PODCAMP AZ 2009

I am SO glad I was checking out some of my friends Facebook pages last Thursday or I never would have seen an event about PodCamp. My friend Jeff was going to be a speaker and I checked out the website, decided it looked pretty cool - esp at the price of - FREE! and so I registered and showed up last Saturday morning to attend.

You might be asking yourself "What the heck is podcamp?" Here is a good definition from the podcamp AZ website: "PodCamp is a FREE BarCamp-style community UnConference for podcasters and listeners, bloggers and readers, and anyone interested in New Media. It was held for the first time from September 8-10 in Boston, Massachusetts and is now spreading across the world."

PodCampAZ reminded me of EFY. For those of you who dont know what that is, click HERE or forever hold your peace. Hehe. PodCamp was only 2 days long and EFY is a week but it was simliar in the fact that so many classes were offered at once through the day so there were 5 or so to pick from at a time and sometimes it was hard to decide which class I wanted to go to!

Even though I dont podcast or use wordpress right now, it still sounded interesting and intrigued the geek-nerd side of me ;-) plus I felt like I learned a lot and just being around people I have never met before was cool and gave me the opportunity to make new friends.



Got my name badge & I'm set! (yes there was a random rainstorm going on at the time this pic was taken in Tempe, aZ)

There were free Amp'd energy drinks, water , pizza and cupcakes from Butter & Me. Mmm these tiny cupcakes were so good I couldn't get enough. But I settled for 3. (they are mini ones anyways so no harm done)

Cool board that looked like an iPhone but it is by Microsoft and you can play games or sync your phone to it and it will pull off all your contact & data information I guess, and show you everything laid out on the big screen!

We were in the University of Advanced Technology building where people go to school.

The classes I went to on Saturday were:

Let me Show You: Video Blogging With Ease - Mike Flathers The Audacity of Podcasting: Using Free Tools to Produce Your Podcast - Dan Feierabend

The whole thing started at 8 but I got there a bit after 10 and the second round of classes were finishing so I caught 1 class, went to get lunch at YC's Mongolian BBQ, came back and went to the video blogging class and then to the podcasting class where I got a bunch of websites with "freebies" for podcasting. I don't podcast but if I figured out something to talk about, I might do it.

(this is what people would see if they watched the online feed of podcamp)

The next day I just went for one class....the class I wanted was about "Business Card Marketing" but nobody was in that classroom when I showed up so I went next door and listened to Brian Shaler on "Phoenix, Events, and Community". It was very interesting and I got a bunch of good links to websites that compile things to do around Phoenix. Awesome!

Both days they streamed a feed online which was nice to watch so I could see some of the things going on even though I couldn't actually be there.

Everything ended at5 , I picked up a free hat and tshirt I won from a drawing and met up with new friends - Chesney - aka Chez101 and her friend ( & I feel horrible for not remembering his name...) and then 3 youth that were there , 2 of them video blog and the youngest was 9 and she doesnt do that stuff. Yet. But she was super cute. I found out the siblings were LDS and the 9 yr old was like "Why weren't you at church today then?" and I said "Oh I did go but just for sacrament mtg. Did YOU go to church today?" and she was like "well no, we didnt go..." haha it was funny. I just told her "Better luck next week".

(some freebies I scored for attending)

You can check out more pix HERE ( I did pull a few off this website to use on my blog, so kudos to them for letting me share...)

I am SO glad I found out about Podcamp a couple days before it happened & it was really cool to attend and learn new things and make some new friends! Cant wait til the next one!