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Modpod is coming to you live from the Podcast Movement conference in Dallas. Founded in 2014, Podcast Movement is the largest podcast conference in the entire world, and I couldn’t be more excited to make my first trip out to see what my peers in the podcast industry are getting up to, and to hear from the best and brightest in the field.
I’ve been going to high-tech/software conferences for over 30 years, and I can say that this is a whole different brand of vodka. It is an amazingly diverse crowd, not only in terms of race, gender, sexual orientation, etc., but also in terms of how people express themselves – both verbally and visually. I also learned that I can live without business cards; I downloaded Blinq, which enables contact information to be exchanged phone to phone. It really is incredible what they come up with these days.
Much of my first day was spent at the Podcast Movement Mastermind workshop. Those of us in attendance were led through a series of interactive sessions by Mark Deal, of the Podcast Editor Academy, focusing on growing our podcast businesses. We covered value proposition, customer segmentation, sales and marketing techniques, partnerships and resource identification and management. Even with all my own years of experience in sales and software, there was still so much new to learn.
Most of the time spent during the Mastermind session was in the form of table discussions of three participants each, with tables remixed every other session. Just like me, many of the folks who run podcast production services also maintain their own podcasts. And man oh man was there a wide variety of subjects:
Here’s a list of podcasting topics represented during my table discussions: dog training, make up for 40+ women (Make Up and Bagels – Shoshuna Akerman), Women of Color who are introverts (Kendra Thorpe), men’s mental health (Jason Tieri from Hey Guys Media Group), a podcast about the show “Stranger Things” (Darrell Darnell from Pro Podcasting Solutions), a podcast that combines comedy and personal coaching (“kind of a combo of Trevor Noah and Tony Robbins”).
With the workshop completed, now the conference begins in earnest. We can look forward to a room filled with exhibitors and sponsors, and dozens of breakout sessions covering topics from podcast editing techniques to tips on growing a podcast series audience. All the big players are here, such as iHeart Radio, Spotify, Cumulus Podcast Network, Captivate, etc.
Seeing so much imagination and creative energy only fills me with even more excitement for all the great things we do at ModPod. As much as I am enjoying this conference, I can’t wait to take everything I’ve learned here and apply it to my own podcast, and all the wonderful productions we support.
