BEA got underway this morning. Everything kicked off for me with a podcasting panel, unfortunately led by the man who wrote Podcasting for Dummies. Literally, the dude who wrote the book. He was painfully awful, never connecting podcasting to books (let alone literary books), never going beyond shallow business jargon. It was such a lost opportunity that I was flashing between fury and disappointment. Ed was able to stomach far more than me. I felt terribly sorry for the people in the audience, who came curious to learn something about podcasting and were being subjected to a low-rent marketing schpiel. "You have to treat podcasting like a business solution," he said. Call me crazy but I thought you had to think of it as a creative endeavor. He also called podcasting the Next Big Thing. Hello, got any snake oil?
So a quick chain of fortunate circumstances later and I’m heading to the National Museum of History with Cecil and David and Steve to see the new Muppet exhibit. How cool! Except it’s just 5 sealed cases of puppets, one of which contains only the Swedish Chef. No Gonzo whatsoever. No Sam Eagle, no Miss Piggy, no Dr. Bunsen Honeydew or his sidekick Beaker. We could see the muppets but no touchy touchy. Eh, it was still better than a lame podcast session.
Later I was lucky again and ran into Kassia and met Lauren and Wendi and Megan and saw Ron and Mark and trailed around on the subway behind Ed, who has a very good sense of direction. Tomorrow I will try much harder to grin and bear any panels that suck — because none can be as crappy as today’s podcasting panel.
