I attended the Sunday sessions of Podcamp Boston 3, which was held at the beautiful Harvard Medical School conference center. I met a lot of generous, interesting people and really put the work in networking. There were a lot of presentations, about 4 or 5 every hour, about 5 times during the day, but I spent more time talking to people outside of these sessions.
One of the cool features of this conference was something called a BrainTorrent, which was a beautiful oval room full of tables with name tents on them, each one with a different topic or concept and anyone was welcome to sit down and join the conversation. That's where I met Mary Anne Davis and Guido Stein. Mary Anne is a potter and Guido is a knitter and we got into a conversation about social media and craft and before you know it, I was recording it.
My own feelings about the even were very positive. I'm so happy I met as many people as I did. More people than I can remember and credit. Meeting Keith Burtis was very fortunate. His live woodworking video cast is very cool and I'm looking forward to conversations with him about the production aspects of creating video shows.
I'm always impressed by the number of people who blog but aren't yet podcasting who attend these shows. It's a good sign that the events don't put off an exclusive feeling and it's healthy to talk to people who are just as passionate about new media but aren't in the podcasting fish bowl. Sharon Couto is one blogger who attended the event with an eye on moving into Podcasting.
I moved into a new media space that I hadn't intended to become involved in, at the encouragement of Mary Anne. I now have a Twitter account, the user name is Bermamot. I haven't posted anything, anything at all since Sunday. I'm a busy guy, but I'll give it a chance. There are definitely two camps, people who are infatuated with Twitter or microblogging, and people (and one of them) who don't see the sense at all and don't have any time for it. I feel as though I'm standing at the door to the Twilight Zone.
Finally let me mention a cool site I saw at a BrainTorrent table. I'm going to use it when I set up my upcoming website. It's a program that analyzes your website for Search Engine Optimization - SEO. It explains what each suggestion means and it appears very thorough. It's free at websitegrader.com. Thanks to Mike Volpe from Hubspot.com for coming to the conference and showing it off.
Friday, July 25, 2008
Thursday, July 24, 2008
#101 Wk74 DVD Authoring
2nd week of the last module in the Filmmaking program at the Center for Digital Imaging Arts at Boston University.
We're going through the Apple Pro Training series book, DVD Studio Pro 4. It's an excellent book, all the books in the series are great tutorials and are a good introduction to the Pro Tools suite. They lead you through a series of projects focusing on different parts of the authoring process, using media from professional projects.
It's interesting stuff, but we're all a bit tired and looking forward to being done in a week.
We're going through the Apple Pro Training series book, DVD Studio Pro 4. It's an excellent book, all the books in the series are great tutorials and are a good introduction to the Pro Tools suite. They lead you through a series of projects focusing on different parts of the authoring process, using media from professional projects.
It's interesting stuff, but we're all a bit tired and looking forward to being done in a week.
Thursday, July 17, 2008
#100 Podcasters Across Borders
Welcome to the longest show I've posted to date. On average these shows run about 15 minutes and when they've gone over 3o minutes I tend to break them into parts. The main reason for the length, which is about 52 minutes, is the inclusion of multiple comments and excerpts from presentations from PAB. My main goal here is to give you a sense of the event, which is quite unique among conferences. But the downside is how much time it adds to the show. And editing multiple interviews complicates the production process. Even up to the last few hours before posting I found some errors that required me to rerecord some sections. Most of the changes are changes in attributions, another time sink in production, which I got wrong on the first recording pass.
I'm satisfied with the final show, even though it's long. If it's a bother, let me know, I'm compressing it down as much as I can. In the future, I'm thinking about using Apple's AAC format, which makes mp3 files smaller but retains higher quality. It also allows me to bookmark and add graphics, but, as far as I know, AAC files only play on iTunes and iPods and I don't want to exclude any listeners. Any thoughts?
Because I am including a number of voices besides my own I've added a note at the bottom of the blog that indicates the type of Creative Commons license I'm using, which is attribution, non-commercial, share alike. I'll talk a little more about CC in a future show, right now understand that you can use all or part of this show as long as you include the name of the speaker and where the audio came from. You can't sell it and if you include any part of it in your own podcast you are bound by the same license. Thanks to Connie Crosby for pointing me the the right direction on this topic, for some reason I find the legal aspects of publishing baffling.
