Where's Wil?

Wow. So what a weekend that was. I went down to PodCampUK in Birmingham on Saturday and had an absolute blast. This was my first experience of an 'unconference' and, I have to say, I was blown away.

The day was split into a morning 'introductory' session, where all the attendees gathered to listen to a professional radio exec talk about the future of radio and podcasting. These sessions live or die by the guy giving the talk, and I'm happy to say that this was a good one. He pointed out one fact I had never considered - that when it comes to 'radio' and 'TV', the programming uses the same word as the medium. That is, you make 'radio' to go on the 'radio', unlike cinema, where you make 'films' to go in 'theaters'. This creates complication - nobody would say you make 'radio' for 'ipods', but that is, effectively, what many of us are doing. He made a note that most young people today identify radio with the programme type, not the device - that is, they talk about 'online radio' and 'radio on cellphone', rather than thinking about the wireless. This was an interesting point to me. When people ask me what I do, I always avoid the word podcast - I tell them I make TV for the internet. That is far more informative for them.


Photo via timbearcub.
The rest of the sessions were moderated and run by attendees, and I went to a couple of very interesting sessions on metrics (measuring downloads / streams for the purposes of advertising) and social networking (just how social are social networks?) At each session, the people attending were interested specifically in that topic, making for informed and interesting discussion. I feel like I contributed a lot, and also came away with some new thoughts and perspectives.

I was so psyched by the end that I talked myself into heading out for the New Media Expo after all. It's going to be a tough schedule but I think it's going to be valuable enough to warrant it. Thanks to everyone that organised PodCampUK (and the sponsors that paid for the, shock, awesome food!) I look forward to the next one!