Meanwhile, for your puppy viewing pleasure:

Come Par-tay with Shireen Mitchell (digitalsista on twitter), the founder and director of Digital Sisters, a DC based nonprofit which promotes and provides tech education and enrichment for women and their children who are traditionally underserved.

We are going to look at how gender, class, and color factor into the digital divide, why we should care, and what we can do to create a society where the benefits of technological literacy are available to all.

Shireen has been a geek since back in the Atari days, learning to program at age 14 and never looking back. She uses her powers for good, speaking, writing, teaching, and leading: all with the goal of helping women from underserved communities and their families reap the benefits of technology.

Par-tay Bonus:

We will also unveil, the Jonny’s Par-tay theme rap in all it’s lyrical splendor.

Super Double Par-tay Bonus:

We will introduce our first Jonny’s Par-tay contest. The prize, a collectible mimobot a designer collectible USB flash drive.

Remember when I said that I would try to make the world a better place for puppies and children? This contest is where I try to tackle the puppies part. Here are the rules:

Jonny’s Par-tay Adopt a Puppy at Your Local Shelter Haiku Contest,

Here’s how you participate:

Just write an original haiku. Remember those poems you wrote in 5th grade? Yeah, one of those. It must have the word “Puppy” and “Shelter” in it, and encourage people to adopt a puppy from a shelter. Then you need to record yourself reciting the haiku onto utterz.com. Utterz is a free service which lets you record audio from your phone to the web. Once you have written the poem, send me an email at jonny.goldstein@gmail(dot)com by Sunday, May 18, 10PM Eastern.

Here is my sample adopt a puppy haiku:

Here is my sample haiku: Puppies are four legged/joy dispensers, find delight/at local shelter

Listen to it here:

A haiku is simply a 3 line poem with this structure:

1st line: 5 syllables
2nd line: 7 syllables
3d line: 5 syllables.

Be sure to email me at jonny.goldstein@gmail.com to send me the link to your poem by 10PM Eastern, Sunday, May 18.

People will vote on their favorite poems on the jonnyspartay.com website until 5 PM Eastern Wednesday, May 21. The winner will receive a designer collectible USB flash drive generously donated by the fine folks at mimoco.com

The winner will be announced on this coming Wednesday’s, May 21, show. And if you write and record a haiku to utterz and email me the link at jonny.goldstein@gmail(dot)com by Sunday, May 19, 10PM Eastern, I will link to your haiku whether your haiku is selected as the winner or not.

Thanks for participating! And thanks for helping raise awareness around the issue of puppy adoption from shelters.

What: Jonny’s Par-tay, the interactive online TV talk show, with featured guest Shireen Mitchell, host Jonny Goldstein, super-producer Scott Stead. and of course our most important guests, you.
When: Weds, May 14, 9-10PM Eastern.
Where: jonnyspartay.com
Interactivity: As always, you are invited to text chat us and each other live. It’s a Par-tay!

These are my relatives on my mothers’ fathers’ side, the Cashdans. Eli “Yiddle” Cashdan was the cousin of my grandpa. Excited to happen upon this when I googled my mothers’ maiden name.

Come Par-tay with two fabulous DC area bloggers and innovators Jimmy Gardner and Andrew Feinberg.

Jimmy Gardner has just unveiled his startup, MyDropBin.com, a service that lets users easily store, organize, and share files using Amazon’s S3 storage service. He also reports on the local startup scene from EastCoastBlogging.com. Jimmy will share his thoughts on the DC startup environment, and his motivation for creating MyDropBin.com.

We will also be announcing the first ever Jonny’s Par-tay Promo contest!

Andrew Feinberg blogs at CapitolValley.net about technology and public policy from the (often clashing) perspectives of Silicon Valley and Washington DC. He is going to talk about what he sees as the perils of the cavalier approach that most tech companies take toward
protecting users privacy, and why they should change their ways before running afoul of the Federal Government.

What: Jonny’s Par-tay, the interactive online TV talk show, with guests Jimmy Gardner, Andrew Feinberg, and host Jonny Goldstein, with a little Scott Stead magic poured on top.
When: Weds, May 7, 9-10PM Eastern.
Where: jonnyspartay.com
Interactivity: As always, you are invited to text chat us live. It’s a Par-tay!

A couple of days ago, I experienced 5 cool things in 90 minutes. All this happened during 90 minutes when I strolled from Adam’s Morgan to Dupont Circle and back to lunch with a friend.

