Another PodCamp Ohio has come and gone! The second annual PodCamp Ohio went extremely well. Confirmed attendance was exactly 200, and factoring in some other missing swag and nametags, I estmate attendance was somewehre between 210-220.

We had some new sponsors as well as some repeat sponsors this year. TechSmith, Blip.tv, Doctor Anonymous, Spaceblue and Blubrry sponsored both last year and this year. Circle of Seven productions, Avitae Energy Water, AssistCoach.com and The OSU Center for the Study and Teaching of Writing (CSTW) are new sponsors.

Doug from CSTW was a great host for PodCamp Ohio this year. Doug and his assistant Judy bent over backwards to make sure PodCamp Ohio 2 worked perfectly at their facility. And did the space work or what! We had more than enough rooms to our disposal as well as plenty of projectors, wireless Internet access, desks, chairs and parking! Thanks so much Doug and Judy!

We had Qdoba fur lunch again, and this time all the food went! Last year I remember finding a lot of quacamole left over that we ended up having to throw out. I’m glad to report all the quacamole along with everythign else was gone. By clean up time, we just had extra chicken, cheese, chips and shells to dispose of. Don’t worry, we didn’t throw the remaining food in the trash.

After party was a lot of fun! The food wasn’t so hot and the bar we picked was out of stock of most of their draft beers but after dinner we made the trek down High Street and visited Jenis Ice Cream. Interesting ice cream, as all the flavors are very exotic. It is definitely worth checking out if you’re ever in the Columbus Short North/Arena District.

On Sunday I met up with Chris and Kim for lunch at BC Roosters. It was great to have one more meetup before winding myself down from the weekend. When you help organize an event like this, there is defintely a day or two of withdraw afteward. It is like a combinatoin of let down that it is over, relief it is over and pride that the job was accomplished.

Whats Next?

I’m pretty confident we will have PodCamp Ohio 3 at the same location as this year. As long as Doug will have us back then it’s a done deal. I would also like to see us create a non-profit organization to manage future PodCamp Ohio events. Last year I had two cases and this year one other opportunity that we missed all becuase we don’t have a non profit tax id. It makes sense to make a non-profit, we certianly don’t make any money from the event plus it is educational. There are a few organizers and volunteers this year who expressed interest so in a month or so once all the PodCamp Ohio 2009 dust settles we’ll start backup the monthly meetings and see what we can get setup.

I had a lot of fun at PodCamp Toronto! Made lots of connections and got to meet a lot of on-line friends including Whitney Hoffman of the LD Podcast. The PodCamp Toronto organizers did an excellent job putting on what I observed as a perfectly executed PodCamp.

For me, one sponsor stood out during the PodCamp. Molson Canadian hosted a Saturday evening party that was definitely worth remembering. PodCamp attendees were given tickets tickets to sample from the many beers brewed by Molson Coors company. I quickly became fond of the Molson White, which I thought tasted a lot like Blue Moon. I later found out that it is Blue Moon relabeled in Canada.

On top of the free beer samples, anyone who had a sample of Heineken received 6 free beer glasses. These are not cheap glasses either. Check out the attached photo.

Anyone in the Central Ohio area who is a blogger, podcaster or social networking enthusiast/expert should be aware that there is a potential meetup group organizing called the Columbus Social Media Cafe. Yesterday was the 4th SMC meetup and I gathered that they are just now working on defining what the goals are of the group and plan on forming a mission statement. You can read more about the last meetup at Elephants on Bicycles and This Woman’s Work blogs.

When I arrived, I found myself briefly explaining what PodCamp and PodCamp Ohio is. I was not prepared to make any sort of presentation at the meetup but I did my best. This was a learning experience for myself, as I found myself speaking to a crowd of bloggers who are aware that podcasting should be included in their space but don’t exactly have a grasp on what exactly podcasting is. I also mentioned briefly some of the viral networking techniques that PodCamp Ohio is using in order to market the event to bloggers, podcasters and social networking enthusiasts.

I learned a lot from the meetup. What I found the most interesting was what they are envisioning; a social networking web site that pulls in feeds of blogs and podcasts and provides social networking features such as tags and comments. The group would be the perfect customer for the RawVoice Generator, which does pretty much what they want. One of the organizers mentioned someone who is in the process of developing such a tool that the group could use, so I didn’t quite feel comfortable mentioning that my company already has such a product on the market for more than 2 years now. The process they are undertaking made me feel vindicated that the past 3 years of my life that I’ve spent developing such tools is of real importance, not just globally but also for the local community. There is real potential for blogging and podcasting to connect with its local communities, and I for sure want to be involved in helping that happen here in Central Ohio.

I hope they can create a brand/logo soon and put in place a scheduled meeting time using not just meeting spaces in the public but also utilizing those social media tools that are so important such as TalkShoe/BlogTalkRadio for on-line recorded phone meetings and Google Group public mailing lists. At the moment the only way anyone can participate is by attending the public meetings, which may limit the audience size of participants. The more opportunity to let someone be herd, the more opportunities that will be used by those with the means. I’m pretty confident they will pick up on these other tools soon.

I am a little concerned that some of the founders organizing the Columbus SMC group found PodCamp Ohio somewhat threatening. I hope they did not get that impression cause it is definitely not something meant to compete with other groups with similar goals. PodCamp is a social event with the primary goal to bring bloggers and podcasters together to share knowledge and network with each other. I hope the Columbus SMC organizers don’t feel threatened by the event, that’s certainly not the events goal and I am confident that’s not what Chris Brogan or Christopher Penn intended when they created PodCamp.

