Charles Stricklin

Where my fiber optic Internet access?!

(I was going to ask, “Where’s my 3G iPhone?!” but that’s only a month away. )

I currently use a Motorola Razr V3r with service by Altel. I’d like to update to a smart phone. While I wait for Apple to release the 3G iPhones later this year and force me to switch to AT&T (which I’ve recently learned has better coverage and signal strength in important places, like… my apartment), I’d like to choose from one of the smart phones that Altel offers in my area.

My choices are:

• The Motorola MOTO Q
• The BlackBerry Pearl 8130
• The HTC Touch
• The BlackBerry 8703e
• The Palm Treo 700wx (I do use Windows XP for my computers… for now)
• The Palm Treo 755p
• The BlackBerry Curve 8330
• The HTC PPC6800
• The BlackBerry 8330 World Edition

I’d like to be able to do things like maintain my schedule, maintain a to-do list, handle e-mails, text messaging, possibly record expenses and maintain my finances, possibly listen to podcasts and other audio, and video would be nice, too.

Those of you who are more savvy about this stuff than I am, which should I choose?

Michael Geoghegan’s GigaVox Media developed their own audio podcast assembly system several years ago and called it the GigaVox Audio Lite Show Assembly and Content Management System. It would accept several WAV or AIFF audio files comprising a podcast episodes ID, introduction, body and closing along with any advertisements, normalize them so that the levels would remain consistent across the entire episode, then assembly them into a single MP3 file for publishing. Furthermore, it could handle changes to advertising campaigns then reassemble and republish all podcast episodes with the changes.

For example, say Cogswell Cogs has been the official sponsor of your podcast for its first 52 (weekly for one year) episodes, but they’ve decided they won’t renew the contract or you’ve found another advertiser, Spacely Space Sprockets, who’s willing to pay your new, higher rate. In the beginning days of podcasting, you’d have mixed Cogswell Cogs’ ads into the first 52 episodes and have no way, short of remixing all 52 episodes, to remove their ads and replace them with the new advertiser.

GigaVox Audio Lite changed all that. You could log into your account, disable the old advertiser, enable the new advertiser, and almost like magic all 52 previously published episodes would announce, “This episode of Jupiter Condominium Living is brought to you by Spacely Space Sprockets.”

You could also change your opening and closing music, credits, or totally rearrange everything using their script editor.

GigaVox sold GigaVox Audio Lite to Podango immediately prior to last year’s Podcast and New Media Expo, and it was subsequently renamed Podango Show Builder Lite. I spoke at the Podango stage during the expo where I first met Lee Gibbons, the founder and CEO of Podango. He and I have since chatted several times via Skype and other means, and I’ve found him to be an extremely smart and pleasant man, dedicated to the new media culture and work ethic. The guy works constantly!

I began using PSBL several months ago and although mindful that the service is still consider in Beta and consequently hopeful for its potential, almost immediately I began experiencing problems with the technology and their support system.

First, I forgot what password I gave when I first enrolled. So sue me, I’m human! Getting my password changed ended up taking a chat with Lee that led to a series of e-mails with Larry Raab that finally culminated in having a username and password that worked several days (weeks?) later. To this day, there is no, “Forgot Password?” function on the PSBL login page.

Then, there’s the encoding errors! Each segment of the podcast is uploaded to the service using a client program you install on your local computer. You select a WAV or AIFF file to upload, tell PSBL what episode it’s for and what piece it is (ID, body, ad, etc.) and after clicking “OK” you cross your fingers and pray as the client program normalizes the audio, encodes it to a MPEG-2 format and, if all goes well, uploads it to the service to be assembled later. It’s the encoding process that causes most of my frustration. Oh, if the file is under 10 minutes long it’ll sail through without any problem, but nearly every time I’ve uploaded anything longer than that, it’ll chug along, encoding half to three quarters of the file before my entire monitor is filled, top to bottom, with cryptic file names and line numbers. I’m forced to quit the program, restart it, log in and try again. After 10 or 20 minutes of this, I get fed up, start cursing under my breath, worrying if I’ll make my self-imposed deadline or get to bed at a decent hour for once, and usually vow to find another similar or better assembly system in the morning.

