The Unusual Suspects

i love unconferences because i usually run into cool folks doing interesting things quietly on and off of the radar. i was not disappointed this weekend when i attended the second day of podcampnyc (april 25 and april 26) at polytechnic university in brooklyn, nyc.

i enjoyed john herman’s presentation on using multi-media in school. the most interesting part of the lecture centered around challenges faced when attempting to integrate popular, feature-rich web applications in the classroom; often due to “i don’t get it” attitudes by administrations in youth-serving entities including public schools and libraries.

perhaps my favorite presentation was the very last session i attended. hip hop association presented a podcast demo using us, the audience, as the live recording guinea pigs (in a good way). it seemed most people were familiar with how to create a podcast, but it was a fun activity.

personally speaking, the most interesting portions of dialog came after the “official” recording. for instance, we all noted the unusually large presence of black, tech-savvy entrepreneurs, connectors and activists in attendance (at least for the session), which too often seems lacking in respectable numbers at similar conferences. post-dialog interaction touched upon the one laptop per child initiative, open source, equity investing in black-owned enterprise, social enterprise, community development and incubation. of course, given the sean bell-shooting verdict had been released the previous day, there were discussions around viable solutions in addressing community concerns through the resources we already provide or could be created.

a very unassuming, humble and baby-faced bill cammack recorded the session which is available here. thanks bill!