We reflect on the recent Podcast Movement in DC, likened to a "podcast summer camp," and discuss its challenges, from noisy venues to balancing industry presence and independent podcasters.
Dave shares insights from a smaller, more intimate podcast event at a Holiday Inn, highlighting the cost-effectiveness and stronger connections made.
We explore the potential future shift towards smaller, niche conferences, and Daniel proposes innovative ideas like value-for-value-based events using cryptocurrency.
From the power of in-person networking to the benefits of hyper-focused sessions, this episode is packed with insights on how these gatherings could reshape the podcasting community.
Plus, we entertain the idea of a future-focused podcasting conference, bringing together tech advancements and creative minds. So, stay tuned, and let's explore the future of podcasting together!
Find Dave at schoolofpodcasting.com
Find Daniel at theaudacitytopodcast.com
Daniel
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Dave
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Podcast Movement ( https://podcastmovement.com/events/ )
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00:00 - None
00:24 - Podcast Movement Relfections
00:45 - All in One Room
03:28 - Union Worker Woes
04:28 - The Catch 22
10:08 - From Small to Big to Small?
11:37 - Haning With Like Minded People
12:18 - Big Announcements at PM
13:50 - A New Movement to Small Conferences?
15:33 - Single Track Events - Affordable Hotels
19:19 - Niche Shows In the Future?
21:12 - Real Life Niche Shows
23:12 - A 2.0 Conference?
26:16 - Podcamps Back in the Day
29:33 - Why In Person is Better
30:49 - Online Attendance
33:08 - No Agenda Meetups
34:12 - Thank You Supporters
The future of podcasting conferences. This is the future of
podcasting, where we ponder what awaits the podcasters of
today. From the school of podcasting,
here's Dave Jackson. And from the audacity to podcast,
here's Daniel j Lewis. Daniel, future of podcasting
episode number 49, the future of
podcasting conferences. I, I just came back
from Podcast Movement in DC. The capital of podcasting?
Yes. And, or as I like to call it, podcast summer
camp is really what it felt like. It was, I had a
great time. It was great to catch up with a lot of people, met some
new people. And in general, it was a good time, a
little different. They had all the sessions
minus the keynotes were in this ginormous
concrete room where all the vendors were. So the vendors were happy because
everybody was in that room to get to the different stages.
That's the good news. It was rather noisy, and people like to point
out that there was no carpet. And that is true, and I was very, very
happy to not be standing at a booth. Now Lipson did have carpet in
their booth, but if I had to stand there all day on on concrete in
a booth, my feet would be I'd wanna cut them off. So that was a
little different. How they got around it, because it did make it noisy,
is when you went to sessions, they had wireless headphones. And
you could basically just grab a pair and stay in there all day, and then
you would just click a button and it would go to different channels. And, eventually,
you would hear the sound of your speaker, the person on
stage, show up in your headphones. So that was kinda needed. It
solved the problem of, hey. The audience isn't gonna be able to hear me. The
side effect of that was, as a presenter, a, if you
had a massive plosives going on, you had no
idea. And I know I always try to make
people giggle. And so when you kinda tell a joke or something funny, and
you can't tell if it landed or not because you can't hear them, so that
was a little different. That reminds me of the
first podcast movement ever. It was Clinton from
Comedy Forecast, got a few podcasters together, including myself, to do
a comedy routine during one of the
gatherings of the evenings. And so I got up there. I prepared
this whole script and everything. It was hilarious, by the way. Thank you.
I got to hear it before anybody else. And I was like, oh, Daniel's gonna
kill with this. It was amazing. And then I felt
I I mean, I could see a couple people laughing.
I think you were one of them, and maybe someone else could hear me. But
no one could hear me, which was just so much the
metaphor of what podcasting is like, shouting in a noisy room, hoping that
anybody will listen to you. But that's what it was like
then for just that little thing. Yeah. That would
be stressful to do a conference every session like
that. I had the thought of, oh, why don't they do something like
everyone pull out your smartphones, use your earbuds if you already have earbuds
or use this thing that we provide to you and you could livestream it. But
then you would have the delay because there would be the conversion to
digital, the live streaming, the transmission through the Internet, all of that. So that
wouldn't work. So their in person thing, it kind of surprises me
that they would go with that as being less expensive
than probably some other kind of acoustic treatment. Yeah. I
just know when I was working with the New Media Expo,
and we had a session coming up, and we had 4 speakers.