Then, more times then I want to say, the morning comes, I give it one last try and it works perfectly!

Other times, I send a screenshot of the error to the support e-mail address and a reply comes back asking me (for the umpteenth time) if the file I’m attempting to upload is a mono, 16-bit, 44100K WAV file. Nothing ever changes, nothing ever gets resolved.

Then, there’s questions I have about using the ad campaign manager that still haven’t been answered. I’d like to have two sponsors: one whose ad appears at the beginning of the episode, another who appears in the middle between segments. How do I do that?! I don’t know, because each time I’ve asked they’ve said they’ll check into it and get back to me. They haven’t. It’s been weeks.

Lee and everyone I’ve dealt with at Podango has been extremely nice… I like these people, but if they don’t start improving Podango Show Builder Lite soon and start improving their technical support and customer service, I’ll be compelled to begin looking in earnest for an alternative. (Maybe Kipronic?)

Since I’ll be speaking at New Media Expo in August, I’d thought it best if I actually purchased my own notebook computer instead of using someone else’s. As much as I’d love to buy a MacBook Pro, I can’t afford it on my own right now and Apple only gave me $240 worth of credit.

Alienware, however, gave me enough credit to purchase an Area 51 m9750 notebook pictured below:

Specs:

Video/Graphics Card: 512MB NVIDIA® GeForce® 8700M GT - Enables DirectX® 10 Graphics!
Chassis: 17″ WideUXGA 1920 x 1200 LCD with Clearview Technology - Stealth Black
Processor: Intel® Core™ 2 Duo T5500 1.66GHz 2MB Cache 667MHz FSB
Memory: 2GB Dual Channel DDR2 SO-DIMM at 667MHz – 2 x 1024MB
Operating System: Windows® XP Professional
Hard Drive: 120GB 5,400RPM (8MB Cache)
Optical Drives : 8x Dual Layer Burner (DVD±RW, CD-RW) w/ LightScribe Technology
Wireless Network Card: Internal Intel® PRO Wireless 3945 a/b/g Mini-Card
Sound Card : High-Definition Audio with surround sound

I’ll be receiving this bad boy in about a week, and I’ll be sure and video the unboxing for everyone who’s interested to watch

When we left off, I’d asked you to gauge interest to see if organizing a WordCamp in your neck of the woods was actually feasible, to determine how loose or how structured you might want to make it and finally you should have come up with a couple of dates you’d consider, dates that didn’t conflict with larger conferences, nearby regional events, holidays, etc.

Now, let’s start talking actual planning.

Step 4. Pick a venue.

I’ll start this step off with a don’t, rather than a do. Don’t go looking to hotels as a venue! Hotels book conferences, not unconferences! Hotels will want you to secure what’s called “room blocks”, quantities of hotel rooms at a lower than normal rate that you, in turn, offer to attendees. Sounds good, right? Maybe, but it’s a financial risk you do not want to take. I’ll explain:

Suppose you expect 500 people to register for and attend your WordCamp. You ask the hotel for a meeting room or auditorium capable of seating 500 people. They tell you they’ll let you use The Fluer De Lies Ballroom, which accommodates 500 people nicely, for free if you agree to a 250 room block. They explain that their normal rate for rooms during the dates you’ve chosen for your WordCamp normally run USD$150/night, but your attendees will be able to rent rooms at a rate of USD$110/night. They then tell you the percentage of rooms rented is 75%. You agree to their terms, and you sign the contract.

