I love Boston. Whether it was the excitement surrounding a looming World Series victory or just the normal hustle and bustle of the city, Beantown just has a higher level of constant energy than I’ve seen anywhere else.
“But Justin,” you ask, “you’ve always said that you don’t want to live in Boston.” That’s true. As much as I like the city, it’s just too busy for my taste as a rural/”suburban” Maine guy. I’ve started to enjoy each visit to the city more, and I do like spending time in it.
I managed to become somewhat of a subway master on this trip. I’ve always loved the T (and trains in general); the concept of having a speedy underground train racing around a city has always fascinated me. Sure, the system isn’t perfect – there were shuttle buses for one part of the Orange Line last weekend, and then there was that time where I had to get out of the car and walk to the closest station when the train didn’t work correctly on a previous trip – but it’s a very efficient method of transit overall.
I also had the pleasure of riding the Silver Line for the first time. The Silver Line is a 5-year-old section of Boston public transportation that uses underground electric buses instead of trains. I loved it.
The star of the weekend for public transportation was the Red Line, my favorite leg of the T. The Red Line has become familiar to me since most of my Boston area friends have lived in Cambridge; the Harvard station is one of two (along with North Station) that I feel familiar with. On Sunday I parked at Alewife at the end of the Red Line and rode from there to South Station with a couple stops along the way. I was really impressed with the ease of the new CharlieCard stored value system as well.
Thanks to my friends Kelley and Ian, I was able to stay in Manchester, NH for the weekend. I’ve really started to appreciate Manchester after the two BarCamps there and this last trip; if I was to move away from Bangor, I’d probably end up there. It’s tough for me to think that I might leave Maine since I really love it here, but it’s always good to have options, right?
The trip made me want to explore places outside of Maine more. When I get some time, I might just do that.
Check out a few of my photos from Boston on Flickr. I also uploaded a video from the Red Line.
I headed down to Boston for the first time in a year and a few months on Saturday and Sunday. My trip revolved around PodCamp Boston (no, not the World Series), a gathering of new media folk at the amazing Boston Convention & Exhibition Center. I went to the event to socialize, learn a thing or two, and promote the Small Steps Podcast.
PodCamp, for those of you who don’t know, is an event organized by a set of devoted organizers and the event’s participants. It’s a lot like a BarCamp, but it’s focused more on podcasting and other new media and less on technology. Over 1,200 people registered for the weekend (an incredible number given the relatively young age of podcasting).
Aside from the sheer number of people registered, the most impressive aspect of the event had to be the variety of people it brought together under one roof. There’s always been talk of an “A-list” of bloggers throughout the blogosphere, and a similar concept has been occasionally mentioned throughout the world of podcasting. Whatever the case, a number of popular and recognizable podcasters all assembled under one roof. Despite the event’s size, everyone was amazingly approachable; I was overjoyed and impressed at how many of my favorite podcasters I met over the course of a couple of days. (The list of people I met in person included C.C. Chapman, Mitch Joel, Matthew Ebel, Rudy Jahchan & Casey McKinnon, Chris Penn, and Brother Love.) It was so energizing to have so many people within the community together in the same place.
The event was organized amazingly well. The BCEC’s location was easy to find, and the schedule was planned out well. The participants of the event did their part, too, by contributing an enormous amount of content to sites like Flickr, Twitter, and their own blogs. Many of the sessions were recorded either by the presenter or by members of the audience, and the recordings should be available in podcast feeds soon.
There was, of course, still some room for improvement. PodCamp founders Chris Brogan and Chris Penn commented in the wrap-up session that the crowd may have actually been too large for the intimate style traditionally held by PodCamps. Not everyone who signed up for the event actually attended, including some of the presenters; Chris Penn saw this as an indication that PodCamps should be allowed to charge a nominal admission fee (PodCamps up to this point have had to be free to attend). He mentioned that an admission fee would most likely raise the quality of presentations and discussions as a result of having a more devoted, focused group attending the event.
I found it odd, though, that he brought up that point after mentioning the dreaded fishbowl. For the last year, podcasters have been debating whether they exist in a fishbowl; in other words, everyone who listens to podcasts are in the same core group. The fear is that podcasting is not reaching an audience outside of this core group, and it will therefore not be able to grow in the future. By charging an admission fee, I’m afraid that people new to podcasting would be hesitant to pay the cost of attendance; I think an admission fee to PodCamp could quite possibly encourage the fishbowling of the community.
The fishbowl manifested itself at PodCamp in a rather predictable way; as the event progressed, I started to have the feeling that I’d heard everything being said already. Many of the presentations were given by people I regularly hear on podcasts, and most of them understandably talked about the same things they talk about on their podcasts. The most valuable part of PodCamp for me, therefore, were the discussions and socialization occurring outside of the actual sessions.
In my opinion events like PodCamp should be a time to discuss where the community is heading in the future. How do we appeal to more people? What else can be done with these media? How is the dynamic changing within a world of user-generated content? I mentioned earlier that the schedule for PodCamp was planned very well. For the next PodCamps, I’d actually encourage Chris and Chris to be a bit more flexible with its scheduling. I propose that the Sunday afternoon of the conference is left open, and the sessions for that time are decided either Saturday night or Sunday morning. This would allow presentations to move beyond the routine topics covered by podcasters and move into a more general discussion about podcasting and the world of social media in general, largely fueled by conversations occurring during the first half of the PodCamp. The spontaneity of a malleable conference schedule screams “new media” to me.
