--- title: PodCamp Toronto 2023 Recap date: 2023-02-28T05:00:00-05:00 author: Sean Smith canonical_url: "https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-06/episode-7/podcamp-toronto-2023-recap/" section: Podcast --- <!\[CDATA\[YII-BLOCK-BODY-BEGIN\]\]>[Skip to main content](#main-content)Season 06 Episode 7 – Feb 28, 2023 18:01 [Show Notes](#show-notes) ## PodCamp Toronto 2023 Recap  0:00 0:00 1.0x 0.75x1.0x1.25x1.5x2x [](//dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/website101podcast.com/uploads/mp3/season-06/S06E07-podcamp-recap.mp3) Sean and Mike attended PodCamp Toronto 2023, a conference for podcasters. This is our recap of the event and key takeaways for listeners. ### Show Notes **Day 1** - The care and feeding of an Audience - [Feedback page](https://website101podcast.com/feedback/) for the Website 101 Podcast - Podcast Networks and how to pitch your show - Analytics: What numbers do you need to look at - Behind the scenes with CBC podcasts - Yeah but how do you manage a podcast (Project Management) - Don't fear the Mic: how to Host a successful Podcast - Stories from the podcast trenches **Day 2** - How to make a HUGE Impression with a Niche Podcast - Top 10 things I wish I knew before I started my podcast - The (AI)caster: Using AI to start or enhance and boost your podcast. - How to pitch yourself to sponsors ### Show Links - [PodCamp Toronto 2023](https://2023.podcamptoronto.com/) - [Feedback for the Website 101 Podcast](https://website101podcast.com/feedback) - [Planning, Structure, and Goals](https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-01/episode-2/planning-structure-goals/) Powered Transcript Accuracy of transcript is dependant on AI technology. **\[00:00\]** **Mike:** It's the website 101 podcast. We are back. This is the podcast for anyone who builds websites or manages them on a regular basis. If that's you, this is the show for you. I am one of your host, Mike Mella, with me is Sean Smith, and with us is not Amanda Loots. Amanda is not with us today. She's on vacation, right, Sean? **\[00:26\]** **Sean:** Yes, she's on vacation. We're disappointed she's not here, but we're recording a special episode because myself and Mike were able to attend a conference this past weekend called PodCamp Toronto. It's for podcasters. It was interesting, fun, good people and we wanted to report back with what we learned at this conference and how it could apply to you as web developers or small business owners. small business owners because there's some things are universally applicable. It's not just for **\[01:01\]** **Mike:** podcasters. Yeah, absolutely. And yeah, so it's a bit of a departure from our normal format. Yeah, it's about podcasting, but hopefully you can get something out of it anyway, whatever it is. **\[01:12\]** **Sean:** It's kind of meta, but we're going to keep it short. That's right. So Saturday morning, the first session that we went to was called the care and feeding of an audience. And what this session was is how broadcasters can grow their audience. And the key takeaway that we took, and we think that you as business owners or self-employed developers can do, is to ask your target audience specific questions. and get answers from them. Now, the presenter went through and we took notes on about nine or 10 questions. Tom Webster is the name of the speaker. Yes, Tom, and he was really good. Now, we could put together a survey with nine or 10 questions, but that's a lot to ask anybody to go through and provide answers. So what we did is we put our own little twist on it, is we're going to going to have a new page on our website. You go to slash feedback or click the link which will be in the show notes. You go to slash feedback and the question is going to appear and there's going to be a text area. You type your answer. You submit. It's done. Couldn't be easy. It's anonymous. You don't need your name. You don't need your email. Yeah. If you want to answer all of our questions, submit again because every page load is a random question. So it's only **\[02:41\]** **Mike:** one question. It's not difficult. Yeah. If you listen to this show ever and get something out of it, or you don't, or if anything at all you want to say to us, go to that link. Website101podcast.com slash feedback and just answer that one question. We'd really appreciate it because we're trying to collect some information from our audience. **\[03:01\]** **Sean:** Yeah. And you can do the same thing with your website. Either I'm sure you're, if you've got a WordPress theme, you can find a way to do that or you can get a developer to help out, create some open-ended questions that will help you grow your audience or grow your business. **\[03:19\]** **Mike:** Yeah, this was a great talk, we really learned a lot from Tom. **\[03:23\]** **Sean:** Yeah, so what did we see on the second episode or a second session? **\[03:29\]** **Mike:** So, the second one was the one we went to was called Podcast Networks and How to Pitch you are a show to them. And this was presented by Michael Mungiarti. It was pretty good. He worked for a podcast network. I think it was called Sonar. Was that correct? Yes, Sonar. And they have a bunch of different podcasts in their umbrella. And he was talking about if you're running a podcast, how would you pitch a show to a network so you can get more reach and that kind of thing. It was very interesting. His company's not Gimlett or I Heart Radio or something. huge, which he admitted. So it's a little more of a niche network. But it was really interesting. **\[04:11\]** **Sean:** Learned, but he has a say. I like that. Yeah. Yeah. I thought I thought it was good as well. **\[04:16\]** **Mike:** And then what do we go to around noon? That was our next. Well, we split up instead of sticking **\[04:21\]** **Sean:** together. Yes. That's right. I went to the one about analytics. What numbers