Here’s what that all means: You’ve just agreed to ensure that 75% of 250 (or 188 rooms) will be rented for 2 nights at a rate of USD$110/night. You’ve just agreed to ensure that the hotel will receive $41, 630.00 when then contract comes due. “So what?”, you ask, “Probably half the people who’ll attend will be from out of town. Maybe so, maybe not, but how many people will blanch at paying USD$110/night and go on Priceline.com or some other service and find a cheaper hotel and stay there? There are even reports of other hotels advertising on Google, making it appear to be the official hotel for the conference when they’re really not.

Using the previous example, let’s say 100 people stay at the official hotel the first night and 50 of them check out, choosing not to stay the 2nd night. That’s 150 room nights. You’d agreed to 376 room nights. You’re liable for the remainder: 226 room nights at USD$110 = USD$24,860.00, and they’ll charge you fees and taxes on top of that.

Do not use a hotel as a venue! Not when there are plenty of equally good alternatives, most of them (relatively) free.

Look around for college, university or high school campuses that might let you hold your WordCamp there. Ask around for businesses. Work out deals with local technology companies who’ll let you use their unused company cafeteria on the weekend in return for a listing as a sponsor. You may very well end up having to pay for someone to clean up or provide security, but in the end, it’ll be thousands of dollars less than going to a hotel or conference center.

Things to look for in a venue:

1. Ample seating for the number you anticipate.
2. Ample parking, if in a region where most people drive cars. (If you live in New York City or similar locale, this becomes less important.)
3. Attendees should be able to bring cups of coffee, soft drinks or water bottles in with them.
4. Plenty of power outlets.
5. A sound system or, at least, the ability to set up one.
6. WiFi, or, at least, the ability to bring in additional nodes.
7. A nearby area to congregate, register people, hand out t-shirts and badges, network, possibly a desk to sell schwag or books, leave business cards, post jobs, etc.
8. A nearby area to feed the number of people you’re expecting.

Additional things that aren’t necessary, but good to have:

1. A “green room” where speakers and staffers might take a breather, prepare presentations, psych themselves up prior to leading a session, etc.
2. One or more areas for helping beginners set up blogs, try out plugins, look at other’s blogs, etc.

When negotiating with the property owner(s) be sure and discuss subjects like necessary insurance, fire codes, emergency contacts, when someone will be there and when the property will be open and available to you, and any other requirements they might place on you.

Step 5. Determine Pricing and Methods of Handling Money

Once you’ve agreed on a venue and secured it with the property owner, including signing any contracts required, then it’s time to start planning the actual WordCamp. At this point, it’s no longer a hypothetical exercise… it’s really starting to come together.

I’d suggest you decide if you’re going to charge to attend your WordCamp, and I’m going to suggest you do but, I’m getting ahead of myself.

You could, theoretically, place all of the financial burden of your WordCamp at the feet of your sponsors and not require your attendees to pay a single dime. Some unconference purists think this is the way to go, and if you’re in that camp, go for it! Just don’t be surprised if 500 people register for your 500 people-limited event, you have 500 t-shirts made up and 500 box lunches available for your packed house and only 120 show up.

Think of it: You hear about this free conference in your hometown, you register yourself and tell everybody in your circle of influence. They all register as well. The big day comes, but it turns out a big term paper is due Monday morning or, it’s Saturday at 9AM and you never wake up before noon on Saturdays. It didn’t cost you anything to register anyway, so, you stay home. Never mind that some corporate sponsor just wasted USD$20+ expecting you to be there. And you won’t be the only one, either. Lots of people who registered won’t show up, either.

People see that something is available to them for free and many times they place that as its value: nothing. Even at conferences where companies pay thousands of dollars to attend, the attendance rate is usually less than 50%, sometimes as little as 30%.

If you were to, for example, require they pay USD$20 at the time they register, they’d be more inclined to actually show up and at least claim their t-shirt. Plus, if they did decide to stay home, the cost of the t-shirt and likely all of their food would have been paid previously. At WordCamp Dallas, we had 170 people register and 155 show up, giving us a 91% attendance rate.

