Austin's podcast

In this episode of the Austin Podcasters Group, we summarize the meetup from 18 May 2009, which was held at the Central Market-North location in mid-town Austin. This was oriented for the intermediate and advanced podcaster members.

Thanks to Karen Krepps for attending this session.

Here is a summary of the topics covered.

I. Status of events related to Podcasting:
- Podcamp San Antonio on 16 May 2009 (no one attended);
- Podcamp Houston, scheduled for 13 June 2009;
- TWTRCON09- the first business-oriented conference for the twitter social media tool (the stream podcasting and the audio episode of 3 hours from the onsite podcasters, Bo Bennett and Ryan Levesque, can be found on their daily podcast of www.twooting.com);
- BlogWorld and Podcast Expo in Las Vegas, scheduled from 14-17 October 2009.

II. Hardware featured:
- the Zoom H4, H4N and H2 models in comparison;
- the Plantronics Audio65 USB headset, which was highlighted in the Blogarithms link at:

http://www.blogarithms.com/index.php/archives/2007/12/23/skype-for-interviews/

and recommended for recording Skype interviews with the highest quality. The link has the step-by-step video by Paul Figgiani and Doug Kaye of the CONVERSATIONS NETWORK.

III. Software featured:
- For recording Skype: FreeCorder, Total Recorder, Pamela and PowerGramo.
- Demonstration given of how PowerGramo integrates with Skype, and how to export the files in either WAV, MP3 or OGG format.

- Screencasting software:
* Camtasia Studio for PC and ScreenFlow for Mac;
* A list of fee and free screencasting applications is available on previous episodes of this Austin Podcasters blog and podcast.

IV. Next Meetings to be scheduled:
- Because of the summer schedules and the gas prices, we are giving a "summer break" from now until August, when we will schedule the next meeting (which may or may not be a virtual meeting--depending upon the guest speaker availability and the webinar tool).
- We will post the notice on this blog and podcast series, as well as the meetup facility page, which is:

http://podcasting.meetup.com/92/

V. Future organizer after September, 2009
- Fred Castaneda is willing to make a 2- to 3-month turnkey transition for the individual who wants to take over the position of organizer for the group.
- There is help from another Meetup group, the AUSTIN ORGANIZERS meetup. This group will help the organizer with ways to increase audience participation and help to improve the meetup quality of the meetups. Fred will give the next organizer info to attend the local Austin meetings together.

Thank you for your support, and we shall next deliver the info for the upcoming August 2009 meetup!