Many loyalty programs have expiration dates for points or miles at the end of the year. If you don’t plan on using them – or if you don’t have enough to redeem for any awards – see if they have an option to donate your points to charity. You may not have enough saved for a gift card at your favorite restaurant or store, but some programs let you donate in smaller increments to a good cause.

Sure, the $5 donation I made to the Red Cross with my expiring points isn’t a huge amount. But it’s a lot better than letting the points disappear!

The answer: we don’t live in the 20th century anymore. A decade ago, Maine decided to embark in a one-to-one learning environment with the state’s seventh and eighth grade students by giving each an iBook. Since then, the program’s been extended to high schoolers.

Kindergarten isn’t the same as seventh and eighth grade. But then again, the iPad’s not the same kind of device as a laptop.

Try this: find a family with young children (under five years old) and an iPad. Ask which person in their household uses the iPad the most. Don’t be surprised if they name a child. I know at least four families with kids under five, and not only can the children understand how to use the iPad, they enjoy it and use it often. Some have even joked (or not) that they need a second iPad as a result.

The major criticism of Auburn’s plan (other than the expense) seems to be that kids shouldn’t need iPads to learn reading, writing, and arithmetic, or that they shouldn’t rely on technology to learn new material. It’s important that iPads and other educational technology are used as part of a rich experience for children, particularly in younger years. Students need time to play, interact in groups, and use tactile objects to learn. iPad time shouldn’t take away recess, just as a video or book shouldn’t take away nap time.

But if you’ve used an iPad, you know the experience is nowhere near the stereotype of a workstation computer from the 1970s. Technology can supplement traditional methods of teaching and learning by offering a rich, engaging, and memorable environment that helps children learn and retain material faster and more completely. Forward-looking educators know this. The George Lucas Educational Foundation showed this brilliantly in a seven-minute video they produced from a visit to Portland’s King Middle School. Apple produced a video about fourth graders using iPod touches for improving literacy.

Maine students can’t be left behind as the rest of the world adopts technology. Is one-to-one learning the best approach at a young age? Maybe, maybe not. But I commend the Auburn School District for introducing new and modern ways of learning and helping Maine to stay on track in an ever-changing world.

Here’s a chronology of what has happened since I placed my order on November 14.

• November 14: Placed an order on JCPenney.com for seven items. Six were available and one, a fleece jacket, was specified as on backorder with an approximate shipping date of November 29. (I would have ordered eight items, but the site said on the final page of the checkout that one of the items was not available even though the product page had allowed me to add it to the cart.)
• November 23: Visited the Bangor JCPenney store and picked up five of the items. At this time I was informed that there was a warehouse shortage on the sixth item after the order had been placed and that I would not receive it. I was credited for that item.
• November 25: Emailed JCPenney customer support about the inventory problems I’d had with my order.
• November 27: Received a response back explaining the site’s inventory system (based on region).
• November 30: Wrote back asking about the status of the fleece jacket after logging into the site and noticing that the jacket had been changed from “Backorder” to “Not Available” on my order.
• December 3, 1:30 PM: Received a response saying the jacket was not available and asking if I wanted to reorder the item since it had once again become available.
• December 3, 11:30 PM: Wrote back with the following: “Would I be able to receive the Columbia jacket for the $23.99 price at which I originally ordered it? If that is possible, I would like to reorder the item, shipped to the Bangor, ME store as I had specified on the order. If the jacket is only available at the $29.99 price that is currently displayed on the site, then I am not interested. Please let me know which is possible.”
• December 10, 10:30 AM: Received a response: “Yes, if the jacket is available, we are able to reorder for you at the
  same pricing you were originally charged.  Please advise us how you wish to proceed.”
• December 10, 5:30 PM: Wrote back: “Please reorder the jacket at $23.99 and have it shipped to the Bangor, ME store. Thank you!”
• December 18, 1:00 PM: Received a response: “At this time the jacket is back ordered till 1/13/11.  Do you still want
  us to place the order to be shipped to your local catalog desk?”
• December 18, 4:45 PM: Wrote back telling them to cancel the order.

I strongly believe that if you complain about something, you should provide suggestions on the situation could be improved. In JCPenney’s case, there are a few changes that could be done to alleviate some of the problems.

