Shutdown and Restart

I’ve got PME writeups to write and posts, a bunch of interviews to make into episodes of the podcast, all kinds of various things to do but last night I was so zonky that all I could do was read email and news feeds and then look at PME pictures on Flickr. Yesterday was a rough day at work trying to hold it together but I should be back to a more sane schedule now. I’m up and feel approximately normal today.

I have seen a little bit of writeup here and there about the Saturday night BBQ from Scott Fletcher and Martin McKeay and others (Martin was the wheel man this year.) This was the last year for the “go grab food from Woody’s” style. It was way more organized than last year, with the money and transportation already lined up. I called at 1 PM and asked them how much lead time they needed to have 3 or so party packs ready by 6:30 PM. I called and made the final order when they told me I should, and still it took an hour and half past when I wanted it. The worst part of the whole thing is that both years I have not been able to actually host the beginning of the party because I’m sitting in the damn place waiting for food. I tried to coordinate from my cell in the restaurant but eventually it died and I was screwed. Sorry all you folks who waited and then bailed. There was almost no food left over (we bought twice as much as last year and had fewer leftovers) so plenty of people got fed but I’m sorry anyone was disappointed. Next year, if there is such a thing, it will involve someone else delivering food to us and I’m going to be at the pool partying the whole time.

Next year, with the show being a Friday through Sunday, the whole dynamic is different. Do we have the chill-out anti-event on Saturday night or Sunday or even at all? The engine that drove it the last two years is the lack of official events on a party night that most people are still there, and that situation won’t be present in the whole weekend conference. This will take some thinking. Maybe it will remain Saturday, be more organized and funded and catered in and we can have it be a “destination party.” From here on out, if I’m associated then I’m at the pool the whole time. I hate missing the fun parts of a party I’m helping throw. Thanks to everyone who attended, to Chuck Tomasi and Tee Morris for jumping in the pool and to Tee for doing it naked. People starting chanting for me to do it, and I claimed to suffer from “flickophallophobia” which is fear of photos of my dick getting posted to Flickr. Evo Terra refused to believe that was an ad-lib, but I did come up with the term on the spot. I did slip on trunks in a quick trip back to my room and later jumped in the pool myself, but minus the dangly bits on display.

Even with the disappointments and delay, it was still a great party. Thanks everyone who attended, sorry for those who left unfed, thanks to Martin McKeay for the transportation and Dave Hamilton and Backbeat for paying the bill. Thanks to Scott Fletcher for working damage control during the delay and explaining the history of the event to the newcomers and quelling the whiners. Thanks to Deb Shadovitz for bringing candles – she thought if we have another BBQ we could use them, so she just brought them without knowing for sure there even was an event! That’s the spirit the event is about to me. She also brought Kahlua, of which I partook freely. Thanks to everyone who chipped in, moved tables, carried food, cleaned up trash, made strangers feel at home, made new friends. All y’all rock!

And Back Again

I’m home from PPME 2006 after a grueling day of travel followed by sleep in my own bed and now I get to get up and go to work. It was a fun weekend, but for relaxation this is not the best strategy. Today I’ll try to write up the overview of the expo before I start to forget all the details.

Thanks to everyone I saw the whole time. It was a great show!

Crazy Times

It’s been a nonstop whirlwind since I got up yesterday, and I hadn’t even opened the laptop in the almost 24 hours since the talk. I did a panel with Ray Slakinski at the Podango booth, I met up with Susan Kitchens and we hung out for a while. I had long political talks about voter turnout and the politics of Northern Ireland at various points inside of party situations, kind of bringing the vibe down but what the hey. I can barely keep up with the many people I’ve met for the first time, renewed my acquaintance with or just said hi to and conversed with when neither of us knew who the other was. Today I’m shlepping the Marantz around and doing pickup interviews. That should be fun.

I should note that the gift shop/sundries shop in the Ontario Marriot has the most reasonably priced toiletries of any such store I’ve ever seen. I forgot my saline solution in my travel bag, and it was cheaper there than if you buy it at the Piggly Wiggly, rather than being the traditional $17 of the “where else are you going to go?” hotel store model. Thanks!

Information Overload

The biggest bit of stress I have out of the whole Podcast Expo is remembering people. I’ve talked to so many people, met so many last year, received so many comments and audio bits and logos over the last few weeks. If I meet you and don’t immediately recognize your name, or the name of your show or your face or the fact that we have met before, please don’t hate me. My memory is like a sieve and I have had my capacity to remember stuff swamped with an order of magnitude over what I can assimilate. I’m not a dick, I swear, just overwhelmed.

