Wow…it’s 7pm Sunday and I’m still feeling the aftershock of the PodCastCon 2006!
Overall I had fun but had mixed feelings about the conferences themselves – more fun, interesting interactions and conversations was had out of them than in, sadly.
I arrived at 12pm – with jetlag from San Francisco flying in at 8:30am the previous day I was unlikely to make the 10am start! The Night Nurse crew had been and gone, and had gone down the pub…it was a ll slightly weird since I crashed the Web2.0 conference in SF and this was a different scale, although similar in some ways with the amount of podwhoring and people trying to sell you stuff…
In full flow was the business conference, I’d missed the creative conference (where apparently many people were scoffing at Brad Gibson’s assertion that all podcasts have to be 30mins or less, everyone I spoke to mentioned it interestingly without me asking…wish I’d been there to point out my 3,000+ subscribers feel differently!). The business conference seemed pretty boring, which wasn’t really a surprise since I don’t run Radio Clash as a business, with one of the speakers droning on about Gardener’s Weekly I left pretty soon after. I was looking forward to the Citizen Journalist and Music conferences that afternoon though.
Met up with the Night Nurse Show in the pub, who were in full argument sorry team discussion but it was good to see Natasha, Stefan and John even though John and then Natasha disappeared shortly after due partly to the excesses of the night before, but also the unengaging nature of the conferences themselves.
Rob from Top of the Pods (and in his new Podshow capacity) was there interviewing people with the really nice Gill Mills (who does Freelance Hellraiser’s podcast and is an old friend of Grant McSleazy – small world!) and I spoke to them later about Radio Clash and licensing and mashups, which you might see on the Podshow PodcastConUK page (no I’m not signing before you ask!)
Had fun disrupting the Night Nurse interview with a “HELLO MUM!” sign and Scott did likewise with “I AM A GAY!” on mine…along with the Stealth Disco video crowd, media guerilla disruption seemed to be the order of the day in an event packed with corporate and advertising messages.
So lunch over it was the Citizen Journalist conference – something I wanted to see because of John Buckley of Dissident Vox was chairing. Although Chris Vallance from the BBC (Radio 5) was entertaining, I found this disappointing because they’d gotten old-media names to speak about citizen journalism, which focused on audience participation and old-media using citizen journalists, rather than what most of us do which is bypass the old broadcast media and produce our own shows.
With all the panels far too much talking from the panel and not enough audience interaction, and when there was interaction, many of the people asking questions were either re-iterating previous questions, doing veiled plugs bigging up themselves or taking far too long and rambling. Several of the questions I was thinking ‘and what is your point?’ - in fact one of the best moments for me in the Music conference was when the guy from Magnatune bit back at the Nokia guy’s veiled plug for Loudeye and impenetrable consultese (‘what’s your value chain?’) with a barbed comment – I was one of the ones who clapped…it was bollocks and against the ethos and clear-speaking of podcasting.
This raises an organisational issue with the conference – it was very difficult to get to ask a question even raising your hand several times, others raising their hand later seemed to get asked before you (you can’t physically keep your hand up for 5-10-15 minutes!) and some of the questions should have been kept short or vetoed by the chair as being answered before (think of Question Time and how David Dimbleby interrupts to see what I mean, it’s not ‘polite’ but it keeps things moving).
A request for next year, if PCCUK2007 happens is maybe use an unconference format or have chairs who have more experience of moving things along (this is not a criticism of John Buckley or the other chairs, I spoke to him after and it was his first time and he did a great job; he did try and move it along but I think the format made it difficult, as well as him being the lone citizen journalist and having to hold up that corner too – in my former life in consultancy I was trained that the chair (or facilitator as they call them) shouldn’t really have to speak apart from helping the proceedings along, or have to provide an alternate view, the audience/panel should cover those bases).
