Learning and mingling: events worth attending
There’s a wave of social media events and conferences coming up that I’ll be attending and I encourage you to attend, as well.
Niagara on the Lake Podcasting and Social Media Meetup (tag: notl2008) is a hybrid meetup and conference taking place August 16 (yes, next week!) at the Prince of Whales Hotel in Niagara on the Lake. The event is being spearheaded by John Meadows and Keith Burtis, both of whom hope that this is the event that crosses the line from being a geeks-only event to one that includes the Social Media Widows and Orphans. While I’ve heard that one is in the works, a schedule of family-focused activites has not yet been published. The speaker schedule is available on the site as is a great promo by StevieZ.
The second PodCamp Philly (tag: podcampphilly) is happening September 6 and 7 at Temple University in Philadelphia. Lead organizer, Whitney Hoffman, has a history of organizing events that foster both an amazing sense of community and an environment that gets people thinking and talking about the medium and related opportunities. Last year’s conference had a great educational program and this year’s appears to be building on that success. SearchCamp is new for the 2008 edition of PodCamp Philly. SearchCamp is a series of sessions designed for people interested in seach engine marketing.
If PodCamp Montreal (tag: podcampmtl) isn’t the first ever officially bilingual PodCamp, it’s certainly one of the very few. That’s right, PodCamp makes its first appearance in La Belle Province September 20 and 21 at the University of Montreal’s Design Pavillion (Pavillion de Design de l’UQAM). The posts on the PodCamp Montreal website are all bilingual (French first, then English) and there will be separate tracks for French and English sessions at the event. Despite the segregation of the sessions by language, I hope that there’s a good amount of mingling between languages and cultures; both have a lot to learn from each other. If the organizing committee is any indication, this is going to be an incredible event.
I’m also considering going to Third Coast for the first time, this year. I’ve heard that it’s a religious experience for producer-geeks like me.
August 7th, 2008 at 4:29 pm
You can always count on Mark to be the community guy :) Thanks very much for mentioning PodCamp Montreal (#podcampmtl, #pcmtl and even #podcampmontreal) in your post.
We’ll do our best to ensure that everyone can attend sessions in the language of their choice - for that we need a good selection of speakers in both languages.
It’s encouraging to hear the buzz that’s begun - we hope to see lots of out of towners in Montreal in September. Check out our blog for registration details, scheduling and special room rates.
And thanks once again Mark for PAB - it’s really only after you’ve actually gotten down to doing the dirty work of unconference organisation yourself that you realize how much time and energy is involved in making it a success.
Keep sending good vibes our way! :)
Cheers
Michelle