I came across my notes from this year’s PodCamp SLC and I thought I would post them here:

9:30 am Keynote: “The Three Bits” Scott Johnson

Cartoonist and podcaster Extra Life Webcomic

The Three Things

Why I ended up not sucking at this…

The Spaghetti Factor Community Service The Happy Convergence

The Spaghetti Factor: If you keep throwing spaghetti at the wall, eventually, some of it is going to stick.

Founded ExtraLife in June 2001, but had been drawing all his life.

Being a syndicated cartoonist is actually kind of crappy thing to be now.

ExtraLife Radio Three guys talking about geeky stuff. There is a place you hit in podcasting when you get enough listeners and the advertisers come to you.

The Instance podcast about World of Warcraft. Jan 2006

The act of throwing the spaghetti at the wall IS the secret sauce.

ExtraLife TV: tried it with video, nothing too crazy, started short animations. Final Score with Scott Johnson: This American Video Game Life Diary of a Cartoonist: a way to connect with fans.

Non of the sponsors are the same. They all have something different. Some pay based on download levels. Some pay based on codes used.

The 56 Geeks Project: We’re all nerds in one way or another. I did it because I wanted a poster on MY wall. Then everyone else happened to like it, too.

You never know when the spaghetti is going stick.

Make your own geek posters.

Heroes for You: Mr. Passive Aggressive Barrel Man Sarge the Collector Devil Child Steel Bosom

Superheroes are fun, but they are more fun when they are fat. Fat Heroes

42 Robots Project

Live Sketching with UStream, broadcasts from his Wacom tablet

56 Zombies

Items of Interest: Just start doodling on the butcher paper on the table. Does the same thing. Just like in grade school.

Featured YouTube (the first one where he was drawing fast): can’t make money from it, but it is fun.

All you can eat spaghetti: $10 comic guest stars, $10 show sponsorships, $25 WOW avatar sketches, speed drawing on YouTube

Lots of things that are failures, so don’t stick.

Community Service: The people are everything.

Essential Community Tools: iTunes, Twitter, Facebook, Forums, WordPress, YouTube, uStream, Events

We started giving shout outs to people giving five star ratings. People want to hear their names.

35% Community: Voice mails, segments, emails, pro music, pro voice work 65% My Content

It draws people in and keeps them interested.

Twitter is very helpful for getting quick feedback. The number one communication tool right now. It’s not for everybody, but it’s great for people getting the word out.

He love uStream

Nerdtacular Fun event every year.

Pick a punchline, guilds

The Happy Convergence: The right hand benefits from what the left hand is doing.

Do things for fun and it will lead to good things.

It’s true of everything. Fans of this learn about this and learn about that.

10/10/80

10 Hate you no matter what 10 Love you no matter what 80 Don’t care

Do stuff for the 10 that love you until they can get more of the 80 to notice you.

One of these days, your work is going to be on screens everywhere.

10:30am Getting Started: Your First Podcast

Podcasting in five easy steps: Podcasting 101

I’m not a professional, but it’s worth the effort that I put into it.

1. Creating content
2. Podcasting tools
3. Content formats
4. Publishing
5. Blogging

Creating Content: You podcast can be about anything. If you don’t have passion, people won’t want to hear it and you won’t put enough effort into it to make it good quality.

Write a mini-business plan.

What is it you want to say?
There are people who will listen.
Has to be interesting: give them something to come back for
Must be consistent: Set a schedule and stick to it
Continually make course corrections.
Listen to the people who listen to your show: Try incorporating listener ideas into your shows and give them credit.

There are tons of great things to record.

Podcasting Tools:

Mac: Garage Band: you are 90% there. PC: Audacity 80% there.

Computer and a computer Logitech headphones. You don’t need to spend a lot of money to get good audio. Snowball unidirectional mic USB.

At the very least, you can use the microphone on your computer.

Microphones for guests? We use Skype. They call into his number and he uses Pamela (Windows Only) and records automatically when you get a call.

Mobile recorder set on a table also works. Zoom H4

Don’t skimp. If you want to make a quality show, do it by investing in it.

Content Formats:

MP3 and everything else. It’s the most common format.

Part of the reason his show skyrocketed, is because he got it on iTunes. There are tons of directories out there, but if you want to find REAL listeners, iTunes is where they are.

