Purely Random

This weekend, I’m going to attend PodCamp Pittsburgh. I only heard about the event on NPR while driving home from work yesterday, but it’s exactly what I’ve been looking for lately. PodCamp falls into the genre of the un-conference. These are a big deal in the Silicon Valley and aim to dismiss what traditional conferences have become: big commercial affairs that seem to focus more on volume than actually assembling a synergetic group. In an unconference, anyone who wants to claim a session can sign up for the room and go for it—maintaining much of the low barrier to entry that typifies the Internet.

My motivation for attending is twofold: 1) my site lacks interaction with related sites, and 2) I need to get out and meet some new people. Regarding (1), the primary benefit of blogs and small-scale sites is the interaction between a related cluster of sites: the section of the blogosphere in which each cluster appears. The main problem with my site right now (aside from a shortage of regular posts), is a lack of community. I’m sure there must be others in Pittsburgh who maintain sites that pertain to getting the most out of life in Pittsburgh; PodCamp is a good chance to find them.

So that’s my story: I’m going to PodCamp. Unfortunately, I’ll miss a few sessions on Saturday morning—I invited some people over to my place for a book club type thing. The good news is that most of the Saturday morning sessions pertain to PodCasting rather than web communities, where my interests lie. In any case, I’ll be at the social/kick-off tonight: maybe I’ll meet some fellow Pittsburgh bloggers there.

This entry was posted on Friday, November 10th, 2006 at 8:55 am and is filed under Ongoings. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.