It was a panel, and we had 3 chairs. And so I called,
the guy that was running it. I'm like, hey. We need another chair. And he
goes, are you sure? And I'm like, well, yeah. We don't want
this person that came here to talk to have to stand. And he's like,
oh, alright. And so it was in Vegas. We
had to have a union worker bring over a chair, and it cost us
$300 to have somebody move the chair. And I've heard
Dan Franks talk about podcast movement because, you know, there'll be times
when they'll have free coffee. Know, there's like a coffee station or whatever,
and it's insane numbers of 1,000 of dollars
for free coffee. Because when you've got 2,000 people drinking
coffee and they've all went out the night before to some Iheart
party, there's a lot of coffee the next morning. And there's the
markup too for the event. It always costs more to have
the food brought to the event. Yeah. But it's it's kind of
a catch 22 in a way because this particular one
I've always seen podcast evolutions as like the one
where the big networks go and, you know, they do,
upfronts where, hey. Here's what, you know, this particular
advertising agency can bring, and here are the really popular shows that you wanna
advertise on. They do that kind of stuff, and there are a lot of meetings
at that. And Podcast Movement was supposed to be kind of for
the independent podcaster, and they were definitely
there, but not in the numbers, you know, like in the
past. And some people said, well, it was during the week,
so you had to take off work if you had a job. Other people
mentioned that not only did you have to take off from your job, but it
was the 1st week of school for many people. So that might have kept people
away. And so, consequently, there were a fair number of
people that were from, you know, for lack of better phrase,
industry, where I remember the last two sessions. I didn't get to go to them,
but I really wanted to hear them. One was, like, how to
record a podcast in today's modern situation or whatever it
was. And everyone on the panel was from radio. And I was like, oh,
this is a different point of view. I'd really love to hear this. And there
was another one that was, again, kind of ad agency kind
of panels. And that's fine. I mean, that's a that's one little bubble part of
podcasting. But it seemed like the industry people had kinda
snuck into what used to be the indie podcast.
I'm not sure why people weren't there before, but you it was at the
Gaylord Hotel. And if you've ever been in a Gaylord, it is a
small city under one roof. It's amazing. They're
I mean, it's just you see it. You're like, I can't believe this. However, those
are not cheap even though Podcast Movement always negotiates
to get a a cheaper price. But when they're normally,
whatever, $300, and they get them down to 2.50 a night, that
adds up real quick. And I don't remember what the price was for a room.
But by having that Gaylord, then you do get the industry people in
because they're used to you know, they're big shot smarty pants, so they they need
a big they're not gonna stay at the Holiday Inn or the Motel 6. So
it's kind of a catch 22. You need those people because those are also, in
many cases, your advertisers that will have their logo on the
front page, so you need that. But on the other hand, if you have them
in these really giant hotels, well, then maybe the average
podcaster can't afford it, especially if he has to take a week off
from work to pay for it. So it's it's just tricky how you do
it. You know, smaller venues, smaller hotels, from from what I
understand, and you can talk to this because I know you did a a Cincinnati
event. It sounds like doing a small event
is almost the same amount of work as doing a big event.
It's just a big event has more risk involved because you've got more hotel rooms
that you've paid for and things like that? Actually, I would say no.
It's probably not because well, it depends
on the level of quality that you want to attain.
I did Podcamp Cincinnati. I did most of the work on that.
I had some volunteers helping with a few things here and there, especially day
of, like, for setting up and checking in and all of that stuff.
But organizing it, scheduling it, all of that
stuff, that was pretty much all me. You remember how tired I
was. But bringing up Podcamp, that's a
blast from the past. And the whole reason why we're talking about this in
light of podcast movement, and we were planning to talk about this
anyway before podcast movement now that we just had a podcast movement,
the timing is still relevant. I thought of how it's
interesting to see the well, not rise and fall. It's not
like that but do imagine that on a graph, like the rise and fall on
a graph, but I'm not saying that the rise and fall of conferences
but of the type of conferences that we've had
where in the beginning of podcasting, it was all of
these small conferences. We had Podcamps
all over the place. Now are there any Podcamps, like,
actually called Podcamps at all? I haven't heard of 1 in a while.
