Thoughts On My Second Year At PodCamp Toronto, A Podcasting Conference Weekend!

Very fun weekend at my second PodCamp Toronto!

Inspired by Matt Rouse's list of takeaways, here are a few of my own:

1. In-person connection - and sustained connection across time, after meeting at these events - is invaluable. I met Matt at PodCamp last year, and we stayed in touch. Matt was our cat wrangler and organized our lil crew, introducing me to some cool folks I hadn't yet met. It takes time, energy, and intention to sustain connection in our seemingly increasingly disconnected world. A text, an email, a Zoom chat - all of it takes intention. Some of it takes more time, and good connections and friendships are always worth it. If you meet people at events, keep in touch with them in between the events! What you water grows.

2. I felt very vindicated in my choice to prioritize YouTube in my content strategy over the last few years, and moving forward - even for podcasts. Apparently YouTube is by far the main discoverability platform for new podcasts. And if my experience putting 200+ non-video podcast episodes on YouTube has taught me anything, it's that this IS absolutely 100% worth doing.

3. People are listening on multiple platforms - sometimes switching from YouTube to Apple Podcasts or Spotify. I myself do this, so it was interesting to see this behaviour named by people with the data.

4. My own personal opinion is that a key to success in this space is both high-quality information being conveyed, and high volume of output. This can lead to burnout, sure, but with the rise of AEO, I do notice more and more people telling me they found me via ChatGPT. My 200+ podcast episodes, which are also on my site as blog posts, I'm sure have something to do with this discoverability. This is absolutely something I had in mind when creating my podcast, so it's nice to see these efforts bear fruit.

5. Among creators it seems like many struggle with perfectionism, procrastination, and mindset issues. There were some folks I'd encountered last year who wanted to make a podcast, and one year later, still had not done so. Lovingly, I wanted to shake these folks - all you have to do is click record on your phone. Then click stop, then upload it. That's as hard as it needs to be. Don't make needing perfect tech the bottleneck to your own progress.

6. I learned the most in between sessions - over lunches, dinners, and drinks. These liminal moments are really where the implicit curriculum of conferences and similar events are. Last year I skipped the networking events, this year I went to a ton. This year, I learned more and had a way better time.

My brain is moving and I left the weekend feeling both tired and very inspired!

Pictured: Matt Rouse, Ben Albert, Marvyn Paul, and Mahek Anam (and me, Sabrina Scott!)