1. Hire enough customer support representatives for the holidays. It should not take eight days to respond to a support request. At the very least, update the customer service page on your site to provide a reasonable expectation for response time. (The JCPenney site says that normal response time for email requests is 1-2 business days.)
2. Put an escalation system in place for follow-up support requests. Assign priority to follow-up requests. If someone is trying to reach you again, chances are they’re getting frustrated.
3. Don’t use boilerplate text in responses. Every response I received from customer service included the following text: “Customers like you are our most valuable resource for creating the optimal shopping experience. Thanks again for your email. We look forward to serving you in the future.” Don’t patronize customers with text like that, especially when you know they’re frustrated. Do it if you have to on the first request, but after that, be human.
4. Use an online shopping system that reads inventory appropriately. I experienced a host of inventory problems with my order. First, the site allowed me to add an item to my cart but only specified it was unavailable on the very last page of the checkout (it wasn’t available in my region, apparently). After the order was placed, one of the items I ordered was cancelled due to an inventory shortage. And the status of the fleece jacket I originally ordered, due largely to the delays in responses from customer service, changed back and forth from “backordered” to “not available” at least three times in the process. If this does happen, provide clear communication with the customer about why the change happened and how it will be resolved.

I won’t be shopping at JCPenney again after my experience with this order. I hope other merchants can learn from JCP’s mistakes in order to better serve their customers.

But what if it’s not? As an exercise in complete absurdity, here’s some wild speculation about what could (theoretically) happen tomorrow at 10 Eastern:

• Live, streaming concert of a major band (let’s face it, it’d be U2)
• Steve Jobs chats on FaceTime with caller #52 to a super-secret Apple number
• A complete archive of every major TV show and movie ever
• An MP3 option for iTunes downloads
• A free MobileMe account with cloud syncing for every iTunes user
• A Hulu competitor¹ (iAd-supported streaming TV shows)
• Steve Jobs announces a new product or service via live video from his office
• iTunes for Android and/or WP7
• A new super-simple way for independent musicians to submit songs
• Steve Jobs goes Oprah: free iPod nanos for everyone!

I realize that half of the list above will never, ever, ever happen. Complete and utter absurdity, remember?

¹ I’d say a Netflix competitor, too, but Apple seems to be pretty buddy-buddy with Netflix lately.

In reality a big part of winning a political contest is the drive of a candidate and his or her followers. To win a race, either you or your supporters (and ideally both) have to want it more than the other guys. Part of that equation is the desire to lead and inspire. Another part is a passion to change something about government — or to maintain the status quo. Together, in the right combination, the parts lead to a winning campaign.

A lot of the key players in Maine just aren’t showing this kind of fire so far in the campaign. Mitchell doesn’t seem to be making much headway in the area, and Cutler, while showing some promise, seems more caught up in a race for second place than he does about winning the whole election. The state’s Democrats, for the most part, pretty much have everything they want right now: a liberal governor, massive new programs at the state and national levels, and a pretty solid lock on federal leadership (for now).

Right now (in Maine, at least) the drive is firmly in the corner of Republican voters. They’re tired of how things have been done in the state, and they want their leadership to change. LePage, the leader of their movement, doesn’t seem as passionate as some of the voters he represents, but he’s well aware of those who want to see a different kind of government. For them, he’ll do.

Conservatives hold the fire right now, but it hasn’t always been that way. Obama’s win in 2008 was largely due to the backlash from voters who wanted to move as far away from Bush’s policies as possible. In that race, Obama had the added advantage of being more charismatic and telegenic than his seasoned opponent.

The humor of this year’s Maine gubernatorial race is that LePage may be elected because of the same idea that worked for Obama two years ago. While the substance between the two is much different, the message is the same: the voters with the most passion and desire want change, and they want it now.

Adobe (among many others) isn’t a fan of these new terms. One of the most anticipated features of their upcoming CS5 suite is the ability to use Adobe Flash and convert programs into apps that could be used on the iPhone platform — well, at least before the change in terms by Apple.

I’ve been reading through developer responses over the last few days. Some people support Apple. Some think the change is a ploy by the fruit company to lock devs into using Apple products and therefore drive more Mac sales.¹ Some people seem to think that Apple just flat-out hates developers.²

Personally, I’m right in the middle. I think developers should be able to use whatever tools they want to build their apps, but I also understand Apple’s position. I think it’s pretty simple, actually.

The core of Apple

To understand why Apple made the change, you have to understand Apple. Sure, they want to make money and encourage people to stay on the iPhone platform, but I believe that Apple’s desire to uphold the user experience for users of their iPhone-class devices is just as important to them.

