John Durham met with me at the New Media Expo and talked to me about podcasting in California Schools. John is from the California Technology Assistance Project (CTAP). According to CTAP’s website

The California Technology Assistance Project (CTAP) is a statewide educational technology leadership initiative, providing assistance to schools and districts in integrating technology into teaching and learning. In developing CTAP, the earlier SB 1510 Education Technology Act programs were restructured in order to place control at local and regional levels.

John is working with California schools to introduce new technology and especially podcasting. The Brent Coley’s class at Tovashal Elementary in Murrietta, California provides an excellent example of podcasting in our schools. The ColeyCast is Room 34’s very own podcast! Recorded by the students, each broadcast highlights some of the exciting things they’re learning in the classroom. If you want to subscribe, here’s the feed: http://feeds.feedburner.com/coleycast.

You can check out a sample podcast from Mr. Coley’s class below.

 

 Digital Podcast 23 [10:53m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (1441)

 

 Sample of the ColeyCast Podcast [6:23m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (203)

Technorati Tags: podcasting, ctap, John Durham, podcasting in schools

I visited with TubeMogul while I was at the Podcast Expo and Mark Rotblat, director of marketing for TubeMogul, spent a view minutes telling me about TubeMogul. The interview is available below.

TubeMogul is a website where you can upload your video once and then it uploads it to numerous video sites like YouTube, Daily Motion, Blip, Yahoo, Google, Myspace, MetaCafe, Revver, and Brightcove. The workflow is relatively simple, once you have created accounts at all these sites.

You just upload a video file to TubeMogul and then add a title, description and tags. Then you hit the upload button and the site distributes your video to all these other services. TubeMogul provides you with links to the videos and the code from each site that you need to insert the video into your web page.

Why would you want to distribute your video to all these sites? Well, it became clear at the Podcast Expo that some videos do better on different sites and unless you know which site gives you the most views you are probably missing out on your sites potential.

And TubeMogul helps out here as well, by providing analytics about views of your video by website. I was amazed when I tried uploading a “how to” video. 65% of the views came from Yahoo Video. I never would have guessed that Yahoo would have that kind of traffic, but it seems to work best there. I imagine it differs a lot by genre, but thats the reason you need to use a service like TubeMogul.

The service is free and Mark tells me that at some point they plan on offering a premium version that will provide revenue for the company.

TubeMogul seems like a great idea and it works well. So if you are into publishing videos, check out TubeMogul.

Technorati Tags: TubeMogul, Podcast Expo, PodcastExpo, PNME, Podcast Expo 2007, PodcastExpo2007, PNME2007, video upload

I ran into Bruce Sharpe, the inventor of the Levelator, at the Podcast Expo and he was kind enough to spend a few minutes with me for an interview.

Have you ever recorded an interview in which you and your guest ended up at different volumes? How about a panel discussion where some people were close to microphones and others were not? Then you need the Levelator.

It’s software that adjusts the audio levels within your podcast or other audio file for variations from one speaker to the next. And once you use it you will think it is MAGIC. No podcaster should be without the Levelator.

My thanks to Bruce Sharpe for sharing the Levelator with the world. If you need some help from Bruce you can contact him at Singular Software.

Technorati Tags: podcast expo, pnme, podcast and new media expo, podcastexpo2007, pnme2007, levelator, bruce sharpe, brucesharpe

Howard Lindzon, the creator of Wallstrip ( a stock market video podcast purchased by CBS for a reported $5 million ), was the kickoff keynote for the Podcast and New Media Expo. Tim Bourquin, founder of the Expo, interviewed Howard to find out more about his experience.

Howard’s approach was to produce focused content that had strong appeal to his core target market, hedge fund managers. He decided on short, appealing video that hedge fund managers would talk about creating a viral effect for the show.

He posted it everywhere they could to extend exposure. He spoke about the difficulty of getting advertising sponsors as a start up and how hard it was. He described how this changed when CBS purchased the show.

The show had 20-25,000 people watching the show at the time CBS purchased the program. He described how important the community is to the success of the show, he attributed 80% of the success to the community they built around the show. From start-up to selling to CBS, was about 8 months. He didn’t regret making the decision to sell because he knew his partners had lots of other opportunities and this was a way to create a win for all.

Technorati Tags: Wallstrip, Howard Lindzon, Podcast Expo, Podcast and New Media Expo

The Association for Downloadable Media met first thing today at the Podcast and New Media Expo. The meeting attended by over 100 attendees was focused on the mission, the membership, membership benefits and the process for electing leadership of the association.

Susan Bratton, of Personal Live Media, kicked off the meeting and explained that the mission of the association is to help podcasters monetize their content by developing standards in terms, measure and pricing models.

Bryan Moffett, of NPR, The association currently has 65 members and is looking for new members. Individual memberships cost $150 per year, corporate memberships cost $1,000 per year and not-for-profit memberships are $150 per year.