do you need to look at? And this was interesting, but the speaker spent most of his time talking about Spotify and Apple podcasts. And yes, I do have an account for both of those, but I've never looked at their stats. So I've kind of decided that maybe I'm going to take a look at it and think about what he said. The key take away for listeners, look at your analytics, find out what's important for you and your industry. **\[05:00\]** **Mike:** Yeah. I mean, it makes plenty of sense, of course. It's a little bit of a black box figuring out how some of these analytics work and that, but yeah, definitely worth looking at too. **\[05:10\]** **Sean:** Right. I believe Mike, you went to see the one behind the scenes with CBC podcasts. **\[05:14\]** **Mike:** Yeah, that's right. The team, there were three folks who handled a lot of the production for CBC's podcasts, which apparently I learned that I listened to a lot of CBC podcasts because they had them all up on the screen there and I know all those. Anyway that was very interesting, I mean CBC is just a different beast as far as podcasting goes. They have budget and producers and executive producers and all that. So it's interesting to learn how they go about it. I don't know how much it applied to our specific podcast but it was cool to say for sure. **\[05:47\]** **Sean:** Yeah, yeah. I'm looking at the two o'clock listing, and I don't remember which one we went to after lunch. **\[05:54\]** **Mike:** I see. Oh, we went to, yeah, but how do you manage a podcast? 2023 edition, I believe. **\[06:00\]** **Sean:** Oh, right. That was the one that he spent the time talking about various project management tools like Trello and Basecamp and things like that. **\[06:10\]** **Mike:** Yeah, Jacob McCourt was the name of the presenter. He did a good job. And yeah, he talked about the actual management side of setting up spreadsheets to manage your episodes all that kind of thing. **\[06:19\]** **Sean:** Yeah, so for us, it wasn't that helpful because we're very familiar with this. And we actually have one or two episodes that I'll link to in the share notes about project management. Yeah. If you would like a newer, fresher episode on that topic, again, hit us up on the contact form. Website101podcast.com slash contact. **\[06:38\]** **Mike:** That's right. 3 p.m. we checked. Did we split up again for this one? Oh no, okay. So we went to an initial talk called interviewing without all the prep, but we decided pretty close in that it just was not for us. So there's a rule at this conference by the way called the rule of two feet, meaning you have two feet. If you don't like what you're hearing, get up and leave politely and go to a different talk. So in this one, we left that one and instead went to don't fear the mic how to host a successful podcast, which is a panel, right? Remember that one? **\[07:17\]** **Sean:** I thought we did the five podcast apps. **\[07:19\]** **Mike:** I don't think so. I think we went to that, because I remember the hosts of this one. **\[07:22\]** **Sean:** Oh, you're right. You're right. We went to the host one. **\[07:24\]** **Mike:** Yeah. It was a panel hosted by kind of comedians who run podcasts and stuff. I don't know. That one actually wasn't that great, either, to be honest, as far as I'm concerned, that hour block was a little bit of a... **\[07:36\]** **Sean:** Yeah, I think that hour was a throwaway. And that's nothing against the hosts of these particular sessions. It just didn't work for us. We were not their target audience. **\[07:47\]** **Mike:** That's right. But the 4pm one was pretty good. That was called Stories from the Podcast Trenches. Do you remember that? **\[07:54\]** **Sean:** Which was also a panel and they talked about good and bad things, experiences, and I really enjoyed this one. **\[08:05\]** **Mike:** Yeah, and there was a lot of really great, you know, we learned about that, what's that nursing podcasts. Maybe we'll link to it if we can dig it up. These two nurses have a podcast and they've grown it into something really successful. Yeah, it was Sarah Fung and **\[08:20\]** **Sean:** Amy Archibald Varley. Right. They were really, really interesting and I was hoping to hit them up at the after party, but I didn't see them there and I didn't see them today. I had a specific question I wanted to talk to them about. I really liked what they had to say. Yeah, it was interesting **\[08:36\]** **Mike:** finding out how they run their business. It was really cool. So then we had an after-party, which was kind of cool. We schmoozed a little bit with some of the people that evening and met some folks there. That was cool. **\[08:48\]** **Sean:** Yeah, yeah. We met a student who was visiting or living in Mississauga, but he's originally from India, and then there was another two guys that we sat at our table, and we spent some time talking to them. Lots of fun. Yeah, yeah, I learned a lot from that too. **\[09:14\]** **Mike:** Okay, so here we are at the after party for Pod Camp. Sean, comments, thoughts. **\[09:21\]** **Sean:** I think this was a good event to go. I learned some things. I still think session number online where questions about how to learn things about your audience. That was the killer session. **\[09:35\]** **Mike:** Yeah, so far that was probably the real home run. We got another day tomorrow. We'll see what comes from that, maybe to be really awesome to you. And hopefully we'll do some wringling tonight at the party here. **\[09:48\]** **Sean:** Yeah, exactly. **\[09:50\]** **Mike:** And then the next day we had the remaining presentations of the conference. The first one we went to was a good one. It was called How to Make a Huge Impression with a niche podcast. We consider ourselves somewhat niche, I guess. I guess we're in niche. **\[10:06\]** **Sean:** I would say that we are in the niche and small. Yeah, but we