It’ll be a blast mate, I’m really looking forward to it.

Not saying there’s anything not to like, just saying I don’t have the enthusiasm I should for it – a personal (surprising) emotional reaction. Your comment is a little odd, Linda, and comes over more like a sales pitch.

Deek:

Nope, definitely no podfade. I still have a wealth of energy for the potential of what I’m involved in right now (not merely the ‘evil empire’) and what I don’t have time to do on a personal level; just no enthusiasm for the PodcastconIUK event itself. Maybe I’m concerned there’s nothing new within it – it’s nothing more than a ‘been there done that’ attitude. Of course, it may be simply that I’ve been far too busy to really get wrapped up in the preparations. Ask me who’s there and what’s going on and I’ll be hard pushed to give you a decent summary. But my involvement didn’t feel right, deep down, since initial discussions about this year’s event way back in April/May. I didn’t want to be part of organising even then, so it never started on a positive foot for me this year.

As far as next year is concerned, whoever stands up and shouts can have the baton – it’s not thrown into the track, merely waiting patiently on a little table next to the start line, it’s colour slightly chipped on one edge, yet remains bright. Cobwebs will start to appear by April, then by August, it will either be infested with wood lice, or bulging with cash.

> and the danger is that people forget simply to make good programs which keep listener/viewer coming back

I totally agree. We may see a dramatic swing that way over the next twelve months, then hopefully it’ll all settle down and people will finally realise that there’s plenty room for everyone. Sometimes though it feels like you’ve popped in to an empty cinema only to have someone with big hair deliberately come and sit right in front.

Sunday night is 20×2: Where am I? at which the talented regularjen is one of the 20 invited speakers. Details at: http://upcoming.org/event/105000/

There is also a Firefox birthday party planned for the Friday night.

And a number of people are in London for the entire weekend, so hopefully there will be plenty of socialising going on outside of the conference.

- Neil.

there are plenty of intelligent organisers about. pass the baton and trust the process – but make sure you do pass it on, not just throw it onto the track and then wonder why the race falters…

“the independent podcasting community” – will have been transformed by 2007 into something rather different I suspect. There is quite a bit of concentration already on commerce just because there is finally some cash arriving in the industry; and the danger is that people forget simply to make good programs which keep listener/viewer coming back, forget to innovate with the medium, too readily aping old media, adopting out-moded business structures, i’d like to see PodcastCon internationalise more – that’ll keep it lively.

What’s happening Friday and Sunday then?