Asymptomatic

Starting in September, which is right around the corner in case you hadn't noticed, there is a series of conferences that have entered my radar as something that might be edifying for me to attend. There may just be too many of them.

Podcamp Philly is the first of these, on September 6th and 7th. Like each of these conferences, this one has a theme. Being that this is a podcamp, the topic is "new media". I've been following the PANMA list for a year and a half and I'm still not sure what anyone really means when they say "new media", but I think it has something to do with blogging and podcasting and stuff like that.

Later in September (20-21) is Blog World Expo in Las Vegas. I'm waiting to hear more glowing reviews of this event from last year's attendees. This is a pretty expensive conference for blogging, and I wonder who the target market really is: bloggers or blog integrators. I think it's the latter, which it might be nice to pitch Habari at, but I'd like to get real users, not SEO people and themers. Maybe that's just me. Still, it would be nice to hobnob with the big players....

Over the weekend, I visited Columbus, not just to hang out with skippy at ComFest and buy too much crap at Origins, but to attend and lead a session at PodCamp Ohio.

The side dishes to this entrée are actually better than the meat, but the meat was the point of the dinner, so that's what I'll talk about here. I'm all about focus here. Focus.

I showed up right on time for the welcome session on Saturday and checked in. I hadn't been able to show up for the Friday night meetup because of the previously mentioned "side dishes". I checked in and was shown to the "Speaker Lounge", marked off by signs with martini glasses (with olive!). After a brief welcome from another couple of session leaders in the lounge, we all shuffled down to Room A for the introduction.

I'm not going to do a play-by-play of the rest of the day, because that's already feeling tedious. Let me cover briefly a couple of sessions I did attend, and my overall impression of the camp. more