Showing posts with label podcamp. Show all posts
Showing posts with label podcamp. Show all posts

Sunday, October 28, 2007

PodCamp Boston 2: David Maister

David Maister shared his experiences on business blogging and podcasting, and answered questions from the audience.

Switched his blogging model to congenial host - "I have this question and what do the rest of you think?"

Blog posting - we all want to be relatively regular with our schedule. Horrible temptation to say you are just going to put something up without the quality; you are best to avoid this trap if you want to build a destination place. Be prepared to post less frequently.

Article: "Do you really want relationships?" (article from new book); even if you despise people, you still have to earn their trust. It is not about how good you are, but whether they believe you are going to look after them.

Friendship skills: some people naturally have friendship skills.

His wife's podcast: Startcooking.com - she is a good dinner host, natural conversationalist.

If you want to make a lot of money, once you get business you want to make sure you get all their follow-up business and have them tell their friends.

What you want: if someone asks your customers if they should hire you, you want them saying unequivocally yes.

Stop talking about you. You don't get any of my business by talking to you. Getting new clients is like dating - you go out and do something nice once, twice, if you don't get a response, you move on.

Clients who ask him if they should get into podcasting. Particularly lawyers, they are very concerned whether they should get into this area. It is proving very very hard to get them to do it. The smaller practitioners who do not have benefit of big brand name are doing it smartly. When you get into larger firms and you have to get 26 of your partners to sign off, it becomes harder to do.

In most advisory business they are not about scale. He probably earns more profit per partner than the big 4 accounting firms. But how do you get in the flow of the best business?

Before you are in the market, are you putting out into the marketing place something that makes people say you are creating smart stuff? That is why he writes books. You can't get people to be interested in you, that you will do something fabulous, until you start putting something out there for them to see. It is unclear which is the best medium; do it all, the blog, the podcast, the book; it doesn't cost him much to turn articles on his blog into a business book. The business book becomes his glossy business card.

E.g. got invited to give a speech at the conference, handed books out to everyone in the audience. One CEO told him the next day he had been reading the book and would he come to speak to his board? Not guaranteed work, but it may lead into something.

Business audiences are busy: is your writing easily digestible for them? His work goes through quite a number of drafts.

It is not the top executives on the web reading his blog. But it is their staff reading his work; these people pass his ideas up. He therefore is writing it as "ammunition" to support those people.

He believes that, despite all his business degrees, business is not that complicated. Management writing is just re-writing Dale Carnegie.

The ability to help enter the audience's mind, help them see things - that is a difficult skill.

Podcamp Boston 2: Social Media for Business with Isabel Hilborn

Isabel Hilborn

Social media: media where the users create the content themselves.

People who are not doing this want to know why people would spend time on this.

Social Media Motivator: Hosts
- cost savings/profit
- timeliness
- suitability
- trust, legitimacy and attention - get more sales if there are bad comments about your comment along with good rather than just good comments - seems more authentic

What can Social Media address?
- professionals - networking, sale,s self-promotion, job search, industry expertise
- enterprise internal - KM, project management
- enterprise external
- marketing

Saturday, October 27, 2007

PodCamp Boston 2: PodCamp Retrospective and Prospective

20 podcamps world-wide in the past year. Why has it spread so far and so fast?

Current challenges:

- what size works best?
- does venue or location matter?
- wiki is not always user friendly?
- scheduling/tracking deadlines
- how do you manage volunteer staff?

How do you expand it out so that you don't have the same 12 people going to every one like Grateful Dead followers.

Today: about 550 people out of 1339 people registered. When you do not get those people out, how do you plan for T-shirts, food, sponsors, advertisers?

Does it need to be called something a little more inclusive?

Other unconferences and new media conferences are charging...

Whitney Hoffman did Podcamp Philly sponsorship like Lego - built out essential sponsorship first, and then sponsorship for non-essentials after.

BarCamp model was originally chosen because it is easy. But what do you do with the scalability, the second year?

What is Podcamp?

