Joel Mark Witt asked me to elaborate on my thoughts originally published in my post The future strength of PodCamp is in three verticals.

Podcasting has been around for three-and-a-half years, PodCamp for one-and-a-half. Both have acheived a certain amount of recognition and the merits of both are consistently disected and debated. I believe that the age of generalism in the podcast community is drawing to a close. PodCamp, in particular (rightly or wrongly), has been about covering as much ground as possible to appeal to as many people as possible and draw as large a crowd as possible to each event. Organizers have measured success by the number of people that register then attend and how many “Rock Stars” participate.

I believe that ship has sailed.

I believe it’s time to expore verticals — three of them.

I’ve mulled this over in my head quite a bit over the last week to further develop my thoughts on tracking and what I’ve discovered is that the three verticals that I will describe here can be used individually, in any combination or not at all. This flexibility is what makes PodCamp such a great model. What I will describe here can also be left in the hands of the community if properly communicated by the initiators of the event. In that respect, the ethos of PodCamp can continue to be central to its success.

VERTICAL EVENTS

This is something that Whitney Hoffman has been talking about for a while. Vertical events are those that cater to a specific niche, theme, demography or geography. Some PodCamps have already organized themselves around a specific theme.

PodCamp Ottawa organized itself around a theme: Welcome to Podcasting and Beyond. In fact, the event in Ottawa was structured to cater to a specific geography and achieved that goal by taking place within three weeks of its announcement. While a few people came from a two-hour drive away and one couple did a six-hour drive to attend, a majority of the nearly thirty people at the event were from the Ottawa area.

I believe that PodCampEDU was the first specifically vertical PodCamp that has taken place so far. Organized by Vivian Vasquez and Andy Bilodeau, the event focussed on the use of new and social media technologies in an educational setting. By all accounts it was a huge success and explored new possibilities with input from both educators and the social media community. Talk about potential. And because the event was vertical, it attracted a captive audience.

There are as many ideas for vertical events as there are hobbies, products, services, ideas and locations. Consider events that cater specifically to people who want to learn about the use of podcasting about (or for) broadcast media, music, writing, NGOs, public sector communications, politics, design, marketing, health, emergency services, sports, municipal government, etc… You can also structure events around specific new media skills such as being an effective host, editing, audio production, engaging an audience, etc… Bring together and include people who have different backgrounds and, automatically, it will be hard to identify who is teaching and who is learning. If you give everyone an opportunity to speak about the challenges and skills of both the traditional and modern in a specific niche, you have a success in the making.

VERTICAL TRACKS

Consider using discussion tracks for your event as a way of making it easy for event participants to find what they’re looking for. A track organizes presentations by a specific topic area in a single thread, typically in one room, for the entire event. With any luck there will be a logical flow — an arc of the story, if you like — to the track.

I recommend that the tracking system not be used to pack too many diverse topics into a single event (e.g. don’t have an event with a track for music, one for education and another for gaming). Doing so could lead to several mini-conferences within one event. It makes far more sense to use the tracking system to focus the discussions within a topic area. For example, an event that focuses on health care could have a track on legal issues, another on the impacts of institutional structure on internal and public communications, and another on audio recording and production.

Of course, there are pros and cons to organizing tracks in this manner. The pros are that people with a specific interest will be able to easily find and follow the information they need. However, we know that in new media a lot of people perform many roles requiring them to learn many skills and understand many issues (I recently heard of a large company that has a Director of New Media with no department, staff or contractors. She exists and works on her own). Events like PodCampEDU and Podcasters Across Borders address this problem by having one room for the event. The community stays in that room and the content comes to the participants thus allowing everyone to experience and participate in everything offered by the conference. Of course, that approach requires either a significant degree of community cooperation and collaboration to sequence sessions, or lead organizers that are willing to invest the time to structure the event.

VERTICAL RELATIONSHIPS

PodCamp Boston (the first one) did it by accident. People of all disciplines, backgrounds and levels of new media and social media experience connected while trying to navigate the halls and funnel through doorways between sessions. It was natural and it laid the groundwork for long term friendships and mutual growth.

The buzz on mentoring within the PodCamp community has started to pick up. Besides the informal — and sometimes formal — mentoring relationships that have sprouted, events such as NewBCamp and PodCamp Toronto have experimented with specific programs and activities to encourage those connections: NewBCamp unveiled Speed Mentoring while PodCamp Toronto allowed people to meet in the calm of its Mentorship Lounge.

There are some very important reasons why we need vertical relationships. If you believe in the idea of celebrities in the community, then you also have to believe in the idea that those who have been called the “Rock Stars” can only be “at the top” so long. There’s a new wave of “Rock Stars” that are joining this space that have new ideas and a fresh perspective. If vertical relationships aren’t established, the new dogs won’t gain the benefit of the experience of the old dogs and the old dogs won’t learn new tricks. In fact, as someone who has been engaged in social media and new media for three years now, I can safely say that it’s easy for people in my position to forget about the challenges we faced when we were first figuring this thing out. That doesn’t account for the fact that times and technologies have changed somewhat. Zero to Podcasting (at PodCamp Toronto) was just as much a learning experience for those who facilitated the workshop as the newcomers who attended. Talk about a vertical gain!

THE MORE THINGS CHANGE…

If you’re planning — or thinking of planning — a PodCamp, remember that adopting these approaches doesn’t mean that you need to take control of the event from the community. As a member of the organizing team your job is to provide a structure (physically and figuratively) for the event. An event can’t succeed without some level of focus and organization. By setting a theme for your event, defining tracks and establishing some ways for people — however many — to connect, you’re making it easier for the community to make the most of “your” event.

P.S. Since I alluded to “Rock Stars”… I’ve often heard interviews with members of music supergroups who claim that their best and most memorable gigs didn’t take place in sold-out soccer stadiums, but in small bars that facilitated a close connection between the band and the audience during the show and between sets when everyone was able to drink together.

Flickr Photo: those are tall by DimsumDarren