Ladies (and Gentlemen), start your engines! SXSW is very very close, and that means it’s time to warm up the podcast muscle for Austin as well. Before the full daily show kicks off, I’ll be previewing the three elements (interactive, film and music) with the organisers of the conference – to start with, a qhistle stop tour of things to do, with some Top Tips on surviving SXSW from those that are setting it up….

Today’s Guests
Hugh Forrest (SXSW Interactive)
Matt Dentler (SXSW Film)
Brent Grulke (SXSW Music)

Tags: SXSW, SXSW 2008,SXSW Film, SXSW Music, SXSW Interactive, Ewan Spence, tips, hints,

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Better late than never, this has been kicking around the hard drive since I got back to Edinburgh (which admittedly was only at the start of this week). It’s a recap of all the companies that presented at Tech Crunch 40, with myself and Duncan Reily, both a writer at Tech Crunch and host of On The Pod here at The Podcast Network.

One of the amazing experiences at the Podcast and New Media Expo (PME) is podcasters interviewing and videoing other podcasters about what they do. And yes, I’ve been involved with a few of those as well. I have only recorded one for myself – and that’s the “Lets Go Through The Conference Freebie Bag…” But I’m not doing it alone! Joining me in this endeavour are:

PW Fenton (Digital Flotsam)
CC Chapman (Accident Hash and Managing the Gray)
Duncan Perry (www.podcast.com)
Chris Brogan (Buzz is Temporary and others)
Matthew Ebel (High Orbit Podcast)
Scott Sherman (The Digital Photography Show)
Robin Maiden (Insight Works, The Diva Cast, and new show Dear Zanne)
Dan Patterson (Creepy Sleepy Show)

With music from Matthew Ebel (Lost My Way).

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Interviews from the organsiers and companies from the first day of TechCrunch40, the start-up presentation conference in San Francisco’s Palace Hotel.

• Jason Calacanis, TechCrunch 40 Organiser.
• Exploring the Conference Bag with Connor O’Neil (Louder Voice)
• Social Networking and Drinking with Liquor.com
• Powerset, a semantic based search engine (www.powerset.com)

Given that the show is over two days (compared to four days for Etech, 11 days for SXSW or 28 days for the Edinburgh Festival Fringe) it’s going to need a little bit of creative programming to make some compelling audio, but then that shouldn’t be too difficult. Expect the two days of the conference to have a bundle of reportage and colour from the halls, and the days after it to feature in-depth interviews with the 20 presenting companies, the organisers, and anyone else that shows up with an interesting story. A conference with content to rival the Lobby-Con? You never know, it has to happen one day!

Given the interest and downloads the previous Tech Conference Shows have garnered (and the natural buzz around this event) I’ll be offering a number of sponsor packages around the podcasts, so if you or your company is looking to get the message out about a product or service that is attractive to the switched on Web 2.0 crowd, the digital entrepreneurs, or the forward looking futurists, then please get in touch.

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The final full show from O’Reilly’s Emerging Technology, going from one of the biggest companies (Microsoft) to a single woman with a bright idea (Quinn Norton’s earth magnet in her finger). If you have any comments, drop me an email at ewanspence@gmail.com.

Today’s Guest From The Emerging Technology Conference 07:
John Curlander (Microsoft Maps)
Quinn Norton (Body Hacking)

Tags: ETech, ETech 07, John Curlander, Quinn Norton, Ewan Spence, Microsoft Maps, Body Hacking.

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Any stories, leads, or if you want to be in the show, drop me an email at ewanspence@gmail.com, or call me on 917 349 4539. Want to follow what’s going on with me? Twitter: EwanSpence.

Today’s Guest From The Emerging Technology Conference 07:
Chris Messian and Tara Hunt (The Citizen Agency)
Sean Bonner (Metroblogging)

Tags: ETech, ETech 07, Chris Messina, Tara Hunt, Ewan Spence, Sean Bonner, Metroblogging, Citizen Agency.

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Our second show from O’Reilly’s Emerging Technology Conference 2007 and the good and the bad of the future are here. The dangers of RFID, the progressive carbon offsetting of Java libraries, and the wonder of Heirarchial Brain functions. It’s all here in your daily round up of some of the more interesting talks and speakers from San Diego.

Any stories, leads, or if you want to be in the show, drop me an email at ewanspence@gmail.com, or call me on 917 349 4539. Want to follow what’s going on with me? Twitter: EwanSpence.

Today’s Guest From The Emerging Technology Conference 07:
Melanie Rieback, RFID Guardian (www.rfidguardian.org)
Simon Wardley, Fotango (www.fotango.com and ETech Carbon Offset)
Jeff Hawkins, Numenta (www.numenta.com)

Tags: ETech, ETech 07, Jeff Hawkins, RFID, Ewan Spence, Fotango, Javascript, Carbon Footprint.

