Podcamp Pittsburgh 3 Wrap-up
October 20th, 2008 | Published in Blogging, PodCamp Pittsburgh, Twitter, Web 2.0, social media | 4 Comments
Justin Kownacki, a Podcamp Pittsburgh co-founder. (Image credit: pittprjns)
This past weekend I attended my very first podcamp, Podcamp Pittsburgh 3. All I can say is this - if a Podcamp has even half the energy of PCPGH3, it’s definitely worth going to.
Here are the sessions I attended:
- “Making Social Media Visible” by Michael Munz
- “Blogging 201: Blogging Best Practices” by Cynthia Closkey and Mike Woycheck
- “Social Media Business Plans”, which was a panel featuring Aaron Tainter and Alan Veeck of Meakem Becker VC, Meredith Benedict of AlphaLab and Julie Morey of ElasticLab.
- “Feedback: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly” by Justin Kownacki.
- An impromptu session on Second Life by David Fisher.
- “Social Networking/Media 201″ by Jennie Roth, Dawn Papuga and Missy Sorg.
- “The Art Institutes: Social Networking Strategies” by Jamie Sterling and Kimberly Blackstone.
- “Your Weekly Music Lessons with Walt”, a live taping of Walt Ribeiro’s weekly video show.
If you are one of the speakers highlighted here, I personally want to thank you for leading your session. I walked away with very valuable knowledge this weekend, all because you volunteered your time and energy. I also want to thank Chris Brogan for talking with me a bit and offering advice on how to move ahead in the field.
While the sessions were great, I’m not without a tiny bit of criticism. I think we could have gone deeper into the medium overall. The majority of what I heard over the weekend had to do with Myspace, Facebook, Twitter and blogs. LinkedIn made a few appearances, as well - but what about the rest?
These few are social networks and social media tools, yes, but they only scratch the surface of what’s out there. I don’t think anyone mentioned any of the bookmarking tools like Delicious or Magnolia, FriendFeed was mentioned once during Blogging 201 (and quickly forgotten), and socialmedian, Strands and some of the newer social media tools were ignored. Come to think of it, I don’t even remember hearing about StumbleUpon, Digg, Reddit or their competitors, either. Maybe I’ll lead a Social Media 401 session next year! These newer tools may or may not be the future, we don’t know yet - but they exist, and to leave them out of your social networking strategy is to forfeit free marketing and publicity.
Overall, though, I would call Podcamp Pittsburgh 3 an enormous success. Being from Central Pennsylvania, I had no idea that Pittsburgh had such a thriving web community - believe me, it does. The attendees and presenters were extrememly passionate about social media and where it can take us in the future. I’m already looking forward to Podcamp Pittsburgh 4.
Were you at PCPGH3? If so, be sure to follow me on Twitter! You can also subscribe to this blog at the top of the page. I’d like to start a Podcamp Pittsburgh section for blogs on my VIP page, as well, so if you’d like your blog or web site linked, be sure to let me know via Twitter or email [shawnfarner at gmail dot com].
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