It's kind of funny because it does remind me the reason
podcast movement came to be is because
of the New Media Expo had blogging. They had
video. They had podcasting. I forget what else.
But it was all these different genres of content creation under one
umbrella. I have a picture. It's me, Dan, Jared, and
Rob Walsh. And we kinda were all going, wouldn't this be
cool if it was just podcasting? Because back then, when
you were a podcaster, you weren't really because, again, video was really
expensive and insane to even get into. So, that's kind of where
podcast movement was born on. What if we just talked about podcasting?
And now that podcasting is so big, you do have kind of the
smaller podcast or hyper niche, and then you have the
big shows with the big budgets. And in some cases, it's not that they're
celebrities. They just end up being celebrities because they got so
popular. And I think that's something that may be a little
different is like, we didn't see the girl
from caller daddy. We didn't see like, we saw the guy from,
Diary of a CEO. He was a keynote, but you didn't see him after that.
He came in, did his keynote, was you know? Now he might have been someplace,
but I didn't see him. And not that it's really fractured.
It's just there are different people on different levels, and that should
be a good thing if we can get the people that have found
some success to, you know, share with the people who are just starting, that would
be awesome. And I think that shows the growth and maturity of the
industry, where in the early days, it was like, hey. Are
there any other podcasters out there? Let's try to see
if enough of us exist or can travel to the
same place to maybe share a space with another
conference. You know, there might be a podcasting session
at a conference. There might be a podcasting track at a couple of
conferences, like New Media Expo or Social Media Marketing World, these,
like, social media or new media style conferences, and then
podcast movement was born. And at the same time, there were
smaller podcasting conferences. But what it feels like is happening is
we started with these small independent
regional conferences, then we grew up
into the big national and international conferences.
And it feels like now we're getting back into the small
again because some of the things that you said and some of the things I've
heard from other people who have attended some of these conferences is they
often feel like there's no one like them. Like, I
know one person who attended one of these big conferences. He
has a podcast that he does just for fun. He does make some money from
it, but he does it just for fun. And he went to a conference, and
he said, I'm never going to a conference again because it's
all about how do you make money, how do you build a business, how
do you and I feel like maybe he just went to some of the wrong
sessions, but that there was that perception.
And he wanted to go just to hang out with other podcasters
and have the conversations or learn about things like, hey. What do you do
when you feel like you have nothing to podcast about? What do you do
when you feel like your audience doesn't love you anymore? What do you do when
these things or do you ever run into these struggles? And
I see now while these big conferences will continue and I
think definitely should because it's good to have industry
level events where industry level stuff can
happen. And indie podcasters can go to that kind of thing.
And certainly, I think, have a space there and deserve to still be
able to speak there as well. That's where you can hear cool announcements. Like
it was during podcast movement that Apple announced
the new Apple Podcasts on the web. It's not an Android
app, but at this point, maybe that won't actually happen. But it does work
on Android now. So that kind of thing, that happened, it
seems, timed that specifically to happen during Podcast
Movement. And lots of these big companies have the meetings at Podcast
Movement or these other really large podcasting conferences.
Those should definitely continue, and I recommend podcasters make their
way to one of these big conferences at some point. Yeah. That
is a key point because they did have that podcast movement
one evening. I didn't go to the opening kind of networking event. I was
at a, I was actually at NPR watching a tiny desk concert, which
was great fun. And that's because of my podcast story because I
knew somebody who won tickets. But, anyway, I think it was, like, the 3rd
night. They just had they had these big huge hallways, and they
just set up a table and put a sign. It was like, this is the
Christian podcaster meetup. This is the I own a
studio, meetup. There was one for nonprofits,
one for and so it was kind of fun to just go down the hallway
and just network with people. And that really is, I think, one of the biggest
benefits. So you you do kind of get that, is there anybody here like
me? And that's, I think, one of the biggest benefits because
sometimes we just feel like we're the only person in the world that's, you know,
talking about this subject. So when you find somebody else, you're like, oh my gosh.