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Into the final leg of the March Conference Tour, with O’Reilly’s Blue Riband Event, the Emerging Technology Conference in San Diego. Our opening show sees Tim O’Reilly talk about the themes of the 2007 Conference, along with a great start up blogsearch company, a mathemagician (just listen…) and a discussion on the ramifications of the Kathy Sierra situation.

Any stories, leads, or if you want to be in the show, drop me an email at ewanspence@gmail.com, or call me on 917 349 4539. Want to follow what’s going on with me? Twitter: EwanSpence.

Today’s Guest From The Emerging Technology Conference 07:
Tim O’Reilly (Etech Conference Site)
Arthur Benjamin (Arthur’s Website)
Cuneyt Ozveren, LeapTag (www.yoriwa.com)
Danny O’Brien (www.eff.org)

Tags: ETech, ETech 07, Tim O’Reilly, Arthur Benjamin, Ewan Spence, Mathemagician, Leap Tag, eff, Danny O’Brien.

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Time now for the second podcast from the BlogHer Business 07 conference, and it’s an iluminating podcast (much like the conference). As always, any stories, leads, or if you want to be in the show, drop me an email at ewanspence@gmail.com, or call me on 917 349 4539. Want to follow what’s going on with me? Twitter: EwanSpence.

Today’s Guest From BlogHer Business:
Elise Bauer (http://www.elise.com/)
Vannessa Fox (Google Webmaster Central)
Adam Tinworth (http://www.onemanandhisblog.com/)

Tags: BlogHer, Elise Bauer, Vanessa Fox, Adam Timworth.

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As always, any stories, leads, or if you want to be in the show, drop me an email at ewanspence@gmail.com, or call me on 917 349 4539. Want to follow what’s going on with me? Twitter: EwanSpence.

Today’s Guest From BlogHer Business:
Elisa Camahort, BlogHer Organiser (workerbeesblog.blogspot.com)
Lena West, XynoMedia Technology (www.xynomedia.com)

Tags: BlogHer, Elisa Camahort,Lena West.

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Pretty much one from the vaults here, in all the files, USB stick swapping, recording and conferences, Eric just nudged me that there was a second report from BarCamp Austin (the un-conference running alongside SXSW Interactive 2007) with the founder of WordPress. Given the editing on the first BlogHer Conference show is taking abit of time, this is the perfect opportunity to slot it in this little quickie without it being too out of date :-)

As always, any stories, leads, or if you want to be in the show, drop me an email at ewanspence@gmail.com, or call me on 917 349 4539. Want to follow what’s going on with me? Twitter: EwanSpence.

Today’s Guest From BarCamp Austin:
With Matt Mullenweg – co-founder of WordPress (http://wordpress.org/).

Tags: BarCamp, BarCamp Austin, SXSW Interactive, WordPress, SXSW Interactive, Eric Skiff.

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I may be up in New York at the moment, but there’s a few more things to clear up from SXSW. Such as the interview with moderator Christian Castle from the Google/YouTube/Arts discussion late last week I mentioned. As always, any stories, leads, or if you want to be in the show, drop me an email at ewanspence@gmail.com, or call me on 917 349 4539. Want to follow what’s going on with me? Twitter: EwanSpence.

Today’s Guest From SXSW:
Discussion from Christian Castle on YouTube, Google, and the mainstream media.
Music from Honeycut.

Tags: SXSW, SXSW 2007,SXSW Movie, SXSW Music, Ewan Spence, Honeycut, Youtube.

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What a fun day yesterday was. Panels that ranged across music, mobiles, the web, copyright law, Web 2.0 and consumers taking matters into their own hands, some cracking live bands, and a great midnight movie to finish it of. That’s what makes SXSW so special. As always, any stories, leads, or if you want to be in the show, drop me an email at ewanspence@gmail.com, or call me on 917 349 4539. Want to follow what’s going on with me? Twitter: EwanSpence.

Today’s Guest From SXSW:
Get ready for the internet based Portable Film Fest.
Mike Tucker, director of The Prisoner (or How I Planned To Kill Tony Blair).
Chris Stapp and Matt Heath, the team behind The Devil Dared Me To.
We play out with Deja Voodoo, Can’t Do What I Wanna Do.

Tags: SXSW, SXSW 2007,SXSW Movie, SXSW Music, Ewan Spence, The Prisoner, Portable Film Festival, Deja Voodoo, The Devil Dared Me To.