- opportunity to learn
- conference anyone can put on
- involving the community
- showing people they can create content, can share content on the web
- people are here because it is their hobby, it is not an industry; people are here to share with people who have a similar love

Sponsorships - not want to be calling the same people all the time; also, need a certain critical mass before people are interested; as podcamp becomes split up and more local, you may only need 1 or 2 sponsors; it has to be funded somehow; the idea of sponsorship by a company equals commitment to this community; even if organizations cannot give money, let them get involved e.g. in-kind sponsorships.

Send them comments about what you think podcamp is and what it should be: podcampboston@gmail.com

Discuss on the forums - linked from the blog

There will also be a survey (Survey Monkey)

PodCamp Boston 2: Smart Plan, Sexy 'Cast with Andrea Mercado

She specializes in library technology planning. Podcasts sessions with authors, interviews, etc. Has a blog LibraryTechtonics

- what do people use to subscribe to podcasts?

iTunes, Miro (can be used for videos and podcasts)

- go and listen to as many podcasts; watch as many vidcasts in your area as you can as research to see what is already being done. Gives you a starting point for areas you might be more knowledgeable in, what length to run them for, learn from their successes

- what is a successful 'cast really varies for the area you are in

- is there something of interest to your planning process

- is your niche already full? In that case, offer to be guest host, help with the 'cast that already exists in your niche

Have there been any recent instant rockstars? Not really - easy for everyone to do it, so harder to stand out. 'Cast like RocketBook went instantly viral because it was new. Now it is about creating a niche for yourself.

Considerations: how much do you have to spend on budget, equipment, time?

At the beginning you may just record and put it out raw, but over time you will want to spend more time editing, making it more polished.

Whatever you are recording, it is to your benefit to be wearing headphones so you can hear what it sounds like-- you can adjust levels as you record. Will save yourself production time. Headsets with microphones don't cost that much. Recording software such as castblaster can cost like $50. Or Audacity is free - allows you to do downloading, editing, exporting into MP3 etc.

Can host onto your own site all in one place, or distribute to other sites;

Don't let your podcast be an "abandoned baby" on Talkshoe...

You don't need to have a five-year plan, but set yourself goals, motivations. Keep it simple in the beginning.

Ask others doing what you want to do--ask them questions about what they are doing.

What is your goal with your podcast?

You need to do some homework, do some up-front work which will likely make it more sustainable;

Plan for time to add liner notes, show notes - please put notes in for people, times when each speaker starts (for example).

PodCamp Boston 2: Personal Branding - the Power of Conversations with Mitch Joel

PodCamp Boston
Saturday, October 27, 2007
Mitch Joel
Building Your Personal Brand: The Power of Conversations

You need to be passionate about everything you do! How many hours a day do you spend working? Podcasting? Most of us do it to get out of our work. He wants us to bring this passion to our work.

Works during the day with fairly big brands on how to hold conversations. You can translate all of this into being more effective in our personal lives.

Why is personal branding important?

Be a better husband, wife, family member. Be a better community member. Make more money in our work.

Words account for only 7% of communication. Your personal brand is screaming so loud you can hardly hear what you are saying. Your personal brand already is! How you dress, what you do, what you do for a living, who you connect with.

A brand is a bunch of emotional things that we connect to. E.g. establishing the Apple brand. How do you establish a brand? You have to figure out the differentiater.

Why is personal branding so easy? Because we are all so different.

Internal conversation - leads to business and marketing. First:

Find the real you.


If you are interverted, connect more to people like you. Most people have never heard of him, and yet he speaks to lots of people because he is connecting with people like him.

Have you tried to write out your own story? Write that story and connect to that story--it will show what makes you truly unique. You need to have your story out, try your story out on people you trust. So often people have a different idea of you than you have of yourself.

The power of a great internal conversation. Companies have internal conversations, too. Harley-Davidson does not actually sell motorcycles. They sell a lifestyle, the open road, "the ability of a 43 accountant to dress in black leather, drive through small towns and have people be afraid of them." (Harley-Davidson executive)

What are your values, your goals, your beliefs? How many of your shows are the mental tattoos on people's minds? When your show comes out, you want them to want to listen to it right away. If someone listens to your show they connect with you.