So, say you decide to charge to attend. What’s reasonable? USD$20? USD$50? My thoughts are: Enough to cover the costs of their being there. In other words, if their t-shirt and 2 meals cost about USD$20, charge $20. The cost should be low enough to not rule out cash-poor students attending, but not so low as to violate the “buy-in” we talked about in the paragraphs above.

You’ll need a secure way to collect the money, one that’s trusted over the Internet. You could simply set up a PayPal button, but what about additional information like t-shirt size? Will they be there both days? What about demographic information like gender, hometown, company name, URLs? What about speakers? Surely you won’t be charging them for admission!

A friend turned me on to Eventbrite, a service that handles all that for you. It’ll keep track of contact information for attendees, gather information using a survey you design, handle the payments… in short, everything you need to handle payments for your WordCamp. They work off a commission basis, so, for example, if you charge US$20/registered attendee, US$0.88 of that will be paid to Eventbrite. Then, PayPal will take its cut as well, so you’ll end up receiving about US$18 and change, but believe me, it’s worth it.

Step 6. Put Out the Call for Sponsors.

There will be costs associated with organizing a WordCamp that cannot and should not be covered by attendees themselves. For that, you’ll need to look to sponsors for help. There are two schools of thought on choosing sponsors:

1) Find local sponsors

Find local sponsors who are either willing to donate money to help cover expenses or goods/services in kind that you need to successfully pull the event off. Do you need coffee? Audio or video production expertise? Will you be serving lunches to your attendees? If you answered, “Yes,” to any of these questions, then consider approaching local businesses to supply these needs in return for considering them sponsors of the event.

2) Find national and international sponsors with an interest in blogging in general or WordPress in particular.

Web hosts, blog networks, coders-for-hire… there are lots of businesses out there who’d love to participate as a sponsor of a WordCamp. Not only are many of them made of the kind of people who enjoy going to these events, it just makes business sense to advertise to bloggers. Bloggers not only use the goods and services they use, but they also blog about their experiences with the goods and services! Add distributed audio and/or video from the event and it becomes an advertising bonanza!

Sponsors are integral to the success of your WordCamp, so we’ll cover how to deal with them in a future segment.

In the next segment, I think I’ll plan on covering speaker selection, the official blog, schwag and the importance of getting Automattic to assist you.

My last few months as the lead organizer of WordCamp Dallas have been fraught with fun, excitement, worry, obstacles, bureaucracy and general mayhem and confusion. One question that keeps coming up is a variation of, “How do I organize a WordCamp in _______________?”

So, I thought I’d share what I’ve learned in the hopes that maybe others will set out to spread the WordCamp experience elsewhere.

Step 1. Gauge interest.

The explosion of blogging over the last decade pretty much ensures that someone will be interested in coming to your WordCamp, just not a lot of people. You need to ask around to gauge the interest level of those in the surrounding area, since they’ll make up the bulk of your audience. Is there one or more colleges and/or universities nearby? Are there technology companies nearby? Is there a WordPress Meetup goup for the area? Do a search for blogs located in your area. If there isn’t enough interest in your hometown for a WordCamp, widen your circle and consider organizing or helping organize one in a nearby town or city. If there is, proceed to…

Step 2. Determine the overall structure of your WordCamp.

If you live in a large metropolitan area like London, Seattle, Tokyo, etc., you might want to consider actually organizing your WordCamp not unlike an actual conference where speakers are selected, scheduled and publicized in advance. You could organize the event into one “track” where sessions inhabit a single auditorium and progress in a linear fashion, or you could have several “tracks” in multiple rooms - one for beginners and one for developers for example.

Another way to structure the event is pure “BarCamp” style, where topics and speakers are not chosen in advance but instead come about organically from the ranks of the attendees. This is especially favorable when you’re dealing with smaller cities like Ruston, Louisiana; Sheffield, England or Edmonton, Canada… places where perhaps there’s one or more universities or some other reason why bloggers might congregate there, yet not large enough to warrant a full-blown conference. In other words, decide whether or not you’ll be dealing exclusively with locals, or whether people from across the country or across the world might want to attend.

