What I knew about Matthew Ebel before yesterday was only that CC Chapman would do backflips to hear his music. While I had heard some of Matthew’s music, I didn’t really connect with it — although, Lost My Way (his new a capella song), did catch my attention.

Last night I saw Matthew perform at the Bullfinch Yacht Club as part of the PodCamp Boston 2 entertainment. That’s when I made the connection. Matthew is more than a singer/songwriter; he’s a performer. Seeing him work the crowd and effortlessly bounce and twist his hands in a staccato frenzy while belting out upbeat songs –mostly with his eyes closed– was one-part demoralizing and three-parts exciting.

This Sound Connection is with Matthew Ebel’s live performance talents and his new song, Everybody Needs a Robot. His new CD, Goodbye Planet Earth, will be released later this evening.

Photo: Nicolas Pin

 

 Matthew Ebel at PodCamp Boston 2 [5:47m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

If you’ve been in audio for a while, chances are you have a lot of stories about lost audio. I have a few. Perhaps one of the most painful, certainly the most current, is the phantom recording I did last evening from the back seat of a taxi I was sharing with Bill Deys, Neil Gorman and Bob Goyetche.

The brilliance of the recording was that it captured a fight that took place between CC Chapman and our Russian cab driver as we were preparing to leave. CC’s directions were a bit confusing and the cabbie was a very direct communicator. The argument that ensued between them was both hilarious and stressful. It was tough to fight the laughter knowing that I had my trusty Zoom H2 recorder capturing the exchange - for Bill (who was in the front seat) more than me.

I plugged my H2 in to my laptop a few minutes ago and smiled knowing that all of the recordings I made yesterday were waiting for me. All, as it turns out, except for the exchange in the cab.

Like my Edirol R1, the Zoom H2 requires you to double-clutch the record button to begin the recording. The first press gets you into record-ready state and the second press starts the recording.

Trust me, the record-ready-recording of the fight between CC and the cabbie was a classic recording that never happened.

Epilogue: During last year’s PodCamp Boston, I shared a cab back to my hotel with Julien Smith. After a while of driving around aimlessly, Julien, in a sarcastic way that only Julien can deliver, leaned forward and said to our very aggressive and impatient cabbie, “Dude! You do know where you’re going, right?”

Off to PodCamp Boston 2, day 1.

It was a great day for a drive. The sun was out, the temperature was great and the roads were clear. It was the first time since PAB that Bob Goyetche and I had hung out - a full seven hours worth in the car, alone. We recorded some discussions which will likely find themselves in upcoming episodes of the Canadian Podcast Buffet.

We’ve checked in to our hotel and we’ve already run in to some PodCampers including Beth and Greg Gary of Grow See This.

See you tonight.

Photos:

• My podcampboston2 Flickr photos
• All podcampboston2 Flickr photos

Just as the Entertainment Industries Summit begins in Toronto, I received a press release from the Canadian Music Creators Coalition (CMCC) that responds to two events of recent weeks: the US$222,000 judgement against Minnesota mother of two, Jammie Thomas, for the downloading of US$25 worth of music; and the Canadian government’s plans to make copyright reform a priority as announced in last week’s throne speech.

Steven Page of the Barenaked Ladies is a spokesperson for the coalition and is brilliantly quoted in the release.

“It’s shortsighted to say ‘See you in court’ one day and ‘See you at Massey Hall’ the next. If record labels want to try and sue fans, we hope that they’ll have the courtesy to stop trying to do it in our names.”

One can only hope that the CMCC can have an impact on the industry-friendly Conservative government. To them, Stephen Page said “If the Canadian government wants to reform copyright it should be creating a made-in-Canada solution that looks to where the music industry is going, not where it was.”

For more information on the coalition, visit the CMCC website and listen to an interview with Steven Page on the CMCC.

For several years now, my father has been able to access his Sympatico mail through their hotmail.ca webmail service. Something changed a few weeks ago and he is consistently presented with an error message that reads as follows:

Redirection limit for this URL exceeded. Unable to load the requested page. This may be caused by cookies that are blocked.

When contacted, Sympatico tech support confidently offered that the solution is to delete ALL stored cookies — thanks for the effort, Sympatico. As it turns out, deleting cookies for live.com, hotmail.ca and msn.com solved the problem. However, adding those domains to the approved list of cookie providers does not solve any problems; my father still has to delete the relevant cookies at the beginning of each web session.

What has changed with Sympatico’s hotmail.ca service that Sympatico is keeping secret? Does anyone have a solution?

The Ottawa Podcast and New Media Meetup Group held it’s second meeting of this season at the Clock Tower Brew Pub on Thursday, October 18.

There were a lot of newcomers at this gathering and one of them, Natasha, won a $25 gift certificate from Steve’s Music Store in Ottawa.

The guest speaker was Jeff Parks. Besides his many projects and podcasts (see links below), Jeff was one of the three founders of the Ottawa Podcast and New Media Meetup Group.

