PodcastCon UK: Compelling content and great music at NevilleHobson.com
Fanny More  |  by www.nevillehobson.com. All rights reserved. 21.11 | 5:43

Posted on November 20, 2006 at 11:32 UK time One major impression I have is how different this conference was compared to the first UK podcasting conference in its clear focus on the business mechanics of podcasting, so to speak.
That was reflected in the panel discussions during the day - creative podcasting, the business of podcasting, podcasting and the citizen journalist, and podcasting new music - and the who participated.
Panelists and their presentations are one thing, audience participation is another, and there was plenty of the latter.

And some great live music, more on which in a minute.
Tom Hall of , the travel publisher, describing in some detail his company s strategic approach to social media and how he sees podcasting as another tool to build community between the company, travellers and travel writers. of podcast: No podcast should ever be longer than 30 minutes.

Brad backed up his opinions with stats on people s short attention spans and abilities to retain information. (Of course, I disagreed - if people find your content compelling, they ll want to listen to a podcast that s longer than that as long-time listeners to will know.) of , which is perhaps the most credible example in the UK of what podcasting can do for a small business in building community and directly supporting sales.

Heather provided some highly credible views on how she measures the effectiveness of her podcasts as an advertising and sales-leads channel compared to traditional advertising in trade magazines (podcasting wins hands down, she says). of and of The Guardian talked about the blur between journalism, blogging and podcasting as part of the panel discussion on , prompting one audience participant to offer his definition of the difference between a blogger or podcaster and a journalist: bloggers/podcasters do it for free. , founder and CEO of record label - and recently elected to the board of - gave a compelling presentation about his internet-era record label and how it s different (hint: his firm s tag line is We are not evil ).

The image at top is from John s presentation. I took a look at some of the exhibitors there, notably promoting their new for the (and which works on all N series phones, although it s not recommended for downloading podcasts on non-wifi phones unless you have deep pockets for the bill). You can talk to Nokia and users about Nokia podcasting via .


Also the on show from . Essentially it s a condenser microphone married to 1-gig of flash memory to make a wholly self-contained professional recording system. Very nice indeed and I can imagine it s practicality in news organizations.

Podcasters may find it terrific, too, if they do lots of face-to-face interviews.
Which now brings me to the music on Saturday.
First up was and the powerful and compelling voice of lead singer Ellie Mules.

I promised them that I d play one of their songs in today s edition of , and it will be in there. The band gave away a CD of five podcast-safe tracks, and I ll be playing Forget You today.
Next, .

Delightful music, best described by Jimmy himself: I want to pull at peoples heart strings and engage them to think about life and death as we travel on the journey through fear and darkness to love and hope.
Finally, the raucous, energetic and wholly engaging . Lead singer Ed is a passionate singer, belting out the songs that garnered ecstatic applause from everyone.

The band s music type and style remind me of the (now that was a very long time ago!) with Ed as a modern .
These live performances at a gig like this from three talented groups of people, independent artists all, illustrate their understanding of how podcasting (and podcasters) can be a viable channel to market for their music, broadening exposure to their creativity.


was there at the end which is a huge endorsement for British music podcasting. My colleague took arguably the which would make for an excellent caption contest.
Congrats to organizers , , and .

A terrific event!
Hey Neville, great review of the day.
I really enjoyed myself on Saturday - it was particularly enjoyable meeting and working with the bands, who all gave fantastic performances.

Daren and I felt quite privileged to be doing the live sound for them and it was great to be able to record their sets. Hopefully some of those recordings will be up on the Podsafe Music Network in the not too distant future
All in all, an excellent day.

  • : It was great, Mike, wasn't it?

    Those three bands were tremen...

  • : Hey Neville, great review of the day. I really enjoyed my..

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  • : This sounds great Neville, shame I can't make it. Will def.

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  • : You're certainly very hard to please, Taran! You see hype, ..

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  • First, the millio..

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  • : I guess the next step is to find a publisher that would like..

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  • : Congratulations on your new endeavor and approach. In the me.

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