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There’s a bundle of stories and thoughts here at SXSW Music, and we’ll get to that in the next few shows. For now, there’s a fascinating interview with Ian Schaffer from Deep Focus (the company behind the Court TV ad/blog campaign to name one), a talk with Corey Dennis from Ioda along with the headline band from their opening day gig), and Casey Muller from Jamglue talking about music communities.

As always, any stories, leads, or if you want to be in the show, drop me an email at ewanspence@gmail.com, or call me on 917 349 4539. Want to follow what’s going on with me? Twitter: EwanSpence.

Today’s Guest From SXSW:
Casey Muller from Jamglue.
Corey Dennis from Ioda Promonet.
Ian Schaffer from Deep Focus.
The Black Angels, performing Bloodhounds on my Trail.

Tags: SXSW, SXSW 2007,SXSW Movie, SXSW Music, Ewan Spence, Jamglue, Ioda, Deep Focus, Court TV, Promonet.

Download “Bloodhounds On My Trail” (mp3)
from “Passover”
by The Black Angels
Light In The Attic

• Buy at iTunes Music Store
• Buy at eMusic
• Stream from RealNetworks / Rhapsody
• Buy at Napster
• Buy at RealNetworks / Rhapsody
• Buy at GroupieTunes
• Buy at Insound

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Added on top of this was the fact that the moderator decided on a ‘no questions from the floor’ policy, only taking in questions (which he screened) on little pieces of paper. Any audience interruptions were parried with the skill of David Ogden Stiers acting opposite Raymond Burr.

Basically I pretty much fumed at the back of the panel until the end, when enough was enough. My notes read like this…

Okay with a few mintues to go they want to hit on orphan works. No I’m not taking this any more, I’m going to stand up and dare to ask a question. That a SXSW panel has to come down to going head to head against the moderator to have any debate.

…and I forced my question into the discussion flow. “Can we ask who represents the consumer on this panel?” The answer? “No you can’t ask.” (Eric Rice has a chain of thought blog posts starting at the above link as well). I’m sorry, I;m going to debate strongly that it should be asked. Turns out the audience was on my side and wanted the question answered as well. Result? End of Panel, thank you for coming.

After the session the number of poeple asking for my card was testimony to the most one sided, ill moderated panel at SXSW (or any conference) I have ever been at.

Which didn’t stop me interviewing the moderator (Christian Castle) for the Tech Conference Podcast. That should be up over the weekend.

SXSW Google is Evil

Moderator: Chris Castle Managing Partner, Christian L Castle Attorneys

Marybeth Peters Register of Copyright, Library of Congress, US Copyright Office
Ali Aydar COO, SNOCAP Inc (ex of Napster)
Rebecca Greenberg Natl Dir, Recording Artists’ Coalition
Rick Carnes Pres, Songwriters Guild of America
Jay Faires Pres of Music and Publishing, Lionsgate
Patrick Ross Sr Fellow and VP Comms, The Progress and Freedom Foundation

Who is representing the listener or consumer on this panel?

We have to write down questions on a piece of paper for the moderator?

CC Misconstuing the DMCA by saying ‘Google is permitting clips.’
MP Explanation of DMCA takedown – physical world is different to the digital world – DMCA adds a protection of copyright. Providers wanted more certaintly if they were “merely” hosting . Copyright Extension was traded with the value of DMCA
AA ‘Is youtube making a copy?’ YT accepts the content, which is then transcoded, thus creating NEW content, and thus direct copy.
PR ergo not covered by DMCA. Copyright intent was an opt-in process.
RG Are there peopel wanting to be exploited by Google/YouTube. Professional (living) artists want to be created. THis removes the artist choice. If google has cash, why can’t they police?
RC And how do we ‘police’ the other myriad sites. “People die of exposure too.” And they’re doing adverts, so they are selling, where’s my portion?
MP The solution is an accoustic fingerprint (after all, they filter porn – but isn’t this a user generation). So if they can do this, are they shaking us down.
CC google’s answer is to give you cut of the revenue after negotiation.
PR the copyright owner should negotiate adverting themselves, not rely on GOogle. ie Comedy Central want it on their site.
RC living on one song for many many years (exs COPYRIGHT is NOT infinite) They can;t search for ‘circle c’
MP we turned down google to digitise the works of library of congress
CC are we surprised that google are wanting to change the law (exs: this comes from the panel arguing against the DMCA)
MP We should do this in the confines of the law (exs ahem DMCA)
CC Why should we spend our creative time searing google
RC I’m a servant – a servant of google. Away from the manufacturing and the industry
CC Is there a massive social cost to thinking Goggle’s DMCA lookout is correct? Takes $10 per takedonw per instance ‘it is in their commerical interest to not filter’
Audience: ANd he trys to remind us all written questions only afte the audience jump to correct re CBS YT deal

Questions
Q. Thread of Did you invite google. Nobody asked to appear from Google. Picking on a google employee in the audience.
Q. What is the EU doing on this issue? MP there is no EU takedown regieme, trying to argue fiar use in the UK (exs which doesn not exist)
Q. Why is it okay for Radio, and not Google (RC: I signed to ASCAP and get paid). Also US is chasing a PRS deal in america.