I'm not weird. There is somebody who still likes this. Well
and that's where I see this new movement of
conferences happening that now we're getting back
into the small conferences, but not small like they were in the early
days where it was just any podcasters wanted to get together with any podcasters.
Now I see those niche podcast conferences happening.
Like, the Spark Christian Media Conference for Christian
podcasters. There are other podcasting conferences
for other niches. And that's what I would love to
see more of in the future is, hey. How about we have
a podcasting conference all about sports
podcasting? And that's it. Every session is something
about sports podcasting. It might be only a 1 or 2 day
conference. It might have only 1 or 2 tracks. That is
okay. When you niche down to something like that, in fact, you
might only want a single track
because if it's already niche, it's very possible everyone who's
coming wants to attend every session in that niche
because they are tightly involved in that niche. Yeah. In the early days
of Podfest, I think they considered the second one. I
considered the first one. But it was in Florida. It was
next to a Ramada Inn that was okay. It wasn't super
fancy. And it was one room. There's one room for it.
And I remember the vendors were on the walls, the back
walls, and then there were tables in the middle, and then you had a
stage. And everybody got to get the exact
same information, and then there'd be a break. And we'd all go out in the
hallway or whatever and talk about what we just saw. And then
after, you know, the break's over, you'd go back in. Same thing for,
Joe Pardo used to do I I think he now calls it Indy
PodCon. Back then, it was called, Mid Atlantic
something, and that was one of my favorite conferences ever. He
always called it Philly, but it wasn't. I don't know where it was, but it
it was, you know, outside of Philly, And there was a Wawa, which is just
an oversized gas station. And if you went across the street, there was
a Wendy's, and it was in a Holiday Inn. And between
I don't mind Holiday Inn. Get more value based than that?
Yeah. And because, really, all we did at the Holiday
Inn, number 1, it was nice that where the
a water at the Gaylord was $9 for a
bottle of water. And at the Holiday Inn, you know,
a beer was maybe $3. And this is probably 10 years ago.
And if you you know, like I said, if you wanna go crazy, you could
go to Wendy's across the street. But I remember by the end of that and
there were probably I'd say a 100 to a 120 at that
one. And by the end of I think you got
there in the middle of the day, like, on a Friday evening. We had a
little meet and greet. There might have been, like, a opening ceremony, and then it
was almost all Saturday, and then everybody went home on Sunday. So it was really
almost a one day kinda thing. And by the end of it, you
had met everyone there. And I met some of those people
at Podcast Movement. Like, I hadn't talked to them in a long time. It was
great because, one guy's name is Raff, and he does a
served podcast. It's all about helping people in the
military transition back into just being a civilian. And
when he told me about all the stories he had, and it's just not as
easy as it sounds, I I stayed up probably till 2 or
3 in the morning talking to him at that conference going, you gotta launch
this thing. Because every time he'd say something, I'm like, that was episode 1. Why
aren't you releasing these? And so you do build
relationships with that. And I think even Joe brought in
food. That was the other thing. He didn't really charge a whole lot, but, you
know, you have to be careful because you do kinda get what you pay for.
But that was an amazing event. And I think,
if I remember right, I think Blueberry, Libsyn, you know, some of the
hosts did help sponsor it because, again, it it's
there's a lot of time put into it, plus you wanna market it and
things like that. So that that's my favorite time. And what's kind of,
I I don't wanna say sad because I'm with you. We need big conferences. It's
nice when we get everyone together. But the minute we have
a really good small event, people are like, this is amazing. And it
makes sense because you're like, I want everyone to experience this great
thing that I just went through. But the problem is when you make it ginormous,
now you've got to find a hotel that will hold you. I was at one
conference, and it was the last day, and people are starting to check out.
And the guy's going over his bill, and he's like, well, I paid for a
resort fee that I never used. He's like, I was in was
in the conference, and he was just going through the bill. And he's like, why
do they have these things at such large hotels? And I was
like, because there are thousands of us now. You can't do
3,000 people at the Holiday Inn. There's there's not that many
rooms. So the bigger the hotel, the bigger the price,
the bigger the risk if they're buying a bunch of, rooms in advance. So it
is kinda tricky when it gets bigger, and, it's a lot of
work. And you think about what can you really fit into
the big conferences anymore because you can't really have
just a full day of a sports podcasting
track or a TV after show podcasting
track or a Christian podcaster track or, you know, all
of these things. There's just not the space for that. And besides that, there
are all of these other things happening at the same time at a large conference
like that. So that's where I see the future of these
podcasting conferences is going to become niche
again as we'll have the small events
of a couple dozen or a few dozen people, and that can be totally okay.