Elevator pitch - 30 seconds to explain what you do. Four simple steps to make your pitch work.

1. State very clearly what you do.
2. Very short.
3. Has to roll off your tongue, sound natural, as if you just came up with it.
4. It has got to be memorable.

Elevators are a euphemism for life.

Be the one who stands out, make sure you are the one people remember. For your personal brand to really explode, you have to listen. Podcasters tend to have verbal diarrhea; you have to listen, listen to your listeners.

ALWAYS talk to strangers. Get out there, you can build hundreds of people in your audience just by talking to the people here at this conference. He is going to spend time people he doesn't know. He is not going to be one of those people talking to just the two only people you know. It's all about who you know. It's also about who knows you.

Plug into other people, not just your computer. Connect into people, and you will get people thinking about you.

He wants us to attend THREE social networking events in the next week. Turn to the person behind you and sit down to have coffee with that person later. If I can understand what you need, I can help you get it. Help people with their goals. You can do this by connecting people online.

"Would you like to sit next to you at dinner?" - The Economist (ad)

Your ability to give and give and not care if you get anything back in return...give abundantly, give of your time, be part of the community. Don't expect to get anything back.

Mentoring is important. Mentors can be family, friends, community, business. A lot of us are his mentors. Everyone in this room is now your mentor. You need to rely on this community. The one to many conversation.

First time in the history of the planet you now have the ability to personally have a one-to-many conversation because of the web. We now have connectivity. You've got to be connected. Everyday people can now go about our day-to-day lives to truly effect change in the world.

You can go wherever you want, and you try to find people like you. The internet - what other media allows you to find people? What other media allows you to have this conversation? Six degrees of separation/six pixels of separation - people are now intrinsically connected. How does our personal brand help you to connect with people?"

"Your brand isn't what you say it is. It's what Google says it is." - Chris Anderson (author of The Long Tail)

Forbidden - woman on the west coast has over 1.4 million friends on myspace.com

LinkedIn - power of using the channels to build your connections.

***Just remember stuff lingers forever on the web.****

6 points:

- establish yourself as an expert - don't just podcast but blog, write articles, speak.
- Be seen and known as a leader.
- Be known as an innovator.
- Separate yourself from the competition. Book: Blue Ocean Strategy
- Gain professional statute
- Build your image e.g. Bono is constantly building his image- how he look is as important as what he says.

What is your personal nametag going to say??

The rules have not changed. Make friends, tell the truth, do your homework.

In Boston for Podcamp!

I am currently in Boston for Podcamp. This is conference 3 of 3 in 1 1/2 weeks!!! I am completely excited to be here. I don't have to organize or speak, just focus on connecting with people and learning. Well, I am always learning. But you know what I mean. ;-)

I attended the Social Media Breakfast this morning organized by Bryan Person and kindly sponsored by CMAccess. It was a good way to connect with a few people I know and meet a few new ones (about 50-60 people attended) before heading into the larger 1200+ delegate unconference.

I haven't yet loaded my blogging from the last conference but am going to go ahead and start live blogging as I have time. Forgive the order...will try to make sense of all of this later with some personal thoughts.

Cheers!
Connie

Friday, June 01, 2007

Unconference: The Book


A book on unconferences is being written in a collaborative way using a wiki. To learn more about this project, see my post over at SLAW.

Tuesday, February 27, 2007

Interview on Geek.Farm.Life

While at podcamp I was interviewed a couple times for podcasts. One of those has already been posted over at Geek.Farm.Life. Have a listen to the "B-side" podcast, Barncast 55b - Podcamp Toronto Interviews. I am just about to have a a listen to it myself.

Cheers,
Connie

Monday, February 26, 2007

Newly Re-energized!




