Flip video camera

Did you know you can stream live video over the web for free these days?

Did you know you can, in fact, stream live video from your phone?

Did you know a Wall Street Journal blogger posts videos captured from a $200 camcorder?  (And the price has dropped significantly since then.)

These are just a few of the things I learned at this year’s Converge South conference.

Call in on Monday morning (Oct 27) at 10 am to participate in a conversation about some of the new tools that are using to build communities on the web and beyond.  Hear more about Twitter, Facebook, blogging, and other social media.

I’ve invited a few bloggers and techies who I met at the conference, including Wayne Sutton and Ginny Skalski at 30threads.  These folks are experts at creating news and information networks.  They administer the mync.com site.

Robert Scoble, a world-reknowned tech and social media geek, was at the conference to show us how he is using video to get the message across these days.  Although Robert won’t be on the call, we’ll be passing on a lot of what he shared with us.

By Jayson Delisle

Midweek in early October, we drove slowly into the historic district of Smithfield, Virginia after a day spent traveling the quiet backroads from North Carolina.  The cotton fields, brightening the edge of the two lane road, diminished just outside of town.  Main Street ends at Wharf Hill’s overlook of the green marshland where the Pagan River, slides to the James, and, beyond, the Chesapeake; the Atlantic.  This was a river town in a time when the roads were rivers and rivers meant prosperity.  Prosperity remains in Smithfield thanks to the Southern breakfast staples of salt-cured and wood-smoked Virginia Ham.  You can’t miss it here.

We parked on Main Street in historic downtown, as the gray clouds and scattered showers packed up for the weekend.  Heather put on her walking shoes while I quickly ducked into the well-stocked visitor’s center to gain my bearings.  OK.  We are in “Isle of Wight” County.  Think England, think colonies.  In America, towns don’t get much more historic.  Remember now, the neighbors are Jamestown and Williamsburg.  So what separates Smithfield from these regal relics?  As a local shop owner casually confided, “…the Williamsburg locals come here to get away from the crowds and the commercialism.”  Heather and I glanced briefly at each other because, in full disclosure, 1) we were headed to Williamsburg and 2) we obviously have an affinity and appreciation for small gateway towns.  During our short stay in Smithfield, we held on to the shop keeper’s comments as we took our time exploring by foot.

Boutiques of many sorts and sizes lined the pedestrian friendly thoroughfare.  Grand Victorian homes now housed quaint and colorful shops selling eclectic apparel and playful pet products.  We toured art galleries and open studios and chatted with the creative folks.  Photo opportunities abounded.  A large, bronzed Benjamin Franklin sat on a bench reading his paper.  Another bench-bound sculpture down the block was of an elderly valentine couple.  “Sit and stay awhile” they implied.  The Ice Cream Parlor and lunch counter hummed with late afternoon activity.

A helpful shop owner offered some recent history regarding a bout of storms that left the beloved Isle of Wight Museum wet and worn.  The town was now anxiously anticipating its grand reopening.  It is comforting to hear the townspeople cherishing their history and their renewal.  The sun was coming out.

As our planned time elapsed, and our curiosity yet remained, we decided we would return through Smithfield, to have a meal (and ice cream!) and visit the historic Ivy Hill Cemetery on our way back from Williamsburg.  You have to wander these old towns to experience their charm and learn from their locals.  As we headed out, towards the free vehicle ferry across the river, we slowed near the immense ham processing plant.  Shifts were changing and the lifeblood of the town was coming and going.  I’ll think of these people and this old river town next time I’m enjoying my morning ham biscuit.  And next time we’ll bring the canoe.

Last year, travel consultant Greta Lint tuned me in to an event that took smallwander.com in a new direction.  I was going to say it changed my life, but I’m not that dramatic.

Converge South is a free conference about using the ever-emerging technologies of the web to communicate with your fellow beings.  Once known simply as a blogging conference, it has grown to include sessions on shooting video for online publication, creating podcasts, increasing online traffic, and the like.

The conference takes place in Greensboro, NC once a year.  This year’s is happening this week, on Thursday and Friday, October 16 and 17.

At last year’s conference, I was a new web entrepreneur who had not entered into the universe of blogging.  After attending the sessions and meeting with friendly participants, I happily hopped on the boat and began learning the vocabulary.   The following definitions are abridged from Wikipedia:

Blog: A blog (an abridgment of the term web log) is a website, usually maintained by an individual, with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video.  (You are reading a blog right now.)

Podcast: A podcast is a series of digital-media files, which are distributed over the Internet using syndication feeds for playback on portable media players and computers. The term podcast, like broadcast, can refer either to the series of content itself or to the method by which it is syndicated; the latter is also called podcasting. The host or author of a podcast is often called a podcaster.

RSS: Really Simple Syndication.  An RSS document (which is called a “feed”, “web feed”, or “channel”) contains either a summary of content from an associated web site or the full text. RSS makes it possible for people to keep up with web sites in an automated manner that can be piped into special programs or filtered displays.

Social media: Social media is an umbrella term that defines the various activities that integrate technology, social interaction, and the construction of words, pictures, videos and audio. This interaction, and the manner in which information is presented, depends on the varied perspectives and “building” of shared meaning among communities, as people share their stories, and understandings.

Social networking: A social network service uses software to build online social networks for communities of people who share interests and activities or who are interested in exploring the interests and activities of others.

Search Engine: Search engines provide an interface to a group of items that enables users to specify criteria about an item of interest and have the engine find the matching items.

Search Engine Optimization: Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the volume and quality of traffic to a web site from search engines via “natural” (”organic” or “algorithmic”) search results for targeted keywords.

Web 2.0: Web 2.0 is a term describing the trend in the use of World Wide Web technology and web design that aims to enhance creativity, information sharing, and, most notably, collaboration among users.

Wiki: A wiki is a collection of web pages designed to enable anyone who accesses it to contribute or modify content, using a simplified markup language. Wikis are often used to create collaborative websites and to power community websites.

With these new “social media” web tools, smallwander.com is better able to collaborate with both town representatives and travelers.  We are better able to share information and learn from each other instead of relying on the staid, brochure-like world that existed previously on the web.

A couple months after last year’s conference, I had our two smallwander blogs up-and-running, Small Towns, which has information to help historic and charming towns to promote themselves, and Smallwanderer, a blog for travelers who are looking for authentic small town experiences.  In fact, our main website is also evolving into a more blog-oriented platform.  We’ll have an announcement on our new web design shortly.

I also learned a little bit about podcasting at the conference, and we launched our first podcast also in May.

If you are in driving distance to Greensboro, NC, I strongly encourage you to attend.