After was an open session, and later some folk from Jimmy Golding (not my bag) and after chatting to Adam Curry outside with Scott (he came out for a smoke with Gill, he remembered us from the Bricklayers Arms earlier in the year) then the music conference chaired by Martin of Green Dragon, I was really looking forward to this, but it turned out mostly to be a velied plug for the Podsafe Music Network and to frighten people with scare stories about being sued by the PRS…again I wanted to ask a question and couldn’t, because I have been C&D’d by the MCPS-PRS in the past as a bootlegger, but also not had any hassle with Radio Clash (touch wood) and knew this to be total crap from my experience and others in the bootleg/mashup community who have had likewise…but again I was overlooked or missed.
Donna from Amplifico did talk very interestingly though on the effect on podcasting on her band, which was cool, and I liked John Buckman from Magnatune who knew his stuff and wasn’t afraid to bite the said Nokia person and then talk about how ringtone and mobile music providers have either ripped labels off or not provided them with stats like iTunes does! But not really podcasting related…
Nicole Simon from Cruel To Be Kind raised a good question about GEMA, the German rights body that is causing a lot of aggro to musicians and DJs in Germany, but otherwise it got dogged down in a podsafe-lovein and talk of PRS, ASCAP and SESAC et al, mostly scare stories for commercial bodies, which doesn’t apply to free non-profit music podcasters.
Actually that was the tone of the conferences, very fixated around making money, or old media bodies, or plugging various projects that the actual discussion suffered I think.
After the conferences was a great band called The Shakes who although David Bowie might have a few questions about their podsafe hit ‘Liberty Jones’ (‘All the Beautiful People’ anyone? Sorry you can’t take a bootlegger anywhere, I know!) were a quality band, with a funny frontman who could seamlessly work over any technical issues and have fun with it…very Long Knives spiky power pop/punk, which is quite big at the moment, and reminded me of Franz or Maximo Park in places…not as finished yet but I reckon they’ll go far just on their lead singer alone…
And then was the showing of the stealth disco video which I’d already been given a sneak preview of and saw them do Rob (I appear in the background at the 2min mark) and the last one with our Scott live! WOO! Very funny…
And after the best part – the pub! I think a lot of people were like – ‘who are you?’ but then talking them quite a few were listeners and fans – so shout outs go to Tom of Archaeocast, Linda from Philadephia who liked the Ivor Cutler show, Nicole Simon of Cruel to be Kind, Conrad Slater (dressed like a space victorian pimp, you’re a strange guy 
) of Spain films and also got to meet Phillip Holland aka Twinkelboi who was a great laugh (and when he becomes a famous superstar my one claim to fame is that my podcast was the first he ever listened to 
)! He was interviewing a drunken me and Scott and we suggested he interview Adam Curry – he was scared but we put him up to it, and he did! Also he filmed me getting back at RegularJen and Scott for the Stealth Disco – which hopefully will be posted at some point…also finally got to say hello to CC Chapman and Phil from Bitjobs, somehow we always manage to miss each other at these events!
I’ve also had a drunken flashback – myself, Twinkelboi and Scott recorded a podcast in the pub for Top of the Pods with Rob…oh dear I wonder if that will ever see the light of day? It was rather, err, rude…t’was just before the Wives and Girlfriends of Podcasters one…
Sadly according to this post that 3 of the gang are not doing this next year cos of aggro and the work involved…so thanks for this event guys, it must be a lot of work!
I think if 2007 does go ahead, I’d add that the corporate/company product encroachment of the event (not talking about the sponsors, but the conferences) spoiled the conferences for me…an unconference or BloggerCon approach would work better for me, but probably wouldn’t be acceptable to sponsors…it may be an unsolvable problem, but the endless plugging from everyone (rather than just talking to me about their shows or work or services, which would be fine) got to me…you do disservice to an important forum like a conference by using it as a blatant advertising tool…it’s vulgar and rather easy to spot, be it in a question, a panel member, or conference theme.
Photos are available here from CC Chapman and Neil Ford and others: http://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/podcastconuk2006
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I was in Trier and got a phone call from Scott from the 
