Episode number 12 is now up and it’s all about my passion for creativity. Innovative creativity. Being different creativity. Strategic creativity.  No matter what you call it, no matter the type, it’s all creative coolness.

And I’m excited to say that I’m changing the focus of my podcast to reflect this.

I also talk about pronouncing my name, my push for Facebook-like employee directories at work with photos, Nuit Blanche in Toronto aaaaaand I give you a challenge.

SpudCast #12 - Creativity and where to find it

Technorati Tags: creativity, social media, nuit blanche, Toronto, spud cast, podcast

Over at Chris Brogan’s blog entitled “Your Blog This Weekend“, he takes a break during the weekend and lets his reader post a blog post in the comments section of this post (how many times have I written “post”?).

What a great idea!

I’d do that too if I had lots of readers :) Sometimes it takes time to build an audience/community. In the meantime, I posted a post (there’s that word again). To my delight, someone had previously posted (can’t help it) about a funny story in his animation class.

Did someone say animation? You can read Chris’ post and all his readers submissions by clicking this fantastic link.

Happy Blog Day!

Coincidentally (as far as I know), today is also Blog Day. I found out about it through Sean McGaughey’s twitter. The occasion calls for bloggers to list 5 blogs for the purpose of introducing them to their readers.

1. A Catholic Canadian
I’ll start off by listing Sean’s blog since that’s where I heard about Blog Day today. It is also my first time finding out that he’s blogging now! Also known as the Duct Tape Guy, Sean has a podcast about songwriting called For The Sake of the Song.

2. Atomic Suburbia
One of the best Canadian podcasts out there because the host, Daryl Cognito, also known as the PodDog, really makes you think– particularly about what it means to be Canadian as he himself is searching his place in this wonderful country of ours. Chime in on his blog with your thoughts of Canada.

3. Generation Exploitation
I seem to be on a Canadian kick here because this is another Canadian blog (avec accompanying podcast). Aside from comedy records, the host plays his collection of unintentionally funny vinyl from yesteryear. They’re hilarious!

4. MammaSteph’s Musings
Ok, the pattern has been set. This is the 4th Canadian blog I’ve listed :) The musings of a mamma… named Steph. Ok, she’s a good friend of mine who blogs about being a mother in this day and age. Her posts are really funny.

5. Media Network Weblog
Breaking the Canadian pattern is a blog from the Netherlands, the country that each year, sends tulips to our capital city as a thank you for helping liberate the Dutch in World War 2 (a great moment in Canadian history which sadly is pretty silent) and also sheltering the Dutch Royal Family (read about it here). Media Network was a terrific show on Radio Netherlands Worldwide about shortwave radio programs. It’s in blog format now so everything you ever needed to know about radio and tv in the world will be found on the Media Network Blog.

Technorati Tags: blogs, Blog Day, Chris Brogan

On twitter today, community builder extraordinaire Chris Brogan asked everyone on his Twitter list to show off their screengrabs.  On an earlier post he asked artists to show off their desktop wallpaper designed by them.

Mr. Brogan, sir, the above his my desktop wallpaper desinged by me :) The cartoon character is named Franky Banky and he will be starring in my upcoming comic book which I have also begun podcasting about.

Technorati Tags: Chris Brogan, desktop wallpaper, twitter

I hate it.

I really, really, really, really, really, REALLY wish Adobe made a Mac version of Audition. THAT was the best audio program I have ever used. Audition was intuitive. Audition was money well spent. Totally worth it. Didn’t mind the high price.

Audition lives up to “you get what you pay for”. I no like.

For instance, I have a nice wav file of my podcast’s first episode. Converting it to an mp3 in Audition is a breeze.  In Audacity, no matter which setting I use (96-210kps), I sound like I have a cold. I had to resort to copying it into iTunes to convert it to a 96kps mp3. Maybe I’ll try 128 to see if the file size increases much.
Everyone seems to rave about Audacity. I just can’t see why.  Though, I’m open to being enlightened, I really need to fork some money over for a real audio program.

As for my podcast, actually, there are 2! And a 3rd in the future.  The first one is a revival of SpudCast which I faded last year. I’ve redeveloped into talking about my adventures in writing, drawing and publishing a comic book. I also plan on talking about my other drawing and online branding adventures.