Yes, I’d prefer that Apple would accept non-C/C++/Obj-C apps and at least give them a shot at a review. I still wish there was a way for advanced users to hook apps into their phone without using the App Store, too. Apple would prefer an experience where everything has been tested for quality before it reaches users at all. Seems like Apple’s taking the “well, if you don’t like it, nobody says you have to write for our platform” approach with this one.

Apple’s all about the experience. They’ve published extensive interface guidelines for programmers that detail how every element — right down to submit buttons — should work. They’ve decided not to approve apps based on their inconsistencies with the “iPhone’s distinctive user experience.” And now (as John Gruber explains well) they’re limiting apps that most often don’t match the quality or user experience of those built specifically for the iPhone.

A common cry from developers opposed to the change is that Apple has placed the needs of developers second. That’s true. But Apple isn’t first, despite what opponents of the change would like you to believe. The user and his experience with the product comes first. And that’s how it should be.

1. I don’t agree with this point at all. Apple has encouraged – not limited – people to build web apps specifically tailored for the iPhone, and they can be made without any review or approval by Apple. iPhone web apps can do almost everything native apps can do (less any functions that depend on hardware, of course).

2. I don’t agree with this, either. There are over 140,000 iPhone apps in the App Store, and I’d bet that many of those were made by people who wouldn’t otherwise have that level of opportunity and exposure to make money with software development. In addition Apple’s development terms are, in many ways, much less restrictive than those of Nintendo or Microsoft.

I’m Justin. I graduated from the University of Maine in 2005 with a major in new media and minors in computer science and psychology. I’m currently employed at Sephone Internet Solutions, a Web design and development company in downtown Bangor, Maine.

One of my weaknesses is that I’ve always been interested in too many things. In addition to Web development, I spend quite a bit of time doing nature and event photography around Maine (as seen on Flickr or Pine Tree Photography, my gallery site). There’s also a lot of evidence around the Web of small projects I’ve started and all-but-abandoned due to my struggle with Application-ADD.

I love having good conversations. I love people who are passionate about what they do and people who try to make the world better. I have a wide variety of focus topics, but a few always rise to the top:

• User-generated content / Metcalfe’s law
• Location- and time-based content
• Uses of today’s emerging technologies in tomorrow’s mainstream
• Organization of complex data in understandable ways
• Development and applications of creativity

Want to get a little better feel for who I am? Check out my Twitterstream or Collage, my aggregated collection of posts from around the Web. You can also always get in touch with me by e-mailing mail (at) justinrussell [dot] com. If you see me, feel free to say hi!

I don’t enjoy talking about politics in the course of normal discussion. The simple reason is because people are often so closed-minded when it comes to debatable issues that they very seldom open their minds enough to risk a change of opinion.

As I see it, there are just too many facets of government to be able to know everything about everything. I’ve developed a set of beliefs based on my past experience, but I like to think that I’m open enough to able to change my opinion if a better set of beliefs is presented to me.

Abortion is the perfect example for me. I’m pro-choice. Laura, one of my best friends, is most definitely not. For the past couple of years, we’ve had an ongoing e-mail conversation covering just about every detail of the topic: what we believe, why we believe it, what we believe should be done. After really diving into the discussion, I realized that although our views of the subject appear to differ quite a bit at the surface, there are really only one or two differences in our beliefs… the most notable of which being the point at which life actually begins.

In the end I believe real progress on political issues will only be achieved with a through, heartfelt conversation over the differences people have on any given topic. There are a lot of smart people in the world, and not all of them share the same views. In other words, there’s a very good chance that there are some very good reasons why people disagree with you on any given topic. Shouldn’t we all invest a little time to hear why others feel the way they do?

In 2004 I thought of an idea for a site that would act as sort of a political MySpace… a place where candidates for any race could sign up for a page, list their thoughts on issues, and allow people to find the best candidate. Facebook has done something like it, but I had wanted to open it up to anyone from presidential candidates to local sheriffs or school board members. I was quite honestly tired of not knowing what any of the local candidates on the ballot really believed. In rethinking my idea, I think I’d also want to open up a sort of issues garden: a place where people could go to thoughtfully supply the reasoning for their personal beliefs without attacks on the other side of the issue.

Obama said something that resonated with me during his little overflow rally this afternoon. It’s actually the first line in this video:

For those of you on dialup:

I will listen to you even when we disagree. We’re not going to agree all the time.

There needs to be less talking and more listening in politics. Maybe that’s what would get me interested in it again.