(from IRC)
[11:58] So to summarize: panel with no official backchannel, no consumer representation and roadblocks placed in the way of open debate?
[11:58] yes
[11:58] welcome to the music biz

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Mostly movies today, but with the musical biopic of Larry Pierce, you’ve got some melodies to join in with at the very end of the show. before that though, 40,000 zombie sheep attack the farm in the New Zealand comedy horror agricultre spectacle that will rival Shaun of the Dead this year, and the chaos of getting every music registrant a wristband.

As always, any stories, leads, or if you want to be in the show, drop me an email at ewanspence@gmail.com, or call me on 917 349 4539. Want to follow what’s going on with me? Twitter: EwanSpence.

Today’s Guest From SXSW:
Hugh Forrest, SXSW Coordinator talking about registering all the music fans and more.
Jonathan King, writer and director of Black Sheep.
Nick Prueher and Joe Pickett, directors of Dirty Country.
Larry Pierce sings “I Think About You Every Time…”

Tags: SXSW, SXSW 2007,SXSW Movie, SXSW Music, Ewan Spence, Black Sheep, Dirty Country.

DOWNLOAD the podcast by right clicking on this link or press play and listen in your browser.

Of course I have another consideration – you can’t just walk into any of the gigs and switch the microphone on to grab a bootleg (well you could, you just couldn’t podcast it legally afterwards). So as well as finding bands that will work in the show format I have in mind, they need to be podsafe, have some tracks alreadya vailable that I can play, and be available to meet up for an interview.

Luckily I’ve had contact with a lot of bands through TPN Rock, so I can call on them, and their labels (now that the SXSW Organisers have published the big list of bands playing), but I’ve another advantage. Ioda’s Promonet.

Naturally a number of the bands on their promotion network have already appeared on many shwos on The Podcast Network, and they also know who’s turning up at Austin. Which means that big SXSW list gets cut down a fair bit once I factor in the promonet bands that are appearing. I wonder if other podsafe music sites are doing this? And they have a massive musical showcase gig on the first day as well which I’ll be attending.

This year it’s the other way round. SXSW is the same rough dates, but Etech has shifted right to the end of March (and thus clashes CTIA in Florida…), so Austin is going to be my starting point. The good news is tehre is a Denny’s, so that’s breakfast on Friday 9th sorted.

Anyway, Interactive. The schedule is looking quite good- one of the things I found last year was that the panel discussions take a very broad sweep of each subjkect, but completely fails to get into any decent level of detail on any subject, mainly because once eachpanellist is introduced, gets their five mintues, two questions form the chair, and you’re at 45-50 minutes, with only 5 minutes for questions. That’s where I know the Tech Conference Show can come in, by getting to the panellists and explanding on the discussions, drilling down on a topic or two, and getting some meat on the bones.

Which is why I think the podcast will be great for peopel who are at Austin as well as everyone else listening around the world. Of course SXSW is more than just the Interactive Show, but that’s for the next post.

Back in 2004, I was invited over to speak at Etech on OPL (the BASIC like programming langauge for Symbian OS back in the v6.0 and 6.1 days). My first time in America, my first big conference experience, and the chance to meet a whole new group of friends. At the time I was still heading up the Tech Support Team in London for Pinnock Organiser Service, a far cry from where I am now.

Anyway, while I was at that first Etech, I met up with Mick Stanic, who was over there to see what new stuff tehre was for his work in the Australlian Advertising Industry. As thigns progressed in 2004, podcasting started to get more attention, and when Mick joined up with Cameron Reilly, first to do G’day World, and then The Podcast Network, I was invited to help set up the network with them. The rest you all know.

So I have a soft spot for Etech – partly because of the subjects it brings up, but mostly because it puts in one room a whole bundle of smart people with ideas, investors, and managers. A heady mix indeed. This year will be no different, and the usual mix of Tech Conference interviews and news will be a little oasis of calm at the end of the journey. I’m not woried in the slightest about finding stories and news in South California. And when it’s all over, I’ll relax on teh Friday before starting the flight home to Edinburgh at 5pm.

You can read about my first Etech over on my personal blog, starting here and working forwards in time.