Like, you and I also went to that event that David Hooper hosted
in Nashville several years ago. And
there, he he brought in Little Caesar's Pizza for everyone. It was
at a place where we could have fountain drinks there that we could
easily have during the breaks or anything like that to have with the pizza.
And that was great. I made some great connections there too. And, also,
when it's small like that, it truly does become a
more intimate connection because you can get the audience
involved much more. And that's what they did in that
small one day conference. They got the audience involved.
They got them up on stage doing certain things,
workshopping certain ideas. You can do that a lot more with
a smaller thing. So if you listening right now
have been thinking, I really wish we could have a track
about this at Podcast Movement or Podfest.
Maybe you could do that yourself. Have a conference in your
area. Find a local conference room or meeting
space that's big enough, that's close enough to food, maybe close enough to
some inexpensive hotels. And that could be far less expensive
for people to attend if they want to. You
wouldn't get the big name celebrities, probably
not, unless one of them lives nearby and podcasts about that
thing or is in that niche. But do you really need
that? I think it's these smaller things
that might interest podcasters a bit more sometimes
to go to, not on a recurring basis, but to be able to
try more and more of them. I could see maybe
presenting at something like a TV show or
movie fan podcast conference where it's all about how to podcast
about TV shows and movies. I could present a session there and I could
if I was still hosting a podcast about a TV show, I'd love to network
with other people also podcasting about TV shows.
We've seen Christian podcast conferences. I wasn't able to make
it to the latest one. I really, really regretted that. I really
wanted to be there. I just couldn't make it happen, But that
can be a thing too. And, like, speaking also of in that Christian
realm, I went to National Religious Broadcasters
Convention, an RB show in Nashville earlier in
2024, and I got to speak there on podcasting. And
that is religious broadcasters. It's mostly the
big broadcasting corporations and
ministries there. But I was surprised
that there were even some smaller podcasters, some
independent people looking around, talking to vendors,
going to some of the sessions. A lot of stuff didn't really apply to them.
I'm glad that they got value from my session, which was about how to start
a podcast. But it was that same kind of thing where the indies were in
this space where they could get some value from it but
not the whole thing. The whole thing was too big for them. But
they still got to be inspired. They got to see some of
these people speak. They got to meet some of these people,
these, quote, celebrities, unquote, that they might not have ever
gotten the chance to see, meet, listen to, or anything like
that because it was a big event. But then
at the small events, you get to have the conversations, the connections
that you don't get at the bigger things. So I feel like the
future is going to become small again
in size, but also more focused
with the niches of these different conferences. And even
especially with stuff now like what we're doing in podcasting 2.0,
like the streaming satoshis and all of that, the value for value and
boostergrams and all of that. Imagine a conference, a
whole conference that could work like that. We recently had that music
festival where it was all value for value for the music festival. Imagine a
conference like that where you could get in maybe
for free. Maybe there's a small ticket charge just to
cover certain expenses or something. But then maybe, like, you
distribute your satoshis or whatever currency it is
to the sessions you go to, or maybe they're automatically distributed
to wherever you go. Like, when you check-in on the app into a certain
session, then automatically your, whatever, 100,000
satoshis goes to that speaker. And then for your next session, your
100,000 satoshis goes to them or whatever the value is. 10,100,
whatever that thing is. But that could be a really neat idea of
building a conference like that. I think it should still be niche
enough to attract that kind of audience that could do that kind of
thing. Like, a Bitcoin conference would obviously work with something like
that. But a cryptocurrency podcasters
conference, perfect for something like that because already everyone
going there knows cryptocurrency. They're familiar with
that exchange, and it's just a little bit more of a stretch
for them to do that. So the perspective, I think,
is being opened up by what Podcasting 2.0 is showing
is possible to do. Even just with an RSS
feed that we've discovered, like with the value block and things that you can do
and wallet switching and all of this kind of stuff. You could do that
same thing in a conference. But even without that technical
aspect, I want to see more
smaller, local, niche podcasting
conferences, whatever the topic is.
