Blogs and Feeds

PodcasterCon.org -- The Pork Roll Story Continues

One of the neatest things about podcasting and vblogging is that it brings out the quirkyest of stories -- what in less complicated times would have been folk tales. At PodcasterCon I spotted a bright yellow t-shirt admonishing one and all to "eat more pork roll."  Now, if you are from Jersey or the immediate environs "pork roll" is very special. I'm from the Taylor ham, not pork roll Jerseyans and remember eating it happily as a special breakfast treat during most of my youth.

So, given my personal history with Taylor ham a.k.a. pork roll, I asked the wearer of the shirt about the significance of "eat more pork roll." Well, boy did I learn all about pork roll. The owner of the shirt was Gene Fitzpatrick of Hometown Tales who was at the conference along with Bryan Minogue. They have made one of the funniest, yet so true to Jersey, vblogs about pork roll. It is entitled -- Pork Roll: The Meat That Divides NJ. I very much enjoyed meeting these two guys and seeing all of the video. Gene showed me some of it from his cellphone, just enough like a movie trailer, to get me really interested in seeing the whole thing.

Now, I've been thinking, next time I go to Jersey, I'll have to get myself a Taylor Ham sandwich -- it just isn't pork roll to me.

PodcasterCon.org -- A Surreal Experience

Went to PodcasterCon in Chapel Hill, NC, over the weekend. It was a surreal experience. First, the venue was Murphey Hall, perhaps the building most freighted with history for me. It is the home of the Classics Department, Greek, Latin and such. Since it took me six plus years to complete my Ph.D. at UNC in Classics, I saw a lot of Murphey Hall during those years, spent many an hour in the department library, in the grad student offices and visiting faculty in their offices. The building has a solid bank of memories. It is not the same though. The university has renovated the building beautifully since my day when it was truly a wonderful dowdy old classroom building with lots of charm and not much else.

At first it seemed so off kilter for a meeting of some 300 or so individuals chasing the newest of the new media waves to be getting together in Murphey, . . . but then as I pondered the circumstance I couldn't help but remember that Homer's poems were spoken (so to speak) after dinner entertainment. Would Homeric poems have been released as a podcast -- more strange thoughts?

Overall, PodcasterCon.org was a splendid, fun event. It was not a round-up of the usual suspects, although they would have enjoyed it. It was a nice opportunity to meet a lot of new folks, some with lots of experience in podcasting and others with lots of enthusiasm but no experience. The energy level was very high, making way for lots of learning.