I am completely exhausted, and yet completely re-energized at the same time. How is that possible? Last week in NYC speaking at the Ark conference, and then spending the weekend at Podcamp, I have learned so much, met so many people, and collected so many ideas! Some I have already put into place: Chris Brogan and other podcamper's network ethic to follow up with people immediately after an event to keep the contact and keep the conversation going. It is challenging when I have met at least 25 new people in 4 days. Remembering who was interested in what and how to continue that conversation is an intellectual challenge, albeit a stimulating, interesting, and enjoyable one!

I spent a good part of last night and this morning sending people LinkedIn invitations and holding follow-up discussions on our common interests. I also did some follow-up work on the podcamp toronto blog and tried to keep up with all the email! And, I was trying to get caught up on my "day job" in between.

The other thing which has really stuck with me is the idea that, if I am going to get into podcasting or videopodcasting (or what have you), I should stop being hung up on thinking it through too much, and JUST DO IT. I am so motivated, I just want to sit and start creating episodes. But, I have other nice little commitments to work on before I can do that. I need to sit and do some solid writing, workshop/presentation planning, and conference planning work. So, I am turning my energies to those things to see how what I have learned can apply to those areas. And I have a lot of great ideas on how to kick-start all of this for me. Again, I just want to roll up my sleeves and DO IT!

I think, once I get some solid sleep, it is going to be a fun month. And for February/March in Toronto, that is saying A LOT!

Cheers,
Connie

Saturday, February 24, 2007

Hello from Podcamp!

Connie is at camp today. Specifically Podcamp Toronto 2007

I am currently liveblogging it over at the Podcamp Toronto blog

There is also livestreaming available from the wiki Schedule page.

Jim Milles and I presented a session first thing this morning called "What to Podcast". We had a packed room of about 40+ podcasting wannabes. We ran it as a brainstorming session with the room and used my macbook projected on the screen as a whiteboard. I recorded our ideas in the session and have also posted it as a PDF file from the wiki.

Thursday, February 22, 2007

Hello from New York

Well, it has been hectic but now I get to rest for a day. I have been in NYC attending an Ark Group conference on Law Firm Library Management Best Practices, moderated by Joel Alleyne. Yesterday morning I spoke on Web 2.0 and Library 2.0. I've had great feedback from it. The challenge was trying to speak to the wide range of experience in the room.

Joel spoke today on Communities of Practice and Social Networks. I have heard him speak before on CoP (to Toronto Association of Law Libraries several years back), but things have advanced so much since then it really was quite a larger talk. I am always impressed by how much he knows when he speaks, too. He's not just a pretty face, that is for sure!

My colleague who was here with me, Shaunna, shared this with me today: I had a fantastic mention in by Dennis Kennedy and Tom Mighell in the ABA's Law Practice Today. See the article.

Anyway, I look forward to a little sightseeing tomorrow. Well, we are in for a snowstorm apparently today. But at least I am in New York, which always gives me a thrill.

And then on to Podcamp Saturday and Sunday! Jim Milles and I are speaking on "What to Podcast" first thing Saturday morning. Jim has another talk that afternoon on grassroots podcasting in the academic setting. Can't wait!

Cheers,
Connie

Friday, February 16, 2007

Can't Wait to See Who's Who at Podcamp Toronto!

I have been anxiously awaiting PodCamp Toronto 2007 ! It takes place next weekend. Things have been really gearing up....we are up to 207 registrants and counting. Lots of people are putting on sessions--a schedule has been put up to allow us to book ourselves in to a time slot.

I'm proud to say that Jim Milles and I are putting on an intro session in the very first time slot, called "What to Podcast". It will be a brainstorming session for podcasting newbies (like me) who want to get started but are not sure what to do for content.

Anywho, some of the people I have met, but many I haven't. It will be a lot of fun to see who is who in the world of Toronto podcasting! (well, more likely greater metropolitan Toronto area and environs podcasting).

I have my fancy new blog business cards all ready to hand out. They arrived this week!

Oh yes, and Jim recorded our conversation about Podcamp for his podcast Check This Out! (Episode 60) so if you want to know more about podcamp, we talk about it at great length.