Yes, I know it’s been two weeks since PodCamp Boston 2 and you’ve probably already moved onto your next project or conference, but hey: Consider this post part of the PodCamp Boston long tail.

Here are a handful of my takeaways from the event.

PodCamp isn’t just about podcasting.
If you’ve attended a PodCamp or two yourself since the first installment of the unconference back in September 2006, then I’m not telling you anything you don’t already know. Though a number of sessions at the event typically do cover podcasting topics (how to start a podcast, how to try and monetize it, advanced production values, etc.), there are countless others that don’t. Discussions on social networking, social media marketing, storytelling, delivering good presentations, digital identity, and exploring the latest Web 2.0 tools are very much a part of PodCamp, too.

PodCamp is billed as the “new-media unconference” these days, which makes me wonder: Might PodCamp need a new name?

There’s plenty of value outside the sessions.

Most conferences or unconferences go like this for me: I attend a handful of formal sessions in “education mode” — and then spend the rest of the time hanging out in the hallways speaking with friends and colleagues old and new. PodCamp Boston 2 was no exception.

I won’t soon forget my conversations with Scott Monty, who is the first fellow social-media guy I met because of Twitter and is also quite adept at selecting good Irish pubs that will properly feed a dozen geeks; Anna Farmery and Heather Gorringe, who were visiting from the UK; Paull Young, Constantin Basturea, and Christin Eubanks from Converseon; Mark Blevis, who’s throwing a PodCamp of his own in Ottawa later this month; Mika Pyyhkala and Deb Block-Schwenk, my lunchmates on Saturday; Mitch Joel, Beth Kanter; Kathryn Jones; and fellow Red Sox fans Sarah Wurrey, Doug Haslam, and Joe Cascio, with whom I took in part of Game 3 of the World Series from one of the local dives on Saturday night.

David Maister is one funny dude.

He’s also known as one of the best in the world in consulting and writing about management of professional services firms — and he’s a blogger and a podcaster. David’s insights during a session on Sunday morning were, quite simply, sensational. I especially liked this line:

Shut up talking about you. You don’t get any of my business by talking about you.”

Managing your online reputation can be tricky business.
There was plenty of good discussion around who you are and how you’re perceived online in a “Job Search 2.0″ discussion led by MaryHelen Votral and Ben Gregg and “Digital Natives” of CM Access (full disclosure: a former employer and former client) and a session on “digital natives” from Michael Denton and the aforementioned Paull Young and Christin Eubanks.

The key question: How much of your personal self should you reveal online and how does all of your blogging, podcasting, social networking, etc. play to job recruiters?

You can here my take as part of a conversation Paull had with Anna Farmery and me in a live-from-PodCamp episode of the Forward Podcast.

PodCamps won’t always be free.
I won’t pretend that I did nearly as much work in helping to organize this year’s PodCamp Boston as I did for the inaugural event (funny what having a baby does to your free time), but there certainly were several other hard-working people who did. Collectively — and in some cases individually — the social media enthusiasts that PodCamp co-founder Christopher Penn names volunteered hundreds of hours of their time to put on a free conference for more than 1,300 registered attendees. One not-so-small detail: Only about 650 of them — not even half — actually made it to PodCamp.

A reasonable no-show rate for free events is to be expected, but when a conference becomes as big as PodCamp Boston has, the result is too much wasted hard work by the organizers to accommodate hundreds of would-be attendees who ultimately decide they have somewhere else to be.

With that in mind, I have no objection to Chris and his fellow co-founder Chris Brogan giving PodCamp organizers the option to charge a nominal registration fee for future unconferences. The result should be a more manageable attendee list and a more accurate representation of just how many participants to plan for.

PodCampers like to party.

’nuff said.

Technorati Tags: PodCamp, PodCampBoston, PCB2

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