John Havens, of Blog Talk Radio, presented a brainstorm of potential benefits that are under consideration for adoption
Performance metrics
Audience analysis
Tutorials, whitepapers
Boilerplate contracts and documents
Media kit example
List Serve

Chris McDonald, of Wizzard Media, spoke about the high level mission as it relates to research. He thinks that they might be able to the central coordinating body for industry research.

Mark McCrery, of Podtrac, spoke about elections for board members. There will be 22 members of the board and their are 13 currently nominations for these positions. The committees will be advertising standards, measurement, outreach & education, terminology standardization, membership. Nominations are due a week from Monday. Nominations will be posted on the website and the members will be able to vote on the website.

A number of people spoke of their backgrounds as it relates to their nominations for potential board positions.

Matt Snodgrass, of Porter Novelli, wrapped up the meeting with a call get involved and the importance of podcasters to promote the organization and to spread the word internationally.

If you would like to join the association and help influence the direction of podcast and new media monetization, you can join the Association of Downloadable Media.

Technorati Tags: Association for Downloadable Media, Podcast Expo, Podcast and New Media Expo

Podango, the online video and audio network, is hosting a conference within a conference at the Podcast and New Media Expo. Here’s their agenda:

September 28 Open Discussion

Leesa Barnes (Moderator)
C.C. Chapman - Unkeynote Address
MommyCast - Advantages of Forming Niched Podcast Networks Why MommyCast & Friends?
Paul Vogelzang - Selling Podcast Sponsorships without CPM!
Michael Mennenga - Forming Podcast Networks
John C. Havens - Transparency
Jason Van Orden - Promoting Your Podcast

September 29 Watch the Pros

Scott Bourne (Moderator)
Paige Heninger & Gretchen Vogelzang - MommyCast
David Lawrence - The Latest AT
Dusty Wright & Richard Burns - CultureCatch
Evo Terra - From Commentors to Contributors: Building Rabid Fans
Rich Harrington - Creating a Graphic Identity for your Podcast
Scott Bourne & Alex Lindsay - Mac Break: Behind the Scenes

September 30 Podcasting Essentials

Jason Van Orden (Moderator)

Podcasting 101: Planning
- Dan Carlin
- Rich Harrington
- Leesa Barnes

Podcasting 101: Production
- Stacey Bond
- Summer Brooks
- Paul Colligan

Podcasting 101: Publishing
- Dan Kuykendall
- Charles Stricklin
- Doug Kaye

Technorati Tags: Podango, Podcast Expo, New Media Expo

The recently formed Association for Downloadable Media (ADM), an organization focused on providing standards for advertising and audience measurement for episodic and downloadable media, will hold its first in-person meeting at the Podcasting & New Media Expo in Ontario, CA. The meeting will be held at 7:30 a.m. PDT on Friday, September 28, 2007 in Ballroom A. Anyone can attend who is registered as an expo attendee.

Agenda items to be discussed include the goals of the organization, the continued membership drive, committee formation action plans, first priority deliverables as an organization, potential membership benefits for podcasters, and the process for the nominations for board seats and committees. After the initial member conference call August 22nd, this is the first in-person meeting of ADM paid and prospective members and is shaping up to be a productive gathering. ADM has been successful at attracting members and has a roster of 50 publishers, agencies, vendors and metrics companies. The current membership list is posted on the site at http://www.downloadablemedia.org.

This meeting will be an opportunity for new members to bring forth action items for the ADM to address. It is open to all interested parties, but members will have priority for their contributions because of the limited meeting time. Since the meeting is open, it is an excellent venue to consider membership for those prospective members interested in seeking additional information about the organization and its goals. All industry professionals interested in monetizing their content are encouraged to attend.

Nominations for the 4 Executive Committees (Chairman, Vice Chairman, Secretary and Treasurer), 11 Advisory Board seats and 5 Committee Chair positions are now open. Any current ADM members may nominate themselves or other members for office positions on the executive and advisory board slots or as committee chairs. Details on the nomination and voting process can be found at http://downloadablemedia.org/membership.html.

The Levelator was introduced to the podcasting community at the Podcast Expo by Gigavox Media, the company commercializing the software made to run IT Conversations.

The Levalator levels the sound in your podcast wav file.  If one part of the wav file has high levels and others have low levels, the Levalator fixes that problem.

 Here’s an example of the before and after Levelator process.  The top row shows a wav file that I had done some work on to level, probably 20 minutes worth of work.  The bottom row shows what the Levelator did in about 15 seconds.

The Levelator is free from Gigavox Media.  Thanks guys!

PodcastStation was named the best all inclusive podcasting software at the Podcast Expo.

This is an impressive software package that looks like it should make podcasting much easier. You can easily mix in music tracks and sound effects right from the control panel. It handles the RSS creation and it can FTP your files where they need to go. If you want a great and inexpensive podcasting software app you should check out PodcastStation.

They offer a free trial verision. I encourage you to give it a try.

(BTW. I liked the software so much that I signed up for the affiliate program. If you use the links above Digital Podcast will make a few bucks.)