This episode of the Sound Connections podcast features the entire presentation by Jeff and the engaging discussion that followed. Key points that Jeff raised during his talk include:

• Pay it forward depends on community
• Don’t think in terms of making money
• Think in terms of advancing the medium and helping others
• Google development rule #9: Users, not money
• Share knowledge, help and the money will follow
• Mentoring can be educational for all involved

Relevant links and resources:

• The Daily Source Code (podcast)
  
• The Pay it Forward Foundation
• Pay it Forward the movie (excerpt included)
• Canadian Podcast Buffet (podcast)
  
• Podcasters Across Borders (conference)
• PodCamp
• Talkshoe Network
• This American Life (podcast)
• Ira Glass YouTube interviews
• Tod Maffin’s From Idea to Air electronic book

Jeff’s podcasts can be found at the following URLs:

• I.A. Podcast
• CapCHI Podcast
• Boxes and Arrows

 

 Pay it Forward - Podcasting and Mentorship [51:35m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

In its heyday in the 1960’s, NASA invested in two key areas of the space program: the technology and the people. The premise of this spending decision was that NASA couldn’t get to the moon without the tools to get there (and of course, the people who knew how to use those tools) and the excitement and support of the public. The latter led to astronauts being sent to charm school. They learned how to dress, be social and communicate with the public. The astronauts understood NASA’s operating goals so they could communicate them in their own words, with their own passion and the values of the organization. Public relations junkets became the norm for the months and years following each mission during which the astronauts were expected to speak on behalf of the organization. Despite its operational and public-relations problems, NASA has been around and intact for forty-nine years.

When I started my career in the mid-1990’s, management sold the staff on our importance by sending us to technology and customer service ‘boot camps’ — five day courses compressed into two because we were ‘the elite’ and being away from our desks cost money. We were expected to memorize and recite, verbatim, the mission statement of the company. Whether or not we believed in the mission statement and whether or not it was anything more than a string of platitudes was inconsequential so long as we could regurgitate it to anyone that asked about the company. If the person with whom we were speaking started to ask additional questions about the company, we were expected to defer up the chain of command and if anyone from the press approached us, even reciting the mission statement was considered a no-no. That company lasted a little more than two years before being bought for a song, converted into a few business units each of which was sold off and ultimately dissolved less than five years after the original company had started.

I continue to see examples of the corporate communications trends of the 1990’s in the new millennium.

As the world of technology and communication has evolved, it would seem that the world of management and marketing has generally devolved. Companies are investing heavily to develop and deliver the same old top-down message to a more critical public using newer and sexier technology. They should be investing in all of their people — sending them to Web 2.0 charm school for customer service courses, public speaking workshops and writing classes.

Web 2.0 is a culture, not a technology. If you embrace the culture throughout your organization, your people and technology will help you build a strong community of real-life and online relationships central to your brand.

Notwithstanding the terrible word that we’ve been stuck with since 2004, podcasting was on shaky ground long before Michael Geohegan’s now famous speech delivered at the Podcast and New Media Expo a few weeks ago (see his blog post, No More Podcast in the New Media Expo).

It’s a discussion that has been going on for a long time in many circles. Indeed, many of us debated the health of the podcast movement merits of the term ‘podcast’ at Podcamp Boston. Following this year’s edition of Podcasters Across Borders , Bob Goyetche and I examined the speaking sessions and we discussed the title of the conference when we realized that there was very little podcast-specific material in the program.

Podcasting is simply one technology that is part of what we call new media. Of course, by its very definition, new media will always involve something new, so podcasting — like many other technologies — was doomed to begin with. I’ve always felt, rightly or wrongly, that the word podcast had to be considered in the whole of new media and accepted as a term like ‘disc jockey’ or ‘host’– not particularly descriptive, but a permanent label nonetheless.

Reinventing ourselves on a regular basis is a dangerous proposition. While it makes for great press, it will further confuse an already suspicious audience and the technology and marketing firms won’t be able to keep up with the latest and greatest terminology. These are the reasons why, even though we considered a change, Bob and I have decided to leave the PAB name intact and, for the purpose of the conference, consider the term podcasting to represent the whole of new media.

UPDATE: I re-read this post and realized that it sounds like I am pro-podcasting and con-new media. To clarify, I agree with the trend towards calling things new media - and have for many months referred to my work as new media first and podcasting second. I also feel that we need to agree on, and stick with, one label. It will do a great disservice to everyone, creators and consumers alike, if we constantly change the terminology.

I’m having some configuration and performance problems with sendmail on my server.  If you are a sendmail specialist and can help me, please email me and let me know how much you charge.

When: Thursday, October 18, 2007 at 7:00 PM

Where: Clock Tower Brew Pub
575 Bank Street
Ottawa, ON K1S5L7

Guest speaker: Jeff Parks

Presentation: Pay It Forward - Mentoring and Podcasting

Jeff will discuss his philosophy on mentoring and podcasting, and how this approach can be a model of behaviour for business and government around the concept of “community”.

Jeff Parks is an Information Architect who has been Podcasting about IA, User Experience, and Human Factors for nearly two years. In November he will be starting a new role with the Market Research and User Experience Firm, Phase-5 as the Vice President of User Experience.

Jeff’s podcasts can be found at the following URLs:

• I.A. Podcast
• CapCHI Podcast
• Boxes and Arrows

Click here for more information or to RSVP