Video podcasting

I spent the day at Podcast Academy. I just flew down to Ontario CA this morning and then back tonight. Nice, easy in and out.

Podcasting is new enough that it's still changing and the Podcast Academy tends to attract repeat customers, so there's always something interesting. This time it was video podcasts.

Craig Syverson is gave a great talk on producing video for distribution on the 'Net. Craig is the force behind gruntmedia, which includes a series of video podcasts that teach you how to produce video podcasts.

Everyone wants to concentrate on the gear when they start a video production, but the real magic happens in the writing and the post production editing. Good editing requires a good editor--a person, not the software.

Something that came up in Craig's talk, and then was reinforced in a talk by Noah Bonnett from 88Slides was the importance of format. 88Slides is a game show in a one minute video podcast. People SMS the answers in. The format, game show is the star of the show, meaning that hosts and even the producers are less important.

Tim Street gave an excellent talk on producing viral video. He didn't just talk about it--he gave examples of videos that illustrated each of his examples.

What ingredients are required for a viral video? First it has to be easy to share and second, it has to be OK to share--nothing too explicit. You also need to take some risks, be willing to be controversial, and engage people emotions.

Spectacles (Diet Coke and Mentos) will only work for so long--ultimately this medium will live or die on stories. Noah made the point in his talk that even a one-minute game show can have a story and that's what has made certain episodes of 88Slides popular.

We should have some of these talks on IT Conversations soon.