1. Two high school kids approached me to ask me for my definition of racism. They were interviewing people for a school paper. I had to really think about it. We had a good talk.

2. Picnic in Dupont Circle. Met with my friend Julie who works at the Peace Corps. Stretched out on the grass and listened to the chirping birds in the middle of the city.

3. Walking back through the Circle passed a busker strumming an electric guitar singing Elvis Costello’s “Watching the Detectives.” Sounded great.

4. Passed by a flatbed truck with a giant inflatable rat on the back. Some kind of Union protest. Can you say, random?

5. Watched a crowd chanting front of the Zimbabwean embassy protesting that government’s unwillingness to recognize the victory of the opposition in their recent election. Q:Where else in the U.S. would this happen? A: In front of the UN in NYC, but it’s still pretty cool.

All this on a warm, lazy, Spring day. So, for all my griping, DC sometimes surprises me with little moments like these. And I appreciate that this former swamp has turned into a city that every once in a while even a jaded dude like me can appreciate.

This week, April 30, Weds, 9PM Eastern, interact live with marketing and pr strategy expert Geoff Livingston and business and social media powerhouse Aaron Brazell. These guys merit a show each devoted to himself, so this episode is going to overflow with Par-tay-licious goodness.

Geoff will talk about the importance of an integrated PR and Marketing strategy where social media and traditional outreach complement each other to help organizations reach clearly defined goals. He will also give us an update on the Blog Potomac conference “This year’s premiere social media marketing event for greater Washington DC,” which is coming up on June 18.

Aaron “Technosailor” Brazell will discuss the value of what he calls social media presence marketing. Aaron is a maestro of this emerging form of marketing, and it seems a natural direction for many of us in the DC area, the land of the crackberry.

We’ll also check in with them on their take on the state of the DC social media scene.

And while we have both of them in the studio, we’ll ask them about their different takes on the the recent Loren Feldman sadism parody shenanigans.

What: Jonny’s Par-tay, the interactive online TV talk show, with guests Geoff Livingston, Aaron Brazell, and host Jonny Goldstein, with a little Scott Stead magic poured on top.
When: Weds, April 30, 9-10PM Eastern.
Where: jonnyspartay.com
Interactivity: As always, you are invited to text chat us live. It’s a Par-tay!

Here are links to notes for individual sessions:
Using widgets and social media to market events, generate sales and stimulate sign-ups

Social Contests and Exponential Growth

Securing a Sponsor for Your New Media in the New Media Space

Audio Production 101

The Haiku Project: Using Mobile Phones For Community Creativity

Using widgets and social media to market events, generate sales and stimulate sign-ups

Presenter: Ben Kartzman CEO of spongecell.

Here is a brief audio interview I did with Ben about spongecell:

And here my the text notes from the session:

Point of the session: using widgets to drive attention to whatever. The point of widget is to take content and move content across the web.

Going to talk about widgets as something that can be built on one site and moved to multiple sites.

Examples from audience of widgets:

-youtube rss feed widget

-utterz–listen/watch audio/video posted from mobile phones)

-ChipIn—Donation widget. Makes it easier for nonprofit to focus on their mission instead of how to process donations.

Whatever widget you want to build—depends how you want it to live in blogs, opensocial, facebook.

How widgets can be used to market better:

Example: Fox WFXG community events widget.

Event widget content all about marketing—getting people to get off the web, or to go to a particular and go to an event. Getting people to ACT.

Spongecell, easy for consumer and promoter. Make it easy for your fans to pull that info into their lives (Outlook, Facebook, etc).

Question about data privacy: Can we grab peoples’ data using spongecell? Answer: No. Don’t want to break trust w/users.

—–

Social Contests and Exponential Growth

Jeremy Johnson from zinch.com

Jeremy showed a case study of a contest for college scholarships that increased unique visitors to the Zinch site from 100K to 500K unique visitors over the course of 30 days.

100 or so students were selected by Zinch out of thousands who wanted to compete in the contest for scholarships.

It worked like the NCAA basketball tournament with individual student against individual student. The winner would move up. This continued until there was one winner. The competition occurred over the same time period at the NCAA tournament, to piggyback of of the interest in the basketball frenzy.

Registered users of zinch worth 2 points.
Casual voters votes worth 1 point.
Many people joined zinch to make their votes count more.

