I had the pleasure of attending the 2007 New Media and Podcast Expo in Ontario, CA.   The show goes on for 3 days, Friday, Saturday and Sunday, September 28, 29 and 30.   I attended all the class sessions on Friday and tomorrow, Saturday, I will be back video taping the entire show floor, including interviewing all of the vendors there.

This is my second year video taping for Tim Bourquin, the CEO and Founder of the New Media Expo and my third year attending the show (I’ve attended this show since it’s inception back in 2005).

Keep reading to find out all about the show, the keynotes, the classes I took and what I learned.  It was a great day!

Keynote Address

Tim Bourquin, founder of the Podcast and New Media Expo, interviewed Howard Lindzon, creator of the Wallstrip podcast, a Saturday Night Live style show targeting the financial industry. 

Howard explained how he sold the podcast, after only 8 months since it’s inception, to CBS for $5 million dollars.

He had $600,000 dollars to start the podcast (he got some financial backing since he knows lots of people in the financial industry).   Some of his recommendations for podcasting included:

• Place your podcast everywhere.
• Focuse on a niche
• Keep it short
• High production value.
• Make it searchable.
• Push your podcast “hard”.

You can check out his podcast at http://www.wallstrip.com/theshow/

Building A Podcasting Network From The Ground Up: Lessons Learned.

Instructor: Mignon Fogarty of Grammar Girl Podcast

Mignon Fogarty started a podcast called Grammar Girl, which she focus on, of course, grammar.  saWho would have thougth that a podcast on grammar would become popular?  But it did.  Extremely popular.  So popular that she decided to create other podcasts with different hosts to take advantage of the huge audience she had with Grammar Girl.

She partnered with a major Book Publisher and started what is known today ast QuickAndDirtyTips.com, which currently has 5 podcasts shows on differnet topics.

She is looking to expand the network with at least 2 to 4 more shows.  She does accepts pitches for shows.   She said that the show would be owned by them, but the host would be free to market themselves and push whatever they where experts in, however, if they decided to leave the show, the show would stay with them and they would replace him/her with another host.

She belives that listeners want:

1. Shorter podcasts
2. Scripted podcasts
3. Standard format
4. Something useful but entertaining
5. Release the show consistently and on time!

Bloggers play a big part in pushing podcasts, so she heavily promotes her podcasts with bloggers.  She also recommended to give something away as often as possible, this will encourage listeners to come back.  Also, interactivity is very important, such as polls, voice mails, newsletters, blog posts and always, always answer all emails.

Try to get your podcast mentioned on other podcasts and make sure you have a great website to support that podcast.

How does she make money?

1. Advertising
2. Books (audio and print)
3. Content licensing (e.g. The Street)
4. Partnered Podcasts
5. Peripheral products (e.g. t-shirts, cards, ring tones, songs, educational products, videos)

Integrating Podcasts Into Marketing, PR and Corporate Communications Campagins

Instructor: Eric Schwartzman of iPressRoom.com

Eric spoke about the Pyramid of Exclusivity, which at the top of the Pyramid, there are the influencers who need to convince the industry analyst who talk to the Nation News Media, who talk to the Press who talk to the Regional and Local News Media who ultimately go to the Target Audince. 

Of course, this is the traditional (or mainstream media).  New Media is the “influencers” (e.g. podcasters) going directly to the target audience (e.g. listeners).

He spoke about a holistic approach to New Media which includes the following:

1. Your website.
2. eMail Campaigns.
3. SEO
4. RSS Feeds
5. Social Bookmarking
6. File Sharing (Flikr/YouTube)
7. Social Networking sites (MySpace, Facebook)
8. News Groups
9. Newswires
10. Measurements

For podcast tips, he recommended:

1. Know what “success” is going to be for your podcast.
2. Know how to measure your success.
3. Knock out multiple podcasts during production, but release them over time.

Metrics in New Media: Showing Results and Judging Success

Panel: Paul Vogelzang, Greg Cangialosi and Matthew Snodgrass.

