What's the excitement about?

I've got a secret to tell you:  I podcast (a lot) Okay, it's not much of a secret, or actually a secret at all, but I had to get your attention somehow.  I enjoy podcasting and the feeling that I'm part of the cutting edge of technology.  But last night I went to the San Francisco Podcasting Meetup , and I found out how far from the cutting edge I really am.

There was an energy and excitement to the Meetup that bordered on frenetic.  Most people there had been blogging for less than three months and a few hadn't even recorded their first episode yet.  Then there was a much smaller group of people who had been part of the first wave of podcasters, some of whom had been podcasting before the name had ever been coined.  The biggest names in the crowd were probably Doug Kaye of ITConversations and the Conversations Network , and R.U. Sirius of the MondoGlobo Network.   The one thing we all had in common was how excited we are about podcasting.

No one's got it quite figured out yet, that much was obvious.  The folks from Libsyn (who hosts my podcast), Ioda, PodShow, AudioLuxe, Castfire and several other companies whose names I forget were in force, but rather than trying to compete, they were all talking about how much they want to see podcasting succeed.  They all seem to be aware that we're just at the beginning of a wave of possibilities, and competition between them will do more harm than good.

I've said it before, that I believe podcasting is where blogging was three or four years ago.  The difference is that many of these people saw how blogging changed the Internet and want to be involved as podcasting revolutionized the Internet again.  And this time it's happening much faster.

A few of the podcasts who's hosts I met last night:

• 1-2-3 Listen to me:  A mother and her two daughters, 5 & 8, tell stories
• A guy, a girl and a bottle:  Talking about wine in and around Silicon Valley
• Animals Aloud:  Examines the impact animals and people have on each other
• Cellar Rat:  Giving us the scoop on the Wine Country, Sonoma County CA
• Zentropia:  Experimental Dub, Dark & Heavy (that's music, for those of us over 30)
• The WildeBeat:  The audio journal about getting into the wilderness
• Fake Science:  Covering current topics in digital music.

And a couple dozen more I forgot to get cards from.  I had a lot of fun last night, and I want to apologize to those people I didn't get cards from.  There's always next month.