Direct competition worked well-one student against another.

Real time vote tally—made it public.

What do they use to broadcast?

We can know everything about a demographic, but we will never know how to use these social media sites as well as the kids. They promoted the competition better than zinch ever could alone.

Goal in creating competition—creating a platform for other people to get really involved.

What motivates people…prize, or prestige….

Zinch seeded them with ideas about how to get their campaign going.

In zinch’s contest, students used social media to solicit votes. For the students: Facebook groups massively important, myspace slightly less, youtube videos important. Articles in local newspapers…

Note: another successful contest:

The BigShotLive.com 600000 uniques a day. It’s a talent contest. People upload videos of them displaying their talent. Winner gets to go to hollywood and get coached on their talent. Friends and family want to promote their kids with talent.
——

Securing a Sponsor for Your New Media in the New Media Space

Presenters: Todd Cochrane and Jeff Hinz.

Note: This session was focused specifically on podcasting, not new media in general. A lot of the advice seems transferable to other new media projects though.

Question:
Should I even try to get a sponsor? A: It is not for everyone

Question:

What’s your content:

Adult or general? If it’s adult, that’s going to narrow your choice of possible sponsors.

Consistency of your podcast:

Daily? Weekly? Monthly? Whatever it is, it’s got to be consistent.

Sponsor going to expect X amount of ad runs per time period.

Your website:

Is it just a blog?

Or is it a branded nice looking website? It’s important to have a nice looking website.

Your RSS Feed: it needs to validate and needs to be getting updated into iTunes
feedvalidator.com to check this.

Finding advertisers:

On your own. You keep all the sponsorship.

Or use a network. It’s hit or miss.

Maybe best strategy is to do both.

Media kit:

Should contain:

Who you are
Who your audience is
set up a survey
age m/f, profession
track record—I’ve done X shows.

How much money can you expect?

Is your audience niche? A niche audience is an easier sell to a sponsor who supplies that niche.

CPM based buys.

CPA cost per acquisition (only payed if people buy)

Proposal: advertisers are going to want a writter proposal.

What are they going to get (banner ad, text link, etc.)

Must get a signed contract.

You have to be a salesman. You have to get behind that sponsor as best you can.

If it’s a company you can’t stand behind, then it’s no deal.

Want to be excited….Biggest problem, hosts not being passionate about sponsor an not selling.

Do you go to company X directly or go to company X’s agency?

It’s easier to go directly to a client.

Execution, execution, execution. Do everything you agree to do. If you do, they will very likely renew.

Report—give them stats. best if they can log in and check it out. be prepaared to give them feedback on a weekly basis.

Suggestion from the audience: businessstat: it’s 20$ a month for good stats.

Engage your audience in relationship to your sponsor. Build it into the conversation.

Roadblocks:

Show’s too small
website doesn’t look good
Make sure the content looks good

Don’t over report!!! Meaning, don’t say you have more listeners than you actually do. Example: you say you have 20,000 listeners and 500 of them take action (e.g. click on a link to the sponsors website from your website). That’s 2.5% of your audience taking action. But if you say you have 5,000 listeners and 500 people take action that means 10% of your audience takes action. That’s more impressive. Be accurate. Don’t over report, don’t under report.

Jeff is a media buyer. The biggest hurdle is a media buyer. Difficult for buyer to recommend a podcast. A lot of clients don’t want to be associated with “User generated content.”

Do you have a valuable audience?
Does your audience take action when you tell them to?
Is it a unique show?
Is it a “digital media” buy or a “radio” buy. A lot of radio buyers would love to buy podcasts and they’d buy it as if it’s a radio spot.

The digital buyers compare it to a banner buy…they are confused.

Most of the media buyers are 25-26 year old kids.

If you treat it like a business and speak to them about topics you are passionate about.

What’ the ROI, can you increase sales? Can you get them to sign up for stuff?

This is why I’m good. This is what I’m good at. This is why I’m unique.

Comic book podcasts connect w/comic book publishers.

Get involved in an affiliate program.

It’s OK to choose not to pursue sponsorship. Then it’s a hobby. Nothing wrong with that.

A big thing is educating clients. They know radio, tv, billboards, but they tend not to understand podcasts and takes work to get them to allocate $. Some big players are doing great, like Proctor and Gamble and godaddy. But most big potential sponsors are not.

Educate them about how your going to motivate your audience and keep that relationship over time. Educate them about the fact is that it’s archived and their brand will be out there for a long time.