Because you might get one session on that subject at a big
conference, but you could have a whole conference about that one thing.
Yeah. And the other thing about that is what
if you say, well, I've I've booked this place. It holds
a 150 people, and then we sell out of tickets.
That's when I'm like, well, that's proof of concept. Now you can raise your
your ticket price a little bit and do it more maybe do 2 a year
instead of 1. I would much rather go to a conference
where everything you see is like, oh, this is exactly what I need. I know
Steve Stewart has done that at Podfest. They have a whole
track for editors, and they do try to make tracks. It's usually like
beginner, intermediate, monetization,
promotion. So they kinda try to niche down. But to have not only
to say now, hey. I want to do a a podcast
event for authors so we can talk about how to promote your
book and how to podcast and value for value for authors or
whatever. It's like, wow. These guys are talking exactly, you know, what I came here
to hear. So that would be, be interesting.
And I know you mentioned Podcamps. Podcamp was a really small
gathering. Well, it was intimate. And it was usually
I think in some cases, it was, like, at a library. I don't know. I
only went to 1, and they had it in a very small theater on
a college campus. And the whole point was you'd have I
think anybody could speak, but you had to kind of register ahead of time.
I think I could be it's been a a while. And then you
were encouraged that if somebody started talking and you're like, this isn't for
me, you're allowed to just get up and leave, vote with your feet, and go
find another room. And so I went to podcamp.org. Do
not go there. It hurts your eyes. It's it's a pod it's a
page from, I don't know,
1998, maybe. I don't know. It's it's bad. It's a old weird looking
Wiki. I know Chris is it Chris Brogan was the guy that started those
back in the day? So maybe we need to, reach out to
Chris and go, hey. Let's dust off podcasts. Because they were a lot of
fun. It took a little organization. How long do you think
somebody needs to promote it to get people to show up?
Probably 3 to 6 months from the Yeah. The 3
to 6 month region could be just saying this is going to
happen on this date, location, and schedule pending.
But, like, with the Podcamp, a lot can happen last
minute. It fits into this idea of unconference
comes really from a bar camp was a different idea of
programmers getting together and some people just getting up and doing
a session, some people just sitting together and programming together, and some people
having conversations in the hallways. That's where this kind of unconference
idea comes in where, yes, there might be a schedule, but there are
also blanks that anyone is welcome to fill in that blank. And I've
seen that happen a couple of times before where someone just says, hey. I'm
gonna do a session about this. Anyone who's interested, come down to this
room and join me for this session. And they get a few
people show up, connections made, lots of fun had.
When it's smaller, it doesn't have to be big.
I know that sounds like or super profound
maybe. But what I mean by that is you go to podcast
movement, and you see they've got these huge
props on the stage. And many of them
are branded specifically to that
conference at that location. So it's not like
it's the same podcast movement prop year after year. Well, they did
have a prop like that for a while. I don't think they're using it anymore.
But the branding was specific. They've got
screens all over the place, big fancy lights, all of this stuff.
You know, it's a whole show really, just the conference
itself. A smaller conference doesn't have to be that
big. A smaller conference can be a
projector on a screen, And that's your stage.
It can be smaller. Some of these conferences might even be
the possibility of having a conference so small that you don't even need
a sound system. Although, I always recommend a sound system and
always record whatever you do at a conference, record it.
But there's so much potential in these smaller
niches. I know the default is gonna be like, well,
wouldn't it just be easier if you did it online? And sure. But
I think we can all agree it's not the same. Yeah. And I was trying
to figure out why I identified it. It's because
when you go to these conferences, you end up making memories.
Mhmm. Whether whatever you do even if it's just hanging out in a
hotel lobby, chat with those 4 guys. I remember it was
me, Todd Cochran, and oh, I can't remember. But there were, like, 3
guys. But I remember we were all being super vulnerable. And I was like,
man, if this is being recorded but we're all able to kinda let our guard
down and and really talk about it. And like this last time, I went
to a a tiny desk concert at NPR. I got to see the
Clydesdales with, my buddy, Bruce. I went to lunch with
Monica Rivera. You know? And these are things that you just can't do
online. It's you know, you can do the little networking sessions, and let's all do
an icebreaker. And there's nothing wrong with that, by the way. That's better than nothing.
