Yet another great learning day.  My main focus today was Podcasting, since we are starting to do a lot of podcasting at work and I’m about to launch The Digital Media Dude Podcast (yes…I know you can hardly believe it…)

So here is the list of classes I took with a short description of each.  For the full day’s notes, please get them here.

• 9:00am to 10:15am – Finding Your Voice; Finding Your Podcast Topic
• 10:30am to 11:30am – Keynote – James Thomas, Editor of Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan.
• 10:45am to 1:00pm – Marketing Your Podcast
• 2:00pm to 3:15pm – Final Cut Pro – Effective Titles For Video Editors
• 3:30pm to 4:45pm – Building Buzz & Traffic For Your Podcast Through Social Media
• 5:00pm to 6:15pm – Automating Your Podcasting Workflow

Finding Your Voice; Finding Your Podcast Topic
This seminar dug deep into why you want to allow your podcast’s listeners to dialog with you.   It covered the tools of “engagement” such as blog comments, audio comments, emails, forums and widgets. 

The seminar emphasized blogs and the instructor recommended that a Blog be set up for your podcast so that people can “read” your podcast as well.   It’s very important to offer show notes and a place to allow your listeners to express their opinions.

Something interesting that I didn’t think about, the instructor recommended that you have a “call to action” in every podcast.  That is, tell them to do something, like go visit your blog, or go post comments, or suggest that they send you ideas for future topics.  This will give your listeners a perception of empowerment and make them feel like they are truly part of your podcast. 

One great tool he mentioned for your podcast listeners was adding voice mail capabilities for comments.  That is, allow users to call a phone # and leave you a comment through their cell phone.    He mentioned one service that is free called K7.net.    I have not checked it out yet, but I will very soon and may even write a blog entry on it.

Keynote – James Thomas, Editor of Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan.
Wow!  Wow!  I was on the floor laughing.   I really enjoyed this keynote.   I saw the Borat movie once, and though, I found it very funny, there were some parts that were questionable in regards to taste.  However, putting my feelings about the movie aside, it was really nice listening to a real movie editor talk about his creative and technical process.

His talk was a great mix of both technical and creative with movie scenes thrown in for the mix.  He showed scenes from the movie (no, he did not show the naked fighting scene…thank goodness!)  and then explained his process.  He spoke about Avid editing and his story editing process for that particular scene.

On a side note, I was pretty far in the back, but I ended up using my new Tamron 28-300MM (at full 300MM focal length) on my Canon 30D to take his photograph.   I love this new lens!

Marketing Your Podcast
So you have a cool podcast, but only you and your mom are listening to it.   Well, you can easily change that if you follow some simple rules.

• Use a blog so that search engines start indexing your podcast.
• Add your podcast to directories such as iTunes, Podcasts.Yahoo.com, PodcastDirectory.com, Odeo.com and PodcastAlley.com
• Get listed in Goole.com and Yahoo.com by using Search Engine Optimization.
• Create an eMail list and email people about your podcast.

Some sites / links he recommended included:

http://freekeywords.wordtracker.com
http://bigcontact.com/feedplayer.php (it’s free)
http://www.feedicons.com/
http://www.jasonvanorden.com/26tips\
http://podcastingunderground.com
http://promotingyourpodcast.com
http://www.toprankblog.com
http://www.phoneblogz.com/
http://www.edisonresearch.com/

Final Cut Pro – Effective Titles for Video Editors
Ok, out of all of my classes I took so far in these two days, this was the most worthless of them all.  I mean completely.

The guy tried, don’t get me wrong.   He did, but what he showed could have been done by my son.

This seminar covered how to create Titles in Motion for video editors.    I was hoping to learn some great strategies and techniques for lower 3rds, intros and bumpers.

All I got out of this class was some basic information that I can find easily on google.com.  Not some real world “Here is how I do it in my production workflow” type of information.

Oh well, they all can’t be great!
 

Building Buzz & Traffic For Your Podcast Through Social Media
Another great seminar taught by the Jason Van Orden, the same guy that taught “Marketing Your Podcast”.

This seminar had lots of information on how to create “buzz” for your podcast and/or blog.

Actually, this seminar mainly concentrated on Blogs, which is fine with me because I’m interested both on a personal level (with this blog) and also because we are looking at Shea Homes to start doing blogs and I want to make sure I can recommend the best way to go about creating them and also marketing them.

Information included how to publish your blog, what software to use (he highly recommended WordPress.org), the different social networks you should be listed on (such as MySpace, YouTube, Twitter, Technorati, etc.) and how to increase linkage to your blogs.

One interesting point that he mentioned was the new term SMO, or Social Media  Optimization.  This is different then SEO (Search Engine Optimization).  SMO is the process of optimizing your content on different Social Networks so that you appear high on their search results.
 

Automating Your Podcasting Workflow
I was not too excited about this class, though I like Philip Hodges from the Digital Production Buzz (I listen to his podcast all the time) I was not impressed at how he presented the information.

The goal of the seminar was to explain how to take the entire workflow of creating a podcast and automated.

The problem was that #1, he only concentrate on Apple stuff and #2 he did not give enough detail.

Regardless, he recommended a few sites to check out:
PodcastMaker – Potion Factory – www.potionfactory.com
Podcaster’s RSS Buddy – www.tolley.info/rssbuddy/index.html

Well, that’s it for my 2nd day at NAB 2007 Post|Production World.   Tomorrow I have another full day including walking the show floor!  I can’t wait to see the new Final Cut Pro 6 and the entire new Final Cut Studio 2 system.

Until tomorrow!

Chau!