Coming to you from Boston PodCamp
September 9th, 2006 by Andrea MercadoThis weekend, I’ll be reporting to you from PodCamp Boston a free unconference at Bunker Hill Community College in Boston.
Why is it called an unconference? While there is an official sponsor (Museum of Science in Boston) that paid for the location, the rest of the conference is man-made on the fly, as opposed to prefab and prescheduled, as you can see by visiting the wiki. The conference is free to all, and powered predominantly by donations (view the open ledger that tracks the expenses as well as the donations for the event, they made a fair bit from the kindness and interest of others). It’s an intereseting conference model, and in this case, if you build it, they will indeed come in droves.
If you’re still a bit sticky on the concept of wikis, check out “So You Want to Build a Wiki?” by Meredith Farkas. While the PodCamp wiki does go a bit beyond the basic community model to an organized chaos planning model (which, in my opinion, is fabulous and brave), this article will give you some basics.
Why PodCamp? I happen to live nearby, it’s free (although I plan on making a personal donation to the upcoming PodCamp 2, which hasn’t been scheduled yet), and podcasting has been hot as of late. It’s also nifty to attend a non-librarian conference and get the non-librarian view to share with other librarians, as insight to what our potential patrons are up to and thinking about. If you’re a librarian attending PodCamp, and let me know, since I’d love to meet up.
Will I be podcasting from PodCamp? I hope so. The PLA Blog had a successful toe in the podcasting water at ALA with the lemonade for libraries story, and we’d like to do more, especially at conferences. While I had PLA digital recording gear at my disposal in New Orleans, a podcast can be recorded straight to a laptop, so I’ll hopefully be able to record something of substance and interest. Otherwise, I’m walking into the conference like a total newbie with nothing but a laptop and a sense of adventure. I’m sure I’ll be able to hook something up with the help of my new podcasting friends. 
I won’t be covering the basics of podcasting. Greg Schwartz did an excellent job of covering Podcasting 101 in his series of webinars, so you should definitely check them out as a place to start. I also recommend checking out Absolute Beginner’s Guide to Podcasting by George Colombo and Curtis Franklin as a great novice reference.
More later!
Tags: conferences, PLA Blog, PodCamp Boston, podcasting, technology
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