Podcamp NY 2.0 Recap

This past weekend, PodCampNYC 2.0 visited Brooklyn to discuss and share all that is social and media.  It was really interesting to meet and discuss the vast sea of social media (which includes Second Life), meet new people, and say hello to friends. While I was there for half of the conference, it was still draining (I’m still trying to recoup sleep) there were some great happenings from this year’s podcamp. What surprised me the most this year was how close knit the social media circle is, it is probably because through social media you engage with others on a daily basis. If you have a Podcast, Vidcast, or heavily involved in Virtual Worlds, your degree of separation from another person seems smaller than the traditional six degrees.  Rather than playing six-degrees of separation from Kevin Bacon, your playing six-degrees of separation from yourself or a friend of yours, in my case its six-degrees of separation from Adam Broitman (aside: read his posts “The World Wide Social Network” and “Google: The Web Is Your Facebook” where he delves a bit deeper into the concept of being socially connected through Google and other web API’s.) There was one thought that stuck with me after Podcamp NY, not everyone “gets it”, not even those heavily invested in social media. This became very clear when I, along with TheDiva Rockin and Ann Marie Mathis took over the Second Life panel (the speaker did not show.)

Not everyone has to understand the tool, they just need to find the right tool for themselves. Some people appreciate twitter, other’s pownce, others Jaiku. yet it is how people, communities engage with one tool or another that make it worth using.  I always call for interacting with residents when a major company enters Second Life but the same is to be said of Social Media.  One really great example (although an odd one to me because I didn’t “get it”) was that of Jody Gnant, who was lifestreaming throughout the conference.  While I may have ruined every woman’s dream of having pedals dropped onto them (in her case I caused them to SPLAT), it made me realize that while I was ruining her moment, her viewers were sharing (and having that moment ruined at the same time!) By lifestreaming, Jody who is a musician (the music is quite cool and put up for free) may be used to sharing her life through music is now doing the same through video on a daily basis. It was evident by some of her followers hanging out with her throughout her time in NYC.  Matthew Ebel was another great example of this, Matthew whom I’ve only heard of in Second Life before PodCampNYC 2.0 held a small piano concert by one of the salons in the Marriott. It wasn’t streamed, but while he was taking requests (from the crowd of listeners), everyone else was tweeting and Qiking the performance.  The engagement here was very different, while intimate, how many music performances do you go to where people have laptops, taking pictures, video, and text and immediately uploading them to their favorite social media outlet to engage with their friends or to savor the moment?

There were also some interesting things and people met at Podcamp NY 2.0. Miss Something and Wankergirl had a really good and unconventional presentation about Relationships 2.0 (although the guy to girl ratio was way out of proportion! I think people thought it was all about sex, it wasn’t!) There was a great panel about monetization that wasn’t about affiliate links and advertisements (it should have been called “how to make money from your podcast and NOT be sleezy about it) lead by the Culinary Media Network, Cliff at BitCast Media and a fourth presenter whose name I’m blanking on (I’m sorry if I get the name I’ll add it in!). There were also some live music acts and free CD’s from Carla Lynn Hall, Natalie Gelman and Matthew Ebel. Some cool applications from Blog Talk Radio (which I’m really interested in – talk radio that can be live and archived and can include up to 5 participants), iProng Magazine (whom provided a few musicians to come and sing), and RedLasso (a service that allows you to take clips from TV and Radio Broadcasts and share, use, or sample.)

There is definitely some room for thought since PodcampNY 2.0, but it also demonstrates just how social, social media really is.