EyeSee

Podcamp Ottawa started off with Jeff Parks giving yet another engaging discussion about podcasting.  He talked about his mantra of give it for free.  which has worked very well for him.

He has a vast collection of interviews which are popular globally, so popular that he has been invited to speak at conferences worldwide.  He does not charge for his guest speaking engagements and his only request is for his conference pass and his travel expenses to be covered. It’s an opportunity of a life time to speak to all these individuals.  His show is about the guest speaker and not about Jeff.  Conversation is more important than technical expertise.

The big question was how does he then pay his bills?  His popularity worldwide has lead to contracts which pay the bills.

He suggests focusing on the relationships and not the monetary aspects of podcasting.  This will translate into passion which in turn will lead to making an income.

Quote “Memory is more important than reality.”

This was the setting for the discussion that followed.

Kristina Mausser of Digital Word gave an example of a typical marketing budget.  Say a company has a budget of 10 thousand dollars they will typically spend about 7 thousand on brochures which don’t lead to any tangible business.  By using podcasting or other social media you can create build build a relationship with your niche market.

She spoke about her time as the head of a marketing department for a specific geographic region.  Her company printed borchures which were distributed within that region.  This resulted in no business at all.  She had to call the customers herself and develop the relationship with them by meeting with them in person.  When it was month end she would call those customers to make some sales.  So the key to her success was the relationships not the brochures.   So podcasting is another way to build a relationship on a much lower budget.

If you are passionate about podcasting then the value you get is enormous.

Jeff parks talked about his recent interactions with a Grade 6 class, they have access to the same info. as us, however don’t have the experience we have.

Make your podcast available in various forms to your audience and let them pick the medium based on their preference.  The french name for podcast is long and very technical so should the English term be used?  The consensus was to use the shortened form of the french phrase.

Another way to describe podcasts to people is using the term internet radio as that is very easily understood.

Kids in Europe and Asia have have multiple mobile devices and use it more than we do in North America, this results in them using mobile devices to find info. vs the web.

Most organizations have a mandate to deliver to larger audiences on a smaller budget so podcasting and social media fit within these budgets.

I am very thrilled to be attending Podcamp Ottawa this morning.  Only 30mins to go.

Here’s a sneak peakof the sessions

Conversations before Code - Jeff Parks

Social Media Monitoring Tips & Tricks

The most Intimate Medium - Hugh McGuire

Monetizing yoru Social Media Passion - Robin Browne

See you there

Open Source is another buzz word that has become a part of our daily vocabulary. When I think of open source I think of software development where the tools are free. This has lead to a lot of really great innovation as companies can now build products faster and cheaper.
The world today is all about sharing and the traditional model of making money by charging for the information has changed.

Open source has now gone beyond personal photos and videos. Open Source Learning is the new way to learn all you need is an internet connection and a computer.

In the past to get access to any university course material you had to sign up or audit the class for a fee. If you could not physically be present then there was no way to get the information beyond buying the expensive text book. Today forward thinking institutions are putting their lecture notes, exams and videos for free online!!!!

MIT Open Courseware is one such institution. Wow, in the past only the elite could get access to this information but now anyone who is willing to be self taught now has access. This is pretty powerful.
Moodle is a course management system that is absoloutely free!!! They are building an olnine learning community. It runs off one computer and is scalable to an institution with 200,000 students. It’s available in over 75 languages.

With the sharing of information happening for free so to speak, information is no longer power as anyone can have access to it.

Thanks to Jamie I now know where to find the API key. So here’s the scoop.

If your Blog is hosted off your personal or company website …

Create an account in wordpress.com not org. Use the account option on the Blog.

You will receive an activation email

Login into wordpress.com

Look for My Account

Edit profile

Voila, here is the API key

Back in the admin panel of your Blog (the one hosted on your site)

Plugins activate akismet

Akismet configuration

Add your key here to the box

update key

Bye, bye spam.

I have had a number of people point out to me that my wordpress “previous” link does not work nor the archive feature. So if you have this problem, here is the solution…..

Add the following to the .htaccess file

# BEGIN WordPress

I had an amazing conversation with Brandan Sera-Shriar during lunch here at WordCamp Toronto. He is involved in a lot of very interesting projects and is also a teacher at a College!!!

Building plug-ins in Wordpress is very easy and does not need a lot of programming knowledge. A great way to get started is to take a plug-in and copy and paste the code and develop a new one.

There is a limit to what a plug-in can do and will want to customize it to whatever you want. Look is just as important as functionality in a successful plug-in.

HTML/CSS, PHP and MySQL skills are great to have

Check out the source of the plug-ins and make small changes. See what the effect is. If the plug-in is from a good source then it will be well documented. This is the best way to learn. Do this on your local host so that you don’t crash your site.

Design a basic template that you can use overall when designing multiple plug-ins.

He does not release his plug-ins to the community however if you do want them he will make it available to you

Plug-in 101

• Create a folder in the /wp-content/plugins/pluginname/
• Give the plug-in a name.
• Describe, authors. This is standard stuff.
• Comments section
• Add code for option menu
• Setup the Options Page
• Register the activation and deactivation hooks
• Function
• Save as a php file

Side bar info…

Breadcrumb

Can have one database for multiple sites with different look and feel.

Wordpress plug-in competition is coming up for 2009.

Here’s what people were doing during the break.

More discussions

Sacha posing

Plug-in side discussion

Just playing around

Mathiew

Rannie and I in a shoot off

The afternoon at WordCamp Toronto, started off with Mark McKay talking about video blogging.

He showed us some examples of videos on You Tube. Happy Hour is his own show. Dear Toronto has their own style of videos.

He will be on MTV on Thursday at 6pm with his view on the election.

How to make a better video blog?

• Think before you speak
• Plan out what you want to do or say
• Video about 2 minutes
• Compress video before uploading

Saw the 61second video posted on Michael Geist, Boing boing

Learnt about video microblogging, 12 seconds

Lot’s of software out there and use whatever you have available to you. Vegas, Premier and Avid.

Take note of the lighting in the room

Video sharing great on Wordpress, Delicious, Facebook, MySpace, Mdialogu, TubeMogul,
Talked about Viral Videos by entering contests. Have no plans to make money of the videos and just wanted to get noticed.

Mark has a green screen in his basement and now paints a wall green where he lives. Today it takes the form of a green fabric and has good lighting. DVgarage is a great plugin.

Convergence of a video blog and TV station. Each video blog is a show. Try to keep it to all one idea. Video blog is the internets version of a TV show.
Give it away and let people watch it.

No cheeseburgers

Gotta have the ketchup

Yummie, dessert

Here are some more pictures from WordCamp Toronto.

Hole in chair

Thirsty again

Accessories

more accessories

Tweeting

Let’s trade moo cards