BarCampBham 2009 summary

2009-05-03T13:20:00.000-07:00

BarCamp Birmingham was a huge success. I believe there were close to 150 people who attended. What is BarCamp you ask? BarCamp is a camp or meet for people to come together and share ideas. The BarCamp was held at the Innovation Depot downtown Birmingham.The experience was unlike most conferences I have been to. The term unconference was used which was a good description. Most everyone (campers) began to show up around 9 am and we had to be out by 4 pm. The idea is to have presenters provide a topic and topics were placed on a board. You could attend whatever session you were interested in. There were 3 main conference rooms and a couple break out rooms for smaller conversations.

Daniel Walters of Social Media Birmingham presented on podcasting and was a good basic course. Dave Barger of Luna Web presented Twitter and Social Media sessions and was extremely versed and knowledgeable. One of my favorites which didn't come as a surprise was Wade Kwon who presented on Blogging your way to Vegas for Free. Harris Reynolds was also very interesting with his topic on Launching a Start Up in One Week. Tammy Hart of Tammy Hart Designs is very well known in the technology community as the queen of Word Press and presented on that topic. The last session I attended was Access Capital Now by Dominick Wallace which was cut short due to time constraints.This is a brief summary of what went on. The day was packed. The sponsors this year were extremely generous and we were all very thankful. The event was free and provided lunch and t-shirts. If you would like to know more about BarCampBham, visit the website at http://barcampbirmingham.org/.

More Websites for BarCamp:
BarCamp: http://barcamp.org/
BarCamp Mobile: http://barcampmobile.org/
BarCamp Chattanooga: http://barcampchatt.com/

Where is the Media?

2009-04-15T15:54:00.000-07:00

Today I saw a tweet (post on Twitter) from David Gregory of Meet The Press. It said to join him on the Meet The Press website for a "live" conversation. I thought cool, think I'll join in. I did and even though I didn't put in anything major, I did ask a question, hit submit, and presto, there was David with a response. Now I can't tell you how many times I've watch MTP and wanted to scream, ask a question, or just say "what are you thinking".

This lead me to my topic of today. "Where is the Media" or better yet, where is it going. Things are changing so rapidly. David Gregory even made a unbelievable statement when asked for advice for someone who wanted to go into television journalism. David said "go to school to study history and stay on top of the most current events" I may be paraphrasing some but that was the general statement. I'm thinking wow, the media is changing at such a rapid pace that you shouldn't even go into college for it.

Where will television media be in a couple years? What about print journalism which has already took a big hit? With all the buzz about social media, where will we be? As soon as I post this blog there will be something new created.

Facebook, Twitter, Linked In, and the oldie Myspace have changed how we get information. For Twitter there are probably hundreds of applications that work with Twitter. I have been using Twitter Grader (http://twitter.grader.com/) to see how I'm doing on Twitter. I scored a 91 out of 100, by the way. Crazy huh? It is the same with other applications too. There are applications like www.ping.fm that update all your social media or blogs with one post. I have a new Facebook/Twitter/Linked In friend who has an online radio blog. How cool is that? She is good and enjoys it.

Now here's the other question of the day. How do we distinguish between real journalist or just the average Joe posting any and everything? I smell another website, "Credible Online Media Sources". There may already be one, I don't know. I have seen a lot of people who claim to be Social Media Experts. I have even called myself a Social Media Guru but that's only because I enjoy it and know more than maybe the average person. I don't even claim to know everything or call myself an expert.

I'm just raising the question. It is exciting to me but the older generation more than likely hates the changes. What about all the people in a career already in print or television who have to rethink their future. It's tough and I do hate that part. So answer this, "where is the media at right now? Where will it be in 2 years?

Scott Kitchens Media blog

BarCampBham 2009 summary

Where is the Media?