This show is about my experience at Podcaster's Across Borders and begins with my personal thoughts about the event. Halfway through I have some excerpts of presentations and some brief commentary on what I took away from the experience and then I finish with a series of interviews I recorded at the end of the weekend as the room slowly emptied. It was a great experience and I've put in a lot of effort trying to put into words what it all meant, because, as I try to explain, PAB wasn't your regular new media conference. Lots of people were trying to figure it out besides me. Check out the comments on David Peralty's blog and you'll see a wide range of reactions.
If you're just interested in the excerpts I've got the timecode listed below. In addition, all the presentations will be posted at Podcaster's Across Borders throughout the summer. Subscribe!
I've also listed the names and URLs of all the people mentioned or heard in this show. Some have podcasts, some blogs and some are thinking about it.
If there was any message or call to action people took away from the event (and there was plenty) one of the most important was find your voice and share it. I second that.
Contents:
Links:
I'm satisfied with the final show, even though it's long. If it's a bother, let me know, I'm compressing it down as much as I can. In the future, I'm thinking about using Apple's AAC format, which makes mp3 files smaller but retains higher quality. It also allows me to bookmark and add graphics, but, as far as I know, AAC files only play on iTunes and iPods and I don't want to exclude any listeners. Any thoughts?
Because I am including a number of voices besides my own I've added a note at the bottom of the blog that indicates the type of Creative Commons license I'm using, which is attribution, non-commercial, share alike. I'll talk a little more about CC in a future show, right now understand that you can use all or part of this show as long as you include the name of the speaker and where the audio came from. You can't sell it and if you include any part of it in your own podcast you are bound by the same license. Thanks to Connie Crosby for pointing me the the right direction on this topic, for some reason I find the legal aspects of publishing baffling.
This show is about my experience at Podcaster's Across Borders and begins with my personal thoughts about the event. Halfway through I have some excerpts of presentations and some brief commentary on what I took away from the experience and then I finish with a series of interviews I recorded at the end of the weekend as the room slowly emptied. It was a great experience and I've put in a lot of effort trying to put into words what it all meant, because, as I try to explain, PAB wasn't your regular new media conference. Lots of people were trying to figure it out besides me. Check out the comments on David Peralty's blog and you'll see a wide range of reactions.
If you're just interested in the excerpts I've got the timecode listed below. In addition, all the presentations will be posted at Podcaster's Across Borders throughout the summer. Subscribe!
I've also listed the names and URLs of all the people mentioned or heard in this show. Some have podcasts, some blogs and some are thinking about it.
If there was any message or call to action people took away from the event (and there was plenty) one of the most important was find your voice and share it. I second that.
Contents:
- 00:27 - About me and the show
- 06:45 - Tim Coyne presentation
- 09:56 - Tim Coyne interview
- 16:51 - Tod Maffin presentation
- 20:50 - Jay Moonah's presentation
- 26:46 - Me trying to make sense of Marshal McLuhan
- 33:51 - Chris Brogan's Jolt
- 41:30 - Attendee final comments
- 50:11 - Closing remarks
Links:
- New Media Expo
- Podcamp Boston 3
- Bob Goyetche
- Mark Blevis
- Marshall McLuhan
- Maslow Hierarchy of Needs
- This Week in Media #98
- Mitch Joel - 6 Pixels of Separation
- Tim Coyne - Hollywood Podcast
- Tod Maffin
- Jay Moonah - Media Driving
- Chris Brogan
- Whitney Hoffman - The LD Podcast
- Connie Crosby
- Dave Fleet - davefleet.com
- Bill Deys - The Country Music Cast
- Murray McGregor
- Francis Wooby - Wooby Communications
Monday, July 14, 2008
#99 1/2 - Whoops!
Here's the deal, normally I test the links in the show notes by posting it and then taking it offline, until I'm ready to post the audio. This is what I was doing this morning just before I rushed out of the house to take care of some errands. Obviously, I forgot to take the blog offline and while this isn't normally a crime, since I was talking about THE PODCAST, and it's not ready to go up, I took the notes down in order to avoid more confusion.
I'm sorry for those you who have been looking for episode 100 online. I'll be posting it in the next day or so.
I'm sorry for those you who have been looking for episode 100 online. I'll be posting it in the next day or so.
Thursday, July 3, 2008
#99 Wk73 DVD Authoring
Another new module and the final one of this Program. This week plus two more and I will be done with school, but not with my film. Finishing the film will be my priority once school is finished. It's sort of like graduating and then having to go to summer school, or cleaning up after the prom. Or something.
There's no time to rest though, until I finish my film my stomach is going to be churning and adrenaline is going to be pumping.
