In about twelve hours, I’ll be hopping in my car and driving up to Podcamp Western Mass. Instead of rehashing what a Podcamp is, I’ll start off by pointing people not acquainted with podcamps to some of my older podcamp posts:

A good starting point is probably:
Understanding Unconferences - #pcct #swct

I’ll also recommend:
What is the Difference Between a Good Podcamp and a Great Podcamp?

and

#pcct - What Makes for a Good Podcamp Session?

These get into the sessions and the experience. People who know me from Podcamps know that I’m a bit of a purist when it comes to Podcamps. I’m not a big fan or presentations or Powerpoint and podcamp. I like organic discussions.

At Podcamp Western Mass over the past few years, there have been a lot of introductory sessions which provide great value for newcomers but also have the potential of obscuring something really important about podcamps, that everyone is a rock star.

There are also a few things that I miss from some of the older podcamps. Back in the day, there would be lively discussions online about what topics people were interested in. This hasn’t happened as much in recent years. One nice exception this year is that Maria Korolov‎ posted about doing a show and tell about VR headsets. Maria knows her stuff about VR and if she comes and does the show and tell, it should be really good. I just hope that it will be a discussion where lots of people get to contribute.

Things that I’m interested in include

MOOCs, Moodle, and Rhizomes: The future of digital pedagogy.

It’s all about the content: Creativity, Spirituality, Politics, and everything in between.

The Darknet

Private or corporate social networks.
Anyone doing anything with Slack? I have http://ahynes1.slack.com set up. Let me know if you want to use it. If you do use slack, especially with any integrations, I’d love to hear about it.

Workflow tools: Some of the things I learned about at previous Podcamps included IFTTT and Evernote. These days, I’ve been playing a bit with Workflowy. Check it out.

Augmented Reality Gaming:
Any Ingress players going to Podcamp? Anyone play other games like Ingress?

What’s New:
I always love a What’s New session. Everyone mentions a new social network, mobile apps, or things like that which they are really enjoying. What new things are you finding exciting?

So, share your thoughts this evening about what you’re looking forward to. Then, let’s have fun tomorrow!