I was watching New York Times best-selling author, Julien Smith‘s presentation on Ustream live from PodCamp Montreal today. As he was presenting I was enjoying the back channel discussions in the chat room with some new and old friends.

I was talking with musecrossing quite a bit, I didn’t get her name (what’s your name?). She wasn’t familiar with Julien, so we were talking a bit about him. I was telling her about his old podcast In Over Your Head and about his excellent book Trust Agents.

Something struck me when musecrossing asked how Julien and his co-author Chris Brogan met. How did two bloggers meet to produce a New York Time’s bestseller?

I replied that they both met at the first PodCamp in Boston a few years ago. Just as I wrote this my friend Merlene Paynter replied: “I think Chris & Julien met at the first Podcamp Boston several years ago.” We both replied the same thing. A light bulb went off in my head about the value in these gatherings. I should mention that I’ve never questioned the value in attending, but it was interesting to think a little more about the topic.

Attending conferences and unconferences is key to building relationships. I’ve often talked about handshakes, high-fives and hugs that take your online relationships so much further when you actually meet in person.

Relationships often begin at events too. I first met Julien at Podcasters Across Borders in 2006, I don’t think we had ever met online before that. I first met the guys at Griffin when they sponsored the first BarCamp Nashville in 2007. Who knew then that I’d end up working for them?

The third BarCamp Nashville is coming to town October 17th, I encourage you to come join in on the incredible sessions and hallway conversations. Don’t be a wallflower either. Start your own and join in on discussions. Be a part of BarCamp, it’s free to attend. You’ve got nothing to lose!

By attending a conference or unconference you’ll be building new relationships, some of which will become friendships. Who knows, you may even end up with a New York Times best seller too. What’s stopping you?

<waving hi to my friends in Montreal>

This Wednesday, we’ll be rocking the Big Bang dueling piano bar with Geoff Smith and friends. It’s always a blast hanging out with the best geeks in Nashville at the Bang, accompanied by Geoff’s incredible music. The event is also to raise awareness and donations for Songs of Love. Be sure to RSVP! 

If you can’t make it don’t fret, you can still be there virtually. Geoff will have his Ustream channel broadcasting the evening live. Be sure to tune in, so you can play Tweet That Tune to win prizes by the good people* at Griffin Technology.

This Thursday I’ll be cutting out of work a little early to hit the road to Atlanta for the Mashable Mixer.

I’m really looking forward to meeting the Atlanta social media gang and the cool people who produce Mashable. I had originally inquired to see if they would consider bringing a Mashable Mixer to Nashville, but it’s not in the cards this time around. Let’s hope they plan one next time.

Will you be going to this? Be sure to let me know so we don’t miss each other!

* I work there :-)

I geeked out at Christmas, it’s really no surprise. My my mum was here visiting us in Nashville, but my dad was back home in Toronto (near there) and my brother was in Switzerland (where he lives).

I’ve been using ooVoo for around a year now, I was one of the early beta testers of the popular multi-person video chat service (thanks Jaffe and Monty). With ooVoo you can get up to six people chatting at once, all within one window (picture the beginning of The Brady Bunch).

Another free web video service that I think is awesome is Ustream. With Ustream you can easily stream live from your iSight/web cam. Ustream enables a built in chat room, so viewers can interact with the host and other viewers.

I wanted to find a way that we could all enjoy Christmas together, even though we were thousands of miles apart. That’s when I realized it could be done.

I shot an email to my dad and brother, Mike, with instructions on how they could take part in the festivities. The best part was that they would be able to watch my 2 and 3 year old kids as they discovered what Santa had left them, and would gradually rip through through the gift wrapping – live.

I set up one laptop on a chair facing the Christmas tree, this was my Ustream live machine. The other machine sat with ooVoo running, so we could see and chat with my brother and dad at the same time. It all worked out really well.

It’s going to be an awesome night at The Big Bang dueling piano bar, because the lovely and talented Geoff Smith will be taking the stage by storm (as usual). I expect it’s going to be one heck of a good night. I plan to bring along some Griffin goodies as prizing throughout the evening.

Knowing Geoff, Cali and Neal you can expect the show to be streamed on UStream, tweeted on Twitter and more. Here’s a video I shot last time they came to town.

If you’ll be joining us please consider bringing along a few cans of non-perishable items for the Second Harvest food bank drive. They are seeking: peanut butter, canned tuna, canned chicken, canned soup or stew, canned vegetables, canned fruit, and macaroni & cheese.

Be sure to RSVP if you’re coming to this free night of fun, shoot Geoff an email to let him know you’re in: geoff@thegeoffsmith.com. Don’t forget to tip your musician and server!

See you there.

I recently posted about being upset that I was missing the third annual Podcasters Across Borders (PAB) conference. Unfortunately circumstances did not allow me to head to Kingston, Ontario to re-connect with my fellow podcasting brothers and sisters from home, I miss them.

Luckily in this day and age we are privileged enough to have simple tools to experience the next best thing to being there.

The picture in this post illustrates how I was able to create my own PAB control center. I could watch and listen to the conference, see pictures  during and after the sessions, interact with the attendees, and even ask a question to a speaker (thanks Eden).

Here’s five things you must have to attend conferences from your couch:

1. Ustream live video: Ustream is a free video streaming service that allows you to broadcast, in real-time, straight from your computer. I need to give a special mention and thank you to Chris Penn for setting this up.
2. Meebo Chat Room: Meebo is one of a few different free chat room hosts. It is very simple to set and to embed directly into your blog, like Chris did on Marketing Over Coffee. I embedded the chat room into Dave Made That (as seen above). This way I could view the photo slide show as I interacted with the users. The chat also was a “back channel” for the attendees to interact with one another, and with the visitors who were not fortunate enough to be there in person.
3. Flickr Slideshow: Flickr is the most popular photo hosting service online. It’s free to use with a Yahoo account, plus you can pay for a pro account now, and upload videos too. Although, I’m not sure why you would want to with countless other free video hosting sites out there. I pay for a pro account to have plenty of space to host my images. Photos “tagged” with PAB2008 automatically feed into the slideshow. I used the following code to get this to work:
   • <iframe src=”http://www.flickr.com/slideShow/index.gne?group_id=&user_id=&set_id=&tags=pab2008” align=”middle” frameborder=”0″ height=”300″ scrolling=”no” width=”325″></iframe>
     <small>Tag your photos: <strong>PAB2008</strong> </small>
4. Twhirl: This is a Twitter client that runs on Adobe Air. Twhirl takes my Twitter account and makes it available on my desktop, without the need of a browser to view it in. This is very handy to have multiple items open at the same time. It updates in real time (with a slight lag), so I can see when I have new messages, or when there’s new messages from PAB.
5. Friends: What’s the point of all of this interaction if you don’t have friends at these conferences? Having friends there sure helps when you need a camera’s audio repaired (thanks Chris), or you have a comment for a speaker (thanks Eden), or you simply want to see how everybody looks this year (beautiful by the way!).

Feel free to ask me any questions should you have them. If you have items you can’t live without when attending conferences from your couch please let me know.

See you next year for sure Pabsters. :-)

[tags]pab2008, pab08, podcasters across borders, barginista, marketing over coffee, ustream, flickr, meebo, virtual conferences, chris penn[/tags]