Monday Afternoon Podcasting

Mesquite Pod Casting

It is the day before the election.   I’m sure you all knew there was to be an election tomorrow.   It is a Monday, the day most are not interested in anything that doesn’t pertain to counting how many days left till the weekend.   Tucson real estate is probably one of the furthest things from most people’s minds today.   If it isn’t then I’m alone.   Based on the search results I’m seeing coming in, not many are searching for information about Tucson real estate today.

Therefore, I’ll put off the post I had for the conclusion of last weeks series till Wednesday and today write a little about the conference this weekend in Phoenix.

I spent a good part of the weekend at PodCampAZ 2008.   It is a two day mini non-conference about podcasting.   It is something I’ve been interested in for about a year and this conference was close enough I could drive up each day and try and get a bit of a handle on what podcasting is all about.

PodCasting?

When I was growing up in Ohio, we had a garden every summer.   In the fall after harvesting and canning and freezing all the stuff in the garden it was time to plow the garden and turn all the leftover plant material under for the winter.   Pod casting back then was throwing empty string bean pods in the furrow to be turned under.

Here in Tucson Pod casting is what you do almost everyday while the mesquite trees are dropping pods like there was no tomorrow.   We sweep them up, and the next day there are more of them.   This is podcasting Tucson style.

Podcasting is sometimes confusing because it can be either audio or video.   It is pod casting vs broadcasting.   It is a small video or audio file that you have to know how to find.   The place most associated with podcasts is Itunes, where you can get podcasts for your “Ipod“.   Oh, I’m beginning to get the idea now.   I don’t own an Ipod.

I learned a lot about audio and video podcasting this weekend.   A class in video lighting for podcasting was very educational for me as a photographer, not a videographer.

I have a piece of software installed here which is a robot version of podcasting for each post.   If you click on it, the robot will attempt to read the post to you out loud.   I say attempt because it has trouble with all caps and a few acronyms.   YouTube is another very popular site for small video files to be uploaded and viewed.   They can be embedded into a blog post and viewed.   Those are podcasts.

It was a very interesting weekend.   I might try my hand at a few podcasts both audio and video, but I’ll be the guy behind the camera, not sure who will be the one in front of it.   Maybe I can get the loser from tomorrow to help with that part.   They should certainly be comfortable in front of a camera, don’t you thing?