The Journey Begins

I’m sitting at the gate at MYR. Because I’m a travel spaz, I went ahead and got here plenty early and decided to chill. Since there is free wifi at the gate, it made more sense to pack and check in several hours before the flight left than to answer email up until time to leave. I’m just answering the email here. I’m bringing audio equipment, and I figured I’d get the hand search of my carry-on. I ain’t checking the Marantz MPD 670. I don’t trust the TSA and the baggage handlers that much. The surprise is not that I got the hand search this time, but that I didn’t last year either direction. I have a tackle box full of wires and screwdrivers and such. If I saw this on the xray, I’d sure as hell hand search it.

I’ll be laying over in the ATL for a few hours, and then flying Hartsfield to Ontario. It would really be odd if there weren’t any podcasters on this particular flight, so I’m trying to think of something to bring them out of the woodwork. If I had thought ahead, I’d have worn a more podcasty shirt. I’ll think of something between here and there. Last year, Chuck Tomasi was on my connection from wherever (Cincinnati?) to Ontario. Who will it be this time? With any luck, it will either be someone I know by sight or that knows me by sight.

When I land, I’ll be going straight from the airport to the hotel to check in and then across the street to the speaker’s reception. I’m going to work on the talk more in the 10 hours before I get to Ontario. Dear Bob, I hope that I feel like it is done by then. If not, I might nip back to the room for a little while this evening to work on it. Either way, I’ll spend a little time in the hotel bar hanging out and shmoozing. Look for me there if you can.

I’m excited, about 1/100th as nervous as I was last year about the talk, and ready to have a good, enlightening, networky, fun, and uplifting time. See you there!

EGC Clambake For September 25, 2006

Here is the Bittorrent link and direct MP3 download for the EGC clambake for September 25, 2006.

I play a song from the upcoming Michelle Malone album; I discuss my session at PME and give the framework for what the talk will be; I play a song by the late great Nikki Sudden; I talk about Jon Kincaid and play a snippet from his show in which he mentions me; I discuss my problems with the Podcast Circle Jerk; I play a snippet from Smart City about balance in work and life; I mention the passing of writer John M. Ford and play a sad Brian Jonestown Massacre song; goodbye;

Today’s egregious factual mistake: Jon Kincaid’s heart attack was in 2004, not 1994.

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To sponsor the show, contact BackBeat Media. Don’t forget, you can fly your EGC flag by buying the stuff package. This show as a whole is Creative Commons licensed Attribution-NonCommercial 2.5.

Links mentioned in this episode:

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Pros and Cons

I’ve had to decline a heartbreaking number of invitations to come to conventions and/or conferences this year. In several cases, I was invited to speak or lead sessions and I just couldn’t do it. Being in a job situation without vacation contributed a lot, where I would have to not only pay my way plus lose several days pay. Being exhausted for a big chunk of the early part of the year also didn’t help, which led to me skipping some things that I could have driven to. Here’s a tally of things I have said no to, every one of which I wanted to attend:

That’s the downside. Here’s the upside: in the latter half of the year with a new lease on life, a new work situation, vacation days and a little more breathing room I’ll be attending more events.

Podcast Expo y’all know about. Converge South was a big blast last time. It’s where I met Amanda Congdon and Mario Librandi, first met Dan Conover and Janet Edens in person, got to hang with Ed Cone and buy Dave Winer breakfast right after he sold Weblogs.com. My video of the event is still out there. I expect to have a good time and will try to make a point to meet and say hi to Elizabeth Edwards, renew acquantances with the Greensboro blogging contingent, eat my body weight in BBQ at Hoggard’s house and generally pass a good time.

I’m also looking very forward to going to Orycon and participating in the programming. I hope to carry the Marantz with me and interview writers and other people there like a banshee the whole time I’m out there. I went to almost every Orycon when I lived out there, and I’ve returned for a few since. When I was telecommuting to Portland, I made it a point to schedule a work trip that coincided with the con (free flight for me). I’ve been back for one on my own dime, but this is the first in a few years. I’m happy to see that they’ve moved the con from Jantzen Beach to downtown. Jantzen Beach is nice and all, but it was a huge drag to try to do anything in downtown like go to Powell’s – particularly if you didn’t have a car. Since they have this great bustling and walkable downtown, it sucked to not be able to take advantage of it. Now you get it both – hang out at the con at the riverfront and also walk across the Morrison Street bridge to Montage (if it is still open), and so forth. I might even try to renew my favorite lunch jaunt – a bus ride down Burnside to Future Fantasy and gyros at Foti’s (again, if they are still open.) I used to do that every week or two and I miss it. Best of all, with any luck I get to see old friends like Jonny X, Mark Bourne, Mary Rosenblum and the whole PDX crowd.

