Live Blogging Podcamp: Steve Garfield's Thunderstorm of Podcasting

Steve Garfield's session was awesome!  I learned a lot about some simple ways to get started with podcasting that don't cost a lot of money or require a huge amount of technical skill.   The key will be to play with this technique to get the quality better and better.   But, I'm relieved that I don't need to pony up lots of money.

While the sound and visual look may not be polished, one could perfect their skills at guerrila podcasting/videocasting so the quality didn't detract from the content.  I think this is a good way to just start to explore the medium and this genre of podcasting/videocasting without lots of money or time.   

I aslo  think it is a fabulous technique for capturing and sharing knowledge from conferences and other nonprofit gatherings as I noted here. 

Steve introduced himself and his site

Here are my notes:

1.   Blogging:  It's all about podcasting and video podcasting.   Many folks subscribe to Itunes, but how do you talk back to the person who made the show, find out about it.  That's why a blog is important.  Your blog is your place.  They can listen to the audio, follow links, and leave comments.   You can have a conversation about your content with people on your blog.

2.  You Can Use Your Phone or your digital camera with video:  He demonstrated how to do an audio podcast with your cell phone and a video podcast with his camera using hipcast.   (I caught some of his demo on my digital camera - here's him shooting the video, uploading the video, and doing the cell phone podcast.)    There were lots of questions about how long you can record on hipcast, the phone number, and some technical questions. 

He said the free and cheap programs for video making are imovie (mac) or moviemaker (pc) or quicktime pro.  His camera is a Cannon SD300, but the newer versions have better audio quality.

I saw how to do podcasts with a cell phone at NCDD, but I didn't know that Hipcast will translate your avi or other video format into a more friendly format and post on your blog as a flash video with a link to the Quicktime format.    Questions about the fee and other services that host video were asked and Steve pointed to his site where there are answers to these and other questions..

How to get the best quality in video? - Steve has a squiddo lens.  He explained compression really well.  He shared his settings.  He uses quicktime pro to export it.  The settings are decent quality and work on an IPOD.   Check his Learn About Video Blogging page.

Audacity is the standard free program.  It does everything you need.   It's free.   

Guidelines for raw footage versus editing time.  Steve did the video and audio without editing.  This style of podcasting and videocasting are called "moment showing" coined by Jay Dedman. - It is about capturing a moment and putting it out there.   Not edited.  Over time you can look at them and they tell a story.   He could spend 7 hours on a three minute video.   He is showing us the easy way to get in. 

Like the famous line in the Graduate, "plastics" when asked about the future:  Steve told us:

This is the future of citizen journalist!  Nokia N93 -- camera phone that takes video and has wifi and can post to the Internet immediately.

UPDATE:  Here's my first podcast, an interview with Steve Garfield.

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Comments

[Steve Garfield]

Thanks Beth! I had a lot of fun doing that session.

[Jameson Bull]

Thanks for the notes Beth! I REALLY wanted to make Steve's session but was torn away by Christopher Penn's and was hoping someone would give me the scoop on what I missed from Steve.

You are awesome! See you tomorrow!

[David Finch]

Beth, Thanks for making your notes available!! My work commitments wouldn't allow me to attend so I've be scouring the net looking for any content I can find from Podcamp. Thanks again!!