The other podcast is called The Laughing Podcast. I’ll talk about that in a future post once I have my first episode uploaded.

And the third will be revealed once I get content!

I’ll list the rss feed and stuff in my next blog post.

Technorati Tags: SpudCast, Audacity, Audition, podcasting, podcast

I am back home from Podcasters Across Borders in Kingston (not Hamilton) and what a blast! Mark Blevis and Bob Goytech (and their wives) did a tremendous job putting together a great convention.

My brain is too tired for me to write deep, deep stuff so all I will say is it was fantastic, I learned a lot and have a metric tonne of new ideas that I can’t wait to get started on (darn my fulltime job!).

If you are a podcaster, or just listen to podcasts or just have an interest altogether, this is a convention you don’t want to miss next year.

There were so many funny (and therefore engaging) presentations with very skillful use of slides (I always knew PowerPoint sucked big time but I never, ever would imagine how great Pages is). I can tell that Neil Gorman will go far. Ditto about Jack Ward of Sonic Society and Andy Bilodeau of AndyCast.

One thing I will take with me from PAB2007 is the sense that podcasters help their community.

Speaking of community…

At one point, someone had lost their digital camera. Everyone pitched in some money so he could get a new one.  Later, his camera was found but what to do with the money? Donate it to the school we already donated over 80 children’s books to! Are podcasters a great bunch of people or what?

I have renewed faith in my podcasting ideas and will proceed with them. Look for the relaunch of SpudCast (thanks to Sean McGaughey) and the new Laughing Podcast…

Technorati Tags: PAB2007

Podcasters Across Borders Day 2 just wrapped up and I am back in my hotel room blogging about today and yesterday (see immediately below). I haven’t had a chance to absorb everything so I will write off the cuff. Forgive me.

Podcasters Across Borders, or PAB2007 as it’s tagged, is a podcasting conference for Canadian and American podcasters. Actually, any country in the world. It is superbly organized by the funny duo of the Canadian Podcast Buffet, Mark Blevis and Bob Goytech. This is it’s 2nd year and I heard so much positive reviews of last year’s I thought I’d give this a try. I enjoyed PodCamp Toronto tremendously and I am happy to report that so far, PAB2007 is enjoyable and most importantly, of course, I’ve learned a lot. Plus, all of us attendees donated more than 80 children’s books to a local school.

While today was the meat of the conference with seminars throughout the day, yesterday was like an introduction and meet and greet– on a cruise on the St. Lawrence iver (directly behind my hotel room). Very nice. ‘Twas fun meeting a lot of new people with such a wide variety of podcasts. The sights were terrific– and of course, by the time I decided to start taking photos, I disocvered that my batteries went kaboink. Andmy spares were back in the hotel room. Fortunately, Dwight from the Much Ado About Nothing Podcast was very kind to lend me some and I was able to take two photos before the sun went down (see above and directly below).

I also got to meet Daryl Cognito of Atomic Suburbia who is also a big fan of newspaper comic strips, Melinda Mason of the My Marilyn podcast, Charles Cadenhead of Mostly News and so many others (my apologies that I didn’t mention your name. This blog post is getting long!).

Of course, the stars were there, Mitch Joel, Julien Smith, Hugh McGuire, Tod Maffin and a last-minute addition, Christopher Penn. Unfortunately, I couldn’t draw with Chris Brogan as he couldn’t make it.

What did I learn so far?

A lot of people think my idea for a podcast is a great one (still not announcing it here yet) and although I had planned to do some recording at PAB2007, and although I kept reminding myself NOT to forget to bring my minidisic recorder, I did, however, forget to bring MY MICROPHONE! AARRRG!!! A lot of people liked my idea for my podcast– what encouragement!

Social networks don’t care about technology.

48% of leisure time is spent online.

Podcasts with background noise are more engaging.

People will create their own online communities to support your product. If my Spud comics ever hit the big time, I will need to keep this in mind.

Creative Commons Licensing in Canada. Mark Blevis approached the Law & Technology people at the University of Ottawa to write up a Canadian podcasting guide on fair dealing (or fair use as they say in the US). creativecommons.ca

How podcasting is going to save the world. How can my skills as a podcaster help solve problems? This is exactly what I was pondering the past few weeks (also to blogging and the rest of my online concoctions). Hugh McGuire did a fantastic presentation about this.

