I am finally back in Baltimore! I left home at 4:30 am last Wednesday and headed to CES in Las Vegas, and then made the trek to Chapel Hill, NC on Friday so I could attend PodcasterCon. Saturday was spent with some of the coolest people I have ever met, and then finally early this morning, I caught a flight home. What a week! Absolutely nothing short of awesome! (thats my original clutch word).

Plenty to come on CES, I will be posting 2 podcasts in the next day or two highlighting the sights and sounds of the exhibition floor. We spoke with a bunch of different companies, and the conversations we had will be summed up in the next couple of shows. The Verizon Wireless podcasts are in post-production as well, look out for them on the VZW page, and please subscribe to the feed if your interested in checking them out.

With all of the excitement surrounding CES, and finally after attending it for the first time, I think I agree with some folks who say the show is really TOO big. They could easily split this event up into 3 key conferences and sell them out solid. Logistically speaking, it would also be so much kinder and gentler on the city’s transportation industry (we had no chance of getting a cab after the trade show floor closed unless we wanted to wait hours, so we walked to the Wynn and stood on a 20 min line there). That being said, CES is a high energy event with lots of interesting people, in the middle of Las Vegas, definitely a good time.

PodcasterCon was really really cool. I had never attended an event that was planned in the “unconference” format before, a totally organic approach to a gathering, one that involves all of the attendees. A format that allows the actual participants to actually create sessions on subjects they want to discuss, and whatever happens, happens. No lectures, etc just one moderator (or sometimes two) and a lot of participation from the attending group. I was able to move around and bounce around a little bit and check out the various sessions. I also had a chance to sit down and record a podcast interview with Ryan Irelan of Podcast Free America, and Brian Russell the organizer of PodcasterCon 2006, both will also be posted here.

David Warlick ran a very interesting session titled “Podcasting as a Teaching / Learning Strategy” - I was impressed to say the least, Dave ran this session like a pro. Almost every single person was participating. Even thought this is a subject I was genuinely interested in, I had just planned on dropping in and listening for a while. However, after about 20 minutes, Dave requested people with podcasting equipment to raise their hands, and before I knew it, I was in the middle of recording a session with about 10 people discussing how to attract funding for enabling podcasting for educational initatives. Dave posts about the experience here, and also mentions our rapid linking and cross-posting of media from the event within minutes of it actually happening. That was pretty cool Dave, lots of synapes firing there. This session was truly a “session.”

The open session hour was really cool as well. Ryan Irelan ran an informative session on “Podcasting for Everyone”, enlightenting a group of aspiring podcasters, and I also attended Gene from Hometown Tales’ session on “Video Podcasting.” All very good stuff! Shortly after that, PodcasterCon ended and we all headed to the Internationalist Bookstore to receive a complimentary copy of “Podcasting Hacks” by Jack Herrington, courteousy of O’Reilly.

To top the day off, a group of us went out to the Carolina Brewery where we enjoyed plenty of fine brew and good eats. We had a great conversation and new friendships were formed. The crew consisted of:

Ryan Irelan (Podcast Free America)
Dave Johnson (Blogging Roller) - look out for his new book on RSS and Atom Feeds.
Josh Staiger (joshstaiger.org)
Derrick Oien (Intercasting Corp, Rabble)
Dave Chekan (Libsyn)
The other Dave (Libsyn)
Hoopes (Libsyn)
Chris MacDonald (indiefeed)
Rob Greenlee (Melodeo, Mobilcast)
Will R (Concerned Citizen)

Great meeting all of you! I am looking forward to connecting with everyone again. Definitely good times.

After this 5 day travel run, its really great to be back home. Have a good one, peace out.

This entry was posted on Sunday, January 8th, 2006 at 7:26 pm and is filed under Podcasting, Media, Business, Blogging, Trends, Technology, Travels, People, Ideas. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Tags: ces, podcastercon2006, david warlick, podcastfreeamerica, audio activism, rabble, indiefeed, mobilcast, libsyn, rollerweblogger,