I  was happy to hear that Halifax is hosting its first podcamp tomorrow, and asked one of the organizers, Craig Moore, AKA Spider VIdeo, to have a short chat about the event. For you've never been in one, Podcamp is a un-conference (meaning, a gathering where all content is decided upon and created by the participants), focused on social media, podcasting, and online video. As a community oriented event, it is much more engaging than the regular smart-guy-standing-behind-a-podium-and-everyone-are-listening-or-checking-emails kind of event. I had the pleasure to attend and present in two of these events worldwide - and trust me, it is a lot of fun.

The event is organized by Craig, Ryan Deschamps e-Learning Manager, Halifax Public Libraries , and Ben Boudreau and Jon McGinley both from Revolve.

Regarding the local community, Craig described it as follows:

The climate is right for Atlantic Canada to learn more about the value of social media for business and community. Podcamps are a great opportunity to share ideas, meet new people and show what you know.

Being in Halifax and positioned where we are globally we tend to take a bit to get 100% up to speed as a community but we definitely have our international innovators. I have been waving the podcasting flag for a few years and have made several pilots for podcasts and am gaining some real traffic with SurfDonkey but there is not a great deal of podcasters locally. Jeff MacArthur is based here though and he is one of the partners in CommandN which is doing extremely well (based primarily out of Toronto, Canada). There were others with audio podcasts that have Pod-faded but hopefully this event will re-energize the podcasting juices. Others have been Bruce Murray (formerly the Zedcast) and John Bignell (EMS live podcast) but I'm pretty sure they are both on-hiatus. That being said though there are more just waiting in the wings i'm sure. We do have a very robust social media community via twitter though and they're several great bloggers (including Ben himself and Ryan.

If you are into podcasting, social media, content creation or just interested in what social media has to offer you and your business, check out this event. You can follow it on Twitter with the tag #podcamphfx, and some of the session will be streamed live via Ustream.

Stay tuned - I am looking forward to see some of the sessions online.

Last night, Jeff Pulver and I broadcasted and recorded two short live shows from TLV and Frankfurt airport, en route to Stockholm. It was a lot of fun, we just opened a laptop and started broadcasting.

However, since we didn't have a lot of viewers, it made us think about the means of increasing internet TV viewership in general, and particularly live broadcasting. Some of the things we found crucial:

1. Announce your show early enough, through blogs, Twitter and such.

2. Define a concrete topic to each show, so people would know what they are getting.

3. Find hosts that have good chemistry, so non scripted situations will flow and be as funny as the rehearsed ones.

We look forward to do several additional shows like these while in Stockholm - Hopefully with interesting and creative people from Podcamp.

Technorati Tags: BlogTV, Personal Broadband Broadcasting, Jeff Pulver, Live Broadcsting , How to, podcampeurope

On Sunday I am flying to Stockholm, on behalf of IMTC. I am moderating a panel at VON Expo about the effect of IMS on the enterprise communication market, and visiting the co-located Podcamp Europe.

If you are coming to these events, feel free to drop me a line at kfir@pravdam.com, or text me at +972544958066.

Technorati Tags: imtc, travel, podcampeurope, industry event, IMS, VONeurope07

A lot of our activities these days are focused on the American market. I mainly watch american online shows, and I was in a meeting couple of days ago, where some participants said that there is no real European online video industry.

As a person who lived in Germany for couple of years, it seemed extremely odd to me - and Mike Arrington came to the rescue, with his post today, where he mentioned the fact that 45% of Europeans watch online videos.

Next month we will be at Podcamp Europe, and meet all the great guys that are building this amazing industry there.

In the mean time - can anyone recommend good European online shows for me?

Podcamp Europe is just around the corner, so don't forget to register. The event takes place in Stockholm, on the 12-13 of June. Nice weather and great company guaranteed. Hope to see you there!

Chris and Chris are organizing PodCamp Europe at Stockholm. Free entrance, tons of interesting people, and the endless energizer networking bunny, will make this event an amazing un-conference as usual. Hope to see you there.