phyllostachys fifteen: PodCamp Pittsburgh Nov. 10-12, 2006

Nothing like a tech conference to get me back into my blog...especially a _free_ tech conference. :-)

A good friend sent me a note about an "un-conference" called PodCamp - a conference devoted to audio and video blogging - how to do it, what to do, etc. Ten minutes later I was signed up as an attendee (the sign-up is wiki-based)...and 24-hours later I had posted my plans for a presentation titled "Video to Web: Shoot, Assemble, Publish to Web".

The conference is the second of it's kind and the first to be held in Pittsburgh. The first PodCamp was held in Boston, at the Bunker Hill Community College, on Sept. 9th & 10th, 2006. People have been audio blogging for a while (considering an audio blog, or "podcast", is effectively a pre-recorded radio program, designing for distribution via the web in a compressed file format), so the PodCamp is long time in coming. The Boston event seems to have been very well attended, with bloggers from other locales flying into Beantown for the event. You can download or stream some of the podcasts of the PodCamp Boston sessions.

Although Apple's iPod is by no means the first mass-market digital music player, it is certainly the coolest [I supposed that's debatable, and therefore a biased statement] and best positioned with an established supporting music/video sales arm, iTunes. With this marketing double-whammy that Apple has ingeniously submitted to the computerized world, the inevitable "xerox-ization" of the name "iPod" has occurred, with all sorts of "pod" words popping up in the modern vocabulary. This has gotten so pervasive that Apple is flexing it's legal muscle, suing various organizations by suggesting that the "pod" syllable is theirs and theirs alone. I won't give an opinion about which side is correct....but my phrase "xerox-ization" I believe explains both the fate and the eventual outcome of the matter - the syllable will be/is firmly ensconced in the public domain as a metaphor for all things digitally audio and video.

I personally have been shooting video and publishing via Apple's iMovie and Google's video site for many months. Though I am by no means an accomplished filmmaker, I am implementing inspiration as it occurs. My most recent production, "Apple Festivals 2006", was a fun short produced by my son and I before attending two local Apple Festivals, each occurring on opposite ends of the Pittsburgh metropolitan area from each other on the same day...hence my use of Google Earth within the video - it allows lots of "hopping" around the globe.

This film shows that though amateurish, I am using the great resources provided by Apple on every Macintosh, iLife '06. The iLife suite of applications includes iMovie, for production of films from digital video "footage", and GarageBand, for creation and assembly of digital audio. You can use iDVD to burn to DVD...or just find a web-based distribution location (your own website or one of the many popular sites). I suppose a high-speed digital connection (DSL or cable) is a given...though I know even the US is nowhere close to a 100% market saturation of high-speed access - though this is improved by such services as Verizon's wireless services.

So, on to planning for my PodCamp presentation...and planning my next video (plugging the house that my wife and I are trying to sell).

..phyllostachys.