Podcamp is not Barcamp is not Band Camp

So this is my last time rambling about Podcamp. C.C. Chapman has had about 1,000,000 comments on his post talking about podcamp not being free. I’m a bit of a heretic, I remember talking with Bryper about the first podcamp and saying that they should charge for that one to weed out the trick-or-treaters that show up for free stuff and nothing else. There’s a lot of discussion about what makes a conference and what makes a camp. These are all academic arguments that the average person probably isn’t even aware of, never mind give a whizz in the River Kwai about.

Some of my favorite highlights – Eric Rice calling it Podshow 2.0, and Tim Bourquin welcoming everyone to the world of paid conferences. I think that aside from the names, Barcamp and Podcamp are two very different things. From what I’ve seen, Barcamps involve a lot of collaboration, where podcamps are all about education. I can easily see why someone who’s been to Barcamps or Brainjams would not be as excited about Podcamp, it’s not the same experience.

Ok, even I’m getting tired of the “Inside Baseball”. In closing, maybe I don’t get to sleep on the floor for podcamp, but there are still human connections made. There are a lot of people who go to podcamp who know nothing, or next to nothing about new media and they would like the guided tour, not pandemonium.

Here’s a picture of me and Nico, my graphic designer / wordpress genius. I’ve worked with many designers for professional projects, but Nico works on my personal projects. I put the rough graphics of Ronin Marketeer together and then he got it all to work correctly (I hate dealing with tables and I’m pretty lame with stylesheets). I knew there is a point where I’d lose interest in tweaking the code and it would be faster and less headache for a pro to take care of it.

The cool part is that we did this site almost a year ago, and from across the planet – he’s in Argentina. He surprised everyone by flying 30 hours to show up at Podcamp Boston. That alone makes podcamp cool enough for me, and yes I’d be willing to $20 to register for it to show I’m serious about attending…

I also a chance to catch up with all my Canadian friends (why the hell is Canada so much more hip than the US?), and was fortunate enough to meet Anna Farmery from the engaging brand. Next time I’m breaking out the recorder.

For more audio discussion on Podcamp, Technorati, and fighting Sploggers, check out the latest Marketing Over Coffee Marketing Podcast.