So, all in all I’m looking forward to working a little more enjoyment and travel back in the mix. Doing nothing but working in your home office 70 hours a week is fun and all, but getting out and about and spending time with my friends and internet acquantiances is good. If you see me out and about, come talk to me!

Update: Added dates. Let’s hang out, PDX folks!

Send Me Your Logos and URLS, You Devoted Amateurs

Just to clarify even more, you people who podcast for the love of it, send me your logo to dslusher@gmail.com if you have one, an URL to your web page if you don’t. If you do multiple shows and they all fit that standard, send me all of them. If you do a show for your employer that you get paid for, and a personal amateur podcast on your own time – send me the logo or the URL for the amateur one. Don’t procrastinate, kids, do it now because I got a late jump on this – having only decided to do this a few days ago. Be better than me, don’t delay.

To reiterate, my talk is Friday September 29th in room 200ABC at 10:30 AM. I hadn’t noticed this before, but I get to open this track. I hope to do what I can to set a tone for this particular slate of programming – the “podcasting as a hobby” track which to me is really the “podcasting for every motivation in the world except money” track. Come see me, please.

PME, Amateurs, Love

It’s getting towards crunch time for the Portable Media Expo. My talk will be Friday September 29 at 10:30 AM in room 200ABC, titled “Amateur Means You Do It For Love”. I hope to have a little EGC and AmigoFish schwag to give away to those interested, so if you come by there will be a (slight) material benefit in it for you. It will be highly interactive, so if you’ve got something on your chest to get out this would be the session. If you didn’t, you wouldn’t be podcasting anyway.

As I said in the last show, I’m collecting logos/screenshots of those podcasters who do this for love. The standard for this isn’t whether you have or would like to make money. If you could be given a guarantee tomorrow that you would never make a dime (any any more dimes) on your program, would you continue to do it? If the answer is yes, you are who I’m looking for. Send me your logo to dslusher@gmail.com. If you don’t have a logo, just send me the URL to your show and I’ll take a screen shot. I’ll be playing all the logos on the screen behind me while I talk, so come join in the media barrage! Spread the word about this, if you would please. Tell your friends to send me logos and URLS, post in your knitting podcast message boards or whatever. Thanks.

EGC Clambake For July 30, 2006

Here is the Bittorrent link and direct MP3 download for the EGC clambake for July 30, 2006.

I wish my niece a happy birthday; I play a song by Ozma; I talk about getting myself organized with the GTD system and a Hipster PDA (PAA, really); I play a song from an Amy Ray solo album; really, that’s it, not much on the agenda today.

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To sponsor the show, contact BackBeat Media. Don’t forget, you can fly your EGC flag by buying the stuff package. This show as a whole is Creative Commons licensed Attribution-NonCommercial 2.5.

Links mentioned in this episode:

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EGC Clambake For July 11, 2006

Here is the Bittorrent link and direct MP3 download for the EGC clambake for July 11, 2006.

I wish my brother a happy birthday and talk about him and me playing online poker; I play a song from an Amy Ray solo album; I talk about PayMeToBlog and Open Roadtrip and play my interview with Scott Shawcroft and Brandon Hines of Open Roadtrip; I play a song by Alana Davis; I talk a little about creating for the love of it, I beg you for your feedback and spitball the general theme for my PME talk; I go out with my theme song of upbeat defiance by Ms. Michelle Malone; bye bye.

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To sponsor the show, contact BackBeat Media. Don’t forget, you can fly your EGC flag by buying the stuff package. This show as a whole is Creative Commons licensed Attribution-NonCommercial 2.5.

Links mentioned in this episode:

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Interview Me!

I’m back in the interviewing ring. It’s kind of odd how I go months between being interviewed by anyone, and then I get a few in a few days. This has happened multiple times, and it’s happening again now.

Last night I was interviewed by Tim Bourquin about the session I’ll be doing at Podcast and Portable Media Expo. Since it’s still several months off, I have thought about the themes a lot but not in the specifics so much. As such, there was a little tap dancing while we talked but I think it went well. Talking about it helped refine my thinking a little, and I think much like last year I’ll kick around draft versions of the talk in the podcast and let people provide their feedback and hone it that way. It was really successful and satisfying working that way last year.

Today, I was interviewed on camera by Scott and Brandon of Open Roadtrip. As they travel from D.C. to Savannah, they spent last night in Myrtle Beach and around lunchtime we met up at the river front in Conway to talk podcasting and new media and open culture and creative commons and such. I was a little over my head at certain points when it got legalish and policy wonky and such, but I tried to soldier on. I did read a little from my hymnal, talking up the value of creating media for the sheer pleasure of it and for the beneficial effects it has on you. Between the two interviews, I think I’ve figured out the skeleton of my talk.