It’s been a while since I blogged anything. I’ve been very busy. Here is my update of what is going on in my life.

RawVoice
Been very busy working on a number of projects as usual. We are about to launch a new web site on Monday, January 14, 2008. If things go well, we’ll be launching some new service each Monday for the rest of the month. We’ll see if I can keep up.
http://www.rawvoice.com/

Spaceblue
I reprovisioned the server the day after Christmas, I am happy to report that I finally have everything on-line and running strong. I quickly got the crucial items on-line. I mainly had to get web stats and a few other little things setup after the new year. Setting up the new server took much longer that I anticipated since I switched from using Apache to Lighty web servers. It is paying off though, the server is handling the same amount of traffic without using all of the system resources.
http://www.spaceblue.com

PodCamp Ohio
I’ve been leading up the charge to organize PodCamp Ohio. Over the past month, we’ve secured a venue location and launched the web site. I am pretty happy with the core podcasters participating, they are really on the ball and have no problem taking charge of items they are good at. PodCamp Ohio will be on Saturday, June 28, 2008 from 9am to 5pm at the ITT Technical Institute in Hilliard (just west of Columbus), Ohio. More details are available on the web site.
http://www.podcampohio.com/

Association for Downloadable Media
Last fall I was elected Chair of the Measurement Committee of the Association for Downloadable Media. The entire process is exciting. I purchased a copy of Roberts Rules and have been slowly coordinating all of the members of the committee. After 12 people joined the committee, I was looking for the board members to set a limit to the size of the committee so it would not become too large to manage. The consensus of the board is to allow as many ADM members to join the committees as possible. I understand the motives, as the podcasting community is oriented in a way that encourages participation, it just makes managing the committee that much harder. I am up for the challenge and started devising ideas how to manage the situation. My position as Chair of the Measurement Committee could not be more perfect for the Association since I have both a technical background with Internet Engineering and vast experience with measuring podcast downloads.
http://www.downloadablemedia.org/

The House
Dad was in town two weeks ago when I was about to fix a shower leak. The work started with Dad reminding me to buy the tool recommended to remove the faucet cartridge in the documentation I printed out. A couple of minutes later, I broke the cartridge trying to remove it with pliers. Lesson learned, still listen to your parents! At this point I think Dad was convinced we would have to call a plumber, but my plan was to buy the removal tool and a screw tap. My plan worked luckily, with the help with an extra long screw replaced in the recommended tool. The rest of the process of installing the new cartridge went smoothly. I am happy to report the shower no longer leaks! If any family or friends need to fix a Moen shower/bath leak, let me know cause I have the recommended tool to remove the cartridge. Definitely don’t try to remove it with pliers!

San Giorgio Pasta Choo Choo Wheels
I told Heather a long time ago about Choo Choo Wheels Pasta and she looked at me rather strange. Two weeks ago I came across a package of San Giorgio brand Choo Choo Wheels and snagged a box. Sam Giorgio is my preferred pasta brand. The back of the box has a recipe for spaghetti meat sauce, so I thought I’d give it a try. I don’t have all of the details here, but the main ingredient are 2 large cans of whole pealed tomatoes, 2 small cans of tomato paste, 2 teaspoons of sugar, 1/2 cup of Parmesan cheese, graded and 1 pound of ground beef or sausage. I used a 1 pound roll of Bob Evans Italian Sausage. Cook the sausage, then mix everything except the Parmesan, bring to a boil then cook on a medium/low heat for 30+ minutes. When you are ready to serve, add the Parmesan, which will thicken the sauce. I like thick sauce, so stumbling upon this tip has revolutionized my spaghetti sauce making abilities!

Anyway, the sauce on the back of the Choo Choo Wheels box was awesome and so far is the closest thing I’ve been able to get to taste like real home made spaghetti sauce the way Grandma would make. She would cook the sauce for hours and have 3 different types of meats in the sauce. It is the standard which I use to judge all other sauces. Funny how that works.

What’s Next
I’m going to restart my Compiled Weekly podcast. The recent work I’ve been doing moving blogs around for RawVoice and reconfiguring the Spaceblue server with Lighty has given me a lot of content ideas for the show. I got a lot of knowledge to share about Lighty and tips with server management. I got just about everything automated so I don’t have to manage anything now.

I recently started organizing and planning an event called PodCamp Ohio for 2008. So far everything is coming together, I couldn’t be more pleased with the progress.

The week before Thanksgiving, I started a Google Group and invited some podcasters who were previously interested in a PodCamp Ohio for 2008. Within a week the Google Group lit up with lots of participation. We’re having our first on-line meeting tomorrow night (Thursday) and our first meet-up this Saturday.

For those who are courious, PodCamp is an event for podcasters and bloggers to meet and learn from each other. Each PodCamp varies but typically they include tables for sponsors to hand out swag, a commons area for socializing throughout the day and plenty of 1 hour sessions where bloggers and podcasters talk about specific topics.

Web Site: www.podcampohio.com

The tentative date for PodCamp Ohio is Saturday, June 28, 2008. If you’re a podcaster/blogger or interested in either, please come. The PodCamp should be very educational.