Thanks to all who attended the Seattle Podcasting Meetup in October. With many of us freshly back from the Podcast and Portable Media Expo, there was a lot to talk about. Additionally, Buzz and Mike were recently at
“Demo” and had observations to share from that event as well.
Attendees included:
- John Calderon The Xen Show
- Ricardo Rabago – High Octane Trading Radio – Organically Speaking
- Andrew Schlicting – PRWeb Podcast
- Buzz Bruggeman – Buzznovation – Active Words
- Travis Petershagan – Crap Monkey Podcast
- Leif Hanson – Bleeding Purple Podcast
- Phillip Lee
- Mike Demer Pluggd.com
- Luke Stapely Game Addicts Hotline
Everyone enjoyed the expo in Ontario, California and seemed to take away different things. Ricardo believes that there is a lot of opportunity right now to offer consultation and education in the podcasting space. Leif really enjoyed the hobbiest track at the expo and was re-energized by Dave Slusher’s session on doing it for love. Would you podcast if your audience was small or non-existent? Don’t get overly caught up in sticking to your show format or building brand and remember why you’re doing it – for the love.
Phillip noted a presentation on podcast demographics concluded that many of the early podcast listeners have dialed into a handful of favorites, and no longer look for new podcasts. I confirmed that my podcast listening habits have followed that trend. However, I also shared a story about how I was recently having trouble with the sync between my aggregator and my device so I clicked on a random podcast for testing purposes. Later, I found the new content on my device and gave it a listen. To my surprise, it was a great show and I am now a regular listener of that podcast (incidentally, that podcast is The Cranky Middle Manager Show). The experience got me back into the experimenting mode. Mike Chimed in that pluggd is definitely looking at content discovery and helping to expose new podcasts to listeners.
After our discussions about the conference, Buzz brought up the notion of the “experience economy.” As our material possessions grow more reliable and have longer life spans, more and more of our income will be spent on experiences. Luke agreed and offered up the fact that the video game industry is in the forefront of catering to the experience economy. Andrew asserted that PRWeb works hard to provide news in ways that the consumer wishes to experience it. According to Andrew, “You have to be narrow in who you want to reach out to, starting with the headline.” Depending on your personality type, you will want to interact with information in different ways. An analytical person may be right at home with data heavy material or downloadable PDF files, while a creative type would often prefer to receive photos or audio interviews.
There was a lot of other stimulating conversation at the meeting, but it wouldn’t be fair to those who attended if I shared it all here 
. I look forward to seeing you at the November meetup; until then, happy Podcasting!
