Personally, I still believe in the spirit and practice of the first Podcamp in Boston, and I think we have kept some of that alive at the Toronto Podcamps. Once again this year, some of very favorite moments happened not in scheduled sessions but in spontaneous hallway conversations, circles and evening events. I understand the interest in verticals, but I see a PodCampEDU, for example, as being different than a Podcamp. One of the best things about Podcamp is the mixture of people of all levels of experience with a huge range of interests being thrown together, and my fear would be parsing things out into verticals would destroy that wonderful chaos, which for me has been the root of so much inspiration.

One common complaint about Podcamp Toronto was the physical distance between the Z2P room and the rest of the sessions. This was 100% my decision and my fault, but what I take most from the comment is that people LIKE the mixture of new & old, expert & newbie, rockstar and rockstars-that-may-not-know-they-are-rockstars-yet (i.e. everyone at Podcamp!)

As someone who worked in academic technology at universities for almost a decade, I can see the value in PodcampEDU 100%, and I applaud your success. I can also see tremendous value in creating Podcamps that focus on other verticals or themes in much the way Mark outlined in the original post.

I appreciate you supporting the idea of ‘pure’ Podcamps which I still think have tremendous value. My original points were to argue against Mark’s assertion that “the ship has sailed” on these. I still feel this assertion is flat out wrong.

Whitney, I’m sure can attest to the diversity in interest with regards to education and the diversity in experience with regards to tech and new media. The only difference between PodcampEDU and other Podcamps is that we specifically said we were interested in intersections with education.

My bias here, as you might imagine, is that we all should have a vested interest in education and therefore could all potentially participate in ways that make sense for each of us (as a parent, as a consultant to ed settings, as a citizen interested in the future of young people…).

As someone who has experienced PAB, PNME, PodcampNY, and PodcampEDU I think different events offer different things but the smaller events have been the most rewarding for me.

I like Chris Penn’s take of different formats. In my thinking, Jay’s notion of ‘pure Podcamp’ is one such format. I think if we want the Podcamp framework to live on, we have to keep it moving, and that means it might look different in different places and it should. I believe what Mark refers to as verticals is one way to keep Podcamp alive.

I’ve always compared PodCamp to an art easel. Organizers put out easels and brushes, and participants do the rest. Verticals might be compared to different easel formats – portrait, landscape, etc. Participants still have freedom, but especially for new folks, it might be nice to have a little focus to start.

I’m personally less interested in making Podcamp more friendly. I’m interested in making it more scary. I want to see an event that challenges peoples assumptions and gets their mental juices flowing. That’s not say there isn’t a place for intro sessions, but I don’t think there is a place for hand-holding. If people don’t want to jump in, unconferences might not be the right thing for them.

BTW, I’m not at all anti-conference. I love conferences. I love organized tracks and getting speaker line-ups two months in advance that I can can go over with three different colours of highlighters. I like bags of swag even if I throw half of it out ‘cus there’s usually at least a couple of fun do-dads and some decent magazines. I like all that stuff. But that is conference stuff.

Podcamp is NOT A CONFERENCE.

General events can and should still happen. For those events I think it will go a long way in helping newcomers if the organizers offer some sense of focus (tracks) within a broad-brush event. Even tracks can be open to someone unrelated sessions that fall in the same category. For example, one track could focus on any aspect of technology, another on any aspect of show planning and hosting, and another track could explore the use of new media in various niches (hobby, marketing, government, media, etc…). The concept of tracks in this case help people know where to go to find specific information. While we want people making connections with others in the hallway, it shouldn’t be at the cost of making the community chase the sessions they’re interested in.

But things like speed mentoring or a mentoring lounge could also be a place for people to hone their skills, without the need for putting together a full-blown presentation. And I think we need to seek people out for those situations who *aren’t* the rock stars, but who we know have some specific knowledge they can share in that kind of situation.

I’m wondering, too, if we have to look at expectations, especially on the part of the organizers — Jay clearly knows what he wants to see at Podcamp, and can articulate it passionately. I know that the numbers game makes an impact if you’re trying to figure out how much coffee to provide or how many sandwiches to buy for lunch, but perhaps that’s something that needs to be re-thought.

(Though I agree with Whitney that coffee is a must, purely for the socializing it permits.)

I think the idea of verticals is an interesting direction to consider, but I don’t think it should supplant the horizontals.

But I’ve reached the point, personally, where I think that for me, smaller is better, and I’ll be happier at meet-ups where I can ask questions of a smaller group.

How do you think we can address this? Should we have a session or a section of the web page all about “how to present”? It’s tough when part of the getting good at presenting requires presentation experience….

Whit

I think there are new elements at each event that should fall into use at MOST of our events, and yet, “should” is a dirty word.

I love the conversation here. Thanks for starting it, Mark, or continuing it, or adding to it, or…hey, let’s ride bikes!

Whit, I think this sums up nicely the difference in opinion here. When it comes to Podcamp, I’d definitely a “big tent” guy. I totally get that there are opportunities for smaller, more focused events, but I still think the “pure” pod-type-camp model needs a certain amount of chaos to work well, and I feel like that chaos is best cultivated, now and for the foreseeable future, through the wide net. Other kinds of events could certainly be more focused and organized, and I agree that is through a combination of these that things will move forward. Let’s see what happens!

Podcamp works as a mash-up of people from different communities getting together and sharing- otherwise, audio people and video people might never realize that writing a blog and getting the text that drives search engines might be important as well. That’s what’s great.