Video: MPG MP4 QuickTime

Recording bitrates? The quality is from 24 bit up to 192 bit. Just audio can survive on 64 bit rate. If you are doing music or recording in loud areas, use at least 128 bit rate.

Publishing:

RSS: blogs (number one way for people to find out about your podcast), directories (there are tons of them), iTunes

Storage: The bigger the show, the more storage it takes, the more it’s going to cost you.

Availibility:

Blogging:

Posting text content with your podcast. If you don’t do this, then no one will find your show. Transcription: There are services that will transcribe them to text. Mechanical Turk. Takes everything you’ve said and then you can post it.

Blog just for your podcast: Include it in your personal blog, but you can create a blog just about the podcast.

SEO: It’s a huge beast. Search Engine Optimization There is NOTHING like being on iTunes. There are a bunch of criteria for being on iTunes. The big things they look for are consistency and quality.

What about money? It’s TOUGH. You have to REALLY work hard at it. To make money from just podcasting, you have to have a lot of supporting things to make money. Ads on your site, etc.

11:10 am Diary of a Business Video Podcast with Kip Meacham card Access, Inc.

I’m really kind of T.O.’d… “We both know that I’m training to be a cage fighter.” Kip Dynamite

There is an opportunity for businesses to capitalize on podcasting.

Find out who your audience is. What would you tell your customers if you had a television show? What are they interested in?

You have to show a direct revenue stream for the company.

“Do something. Do something to that, and then do something to that. Pretty soon you’ve got something.” – Jasper Johns, painter

It’s harder than it looks. It takes more time, it’s a huge commitment in people, time and money, If your C-level executives don’t see the benefit, then don’t start.

You can do something once and re-use it many times. Nail it and scale it. It mitigates your support challenge. You can point them to a 90 second video.

Big product training, product support boost.

Opportunity for “tribalism” with user-generated content. Your customers can have a conversation with you.

Execution is crucial. This is a SERIOUS business problem.

Learn vicariously, don’t try to start cold. People have figured it out and are willing to share.

Pick a genre: one you can sustain and will serve your audience. Comedy, soap opera, action drama, educational?

Find an internal resource for your persona. Someone who can give good face or their personality can trump their face.

Have a plan and get a budget. Count the financial and human capital costs.

Choose hardware and software based on your podcast persona. News anchor or reporting live. Most podcasts start from one of those two places. If you are mobile, your gear has to work around mobility.

Build and manage a content pipeline. You need at least 20 ideas in the hopper.

EQUIPMENT

Video is the last and easiest concern.

Choose HD and then get a camera. Make sure it can be hooked up to a tripod and microphones. Mics are critical. With crappy video quality, if you can hear what is going on, then it’s good. The key is audio. Sennheiser EW 100.

Get the right post production setup: Spend here, it’ll pay off.

Buy a Mac or go home. Get the desktop because you need a good processor.

Then, get the right camera. It’s one of the cheaper things you’ll buy.

One minute of production video takes ten hours of human capital.

People can only watch your face for so long. After a while, they get sick of your face.

Legos: Everybody has Legos. We all bring cool stuff, but when we share our Legos, it makes EVEN cooler stuff.

Do not get mean. Be polite. Do not ridicule people. Never slam anybody who does a bad job. You can always shoot another one. That’s great! Maybe we can use that. Let’s shoot another one. UGC needs a lot of positive reinforcement.

Promote your customers and they will link to your site.

Email: kdmeach@cardaccess-inc.com web: www.cardaccess-inc.com

11:50 am Podcasting and the true shape of consumer demand with Judd Bagley writerjudd@gmail.com

If you love your audience, set them free.

Didier Sornette, PhD Market Behavior Theoretician: Why Stock Markets Crash

The world might be different than you think it might be.

Markets operate in 2nd Degree Harmonics

There are different shocks that affect the system.

Growth spurts can be from endogenic (word of mouth) or exogenic (advertising)

Found a Power Law relationship: y=1/x

The power-law pattern the book sales exhibited is common in the natural sciences. For something that may seem as random and unpredictable as book sales, there are natural laws.

Sales are dominated by cascades (viral) rather than by direct effects of advertisment.

Natural laws describe human behavior.Once you learn how these laws work, you can profit from them.

The advertiser’s dilemma: Advertising is when most of the people are not watching.

Earned Attention: Public Relations

Quit thinking about how you find your audience. You have to attract them. Instead of blasting them with your message, wrap your product or service within your message and they will find you.