This final class is shoe horning in two ideas, DVD Authoring and Color Correction. We're using Apple's DVD Studio Pro for the authoring and we're looking at color correction in Avid, which has superior tools for the job over Final Cut Pro. Not so Color, Apples newest tool in the Final Cut Suite. I address them all in this show, including reasons why Color, which is the deepest and richest of the three tools for professional color correction, should not be the first thing you reach for when you correct color. Take a look at the T L Cooper Eclipse, an expensive sophisticated keyboard/input device that allows you maximize the color correction workflow. There's a great review of using this tool at Ken Stone's site. In the show I refer to Pitch Black, Titanic and the Lord of the Rings series are good examples of using color throughout a film to evoke place, mood and time.
Macaela Vandermost is the instructor for this module. She introduced the idea of color correction at the beginning of the class, because we're going to be spending a full day on Saturday, the last day of the class, learning about color correcting in Avid. A lot of people in class felt they should get an overview of color correction in FCP and she kindly obliged. Color Correction is a difficult concept to grasp and it's even harder to do well, so getting an introduction at the beginning of the class and then more in depth instruction at the end should make it easier to get it.
We spent the entire class Tuesday looking at color correction and Thursday we did a quick run through of using DVD Studio Pro 4 to author a DVD. Classes for the remaining module will go into depth on the critical aspects of authoring, such as compression, creating menu navigation and menu graphics and developing an efficient workflow.
There's no time to rest though, until I finish my film my stomach is going to be churning and adrenaline is going to be pumping.
This final class is shoe horning in two ideas, DVD Authoring and Color Correction. We're using Apple's DVD Studio Pro for the authoring and we're looking at color correction in Avid, which has superior tools for the job over Final Cut Pro. Not so Color, Apples newest tool in the Final Cut Suite. I address them all in this show, including reasons why Color, which is the deepest and richest of the three tools for professional color correction, should not be the first thing you reach for when you correct color. Take a look at the T L Cooper Eclipse, an expensive sophisticated keyboard/input device that allows you maximize the color correction workflow. There's a great review of using this tool at Ken Stone's site. In the show I refer to Pitch Black, Titanic and the Lord of the Rings series are good examples of using color throughout a film to evoke place, mood and time.
Macaela Vandermost is the instructor for this module. She introduced the idea of color correction at the beginning of the class, because we're going to be spending a full day on Saturday, the last day of the class, learning about color correcting in Avid. A lot of people in class felt they should get an overview of color correction in FCP and she kindly obliged. Color Correction is a difficult concept to grasp and it's even harder to do well, so getting an introduction at the beginning of the class and then more in depth instruction at the end should make it easier to get it.
We spent the entire class Tuesday looking at color correction and Thursday we did a quick run through of using DVD Studio Pro 4 to author a DVD. Classes for the remaining module will go into depth on the critical aspects of authoring, such as compression, creating menu navigation and menu graphics and developing an efficient workflow.
Tuesday, July 1, 2008
#98 A Tale of Two Conferences
There's an interesting event coming up towards the end of this month in Boston. Podcamp Boston 3 takes place July 19th and 20th. You can get directions and other information, including a list of sessions that will take place through the links I've provided here.
I attended this event last year, and I talked about it in episode #56. The conference founders, Chris Penn and Chris Brogan, both attended Podcasters Across Borders last weekend and I was fortunate enough to interview Chris Brogan and asked him to weight the advantages of each.
I was fortunate enough to interview Chris Brogan for a few minutes between sessions at Podcasters Across Borders and asked him to comment on the two events.
I hope you get a better sense of both events through my comments and Chris' interview. There was only a few minutes to chat between some sessions, so our conversation was rushed. I think you'll find if you attend Podcamp Boston 3 that there will more time and space for conversations and meeting new people.
I want to say thanks to Chris for talking with me. I know he's going to be at Podcamp and I hope you'll be there too.
I attended this event last year, and I talked about it in episode #56. The conference founders, Chris Penn and Chris Brogan, both attended Podcasters Across Borders last weekend and I was fortunate enough to interview Chris Brogan and asked him to weight the advantages of each.
I was fortunate enough to interview Chris Brogan for a few minutes between sessions at Podcasters Across Borders and asked him to comment on the two events.
I hope you get a better sense of both events through my comments and Chris' interview. There was only a few minutes to chat between some sessions, so our conversation was rushed. I think you'll find if you attend Podcamp Boston 3 that there will more time and space for conversations and meeting new people.
I want to say thanks to Chris for talking with me. I know he's going to be at Podcamp and I hope you'll be there too.
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