So What the Heck is a PodCamp, Anyway?

Whether you’ve seen the posters around town, heard about it on Facebook, or from someone else who is planning to go, you got here because you were interested in the Soo PodCamp and in getting involved in the discussion about social media.  If you already know what a PodCamp is, welcome!  Register to attend at the top of the page, and you can also go to the session topic area and let us know the types of things you want to talk about on Feb 20th.  We look forward to seeing you there!

Keep checking back to this blog as it will continue to be updated as we get closer to the actual PodCamp.  All of the blog posts are comment-enabled so let us know what you think!  It’s never too early to get the discussion going.

If you came here because you’re interested, but aren’t exactly sure what a PodCamp is, keep reading.  A PodCamp is a free community UnConference aimed at bringing together new media enthusiasts, professionals, and hobbyists.  If you ever wanted to know more about social media, or how to better utilize it for either business or in any other application, this is the place to be.

But wait, what’s an UnConference?

Well, we all know what a conference is, right? We’ve all been there before – gone to some sort of conference where we were excited to learn something new, and ended up bored out of our minds all day listening to people talk at us.  Or other times the content was ok, but there was another direction we wanted to go in to make it work for us.  And in all cases, there was no opportunity to interact and get what we wanted out of the experience.

And that’s where the ‘un’ part of Unconference comes in.  It takes all the negative things that we’ve come to associate with going to conferences – the long, boring, non-interactive presentations, the set-in-stone agendas, and turns it on its head.  At an Unconference (in this case a PodCamp), you have the opportunity to help shape the experience so that you get the most out of it as possible.

A PodCamp is based on the principles of Open Space Technology.  Developed by Harrison Owen in the mid-80’s and fully outlined in his 1993 book Open Space Technology: A User’s Guide, it is a self-organizing process.  People come together with a common purpose (in this case, an interest in social media).  The whole purpose of the Open Space Technology and the PodCamp is to facilitate the exchange of information.  In order to ensure that the people attending get the most out of it that they can, there is no set agenda going in – so that people are not restricted by someone else’s idea of what should happen.

But just because there is no set agenda going into the Soo PodCamp doesn’t mean that there won’t be one – it just means that the agenda is not set until the people at the meeting decide what it should be.  This is a key difference between a regular old conference and an Unconference or PodCamp – the very way it is organized is to facilitate the best experience for each individual person instead of shoving someone else’s idea of what you should find interesting down your throat.

And why social media?  Because social media has changed the way we go about our daily lives.  It’s called ‘new media’ because that’s what it is – new.  So come, bring an open mind and a willingness to discuss, and see what you can learn about new media and how you can use it, whatever your goals may be.  Share ideas, discuss theories and learn lessons from an audience of experts.  Network, network, network.  All are welcome. Join us!

So know that you know more about what the Soo PodCamp is, register today! It is completely free – we want the most amount of people to be able to attend in order to get the best experience possible.  Refreshments and lunch will be provided to make sure our brains are functioning at their best.  Every person who attends brings their knowledge and adds it to the pool (and everyone has something to contribute, even if they don’t know they do!)

Tagged as: Soo PodCamp, Unconference