billpalmer.net

If you had told me that I would ever travel to New York City and spend three days in Manhattan but never take one step north of 14th Street, and two more days in Brooklyn of all places, and that I'd end up classifying it as one of my most successful and enjoyable NYC trips ever, I'd have said you were crazy.

But that's exactly what happened this past week with PodCamp NYC 2.0. After seven previous trips to NYC over the years I've seen enough of the midtown touristy stuff. So it was great to stay with friends who live in the Village and actually spend some quality time down there, something I've really never done in my previous trips. It's one thing to walk through Washington Square on your way to the next tourist destination. Getting a taste of the local culture and understanding what you're seeing is a whole other thing.

I've attended too many PodCamps to recall the exact number without counting them up on my fingertips, but this is the first time I've had the opportunity to attend a second PodCamp in the same city. A year ago at PodCamp NYC 1.0, I simply ventured from session to session, learning what I could and meeting who I could. But this year it was time to do something different, so we did an iProng Magazine table in the main hallway. And to make what we were doing more interesting, we had a different podsafe musician perform in front of our table every hour.

Actually sometimes it wasn't in front of the table, but behind it. Or beside it. Or in a few cases the performances included the piano that somehow managed to have been randomly parked next to our table. Nor was the location itself particularly stationary, as we ended up setting up the performance area at three different tables across two days, and at one point we were set up outside. It was a blast, and I can't remember the last time I heard so much great live music in such a short timespan. You throw it open like we did to where literally any podsafe musician can sign up to perform and you never quite know what you're going to end up with, but there wasn't a bad one in the bunch and we're going to have some fun doing interviews with them for the magazine in the near future.

As I was thumbing through the various PodCamp NYC 2.0 photos on Flickr this morning I saw the mountain of photos posted from the various sessions and I was reminded that there was a whole other side of PodCamp going on that I didn't get to participate in this time around because I spent nearly all my time at our table, but that's the way it goes. Last year I spent nearly all my time in sessions and regretted not having spent more time at the tables. No matter how much you might try to mix it up, you're never going to manage to be in all places at all times. But thankfully we have the social networks so we can fill each other in on what we missed. This time around I'm afraid you'll have to get that side of the PodCamp story from others.

What occurred to me on the way home (and boy was I ever not ready to leave town) was that our little setup with musicians performing was nothing short of a showcase. It wasn't for the record labels; there were no A&R people there with contracts at the ready. Instead the showcase was for podcasters. Each musician who performed was in effect auditioning in the hopes that the podcasters in attendance would go home and play their music on their shows. And I can't help but think that we just saw the musician showcase of the future in some sort of prototypical form.

The experimentation with the setup, the open endedness of the scheduling, it all allowed us to get a feel for what worked and what didn't, and I think we're onto something. I can easily see using this same model at any future PodCamp that wants it, and as I've said before, this was far from the first time that something like this has been done at a PodCamp. For the PodCamps that we can't make it to, perhaps someone else can handle the facilitation.

Above all, my primary take-away from PodCamp NYC 2.0 is a fairly straightforward one. Attendees kept coming up to our table asking the most basic of questions ranging from what podsafe music is, to what a podcast is. My initial temptation was to be annoyed by it, based on the premise that it's 2008 and PodCamp attendees ought to know these answers by now. But then it hit me: the people who were asking such basic questions were doing so because they were new to the fold, faces I hadn't seen before. They were asking the same annoying questions I was asking back in 2006 when I attended my first PodCamp. So the bottom line is that PodCamps are still bringing in new blood, new people who've just now become interested. In fact the majority of people I talked with this past weekend were folks I'd never seen at any previous PodCamp - it's not just the same batch of people showing up each time. And that has me really excited for what comes next.