Minimum of 6 weeks for a sponsor. A full quarter even better for them to see results from your podcast. If they just want to sponsor you for a week or two or three, forget it. That is an unrealistically short time frame for them to see results.

————-

Audio Production 101
Presenter: Matt Ebel
Editorial presenter: Matt is a suburb presenter and his music rocks. To listen to some of his tunes, check here.

Good audio does not mean filtering audio in your editing program after your recording. Good audio starts with recording well.

“Clear your room. ”

Isolate yourself. Eliminate the competition.

Turn off your cell phone.

Turn off noisemakers—dishwasher, AC unit, laundry machine

Roomates and pets

Late night is good—-let’s people moving around using the bathroom etc.

Seal yourself into a padded room.

Pillow, blanket, towel plug under door.

If you start to overheat, take a break, open the door, turn on the AC and then start again once it’s cooled off.

Use a long cable and put your pc in a the closet. Use wireless mouse and keyboard.

Sound bounce=flutter echo, they bounce around and it your mic over and over again–generally bad.

Two ways to stop the bounce 1) Absorption. ( soft surfaces) and 2) Diffusion (hard, irregular surfaces) breaks the sound up.

Absorption: Auralex acoustic foam. 1 inch pyramid foam is good.

Egg crate mattress pad at wal mart (cheaper)

A tapestry,a blanket—looks nice.

Anything textured and soft works.

Rug

Diffusion.

Auralex panels.

Science panel—-looks better. or you could make it.

Or a bookshelf with different sized mixed up books.

Anything that’s not flat.

_________

How many flat surfaces do you treat?

Vocal booth, drum room cover most all flat surfaces.

Broadcast—not so much. maybe 50-70%

Cover the area facing your face.

auralex.com/pcf

You fill out the form and send it to auralex and they send you your recommendation.
Then you can place your alternative materials there instead of using their product, or use their product.

Next—-Plug stuff in.

Knowing which mic you need.

2 kinds of mic dynamic (cheaper, less sensitive, doesn’t need power) and condenser (more expensive, more accurate (sensitive)

Studio night—goal is to make it seem like you are in the room. pick up all the frequencies. a better net to catch more sound. diff mics have diff pickup pattern.

Cardioid.

Omni directional.

Figure 8 pattten good for an interview w/one other person.

sm58 designed to pick up the human vocal range right in front of it. Ok, for solo podcasting.

nt1a, nt2a (about 250$) diff pickup patterns. needs soundboard w/phantom power.

Blue snowball. condenser mic. good rich sound. cardioid or omni. usb mic. powered by the USB mic.

Rode podcaster—large diaphragm dynamic mic. cardioid.

_________________

POINT THE MIC AT YOUR MOUTH!!!!! Prentent it’s a laser pointer directed at your uvula. Diff mics listen in diff direction.

Be scientific and record—this is my mouth at 1 inch. this is my pout at 2inches etc. and pic the best one.

_____________________

Plosive shield. Wire coat hanger and nylon pantyhose on a hoop and a goose neck to hold it in place–rule of thumb—halfway between your mic and your mouth. be scientific and test where it should go.

______________________

Notes about posture. The better you breath the better you sound.

Imagine a cable on sternum and cable on your tail pulling pulling opposite directions.

Do not SHOUT (unless sound horrible is your schtick). makes your voice tired, and picks up annoying frequencies.

________________________

Setting up the mic.

————
cell phone—electromag interference. turn it off. keep at least 4 feet from sound equipment if you need it on.

___________________

Interface—USB microphones.

If you are using a handheld recorder, the digital recorder zoom H4 highly recommended.

mxl mic mate—converts xlr-to usb and powers condensers via the usb.

———

The Haiku Project: Using Mobile Phones For Community Creativity
Presenter, Jonny Goldstein (yeah, that’s me).

The Haiku Project was something Jonny started as an experiment to see what would happen if he asked people in his online social networks to write and record original haiku poems to the web using their cell phones and the service, Utterz.

Why haikus? Most people in the United States who have gone through school in the last couple of decades are familiar with haikus. Haikus are accessible, don’t take a big time commitment, yet can contain great creative depth and emotional range.

Promotion: Jonny’s blog, Twitter, and Utterz.

Duration of project: The month of February, 2008.