I don’t want to be just another person spouting off my political thoughts until November. Instead, I want to start a little mini-project to cause you to rethink some of the beliefs you may have. I’ll occasionally write a blog or a Twitter post marked “Politics Unusual” (and they’ll be in Collage, of course); these will be things that I believe will either strengthen your beliefs or cause you to reconsider them. If you have any thoughts for me, let me know.

This month’s Wired cover story features Sarah Silverman helping readers understand why so many parts of the world suck. I’m always impressed by their stories; they’re topical, fun, and really comprehensive. This month’s issue also includes the paper version of the iPhone story, so I thought I’d flip through and see which pictures they decided to use and how they decided to lay the story out. (I’m a bit of a page layout geek, too.)

Not surprisingly, I was interrupted on my way to the story by a stupid pack of magazine subscription cards stuffed annoyingly into the middle of a story. On the facing page I noticed Sarah out of the corner of my eye. I looked down, and she was surrounded on a couch by a plethora of the very same Wired subscription cards I now held in my hands. I cracked a smile, and I couldn’t help but shake my head and whisper to myself, “There’s no way.” I read the segment of the “Why things suck” story on the page underneath the cards:

“You know all the subscription cards cluttering up this issue of Wired? Well, um… sorry … The worst part about ‘em? They cover up some really good stories.”

I think my jaw dropped at that point. I’m not an expert on magazine design, but they either had to choose that page for the placement of the cards or lay out the issue so that the story would appear at that spot. They addressed an annoyance about the medium and had some fun with it.

I wanted to cancel Wired because each issue takes me about two hours to read and I have a pile of about twenty unread magazines collecting in my bedroom. I literally enjoy the magazine too much. Needless to say, the pile will continue to grow thanks in large part to that little stunt they pulled this month.

How’s that for marketing?

First you have to understand why I still do Web development. Although I have some pretty strong complaints and annoyances with this line of work, the fact is that I like to help people. Above all else, I like to help people. I like helping people understand this new world. I like seeing their face when they say, “You can actually do that?” I tell stories to try to make people understand what makes me excited about it all. And while Web development isn’t the closest match to my real technology interest, it’s a fairly secure way to have some sort of anchor in this world that I adore (and it’s something that I’d like to believe I’m fairly good at). I also like it because it’s a fairly reliable 9-5 job (although that sometimes doesn’t happen). The set schedule allows me to spend my non-work time exploring this space even further, trying new things, and being creative in ways that I just can’t while I’m doing business sites.

So why do I do it in Maine?

I am within a two-hour drive of what I believe to be the best national park in the country, a great city, and one of the best mountains in the East (and within three of one of the coolest areas in the world). We have some of the best people in the world here. We’re independent, we’re opinionated, and we do things our own way. We have snow, we have heat, we have rain, and we have thunder. It’s laid back. I honestly believe there’s no other place in the world that can match the place I am right now.

What happens if you combine the two? I have the chance to help the businesses I’ve grown up watching, visiting, and paying. It’s a way of saying thanks, and it’s a way to let other people know about the businesses that I love.

My final point is this: I do not do what I do where I do it for the money. It’s true that I could be making a lot more dough in the middle of a city, or if I tweaked my job a bit to become more specialized. Instead, I do it so that I can be proud of the work that I do. I do it so that I can enjoy the work that I do. The combination of those two serve as the barometer of my happiness; if I am enjoying work and am proud of it, I’m happy, but if either of those two fade, so does my happiness.

Two years ago I started another tradition: a Christmas Eve trip to South Paris, Maine. I’ve spent the last two Christmas Eves with my friend Melody. We usually grab a bite to eat and catch up on what’s happening in our lives. We also visit the elk farm in West Paris.

The elk at the farm are amazing. They’re beautiful animals, and they’re used to being fed grains by people. They walk right up to the fence and will lick the grain out of your hand if you so choose; you can also throw it into a feeding trough. They seem to like being patted, and they’re lots of fun overall.

The other highlight of the trip is the drive back home. I stay in South Paris until around five, and then I make the three-hour drive back through Rumford, Farmington, and Skowhegan, stopping at the Irving station in Farmington for a cup of hot chocolate and admiring the Route 2 Christmas decorations along the way. On the radio for the trip is WHOM‘s “Home for the Holidays.” The leisurely drive on Christmas Eve with Christmas music in my ear makes me smile for the whole trip home.

On Monday I’ll continue my South Paris elk trip tradition. It’s one of the few new traditions I’ve started recently, and it really makes me realize what’s so special about doing the same things year after year: it evokes emotion. The drive back is a quintessential Christmas season experience for me.

