I had the pleasure of speaking at the Vermont Consultants Network's July meeting yesterday on the topic of Blogging, Podcasting and Webcasting. For my fellow New England Code Camp homies, the experience was much like presenting in the Providence Room at Microsoft's Waltham Offices.
Giving a presentation about blogging is something most of you reading this could do quite effortlessly, since we've been living in this realm for so long and take for granted its processes and benefits. But for those without first-hand knowledge of blogging, RSS and SEO, the topic can be, as one of the attendees said afterward, mind-blowing.
One attendee remarked that it was obvious I never sleep (which I'll take to mean I'm still being productive) and another said at the presentation's conclusion that they had just experienced a two-day seminar in the span of 60 minutes. There was also a local blogger discovery in Anne Barrett, a talented cartoonist who I'm convinced could generate a large audience if she wanted one. Check out this post to see a sample of Anne's cartoons where she debates the anxieties associated with starting a blog.
We never got to podcasting and webcasting in the presentation's 60 quick minutes, but instead focused on blogging: how to get started blogging (I showed them WordPress), what it means to subscribe to a feed and the benefits of RSS (I showed them Google Reader and the reader I've been using for a long time now, GreatNews, demonstrating how to subscribe to a feed in both.) We also covered the topic of discovery, both how to discover new feeds (we subscribed to results of a Feedster search), and how to be discovered, at which point we got into a few Search Engine Optimization tools and techniques.
In thinking about the presentation and my personal experience with blogging, it felt like I was sharing a secret formula for success to my new friends at the Vermont Consultants Network. In some ways I suppose that's true, that blogging and establishing a personal brand online does constitute a secret formula that not as many people know about as we may think. But it's a formula that definitely works.