned off, and my tweets will be fewer and further between.

In addition to feeds, I’m also re-evaluating every tool I use, both on the web and on my desktop, to see if there is a better one out there for me. I’ll, quite likely, be the proud owner of a new laptop in the coming weeks, and I want to make certain that the tools I’m using are the ones that will allow me to get the most done, in the least amount of time, while fitting within my existing (and currently evolving) lifestyle.

My personal branding is also being refreshed during this opening portion of the year. I began that with a “mostly done” change of the blog appearance. If you’re picking this up via RSS, stop on by the site to take a look - I’d love to hear what you think. I’ve got time set aside for things like Facebook, Linked In, and Twitter, too… So keep your eyes peeled wherever we’re connected to see how this unfolds.

There  are some other things that are being done to help with this process, too. I’m getting a new desk, for example,and re-positioning furniture in the office to help me make the most of physical space, I’m taking a look at some of the personal projects I own or play active roles in and will likely stop or change many of them (even if those changes aren’t visual) and am working my way through a number of personal productivity books in a desperate attempt to make my life more manageable.

So that’s what’s going on - and why I’ve been pretty quiet, recently. It sure seems like things are going to be busy. What about you, though? What do you have planned, digitally, for 2008?

To Fee Or Not To Fee

My summary of my time at PCB2 will have to wait in draft for a while - there’s something more pressing I want to talk about.
There’s a discussion taking place all over the web about this weekend’s decision to revoke PodCamp rule number 4. Before this, rule number 4 read: “All sessions and events must [...]

My summary of my time at PCB2 will have to wait in draft for a while - there’s something more pressing I want to talk about.

There’s a discussion taking place all over the web about this weekend’s decision to revoke PodCamp rule number 4. Before this, rule number 4 read: “All sessions and events must be free of charge to attend”. That rule is no more and organizers have now been presented with the option to charge a fee to attend PodCamp. There is, at the time of writing, a recommendation on the wiki that reads “sessions and events are strongly encouraged to be free to attend to allow as many people to attend as possible”, but it’s no longer enforced.

I said something on Saturday afternoon during the “PodCamp Retrospective” session which I’d like to repeat and build on here. Having been an attendee to both of Pittsburgh’s PodCamps, their PodCamp BootCamp, and PCB2, along with PAB 2007 and various one-day paid events - I can tell you that I see a clear difference between a PodCamp, and the for-paid events like PAB, or the session side of the PME (Note my exclusion of the vendor floor here).

To me, PodCamps seemed to be designed to bring new people into new media. To TEACH people what a podcast was, what blogging was, how to get your video podcast started or some basic SEO to ensure your blog didn’t get lost in the fray of the web. PodCamp, to me at least, wasn’t about the free food, or the free t-shirt, or the after-parties, or even the “fishbowl” people coming together to see each other. To me, PodCamp was about taking OUR community, and sharing it with others, to GROW the community, and bring new people in. It was the “new media school” in a day or two, and should have been used to expand the fishbowl into the aquarium. Then a pond. Then a lake. and, well, you get the idea.

We in this new media space are constantly moaning that our world seems to be tapering off. That we need to start reaching outside of the fishbowl and bring in new listeners. PodCamp IS our chance to do that. There is NO reason that Podcamp CAN’T be we, the new media community fishbowl, reaching out and teaching other what this space is. Will we be creating new content creators in the process? Sure! But there’s nothing that says that everyone who attends a PodCamp will become a content creator. And besides, what’s to say someone doesn’t come to learn some blogging tips, and walk out knowing a lot about how to LISTEN to a podcast. That’s one more content CONSUMER. Even if their blog never gets off the ground/

So, you’re asking, what about the other side?  What about it! There’s still plenty of room for “fishbowl” gatherings to occur. The PABs and PMEs and the like will still happen.We, the existing community, are still trying to better ourselves, and there’s nothing that says we have to stay still. The existing fishbowl folk are still going to group off at PodCamps, it’s human nature, but that shouldn’t be the FOCUS of the event. I don’t think I met anyone at PCB2 looking to get into this space or learn about it. They allhad a foot in it somewhere. Which was great, but didn’t make it feel ANYTHING like a podcamp to me.

So what about a fee? For a PodCamp, as I’ve defined it above, I say no. For the fishbowl events? Sure. If we went people to come to podcamps, learn about our space d then participate in it as either a content creator, or a content consumer, then we need to do as much as we can to lower the barriers. And if they go home without a free shirt, then so be it.

I’ll post more on where I think PodCamp should go tomorrow. This post was long enough.

Attending PAB. And the repercussions of that.

First, the next of my portable office series is being pushed to Saturday of this week. So I skipped a week. It was worth it, and you’ll read all about why … later.
For the readers of mine who have been living under a rock and missed this, I’m attending the Podcasters Across Borders event this [...]

First, the next of my portable office series is being pushed to Saturday of this week. So I skipped a week. It was worth it, and you’ll read all about why … later.

For the readers of mine who have been living under a rock and missed this, I’m attending the Podcasters Across Borders event this weekend in Kingston, Ontario. Hooray for low travel costs.

I’ve got a lot of notes for a lot of posts that will trickle out over the next couple of weeks, but I wanted to take this time to get something up right now.

This event, for me at least, has been the best new media type event I’ve attended. Not necessarily from an information point of view, not that the information (And the dense schedule of sessions) isn’t great, but from a people and community point of view. Being that I have mostly attended American events, and simply listened to shows from the Canadian community, I often felt more like an American podcasting community member, and not so much like a Canadian or global member.

This weekend, for me, has changed that. And it’s been awesome.

As promised, details to follow once it wraps and I return to the “real world”.