Merry Christmas to you all. No matter what you practice, enjoy the season.

This is the letter I wrote CBS after I read and watched the piece:

I’ll be bluntly honest: I was offended by your 60 Minutes “Millienials” piece. As a 24-year-old Web developer, I find it outrageous that you stereotyped a whole generation based largely on the accounts of two twenty-somethings who make a living coaching its least productive workers.

Why, in a piece covering 12- to 27-year-olds, were a large majority of the interviewees not contained within that age range? Why was all the video footage of our generation illustrating the carefree, priority-lacking members of our generation instead of showing some of us who are passionate about the work that we do or individuals who have already had great success starting their own businesses and companies?

While watching the piece, I couldn’t help but think of those old sitcoms with a grandfather whose only line in the show was “kids these days” or “get off my lawn, you scoundrels.” I can only imagine what older generations would have said as the Baby Boomers and Gen-Xers entered the workforce for the first time. I imagine they lacked the faith in you that you obviously lack in our generation.

There’s no question why the people of our generation don’t watch much television – especially shows like 60 Minutes. Your “Millenials” piece makes it tragically clear that these kinds of shows are not for us. These kinds of shows can’t stand us.

Time to go back to YouTube.

Out of all your interactions with me, when was I the most passionate about something (and what was it)? What would you say I’m the most passionate about in general?

I’d really appreciate a response via any means (comment, e-mail, Facebook message, 206-350-HI-JR, etc. etc.).

By far my favorite photo project of 2006 was a little effort I coined 30holidays. The idea is quite simple: take one holiday or winter-related photo each day from November 26 through December 25, then upload the photos to Flickr. After the holidays passed, I had been a part of a strange coincidence, documented my holiday season, and just had a better appreciation of how we celebrate such a wonderful time of the year. I loved it.

As hard as it is to believe, November 26 is just over two weeks away. Starting that Monday, I will once again be bringing along my cameras everywhere I go to capture a single photo each day until Christmas. (This year, I hopefully won’t miss a day like I did on December 21, 2006.)

Here’s the thing: I don’t want to do this alone. If you like photography or if you just like the holiday season, please try this out, too. It’s a lot of fun. It’s as simple as registering for a free Flickr account, taking photos, and then uploading them to the site.

Get more details on the 30holidays group page. If you’d like, you can see a calendar of my collection from last year.

I really can’t wait to get started.

On Saturday, Kelley and Ian took me to a fantastic restaurant called FiRE + iCE. This place was about the closest thing to a new media grill as one could get; you fill a bowl full of raw meat, pasta, veggies, rice, or whatever else you’d like, fill a smaller bowl with any of about a dozen sauces, and take it to a grill at the center of the restaurant. The cooks grill the contents of the large bowl, throw on the sauce, and you have a customized meal. It’s a next-generation buffet. It never gets boring. And man, was it tasty. I’ll definitely be going back.

On Saturday night, I realized that I could spend Sunday doing more than just PodCamp in the big city. I e-mailed a few of my friends in the greater Boston area, and my good friend Laura called to invite me out to her church the next morning.

For many people, church on a Sunday morning wouldn’t be a big deal. For me, though, it was quite the change of pace; I hadn’t been to a Sunday service in about a decade. (I’m not really that much of an organized religion guy, and I religion is one of the topics I consciously don’t talk much about on this blog.)

So to the complete disbelief of anyone who knows me well, I spent Sunday morning at Vineyard in Cambridge. Like FiRE + iCE, it was a type of establishment I could never imagine taking hold in Bangor; it was the first church service I’d ever attended with plain-clothes pastors and references to YouTube and the Red Sox (it is Boston, after all). I told Laura after the service that I found it to be refreshing, and I was very glad I attended. The church did a wonderful job of delivering a message while leaving the sermon open to some interpretation; unlike some other congregations, it really seemed as though Vineyard was trying consciously to be open to a lot of people. The fact that the sermon included video clips and contemporary music definitely appealed to the new media part of me.

I’m not doing the church justice with my brief explanation, but I wanted to mention both it and the restaurant due to the differences they both showed from traditional institutions of their types. Boston definitely seems like a place that appeals to a younger, more creative population.

If you’re interested in a bit of audio to illustrate my points, Vineyard provides an MP3 of the oddly-relevant creativity-themed sermon on their site.

“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.

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.

• Tuesday: PodCamp Boston
• Wednesday: The city of Boston (and Cambridge, and Manchester)
• Thursday: Unexpected experiences
• Friday: What it all means

Talk with you tomorrow!