Today shares his thought on Podcamp Pittsburgh, the death of blab.im, and what geese, Ringo Star, and Michael Phelps can teach podcasters. Comments 888-563-3228 The Messengers Are Coming! If you live within driving distance of Akron, Ohio you might want to make a trip this Saturday the 20th of August as the Film Crew of The Messengers (a documentary about podcasting) will be joining our Northeast Ohio Podcasters Meetup group from 3-4:30. They are going to share their story, some cool footage, and film out meeting as well. For more information go to www.neohiopodcasters.com If you haven't heard the behind the scenes podcast about the making of the movie, check out www.themessengersdoc.com/podcast Here is a recent write up about the podcast and movie (and it's not done yet). Attention Podcasters' Hangout Family... I'd like to take a moment and recognize Dave Jackson from The School of Podcasting for spending what has to be an ENORMOUS amount of time editing and producing a podcast that highlights "behind the scenes" for an upcoming film called The Messengers: A Podcast Documentary. The film is the brainchild of Executive Producer Chris Krimitsos and I also serve as Executive Producer myself. This film has taken us and the crew - Director , D.P. Willie L. Harper, and Lead Film Editor Saulo Zayas - literally into other countries to highlight the stories of how podcasters have used this medium to make a MAJOR impact in their communities and/or through their audience. This episode chronicles the back-story of our experience flying down to Guatemala to support and film mobile podcaster Shawn Smith's Now Is The Time Mission, where the organization serves villages living in extreme poverty through building and installing high efficiency stoves, laying down concrete floors inside homes, donating *tremendous* amounts of clothing, school supplies and other goods as well as lead a daily VBS program for all the kids of the villages they serve in... Shawn has been doing this every single year for over TEN years. At the end of each day, Shawn sits down to interview the volunteers about their experience and as you can imagine, these conversations get raw and emotional. These podcast episodes are then uploaded and shared with loved ones back home. This episode of our podcast for The Messengers: A Podcast Documentary highlights this trip and some our own experiences -- and emotions. I hope you take the time to listen to it and enjoy it, and also enjoy the level of production podcasting PRO Dave Jackson has poured into this. Thanks Dave, you are freaking amazingly talented. Join the email list and get access to behind the scenes footage by going to www.themessengersdoc.com Podcamp Pittsburgh In a slide show of the previous 11 years of Podcamp Pittsburgh, you could see where this event was well attended in the past. This year they had approximately 50 people. NOW HOLD ON, before you judging things just by numbers. For me, my goal is to find individuals who want to launch a podcast. I started off my opening keynote speech asking the intimate crowd how many of them already had podcasts. Very few hands went up. When I asked how many people didn't have a podcast yet, TONS of hands went up. So while this was an intimate group, it was a perfect group for me. So judging things by numbers only goes back to people looking at producers who love to share their huge numbers. They might think, "I wish I had those numbers" but what you don't know is how engaged that audience is. While there is no spam in podcasting, some people may not be that engaged with the host. For example, I get very little interaction from my Weekly Web Tools podcast. I love the show, and I love my listeners, but it's a fact that my School of Podcasting Audience is more engaged than the Weekly Web Tools audience. As always I go to events to network with some folks, Saturday night I got to meet some very cool people. I also got to hang out with some of my awesome Libsyn people (Elsie Es