DISQUS

Bravo Chris, good advice. I bet that certificate program is being offered by a private for-profit institution which is motivated by the bottom-line, not the best interest of the students. If credentials is what you want, better to get more valuable ones like a BFA or BA from a state supported institution and really take the time to learn the art, history, aesthetics, and practice of photography and have a well rounded education. And if one already has a degree, or does not want one, through workshops and/or continuing education and/or extension courses one can learn a lot. There is no need to spend more than the cost of a two-year associates or four year bachelor education from a state-supported institution on a certificate program. The numbers do not make sense. There's a reason why the Maine Workshops are so popular, beginner as well as pro photographers go there to hone specific skills, and over time it's more valuable that a concentrated certificate program. Caveat Emptor! The invisible hand of the market is ruthless, knowledge and information has to be searched out to balance marketing and hype from those trying to sell you education.

I applaud your move to change a token admission fee. For better or worse, in the post-industrial capitalist society we live in, many of us don't take things seriously unless we pay for them somehow. Very few people took "being green" seriously until the Iraq war and high gas costs, even though scientists, economists, and environmentalists have been warning us of the problems since the late 60s. I consider a fee a good way to help determine how serious participants are to really be part of Podcamp, for there are real costs involved when someone says they are coming and does not. The best things in life are not always free, and $50 is by far the best value in media making networking and learning around. The open ledger is quite a nice feature. We should avoid rigid definitions of what is an unconference, for Podcamp Boston still stands out as a very special event and the model of an unconference that works.

the "what am I doing right now" vs. "where my attention is right now" is an interesting choice in terms of using twitter. What I like best about twitter seeing what people are reading and paying attention to, it's a stream I visit once in a while for that.

The viral metaphor is a good one, and just like in biology, there are bad viruses that kill us and good ones that we depend on for life. You say that "viral marketing does NOT require consent" and I would argue that viral marketing has various flavors, some with consent, and some without. Forward to a friend, that's viral with consent. Hotmail, that's viral without consent. The term viral has been used to describe the mechanism that goes beyond traditional word-of-mouth, but to associate "viral marketing" with bad techniques and not make the distinction of types of viral marketing within the category, goes against the origins of the concept and term as set forth in Douglas Rushkoff classic book, "Media Virus" later in Jeffrey Rayport Fast Company article, "The Virus of Marketing."

Yes, I really want Podcast support, since that's 90% of what's on my Video iPod now, and when the time comes to get the iPod Touch... I hope the store has Podcasts for me!

I like the email idea, and lots of people simply listen on the web. I myself graze that way, I subscribe to only a handful of podcasts via iTunes, however, until iTunes learns to reads mail and move the podcast from email to your iPod automatically, RSS will still makes sense :-) the days of single platform distribution is long gone.

Barlow Keener makes excellent points regarding LinkedIn. If LinkedIn added some "Facebook" like features as the photo being described, I would welcome that. It does what it does very well, and it's streamlined and focused. I like that, but dear LinkedIn, lighten up a little, a little fun would be nice like photos and such.

I'm glad Goldie got the humor of my comment, but of course, I was only 1/2 joking. I hate having to have a profile on different sites. The semantic web was supposed to make it easy these things to happen. Time will tell. Software is getting smarter. Now let's see if I can find FacebookSync :-)

I just rediscovered the most amazing social networking tool... my Apple Address Book! Now I would be happy to share it all with friends, and parts of it with groups, so whatever happened to Peer to Peer social networking tools? Why do we all have to go to web sites to share? And so many different sites? There's an entrepreneurial opportunity here for someone... The Sync Address Book with Social Media Network according to rules and categories plug-in?

As someone of is often unable to spend time in front of connected devices (when I'm on a shoot I can't direct or do camera work and Twitter at the same time, nor can I do it when I'm in an intense editing session) I have kept the active social network count low, but there's something about Twitter that keeps me checking in once in a while. It's the specific people who are on it and what they are saying. It starts with the quality of the conversation. Do we need more networks to be on? I'd rather see the good ones evolve to meet the changing needs of users.

Here's Christopher demonstrating the unit: blip.tv/file/286956.

For me it raises a question and thought flow, just as CSS helped us separate content and form in terms of web pages, maybe we need to think about ways of separating the content and form of messages. I should be able to choose how various messages types are routed to me and to what device, with some smart agent helping the process, but that would require that we are able to tag our outbound messages with a "type" like (email | document | IM | Tweet | whatever) something that captures the type and nature of the communication morsel.

There is a clear trend and services like blip.tv are evolving quickly to offer media makers a convenient way to make their video available in a range of format for different services.

Nice intro, Chris!

Bre Pettis & David LaMorte ran with the production of the video, Steve and I were mostly observers (and we might have offered a little advice along the way). I did not really direct... if you want to assign credits I'm really the editor...