But not everyone “gets” showing up to a free event where the attendees are the speakers and anything can happen, until you’ve experienced this at least once. It’s like the “problem” with the name podcasting- some people still feel it’s an ipod thing, and don’t understand, but that is slowly changing. (I got a thrill when I heard someone on a NPR show talking about having just discovered the show through the podcast…) So to reach outside the fishbowl, we may want to bring “topical” elements or verticals into Podcamp, at least as an experiment if nothing else.

Interestingly enough, there is a chance we may be widening the scope of Podcamp Philly this next time around, but then you always deal with whether or not the event will outgrow the intimate nature thaht works so wel, how many sessions verge on ‘Too Many’, and other questions that come from growth.

Podcamp works well when it’s small, intimate and about community, especially the local community.

There’s been some informal talk about whether Podcamps should be local events and then should we have one larger event, sort of like an East Coast Portable Media Expo. featuring kind of the “best of” the regional podcamps, while still trying to keep it unconference-y and low key.

Would anyone come? Is it worth while? What kind of events hit the bloggers and video bloggers and podcasters and SEO guys and the marketers? So far, Podcamp is the “biggest tent” out there, encompassing most of these folks comfortably. Is narrow better? Is a wider net better? I don’t know for sure, but it will be fun trying to find out, speed bumps along the path and all.

I think we’re getting stuck discussing tracks as ways to target specific niches. We’ve strayed away from talking about the need for more local and regional events that can be structured to cater to the needs of a specific area. Those events are easier and faster to organize, have fewer logistical challenges, and I believe that they will go a longer way to building sustainable communities.

In fact, I’ve been thinking about this more and I think if anything we need to expand the reach of events like a podcamp, not restrain it with verticals. Hmmm, I feel my own blog entry coming on…

Vergel is an incredible asset to this community. He can speak on an incredible number of subject. The verticals shouldn’t prevent him, or others, from filling openings in the schedule while the event is on. What it will allow them to do is identify tracks with holes in them and fill those holes will sessions that fit with that track. A conference with holes in multiple tracks should offer plenty of options for speaking topics for someone like Vergel.

One of my favorite guys at Podcamp is Vergel Evans. Vergel will be involved in like one scheduled session on the Friday night of Podcamp Toronto, and by the end of Sunday he’s done 3 or 4 sessions ‘cus he sees “hey, nobody is talking about X”, so he schedules a session or grabs a partner and just does it. THAT’S the magic of Podcamp, and personally I don’t EVER see Podcamps loosing relevance as long as there are guys like Vergel who are sensitive to the needs of the community in the moment of the event.

Put another way, I see Podcamp evolving naturally with the community as long as we don’t keep trying to “fix” a model that is a long way from broken, IMHO.

That said, I believe that a few questions come up in post-event analysis:

1) What kept the other 200+ people from attending the event?
2) What will keep the momentum of PodCamp going?
3) What will take the PodCamp movement to the next level?

If PodCamp doesn’t evolve, if it stays where it is today, it may outlive its usefulness at some point. That’s fine if the goal of PodCamp is to eliminate the need for itself. However, I think there is so much more that can happen with PodCamp, so much more that can be done with it to keep it going and serving the community — newcomers and veterans, alike.

Mark, I simply don’t agree with this statement — unless the 200+ people who were at Podcamp Toronto last week (over half of them at their first Podcamp) were a figment of my imagination. Or unless they all came up to people other than me and said they wanted a more focused event, ‘cus they certainly didn’t say it to me.

Am I just totally out to lunch here?

I believe that a marketing person who lived nearby a free PodCampEDU event (especially since it will deal with reaching a specific target market — students), would be crazy to not attend and absorb the discussion. That goes for pretty much anyone interested in new and social media.

To give this some context… when the movie “Apollo 13″ came out, businesses around the world went crazy for the problem solving case study in the movie. Even though very few organizations deal with the combination of rocket fuel, pure oxygen environments, limited power capacity and the risks of manned spaceflight, everyone picked up many lessons from the story.

You never know what you’re going to learn and where you’re going to learn it. The challenge is to not separate yourself from the learning opportunity.

But that’s my point exactly. If you have, for example, something called PodcampEDU, that says to me that I have to be a member of the education community to get some benefit from that. Do you honestly think anyone from, say, a marketing discipline would attend, even if there is potential benefit for them?

Also not sure what you mean by “unfocused events keep us trapped in our current state”, could you clarify?

People need to think outside the box. I believe that unfocused events keep us trapped in our current state.

Personally, I still believe in the spirit and practice of the first Podcamp in Boston, and I think we have kept some of that alive at the Toronto Podcamps. Once again this year, some of very favorite moments happened not in scheduled sessions but in spontaneous hallway conversations, circles and evening events. I understand the interest in verticals, but I see a PodCampEDU, for example, as being different than a Podcamp. One of the best things about Podcamp is the mixture of people of all levels of experience with a huge range of interests being thrown together, and my fear would be parsing things out into verticals would destroy that wonderful chaos, which for me has been the root of so much inspiration.

One common complaint about Podcamp Toronto was the physical distance between the Z2P room and the rest of the sessions. This was 100% my decision and my fault, but what I take most from the comment is that people LIKE the mixture of new & old, expert & newbie, rockstar and rockstars-that-may-not-know-they-are-rockstars-yet (i.e. everyone at Podcamp!)

Hmmm… I have to say, if this is how the success of Podcamps was being measured, I am very guilty of misunderstanding what all these Podcamps have been about, and of not measuring the success of the ones I’ve been involved with correctly.