Teach42

I’m incredibly tired, but I have to make sure that I get this all down before I fall asleep. I just got back from Apple’s introduction into the podcasting arena. I thought it was going to be just a little social mixer with some Apple reps addressing people’s questions about podcasting. I thought it would be the perfect place to meet some of my fellow podcasters and say hello over a beer or two. I thought that it would generate some buzz, but still be dominated mostly by geeks.

I could not have been more wrong.

When I came up the escalator, I saw a massive line. I figured it was probably the line for drinks or for the free food. Just out of curiosity, I asked someone what they were in line for. You guessed it, Apple’s podcasting presentation. It was not a small line. In fact, it was a line for the second presentation. Second? Yes, it was so popular that they agreed to do it a second time. I also found out that it wasn’t a social gathering, nor was it a mixer of any sort. It was a presentation put on by Apple to describe how they were entering the podcast arena. Not what I expected at all.

I did decide to wait in line and got in to the second session. I’m not positive but I believe they even had to turn some people away. While waiting in line, I wound up answering quite a few questions about what podcasting was all about. It quickly became apparent just how excited people were by the idea.

There weren’t enough seats to go around though because many people from the first session stayed to hear it all a second time. Yes, you read right. How often would you stay to see a presentation twice in a row? Lights went dim and the Keynote began (yes, the Keynote. There is intelligent life beyond PowerPoint).

The main presenter was someone named Barnaby Wasson, the Director for Community Outreach and Special Research Projects at Arizona State University. He started simple and kept it simple. He kept it light, he kept it fun, and most of all he did an incredible job of describing to people just how exciting podcasting can be.

Anyone who reads this blog on even a semi-regular basis knows how critical I am of bad presentations. My tolerance level for people who read directly from PowerPoint slides is incredibly low. However, this presentation was exceptional. The visuals accented the information he was discussing. Often an entire slide was comprised of no more than three words. When you have something to share, that might be all you need. They said they were posting the slides as well as podcasting the audio. Definitely worth picking up and checking out.

After the first slide or two, he paused to play some clips from selected podcasts. I was completely stunned to hear my voice and Broadband connection coming out of those speakers. The first clip he played was from one of my shows. I had no idea they were going to be doing that, and to be honest I was thrilled to even be a small part of Apple’s coming out party. So long as I’m being honest, it was a major ego boost as well.

The presentation covered what a podcast is, how you used to subscribe to them, and of course how you do it now in iTunes 4.9. Ordinarily, I’m not a big fan of blatant sales pitches. I know they don’t sell iTunes, but it’s still a way to get people to buy in to their music store. However, in this instance I do have to agree that it’s quite simply the single best way to subscribe to podcasts. Certainly has my seal of approval. They also went over how you create a podcast in Audioblogger (not the greatest way, but definitely the simplest), and covered some of the new features available for podcasts through Apple products. In particular, the ability to break a podcast up into chapters and associate images with each chapters is extremely cool. It’s great to have built into iTunes, even better to be able to take it with you on an iPod photo. However, I don’t think it’ll work on MP3’s so people will probably have to create two files, one with chapters and one without.

He did reference Dave Warlick’s Educational Podcasters Network, which is a fantastic directory of ed related podcasts which I thought was a big bonus. I don’t remember exactly how it came up, but he did also suggest that people run their feeds through Feedburner. I found that a pretty interesting endorsement coming from Apple. Could there be some affiliation there?

I know that he covered several other topics, but I’m exhausted and not really thinking too clearly right now. Let me just wrap things up with a few comments. People wanted to applaud through the entire session. To say it was well received is a gross understatement. This is going to be huge. Dave had better be prepared for over 400 people at his Podcasting workshop on Thursday.

Finally, I did somehow manage to run in to Kelly Dumont of The Educational Mac. One of the main reasons that I went to the event was to meet him. we’ve talked over email, I’ve been reading his blog and listening to his podcasts and now I can finally put a face to the name. We talked until I realized that it was getting much too late. Honestly, we probably could have chatted all night long. Just as fantastic a guy in person as he is on the podcast. Fantastic way to cap off a fantastic day.

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