Brian Frank's Blog - Latest Comments in PodCamp London: The Day After

Re: PodCamp London: The Day After

Brian Frank — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 01:29:27 -0000

Sean & Dave - it was great meeting you guys, I'm glad we had you and so many other social media conference vets come to London. I hope you'll be back (and/or maybe more of us from London will venture out and run into you elsewhere).

Jonathan - Judging by reactions your session was one of the day's hits.

Phronk - I had to look up "autoeroticism"... Good point and I'm glad you used a word that some people might assume refers to cars (like I did, until I looked it up). Gives me something to keep rambling on...

Compare it to a car show. People take their antique or suped-up cars to those events to show-off and to admire other people's cars as well. PodCamp has a bit of that with people sharing knowledge they're proud of and admiring what other people have brought. But at a car show the variety is superficial: a lot of differences in terms of components and aesthetics but at the end of the day everyone drives out single-file and their cars are still the same cars.

At PodCamp you walk into a session or strike up a conversation and it takes a bit of work to figure out where that person is coming from, and we leave a little different from before. We see things from different perspectives. We go home not just with ways to improve our sites' appearance and performance; we go home with a fresh appreciation of what we're doing, exactly. Right now I'm sure there are at least a few pclo09 attendees having trouble sleeping because they heard something Saturday and realized, "I never thought of that possibility..." and they're dreaming of starting whole new projects and practices.

Getting back to Jonathan's presentation, I can't help wondering if maybe the relatively low percent of surveyed youth saying using the internet is an important part of their lives is due to their inability to distinguish the internet from anything else. (I.e. I wonder what the result would have been if they were asked how important sleep, food, or breathing is to their everyday lives.)

Re: PodCamp London: The Day After

davefleet — Sun, 26 Apr 2009 22:49:40 -0000

Excellent recap, Brian. Glad you liked the session. You're right - the discussion was great; I was able to just sit back and watch for a good chunk of it.

Two of my biggest highlights (among many) were Jonathan's youth and social media presentation (for the great argument he made around the generational gap in social media) and Andrew Sinclair's piece (for the thoughtful discussion among the audience).

The whole event was excellent, though - I look forward to returning in future years.

Re: PodCamp London: The Day After

Jonathan — Sun, 26 Apr 2009 22:28:07 -0000

Great recap Brian. Glad you enjoyed the presentation / drink tickets / shuttle (in that order).

Re: PodCamp London: The Day After

Phronk — Sun, 26 Apr 2009 21:53:17 -0000

I love the idea that social media adds a layer on top of everything else. It's all gotta be about something to be of value. Although us geeks can spend a few hours Twittering about Twitter, at some point we gotta communicate something other than our methods of communication, or else it's all just technological autoerotism.

Re: PodCamp London: The Day After

Sean McGaughey — Sun, 26 Apr 2009 20:44:29 -0000

It was nice to meet you this weekend Brian. Thanks for sharing your podcamp London reflections.