This class got me lost, since I’m not that much into stats, however, there were a couple of items I got that I believe where interesting:

Ways of sizing audiences:

1. Download request per episode
2. Download completes per episode
3. Unique download requests per episode
4. Unique download completes per episode.

Ways of measuring engagement, impact and response:

1. Subscribers (RSS and email)
2. Podcast website visits as a percentage of downloads.
3. Blog, forum and page activity as a percentage of website visits.
4. Podcast website page views and time spent on site.
5. Impact - Ad awareness, call to action responses, sales and referrals.

Ways to measure consumption:

1. Partial Plays
2. Complete Plays

New Media For Special Interests

Instructor: Don  McAllister of ScreenCastsOnline.com

Out of all the classes I took today, I loved this one the most.  It was the perfect combination (or mixture) of technical and business.   The instructor knew his stuff and knew how to teach it.  Don creates Training On Demand videos (he calls them screen casts).    Anyone that has been reading my blog for a while now, knows that I love creating training videos and I make lots of them at work, so I found his class very informative.

Below is an explanation of his business.

ScreenCastsOnline.com Buisness Model:

1. Free content
2. Free Shows (Resolution of 640×360 and posts them every 2 days)
   • Via RSS and iTunes
   • Full show list on website - categorized and searchable.
3. Extra Membership
   • $45 to join including 6 months, $25 renewal
   • Member only premium content shows.
   • Full screen cast each week.
   • Hi Definition Resolution and iPod version.
   • Access to entire back catalogue.
   • Multiple secure RSS feeds for year and resolution.
   • Secure members website with direct links to all shows.
   • Fully automated payment system through Paypal.
4. Sponsored Shows
5. Affiliate arrangements with software vendors
6. DVD Sales
7. Corporate screen casts (creates screen casts for other software vendors that they place on their site).

ScreenCastsOnline Tools:

1. Record and Capture
   • Snapz Pro X (I personally use this and I love it)
   • iShowU (Check it out at http://www.shinywhitebox.com/home/home.html) He recommends this one over Snapz Pro X due to the saving time is almost immediate.  SnapZ Pro X is slower.
2. Preparation
   • Know your subject or at least your topic
   • Analyze the best approach
   • How to teach: Basics - Advanced - Re-enforce
   • Create your materials
   • Have your scenarios, documentation and special graphics ready.
3. Recording
   • Set screen resolution to match the capture
   • Set a standard video resolution and frame rate
   • Use the “animcation codec” for lossless capture.
   • Record in small segments.
   • Record high quality audio.
   • Avoid “dead screen” as much as possible.
   • If you screw up, record again (however, look at the last clip to keep continuity).
   • Create a new user account for capture.
   • Have a clean menu bar, clear desktop and clear folders.
   • Use Real Time Effects:
     • OmniDazzle
     • MousePose (Check this out.  Very very cool!)
4. Encoding
   • H.264
     • Scaleable, efficient and excellent results.
     • It’s becoming ubiquitous due to iTunes.
     • Flash now supports H.264.
   • QuickTime Pro
     • Inexpensive
     • Fully featured
     • Ideal for single jobs.
     • Can also be used for trimming and basic editing.
   • Compressor
     • Part of Final Cut Studio
     • Presets and droplets
     • Multiple Jobs
     • Batch processing
     • Distributed encoding
   • What values to use to reduce the file size?
     • H.264 Codec
     • 12 to 15 FPS
     • Resolution - Reduce in multiples:
       • 1280×720 (original)
       • 960×540 (3/4)
       • 640×360 (1/2)
       • 320×180 (1/4)
     • Data Rate: Automatic or experiment.
     • Quality: Medium to Best
     • WARNING: Apple presets makes huge files!

Well, that was my day at the New Media Expo 2007.  I thoroughly enjoyed it and learned a lot.  I can’t wait until tomorrow.  I’m going to be video taping the entire show floor and visiting vendors to see what’s new.  

On Sunday, I’m heading on to an all day Macro Photography seminar, so look for a blog entry on Macro Photography sometime next week!

 Until the next blog entry!

Cheers!

- Marcelo Lewin

The Digital Media Dude

http://www.thedigitalmediadude.com/