The Arc of the Whale Model in storytelling. Sonya Buyting of Sassy Science put on a very informattive presentation that will be very useful to not only my comics, but Twitter Spud as well. Well, to anything really. Podcasts, radio documentaries, etc. It’s basic storytelling 101 that I was never, ever taught in school.

The view from my hotel window (6am)

Technorati Tags: PAB2007

I am in Kingston and tonight’s the first night of PAB2007. A.K.A. Podcasters Across Borders a.k.a. podcastersacrossborders.com. It’s my first time in Kingston and my hotel (and hotel room) is right on the water’s edge on the shore of the St. Lawrence River. My room is right beside the terrace and lots of seagulls :)

Technorati Tags: PAB2007

edit: the show name issue has been fixed 

I WAS really excited about starting up my own show on UStream.tv. I have it all planned out (I won’t reveal it yet) and got my webcam out, signed up, filled out my profile and clicked “My Shows” to set up my “standard show”.

I thought of a name and filled out the necessary form fields and uploaded a show picture. Clicked “Create show” and got greeted with a message saying “Show name already in use, please choose another show name”.

Huh?

Ok, fine, maybe there is someone else with my name who thought of the exact same title. It could happen. There are pages and pages of Daniele Rossi’s in the Rome phonebook. Surely, one of them speaks english and yes, coincidentally, even he would be using UStream to set up a show called Daniele Rossi’s Adventures in Drawing.

So I did a search but no shows come up with that name. Not even my name. What’s the problem then? I try other variations and still got the same message from UStream. “Show name already in use, please choose another show name”.

I try gibberish. Surely, no two people will type the same random keystrokes. Apparently it happens on UStream.

Maybe it’s a Firefox thing. I fire up Safari and go through the whole shbang again. “Show name already in use, please choose another show name”.

No FAQ, no support on UStream’s website. What is it with social media sites and a lack of support? Ok, you become the bestest thing since last week’s bestest thing and you can’t grow with the flow? Not even a faq?

A search on Google returned no matching results. Maybe it’s a bug? I sent them an e-mail but I wonder how long it will take for them to reply? In the meantime, does anyone know what is causing this?

Technorati Tags: UStream.tv, UStream

Thus ends my first MESH Conference. All in all, most of the information wasn’t new to me, but of course, i’ve been reading up on various aspects of social media like a mad man since the end of February but MESH offered a teriffic opportunity to network.

I made 2 for my illustration freelance venture, quite a few for my day job, and I learned a lot about other conferences such as Enterprise 2.0, TorCamp, BarCamp and DemoCamp. I also heard about tonnes of philanthropy sites, green sites, and interesting start ups such as sneakerplay.com. I will blog about all those in the future.

The most important thing to remember, in my opinion, about social media is not what will be the next best thing, or if you should abandon MySpace or if Twitter will last. The most important thing is you have to put the community first. Think of them as your client. Your customers (regardless if you’re making money from them or not).

Putting your community first means to think about what your community wants.

Don’t bother with adding cool things without checking if your community wants them. Don’t worry yourself over being visionary or cutting edge. Just… do whatever it is your community wants. Listen to your community. Listen to your audience.

The catered food at MESH was also good.

Technorati Tags: MESH07, social media

I am attending the MESH Conference 2007 today and tomorrow here in Toronto. Met a lot of people and made some contacts. Including one potential cartooning contact!

 All panels today seemed to fall under a few common themes: philanthropy on the web, is it the end of the newspaper? and what the kids are doing online these days. While PodCamp Toronto was focused on the tools of social media and building communities, MESH is all about the theroy behind why and how social media is so popular and will never go away. No more one-to-many communication in the hands of Madison Avenue and Hollywood (it’s about time, too).

Yes, the Internet and social media has empowered us mere citizens to do great things like bring down improve corporations and totally disrupt marketing, but this has happened before in history. During a panel about how deep are the conversations on the web today, I learned from Mark Federman that Gutenberg’s invention of the printing press disrupted everything by empowering mere citizens in writing and printing their own books. People started publishing their own stuff. Also, Plato didn’t like the idea of a phonetic alphabet giving the illusion of wisdom (!). And in the telegraph days, well, that changed everything, too (I highly recommend a book called The Victorian Internet). Fascinating stuff. I want to learn more.

On to day 2!

[tags]mesh07[\tags]