Podcast Spot launched a year ago today, if you can believe it! I still can't. It's been an interesting year, to say the least. We'd like to say thanks to everyone who has supported us over the last twelve months, and especially to all the podcasters who call Podcast Spot home. You're the reason we're here!

We have lots of plans and ideas for Podcast Spot, so I have no doubt that our second year will be even better than the first. If you have any feedback or suggestions, we're always eager to hear from you.

Thanks again, and happy podcasting!

Northern Voice 2007 happened a little over a week ago, and we were happy to be there podcasting the sessions. When all was said and done we had posted 36 episodes, including two interviews with Darren Barefoot from the organizing team. We learned a lot from the experience, including:

• Getting video from the camera to the web is still relatively difficult (especially with just a laptop), despite tools like Windows Movie Maker.
• Material to supplement the audio (such as a slide deck) would have been nice in a lot of cases.
• Always have a schedule worked out in advance.
• You can always improve the quality of your recordings!

Despite these and other lessons, it seems most people were pretty pleased with the podcast. We've received a bunch of comments from attendees and others, thanking us for making the recordings available. It was our pleasure!

Finally, I'll leave you with some stats about the podcast:

• We posted 36 episodes
• Combined, the episodes take up 7.83 GB of storage space (including all the conversions)
• If you were to listen to every episode, it would take 26 hours, 7 minutes, and 13 seconds
• The average episode length is 43 minutes, 32 seconds

We're going to be podcasting Northern Voice on Friday and Saturday here in Vancouver, B.C. This is definitely one of our favorite conferences, so this year we volunteered to record and host the sessions. You can follow along at:

http://northernvoice.podcastspot.com

We're just waiting on Megan to arrive and then we'll get our first "welcome" episode up. Tomorrow we'll be recording parts of Moosecamp, and all of Saturday's sessions will be recorded (if all goes according to plan).

And if you are thinking about becoming a podcaster, now is a great time to do so! Sign up at Podcast Spot using discount code NV2007 and we'll give you 100 MB of upload quota free. You can see more details here.

As Dickson mentioned, we were invited to share our experiences in the VenturePrize business plan competition last night with a group of this year's potential participants. The presentation went well from our perspective, so I hope everyone found our story useful. If you'd like to find out more, check out our VenturePrize Experience blog.

We're back in Edmonton now after a great weekend at the 2006 Portable Media Expo. Thanks to everyone who stopped by the booth to say hi - it was really great to meet you! Thanks also to everyone who has checked out Podcast Spot.

Back to work!

We're in Ontario, California now and we're ready for the 2006 edition of the Portable Media Expo! If you are going to be in town, stop by and see us in booth #408. We'll post a few updates here, but you should check out my blog and Dickson's blog for more information. You can also check out some pictures from the event here.

Oh, and be sure to check out Podcast Spot ;)

We're leaving tomorrow afternoon for Toronto for the first ever Mesh Conference, taking place Monday and Tuesday. We'll be in Toronto until the 18th, so if you wanna meet up (or if you need to get a hold of us for any other reason), email us or give us a call!

Mack: 780.619.3864
Dickson: 780.910.0941

We've registered for Canada's first ever Web 2.0 conference called Mesh, taking place in Toronto on May 15th and 16th. Looks like it will be a great conference with some interesting topics and an amazing line up of thought leaders already on board.

Want to join us? There's still time to register!

Dickson and I registered for Northern Voice 2006 tonight. We figured it was about time, since the conference is less than a month away (February 10th and 11th). We'll be in Vancouver from the 9th until the 12th, hopefully learning a lot and sharing the stuff we've been working on! We'll post an update when we've decided what exactly we'll have ready for the conference.

There's still time to register if you want to join us. See you there!

Have you heard about the Portable Media Expo & Podcasting Conference? We've been registered as an exhibitor for quite some time now, so I figured it would be a good idea to officially announce it! Here's what the event is all about:

Portable Media Expo & Podcasting Conference is the only industry event that brings together influential podcasters, media, content creators and device makers to cover the complete range of business, marketing and legal issues for portable audio & video.

The ability to take media with you and listen or watch when you want - on whatever device you want - is the focus of this event. It's also about the new trend of individuals as media companies.

Dickson and I are really excited to be attending and we're looking forward to meeting everyone. And we do mean everyone - if you're at all interested in podcasting, this is a must-attend event! We're also really looking forward to finally being able to show off some of the applications we've been hard at work on.

We'll have more details on our stuff as the date (November 11th and 12th, 2005) draws near, so watch for updates. I'll also be adding content to my personal page for the event, so you can keep an eye out there too if you want.

Portable Media Expo   podcasting conferences portable media expo

Today Dickson and I attended TEC Edmonton's TEC Connector. TEC Edmonton is a joint venture of the University of Alberta and the Edmonton Economic Development Corporation. Here's what the event was all about:

This TEC Connector event will showcase companies created from the results of University of Alberta inventions and technologies. In addition, the event is an active connector which will provide networking tools and tips, plus generate opportunities to connect with useful representatives in our community, including: university researchers, start-up company leaders, professional service firms, financial support organizations, government agency representatives, media representatives, inventors and entrepreneurs.

Obviously Paramagnus is not a spin-off company, nor we do use any University research or innovations, but we thought the event might be a great opportunity to do some networking anyway. We met some interesting people and found out more about many of the local companies we had only just heard of in the past. We also learned some interesting statistics about University of Alberta spin-off companies:

• As of March 31st, 2005 there were 69 active UofA spin-off companies
• There have been 84 such companies formed since 1963, including those that have merged, been acquired, or discontinued
• These companies employ more than 1000 high-skilled workers
• More than 80% of the spin-offs are based in Alberta
• Seven are publicly traded

Networking events are always lots of fun! This one was especially good because there was free food and drinks :)

TEC Connector   business ualberta tec edmonton edmonton edec