I’ve attended every single Podfest since 2014. And this year it was great to see so many friends and colleagues in person again!
Here are some of my experiences, notes and highlights of the event:
MY TALK:
“How to Use Compression & Normalization (Mandatory for Creating Professional Grade Audio)” —> The full presentation will be published soon!
Outline what I covered:
- Normalization (Peak and Loudness) (When and where to normalize audio)
- Compression (Why, controls) (Demonstrations of compressors, upward compression, vocal riding, limiter, and a great sounding plugin chain)
*Audio Production Challenge for my listeners: Compress the ultra-dynamic audio clip that I used for demonstration in my presentation and send me your processed audio file!
Links to Apps and Plugins I Mentioned in My Talk at Podfest 2022 on “Compression and Normalization”
Link to 4 recent overview posts:
- What is Compression? (Audio Processing)
- Introduction to Compressor Controls
- What Are Audio Plugins? (Audio Processing)
- Introduction to Plugin Chains
PODCASTING 2.0, CRYPTO, BLOCKCHAIN, ETC.:
- Spoke with several podcast industry pro’s about Podcasting 22.0, crypto integrations into podcast feeds and websites, etc. Hardly anyone was talking about this. It’s still VERY early.
- The Florida Bitcoin & Blockchain Summit
PRESENTATIONS I SAW:
Seth Silvers, CEO of Story On Media — “The Roadmap To Using NFTs To Engage Your Podcast Audience and Increase Revenue”
- Focus on “how can NFTs help build my community, instead of how can NFTs make me money.”
- Think of an NFT as an access card.
- “Gratitude” NFTs just for people to support the show. (offer NFTs of every episode, etc.)
- Never-ending tickets.
- Uncut.fm “Collect NFTs from your favorite podcasts”
TikTok presentation by Melissa Hughes
- *Mindset when creating TikTok posts: Document instead of create.
WHAT I WAS INSPIRED TO CHANGE/DO:
- Create a new short course??
- TikTok posting for marketing purposes? (Am I really going to commit to this?!?!)
- Join a songwriting group (which I discussed w/Ashley Lehmann)
Other interesting things I learned about:
- Snowpixel: AI-generated images (Natalie Champa Jennings told me about this)
- “Dream 100”, gatekeepers, (from my conversation with Seth Silvers) — The Dream 100 are relationships with people and/or companies who can help me market my business to their audiences. Instead of focusing on marketing, focus on building these 100 relationships.
MY OVERALL EVALUATION OF THE ENTIRE EVENT:
- All in all very good
- Perhaps too many speakers and tracks, etc.
- Felt a bit too spread out
- I should have bought groceries
PEOPLE I HUNG OUT WITH:
- Seth Silvers
- Jennie Wren
- Steve Stewart and Mark Deal
- Glenn the Geek
- Mike Helms
- Marc Johanssen
- Roy Stegman
- Harry Duran
- Natalie Champa Jennings
- Ashley Lehmann
- Paul Desmond Adams
- Gordon Firemark
- Bryan Entzminger
- Julia Levine
- Ross Brand
- Dave Jackson
- Dan Hughley
- Daniel Abendroth
- MANY OTHERS!
NOTE: The next semester of PES starts on June 28, 2022.
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One Response
Hey Chris, I can echo a lot of what you said about Podfest. Good wrap-up.
One thing I don’t get enough of is hearing what others got out of attending…and it’s not easy to get that out of a person.
If you walk up to someone and ask them straight-out “What did you get out of attending”, they are likely to give you a standard answer that sounds like “It was good. I saw people. Etc…” – but you sat down and thought through all 72+ hours and gave us the small moments that truly impacted the way you thought and felt.
I took a photo of you and Ashley Lehmann sitting at a table outside of the hotel market. That might have been the part you spoke about in the show – which means I probably witnessed that moment! (Check your email for photos).
Every day we are making value decisions about what we spend our time and money on. Attending a conference like Podfest is one of those HUGE decisions, because it costs about as much time and money as going to Disney for a couple days.
ie: Airfare/transportation, tickets, food, lodging, and the opportunity cost of spending money rather than being at home with your DAW and plugins making money… it’s all so expensive!
However, I think anyone who goes to conferences and ACTIVELY interacts with the event gets their money’s worth…you just won’t know for a while (maybe months or years).
If someone gave you a tip/shortcut that saves you 5 minutes of post-production on every episode, the payoff could be 41.6 hours saved in one year (assuming two episodes a day, 50 weeks a year). Anyone making $50k a year would essentially have the ability to recoup/save $1k or make an additional $1k with the time savings.
What if you got the tip and landed a client? NOW we’re talkin’!
I believe anyone can benefit from attending conferences. The goal isn’t to just learn from sessions, but to also learn from the little conversations that take place in-between. (And maybe find someone that needs your help while you’re at it).
Good stuff Chris!