Scott and Brandon will be posting all the raw footage, audio and photos from their trip so when my interview is available (it might be a while) I’ll link to it. They have an interesting possibility in assembling the documentary. They are taking footage of themselves doing the road trip as well as the interviews. I think the two narratives might just work quite well together. And, if you don’t like the job they do you can always edit together your own cut. When you look at their footage from Conway, South Carolina the bit with them fishing a frisbee out of the marina was shot by me. Send the blame for the shakiness, bad framing and the inability to work the zoom my way.

Speaking at PME

I’ve been invited again to speak at Podcast and Portable Media Expo, about which I’m quite happy. My talk will be Friday, September 29th from 10:30am – 11:30am. I like this better than the previous one because I can get in, do my talk as one of the very first things and then simmer down for the rest of the conference. Last year, my talk was toward the end which gave me a long time to think and worry about it.

The tentative title is “TRACK 4: Podcasting As A Hobby – For Those Who Create Purely for Enjoyment”. This is certainly in my beat and kind of follows on from my previous talk about connecting with an audience. I have to turn in my abstract and stuff today, which sort of snuck up on me. I had several days to prepare but was busy with other things and now have to do it this evening. Procrastination R Us, of course. I’m not going to do the exact same thing I did last year with the slide show of faces, but I might be willing to do a similar thing with logos of shows. The hardest part of all this is writing the abstract today and having it actually represent what I talk about in 5 months. I have a lot of thinking to do and I might well change my mind on what I want to say in that time. I’m wide open for input for what people want to hear in such a talk. Leave me comments, friends.

I’m thinking about altering the title to something more value neutral than the slightly tilted one I was provided. The one thing I sincerely want to avoid in this talk is creating an underclass or second tier of podcasters the way about 3/4 of mainstream news coverage does. You know the kind of story, the one that has as a subtext (or even text) “There are some serious grown ups trying to suck money out of this and then all these knuckleheads who do this for free because they LIKE TO! How crazy is that?” If I have one bit of agenda here it is to acknowledge and celebrate the legitimacy of pursuing this for the sake of edification of yourself and others.

EGC Clambake for December 14, 2005


Here is the Bittorrent link and direct MP3 download for the EGC clambake for December 14, 2005.

This show is entirely songs from and an interview with Simon Steadman recorded last month at Portable Media Expo. I play songs by both Steadman and the Dharmas. Thanks, Simon!

You can subscribe to this feed via RSS.

This episode is sponsored in part by the fine folks at iPod Observer and Reel Reviews! To sponsor the show, contact BackBeat Media.

Don’t forget, you can fly your EGC flag by buying the stuff package. For the month of December, $25 of your purchase goes to the Mercy Corps.

This show as a whole is Creative Commons licensed Attribution-NonCommercial 2.5.

Links mentioned in this episode:

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PME Talk Audio is Posted

My talk at Portable Media Expo has been posted, and you can download it from the page of all Saturday sessions. I gave it a cursory listen and the sound is pretty good. The downside is that the best moment of the whole thing is lost because there was no microphone available for Swoopy’s comment for the audience. Some of the audience questions were recorded, when I could get my lavalier mike up to them, but Swoopy was way in the back of the room. Oh well, believe me it was powerful.

If you listen, let me know what you think, please please please.

EGC Clambake for November 16, 2005

Here is the Bittorrent link and direct MP3 download for the EGC clambake for November 16, 2005.

Let it be known that I am indeed aware that I used the word “fantastic” about 15 times too many. Sorrry.

I talk about the Portable Media Expo, my talk and the vibe of the thing in general; I play a song by the Gentle Readers; the interview with Phil Torrone of Make Magazine; I tell the story of meeting the bomb disposal guy and turning him on to Tiki Bar TV; I play a song by Paul Melancon and toodle.

This episode is sponsored in part by the fine folks at iPod Observer and Reel Reviews! Don’t forget, you can fly your EGC flag by buying the stuff package. For the month of November, $25 of your purchase goes to the Mercy Corps.

This show as a whole is Creative Commons licensed Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 1.0.

Links mentioned in this episode:

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CNBC Update

According to Michael Geoghegan, the CNBC piece from PME will be today on “Closing Bell” between 4 and 5 PM EST. I’ll be taping it and can get the audio off of it, but have no way to do the video. Can anyone in the nerdosphere capture that?

Update: To clarify, I’m wondering if anyone can capture this and snip it down to an MPEG or MOV of just the PME segment. I should be watching it for myself