Identify your ideal audience. Find out what those people are passionate about. (collectively). Create content that appeals to their interests. Invite them to participate (secret weapon). That generates a degree of loyalty.

1:30 pm How to produce a killer action sports podcast with Senior and Darren Arringtion extremepods.com

Tube Mogul sends video to all the video sites.

People don’t want to see us. They want to see what we do.

People will watch a six minute video and watch it. Unless it’s really interesting, people won’t watch a video longer than ten minutes.

You can shoot hours of video and only have twenty minutes of good stuff.

There’s no love and romance on the Internet unless you’re on eHarmony. If they think you suck, they will tell you that you suck.

If you’re looking to make a million bucks, then do an educational video. We’re looking to have fun. When you’re looking for fun, you get your camera in a lot more places.

When he’s shooting, he does a lot of short clips just for editing purposes. It’s easier to look at smaller clip.

He uses iMovie 06. It has to be easy.

The advantage with Final Cut is with the titles. You can make some cool stuff.

They use Canon only. GL2 is the best toughest camera that he’s ever seen.

When you dump it, dump the standard def in widescreen format.They run all tape.

2:10 pm I have a vidcast or podcast, how does it fit in with my other web stuff? with Jason Alba

Why should you participate in Social Media?

Grow your network. Nuture Relationships. Read the book, Never Eat Alone Building intimate relationships. Share my Brand.

How?

Authenticity: Instead of sounding like PR, legal or HR scrubbed my message, you sound real.You sound like your real voice.

Transparency: You’re not trying to hide anything.

Think: Conversation and Community

YouTube video: The Breakup

Complementary Social Strategy:

A lot of time, you have to talk about things that AREN’T your message.

Job security doesn’t exist…Let’s retire the idea of job security and think about income security.

Blogs: write an entry on your blog about your idea.

Twitter: You have a lot of followers, but they are all different. Have business and work be at an appropriate mix.

Facebook: He uses the Twitter to Facebook application.

LinkedIn: Go into Answers and post the idea.

Newsletter: Send it out to your family and friends.

Articles: Write articles for other blogs. Front page of Yahoo and he got a ton of hits from them.

Books: Write a book about your idea. You won’t make money from the book, but you will drive success to your blog. Driving Sucess 42 Stories

CRM: Contact management You HAVE to do a lot of followup with CRM.

Yahoo Groups: Help you grow your network, nuture relationships and grow brand. Be a helpful person on that.

Followup: It’s where most of us fall down. You miss opportunity when you don’t send a simple thank you.

Secret Weapon: Email signature Every single character can add noise or help you. Put your brand in front of them whether they log into the program or not.

Thank people for adding you to their site.

3:20 pm Interviewing Remote and Local Guests for Podcasts with Tom Johnson

Natural inclination is to interview people.

Had this romantic idea that everybody has a story inside. You can’t just coax it out of them. People are a lot harder to talk to than I thought.

Find people who KNOW something. If you ask them a few simple questions, they’ll just go. With people who don’t know what they’re talking about, then it’s harder to urge it out.

He would give them the questions beforehand, but then people would READ their answers to him. That’s a bad idea. They will know the answers even when you don’t give them the questions in the first place.

Have a list of questions. If you wing it, it may feel. You don’t need to go in the order of your questions. Try to match the question to the previous response. It’s unnerving to not know which question to ask next, but it makes it really good. Don’t worry about the order of the questions.

Ask tough questions. Ask the questions that you REALLY want to ask. Don’t hold back, even if it makes you a little uncomfortable. Most of the time, they don’t freak out. It makes the interview a lot more interesting. If you pick somebody knowledgeable, they’re going to have a response.

The double-ender: Record locally on your system. The interviewee records locally the answers. You put the two pieces together. You record the interview by yourself on Skype and have them record on Audacity and then have them send the audio file. He has to walk them through the process, but the audio quality is MUCH better.

Sound Soap to take background noise out of their files.

Too many bad encounters with Skype and Pamela.

Live is a lot easier. Likes the Zoom H4 recorder. Windscreen is very helpful. Avoid moving your hand, and make sure the microphone is equally as far from your face and interviewee’s face.

Talkshoe is another option.

Interviewing people makes them feel honored. You make a one on one connection with them.

Free Conference is another option.