It’s good for the creator to participate in the project if she/he is going to ask other people to take part. If you invest your time, better chance others will too.

Initially asked people to add the tag “haikuproject” to their submissions, but compliance was low, so then just asked people
to have the word “haiku” in the title. That worked better.

Used the mobile phone multimedia blogging service Utterz.com for people to record their poems from their phones.

Results: at least 14 people submitted a total of over 40 poems which were listened to hundreds of times. Also, as a result of the project, Jonny was featured in a Washington City Paper article about DC area haikuists.

Question from audience: How to create a geographically specific contest like this? Not sure.

Finally we recorded a brief collaborative story at the end of the workshop to demo using a cell phone for a group creative audio-project.

More info about the Haiku Project here.

——–

I hope these notes are helpful. If you have any questions, shoot me an email at jonny (dot) goldstein (at) gmail.com.

If you are at PodcampNYC 2.0 and want to chit chat, high-five, or just say yo, this is your big chance. I’ll be wandering around the halls both days. Probably the best way to find me is to give me a call or text me: 646-209-7204. Let’s totally hang out.

Another way to connect is to catch me leading a session about fostering community creativity via mobile phones, using the Haiku Project as a case study. You’ll find out how I got a bunch of people from coast to coast to write original haiku poems and record them to the web via their cell phones. We’ll also kick around ideas for other projects that encourage community creativity using mobile phones.

That’s 4PM Saturday, April 26, room RH 207.

OK, seeya there!

Look forward to seeing you. It’s gonna be a fun couple of days Podcamping in the urban jungle.

Alan Rosenblatt, one of the world’s foremost thinkers in the world of digital political advocacy, is our featured guest on Jonny’s Par-tay this April 23. If you have interest in ANY of these: 1) Online community 2) Digital persuasion 3) Influencing politics via social media, you gotta check out this episode. Alan is the founder of the Internet Advocacy Center, the Associate Director for Online Advocacy at the Center for American Progress, and blogs at techpresident.com and his own blog Dr. Digipol.

I met Alan in person at an event at DC’s Google Office, and was impressed by his knowledge and by his down to earth manner. This guy is the professor you wish you had in college.

So for those of you new to Jonny’s Par-tay, here are the details:

What: An interactive live web TV talkshow where you will be able to talk with each other and Alan Rosenblatt via live text chat. You’re questions, comments, and participation are integral to the show.
When: April 23, Weds, 9-10 PM Eastern
Who: Special guest Alan Rosenblatt with host Jonny Goldstein, Super Producer Scott Stead, and you.
Where: jonnyspartay.com

Alan
Rosenblatt, Ph.D. is the Associate Director for Online Advocacy at the
Center for American Progress Action Fund. He is a long-time and
frequent speaker and author on digital media, advocacy, and politics,
including social networking, blogging, grassroots, and mobile advocacy
strategies. He is the founder of the Internet Advocacy Center; a Fellow at George Washington University’s Institute for Politics, Democracy & the Internet; an adjunct/visiting professor at Johns Hopkins, Georgetown and American Universities, where
he teaches graduate courses on the intersection of the internet, politics,
and the media; and a blogger at the award-winning TechPresident.com and DrDigiPol.com. Alan is also a founding team member
of Media Bureau Networks (MBN), a pioneer in streaming media services; a contributing editor to Politics Online; serves on the editorial review boards of several scholarly journals dedicated to the study of the internet, politics, and government; and is a member
of the Board of Directors for E-Democracy.org. He taught Political Science
at George Mason University for nine years, where, in 1995, he launched
the first-ever cyberpolitics course. With MBN, he webcasted live
coverage of the 2000 Presidential Conventions. From 2001 to 2003,
he served as Vice President for Online Advocacy Services division at
Stateside Associates. From 2003 to 2005 he served as Director
of Training Programs at e-advocates (now called 720 Strategies). Alan
Rosenblatt has a Ph.D. in Political Science from American University,
an M.A. in Political Science from Boston College, and a B.A. in Political
Science and Philosophy from Tufts University. He lives in Arlington,
Virginia.

Spending time discussing the preferences of different Generations with Jessie Newburn, has sensitized me to generationally targeted marketing messages. This package design is clearly directed at millennials (AKA Gen Y), who are supposedly distinguished by their focus on themselves and their generation. Thus the young pair taking their own photo, having the time of their lives.

The buildings in the background are done in the style of 80’s xerox art. How does that fit in?