If you’re encouraged at the prospect of people from outside your local area being in attendance, also consider making the event two or more days. If I live in London or Toronto, it’s a safe bet that people won’t mind flying in or, at least, driving from nearby areas. If you’re organizing an event in Starkville, Mississippi, count on making it only one day.

Step 3. Pick a weekend, and maybe even a few alternate weekends.

Weekends work better for unconferences. Company A might let employee B spend Thursday and Friday out of the office if it’s paying $2,000 to send him or her to a conference, but likely won’t for a free or $25 unconference. Besides, you want to attract people who are passionate about blogging and willing to pass up sleeping late Saturday morning or other weekend activities.

Pick a weekend that doesn’t clash with other events such as the Superbowl or Macworld Expo. There are several events where, if you schedule your WordCamp too close to theirs, they’ll win every time. Events such as TechCrunch, Gnomedex, South by Southwest, SOBCon, New Media Expo, Blog World Expo, Mesh, MacWorld Expo, just to name a few. Scheduling a WordCamp too close to Spring Break, Christmas, Thanksgiving, etc. are also bad ideas.

Also, don’t just pick one weekend, pick several as coverage. Maybe you hope Matt Mullenweg might speak and he’s not available on the weekend of your first choice. Maybe the venue you’d prefer has a piano recital booked that weekend. Be safe and choose alternative dates.

That should be enough to get you started

I’ll continue next time with venue selection, pricing and sponsors.

I was looking over the list of registrants for WordCamp Dallas a few days ago, and confirmed what I’d previously expressed only as a hunch: There are quite a few women attending.

Okay, maybe it’s sexist of me to notice, but computers and technology tend to attract more males than females, so I smiled inwardly when I realized the event wasn’t going to be a total boy’s club.

Here’s the breakdown, of the 120 people currently registered, 29 (24%) of them are female:

After that, I started messing around with the t-shirt choices:

I bet I know what you’re thinking. You’re noticing that nearly 59% of all attendees wear shirts bigger than ‘Large’. (I’m one of them, unfortunately.)

Then, maybe you wonder what the women… er… look like…

Whew! It’s mostly the guys who need to eat more salads.

The only thing left to plot (with the information provided) is how long they intend to stay:

So, 93% intend to come both days. That brings a smile to my face.

The triumvirate of William F. Buckley, Jr., Ronald Reagan and Rush Limbaugh have done more to shape and promote the ideology of Conservatism than anyone else in my lifetime.

We lost Reagan a few years back, and now we’ve lost Buckley.

Now, after the 106th-110th Congress, President George W. Bush and his father previous, Limbaugh heads up an ideology in exile. Now, a senator who voted against tax cuts, not once but twice, helped limit free speech, wanted to provide amnesty to illegal aliens and wanted/wants to further bankrupt the country on a hoax may claim to be “Conservative.”

If ever we needed you, William, it’s now.

NBA legend and RINO Charles Barkley just took a page from the John McCain book, “How Not to be Elected by Insulting Your Political Party’s Base: How to Adopt Positions Directly Counter to Your Own Party”.

Seriously, it’s time for a purge! Let’s jettison Barkley, Specter, Snowe, Collins, Schwarzenegger, and all the Bushes now when we’re effectively fighting a Conservative purge of our own in the guise of a nomination process.

Maybe we should form our own national Conservative Party and leave the GOP to die off as the Whigs before them. Or, better yet, maybe we should all re-register as Republicans (I left the party years ago in disgust), get involved in our state GOP leadership and start weeding imbeciles like Mr. Barkley out before they contaminate the party any further.

Idiot!

So, I see old Punxsutawney Phil saw his shadow this morning, predicting six more weeks of winter.

It’s a shame that Claude the Crawfish’s prediction was canceled this year, for all reasons, because of bad weather! That means all you Mardi Gars revelers out there will have to stand to the side of the road and yell for beads in cold, cold weather.