Jason Burns’ Blog

This weekend I attended the “Podcast Hotel” conference in San Francisco, California. I guess I should say “un-conference” as that is how like to refer to it. I have to say that my experience was less than satisfactory. In all fairness a lot of it was not really the fault of the conference, but some of it was definitely poor planned.

Who has a conference and does not consider parking? I was forced to park on the street and go out and feed the meter every hour. When I asked the lady who was taking registrations, her response was “Oh, yea, sorry about that.” Unfortunately I decided to drive down at the last minute. The drive was actually kind of fun. Who doesn’t like blazing across Nevada at 90-100mph for hours on end.

The keynote speaker was Andrew Baron, the founder of Rocketboom. He is now also the producer of John Edwards’ video podcast. It was pretty obvious from the start which political lean this conference had. I don’t have any interest in getting into a political discussion here…and I see no reason it is relevant to podcasting.

When the first panel came up, the topic of discussion was “Being an Internet rock star.” This is where I pretty much checked out of the conference. The probably less than 30 people in attendance were hearing an odd sort of conversation. The topic was marketing yourself, not your site or it’s content, but you.

I don’t know where you stand in this whole online media thing…but I don’t really care if you know who I am. If you like what I say, and follow my site and podcasts…that’s great. I don’t have any grand delusions about being a web celebrity.

If you look at some of the people who have gained notoriety, it’s based on what they have done, not how well they promote themselves. Look at a few of today’s standouts: Kevin Rose, Leo Laporte and Wil Harris.

Kevin Rose did his tenure at TechTV, but there would be no Diggnation without Digg.com. He helped create a great online community and his “celebrity” was secondary. Now Kevin has helped launch Revision3 and is truly putting out some amazing quality video shows on the Internet. I doubt he wants to be called an “Internet Rock Star” either, but if there was such a thing, he would probably be it.

Leo Laporte, another TechTV luminary, has been providing great computer related content for decades. He has hosted a number of shows, and now has a fantastic network of podcasts and vidcasts that are informative and entertaining…again, I follow him because of what he has done. I listen to TwiT, net@nite and the MacBreak show pretty much every week.

Wil Harris…bit-tech.net. Need I say more? I have been reading this site for a long time and will continue to do so now that he has left. It’s great content for the enthusiast. I will follow his new project closely as well because of what he has done…not to mention he is a pretty cool guy in general.

I doubt any of these guys, as well as a host of others who fit this bill a lot closer than anyone at the podcast hotel, started by wanting to be famous. This industry isn’t filled with hackers who have posters of their favorite hackers on the wall. In speaking with Dawngrrl afterwards, I made the comment…

I don’t think you are a “star” until people outside of your particular industry know who you are.

I mentioned that my mother knows who Ozzy Osbourne is. That’s when you know you are a true celebrity. I guess I am lost on the point of being a celebrity. If you are a budding media mogul out there, and I guess I am trying to be one of sorts, my advice to you is this. Spend your time finding a reason for people to come to your site instead of finding the people themselves. Once you have a truly informative site, podcast, vidcast, etc. People will spread the word.

There is nothing wrong with helping them along the way. Digg.com, del.ico.us, reddit, myspace, youtube….all of them can be a means to an end. I don’t think things like Justin.tv will last too long. You can only watching pointless TV for so long. You have to have something to offer people so they will keep coming back.

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