But I was trying to figure out, like, what's the difference between networking
online and networking in person? I'm like, I think there's just something about
shaking somebody's hand, giving somebody a a hug, or whatever it is. It's
that personal it's just another form of communication, I guess, that
just makes it, I think, a little deeper. Yeah. And I think of how
many conferences, online conferences, and summits that I've
registered for. Do you know how many I have actually attended
to the level of engagement that I would have attended a live
conference? Take a guess. 1?
0. Okay. And I've paid for some of
them too. And I think it's so much is mindset
of some people might think, oh, I can watch this or I can,
quote, attend, unquote, this while I'm doing other things.
And then you just forget or you get distracted or you don't make the
time for it. Whereas if you're going somewhere, you're taking time off
maybe, but you're present physically and much
more mentally because you're present physically. So here's the
question to you, Dave, the challenge. When are we going to
do the future of podcasting conference?
Well, that is a good question. You could do something like that. We could have
a one day conference where every session during the
day, it's a single track conference. Every session is
something about preparing your podcast for the future. Now a lot of
that would be stuff like podcasting 2 point
o things. Some of it could be things about upgrading
certain podcasting technology, like maybe really talking about why
you need to replace your old live music
mixer with something like a Rodecaster Pro or whatever the newest
technology is. Or it could be certain conceptual
things, like how to prepare your podcast
for your death or how to cancel proof your podcast
or certain things like that that are all focused on the future of
podcasting as a whole as well as the future of your
podcast and how to ensure the future of your podcast and
leverage these new things to make your podcast better.
We could do that in a one day conference, maybe even a 2 day conference.
Don't nail us down on it, anybody. But Yeah. Definitely, something like
that could happen. Columbus, Ohio is halfway between my house and your
house now. Thinking that. Yeah. Know, that would be crazy if we
did that because that is also where we supposedly met.
Yes. I think so. A long time ago. Yeah. That would be
interesting. Just an example and, again, it's kind of always
weird when you quote no agenda because their audience is
huge, but they have people doing meetups. Their
audience has their own little, like, gatherings. It's it's not so much a
conference, but it's that, again, physical connection of seeing people eye
to eye. And they're usually at a restaurant, so they're eating food together, and
it just builds that bond. And, you know, it doesn't have to be
super crazy. I used to do the Northeast Ohio podcasters meetup,
and we met, it was really cool, at a local radio station. And so
they let us use kind of their conference room, and and that was cool. But
then when COVID hit, we moved online, and
then we got really used to doing it online because we weren't
eating food. It was just basically hanging out and leaving, and so we didn't really
lose anything by going to, online. But, yeah, the wheels are
turning in my head. Since you looked at this loony old man.
Exactly. Alright, Daniel. Well, we've been gone a little
bit, while I was out and about. Have we received any Boostagrams?
We got a bunch of streaming Satoshis and a couple of Boostagrams from
Sam and CreativityFound. So thank you so much for sending
those, and make sure that you're using a podcast app that can
send value back. So think about what value you got from this
podcast. Consider sending that back through a podcasting 2.0
app. And if you want to make some money, I have an
opportunity for you that Dave has given me permission to share. I have
revamped the Podgagment affiliate program. So even if you
don't use Podgagment yourself to engage your audience and grow your podcast, which I
think you should, but you can recommend it to other podcasters
and earn some nice commissions from it and even some
other cool things that can happen by being an affiliate. If you're interested in that,
I'd love to have you as an affiliate. Dave is an affiliate, and
he promotes it. He gets paid too. I love sending Dave money every month. I'd
love to send you money every month too. You can check it out over at
podgagement.com/affiliates.
And the link will be in the show notes. And I think that'll do it
for, this episode of the future of podcasting. If you
know someone who's been thinking about maybe creating a a
some sort of event or is just interested in
podcasting 2.0 and the future of podcasting, go to that share button
and send it on over to them. We would greatly appreciate that. Or just tell
them to go to future of podcasting.net. But that is gonna do
it. This one is in the books. Keep boosting. Keep podcasting. And
maybe start your own podcast conference or 2.