A lot of people feel like stopping the genocide is a lost cause, but the “save darfur” movement has already saved hundreds of thousands of lives. If the Podcamps took up this cause, it would significantly add to the amount of lives saved. I am teaching a session at Podcamp Boston about what podcasters can do to help stop the genocide, and it doesn’t take much time! And zero money.

I hope the Podcamps continue to think about causes that they can support, whether local or international. As members of the new media, podcasters are in a powerful position to make their voices heard and call attention to what they feel is important.

Just pumps me up!!!!

The point of Podcamps, from my POV, is to bring the local community and outer-New Media community together. Part of having PC Philly is to energize the local community; it’s been designed to show off different parts of Philly as well, giving people a sense of the place beyond a conference room and coffee. (Every Hotel room and conference center is kinda the same anyway, right?)

So I look at this as a broader opportunity to develop communities at home and abroad, while taking the time to give back. Even from a talking to sponsors point of view, it’s an outward focus of how can we help them get their message out, while they help us make the event free to all registrants.

The sessions at PodCamps are awesome, and this is stuff you can’t go take a class on at your local college. That said, the fact that schools like Drexel are excited to have our event there, shows that there’s interest and support for this conference model and what we teach.

it’s about making new media conferences like new media people- people who want to express their point of view, people who want to do something. the talking is important, the just doing is equally as important.

I do not think these things can be too wide, the wider they are the better as far as I am concerned, the more we mix with someone NOT of our community the more reaching we achieve.

MediaCampBucks07 here:
http://achubbucks.pbwiki.com

“The same people keep going to them and talking about the same things. Collectively I think we all need to push hard to stop doing that. To shatter the echo chamber and make these events about so much more then tips and trick sessions and socializing.”

That is RIGHT on the money, and self-perpetuating communities are so NOT the way forward, as much as I love so many of the people in ones such as podcamps.

Any “organised” community is always in danger of becoming incestuous which by its nature can be “exclusive”, (I don’t mean in terms of being on the outside), I mean in terms of modes of operation, or assumptions of practice, which we know is not what it is supposed to be about.

Chris

I’m not sure what the “next-level” for these conferences could be. At some point, these events are defined as podcasting events, and as such will attract those people. The “next-level” might be something like a “online presence camp” where podcasting is a component of it or something, but the danger is at some point it’ll get too broad to be a single event.

For PAB, the conference target audience is essentially podcasters, so the echo-chamber effect is not entirely by accident. People appreciate the opportunity to interact with people they normally see/hear online. Where else but at events like PAB, podcamps, etc can one be reasonably sure to walk up to a stranger and discuss podcasting and be understood?

For us, donating books (and money) and bringing a positive non-podcast experience to the host community was a great experience, one we’re sure to repeat or expand on next year.

Much to his credit, John Havens, or lead organizer, is driving the push to do something good for a group outside of our normal participants.

It’s difficult to choose who to help or what to do to actually make positive change, without taking all of our time and attention away from making Podcamp itself great.

Kathy King suggested bringing her network of educators in to the event and hosting an all-day hands-on learning room to give them the skills to teach tech, podcasting, and new media to their students.

I think it’s a great blend of doing what we’re great at, but also helping a group other than ourselves. I also love the “Rocky Run” idea at PodCamp Philly.

Long story short, I think you’re definitely on to something here - hopefully we’ll be able to make it a reality