I was extremely impressed by the organization of the event, and I’m truly glad I went down to participate and honored that I met so many of the people I hear every week. As Chris Brogan mentioned, these events allow the “social” of social media to come alive; amazing things can happen with so many smart people under the same roof.
Check out my photos from the event at Flickr. I didn’t get many and they’re not very good, but I wasn’t really there for photography.
I just returned from a great (and tiring) weekend at PodCamp Boston, among other things. This week I’ll be writing a series of posts about my trip: what I learned, what I did, and what I found out about myself.
- Tuesday: PodCamp Boston
- Wednesday: The city of Boston (and Cambridge, and Manchester)
- Thursday: Unexpected experiences
- Friday: What it all means
Talk with you tomorrow!
Yesterday’s trip to western Maine established two things for me (well, many more than two things, but two things that are related to the point I’m about to make).
- After Acadia, my second favorite region in Maine is Grafton Notch State Park.
- I like playing with shutter speeds.
Screw Auger Falls, Grafton Notch State Park
I might have to make a list of my top ten favorite spots and regions of Maine. That’d be a good project.
Some may say that my 10-hour trip to western Maine today was chosen on the off chance that the Gifford’s flagship store in Skowhegan would be closing later than the one in Bangor did.
I refuse to debate the intricacies of that argument with those people.
(300 photos taken today. That felt gooooood…)
Lately I’ve talked about orange leaves, red apples, black and white photos, and purple shirts; it’s about time for a little green.
I’m heading down to Boston for PodCamp Boston 2 next weekend, and I thought this was an excellent time to (finally) launch my first-ever podcast, the Small Steps Podcast.
Small Steps is an overdue re-entrance into the environmental world for me. I’ve wanted to do an environmentalism thing for a while, and Small Steps fills that gap.
It’s easier to describe with audio, though, so check it out:
Head over to smallstepspodcast.com to listen or subscribe to the show. You can also download or subscribe in iTunes. Small Steps is also available in Collage. Please let me know if you have any ideas for future episodes!
I’ve been talking a bunch about trying some new things in my life, but there’s been no real visible action to support it.
That is, until today’s Maine Edge hit the newsstands. I took a few months off, but you can read my thoughts in black and white (ink) again in my new “tekk edge” column. If you live outside of the Bangor area, don’t want to waste a tree, or just don’t feel like finding one of the approximately 14,000 copies, you can read my first installment, The mighty Amazon, online at your convenience.
If you have something you’d like to see me write about, leave a comment or send me an e-mail.
Ready? I am. Let’s go.
We’re entering the key weeks of the foliage season for the majority of Maine. I feel festive.
Thanks to my new, beefier hosting plan, I feel empowered to offer you, the justinrussell.com reader, high-quality downloads. So have a photo; this one was taken on October 30, 2005, in Millinocket, right before my car’s transmission gave out. (I haven’t been back since.)
If you’re not sure how to set the desktop picture on your computer, follow these simple steps:
Firefox
- Click on a thumbnail above.
- Right-click on the enlarged picture and choose “Set As Desktop Background…”
Internet Explorer
- Download Firefox and install.
- Open Firefox.
- Click on a thumbnail above.
- Right-click on the enlarged picture and choose “Set As Desktop Background…”
If you’ve visited the state of Maine’s government site over the last couple of weeks, you may have noticed that a photo of apples I took a couple of years back was chosen as a winner for their Fall 2007 photo contest. I’m really honored (and surprised) about that one; there are lots of great Maine photos in that set!
I license most of my photography under a Creative Commons license. This license allows anyone to use the photos for any non-commercial purpose they wish, as long as they give credit and/or a link to my site… but they don’t necessarily have to let me know they’ve used the photo. If you see something of mine used somewhere, let me know about it!
The wonderful Consumerist blog used one of my 30holidays photos from last year to illustrate a story. They have a really great idea going; they manage a Flickr group to allow people to submit photos that the photo creators think would be appropriate for Consumerist. It reduces work on Consumerist’s end by giving them a pool of permission-granted photos to work with, and it lets people have the chance to see their work on the blog. Great idea.
One Big Maine, a site about Maine life and travel, used one of my Bar Harbor pics for an article about Acadia National Park. Move.com used a UMaine photo of mine for an article about great places for singles to live.
I guess this Creative Commons stuff really works.
If you’d like to use a photo of mine for a project, check out Pine Tree Photography or Flickr. Any of my photos marked with a Creative Commons license are available for use under the terms of that license.
This weekend is not the time to visit Bangor. You’ll find road construction or huge traffic delays at almost every turn, and, as my boss Kelly observed, “it feels like Long Island out there.”
Work continues on the perpetual frustration that is I-95 construction, and the beginning of next week marks the start of the Essex Street bridge replacement project. There are a couple of lane closures set up in both directions within the few mile stretch through Bangor. If that wasn’t bad enough, the I-395 entrance ramps are also closed, resulting in increased traffic on secondary roads in the area for detours.
But it doesn’t end there. Work continues on the Main Street paving project; the pavement along Main Street throughout downtown has been torn and parts of the sidewalks are obstructed by large rocks. Lanes are closed, too, resulting in longer traffic lines.
For the icing on the cake, the new Hollywood Slots project has for some unknown reason decided to use this construction-laden time as an opportunity to work on the I-395 exit ramps to Main Street. They’re building a devoted lane that will lead directly into the casino next summer (joy), and there’s fairly heavy construction along Main Street near 395.
In short, don’t go anywhere near the markers on this map (click for interactivity):
Does this really all have to happen at the same time? Sounds like pretty poor planning to me.