would like to be in the niche and large. **\[10:14\]** **Mike:** That's right. This guy is a, what was his name again? He's a lawyer who has a, his name is Hussein Ponju. And he has a podcast called Lawyer, I believe. And it's about Canadian law and, you know, the cases that they, they deal with that kind of thing. **\[10:29\]** **Sean:** Yeah. And he, he was an excellent speaker. He was engaging, he was funny, and yeah, if you get a chance to see him, I would recommend it. He was really, really good. Yeah. Good information there. And then after 11 o'clock, what did we do here? 10 things I wish I knew before I started my podcast. Now, ironically, myself and Mike were planning on doing a five things I knew before I started my podcast, and right when we were ready to submit our abstract, this one went up. **\[11:01\]** **Mike:** so they stole our idea. However, the guy who the presenter, his name is Marco Timpano, literally wrote the book because he has a book called 25 Things I Wish I New before I started by podcast, so we thought, well, they will let him let him handle this topic. So we've **\[11:19\]** **Sean:** found out. It was his presentation was really interesting. He was an engaging speaker, it was lots of fun. And we could have still done ours because our things were different than his **\[11:31\]** **Mike:** Yeah, it was really a bit of a different angle that he took rather than what we were going to do. So yeah, it's too bad, but I mean next year we'll be in there when Amanda said. **\[11:40\]** **Sean:** Yeah, so today there was no lunch, and we went right into the next one, which was the AI caster using AI to start or enhance and boost your podcast. Now, this, we both myself and Mike have played around with AI, so we didn't really learn a lot from it, But what we'd like to say is that you can use AI to help you with your business or your web development or whatever it is. The key takeaway if you're going to be using AI is to not just copy and paste. Use it to generate ideas and then write them yourselves because the presenter, and I forget his name, informed us that there is some SEO penalty when Google or whoever determines that your content was written by AI. So you will want to take that content that was provided to you and change it up with your own words and voice. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. It's great as basically don't plagiarize. Yeah, remember what you learned in high school. Don't plagiarize even **\[12:51\]** **Mike:** from an AI generator. Yeah, it was cool, it was good advice. And then finally, the last presentation we went to was really great, I think, how to pitch yourself to sponsors. Because we are considering, we don't have any sponsors in the show as we kind of joke about once in a while, but we're considering exploring that option. And we spoke to, or we listened to, a presenter who has a very niche podcast about traveling like tourism, but what would you call it? Like environmentally friendly tourist options, **\[13:28\]** **Sean:** things like that. She build herself as an influencer on Instagram and TikTok and then she has her podcast. She presented a lot of excellent information and what I would encourage listeners to do is you may not be looking for a sponsor on your podcast because maybe you have one or you don't, but you may want advertising on your website or you may want to look at becoming a sponsor for somebody who is doing a podcast or a YouTube channel in your **\[14:05\]** **Mike:** business as niche or market. Yeah. Her name is Aaron Elizabeth Hines and yeah she does have relationships with promoters and that kind of thing who have sponsored episodes and that and she she gave a lot of advice if you wanted to go that route. Yeah, it was interesting. **\[14:22\]** **Sean:** Yeah, so I want to give, like, I had some thoughts about the presentations in general, and I'm not going to name names, because I want to draw on some things that we've talked on in the podcast in the past. One of the things that we often talk about is accessibility. And I had an issue with at least two of the presenters that there were slides were not easily read because it didn't have good contrast. Like the one that I'm thinking of, the background was like a light medium green with white text or a yellow headline and I couldn't read it at all. It was really hard to focus on them. **\[15:04\]** **Mike:** Yeah. I had one talk where they mentioned this to you, Sean. They did that thing where they would have some funny animated gif on a slide to represent the thought that they're trying to convey at that moment, which is funny for the first five seconds when you see it loop. And then as they're talking over that slide for the next five minutes, it's just loop after loop of that same animated gif. And it's very distracting when you're supposed to be focusing what they're saying. **\[15:31\]** **Sean:** So the other thing that I would say to speakers at conferences and please remember I used to teach public speaking. So I'm speaking from experience as a teacher and somebody who attends a lot of conferences. Don't whisper. When you talk really quietly, nobody can hear you. Yeah. You need to, you need to project. If you don't have a microphone because the venue doesn't have one, you need to speak loudly. That's not yelling. It's projecting deep breaths, speak from your diaphragm. Yeah. There's three or four presenters that I had, I struggled listening to them and I was not necessarily sitting in the back of the room. I was in the middle of the room most of the time. Please speak loudly. Yeah, this conference is, I mean, it's important for speakers to remember that even if they have a microphone, many attendees are listening without headphones, so volume matters. **\[16:19\]** **Mike:** not the most, you know, high budget conference. It's a free conference. You pay what you want. And there were very few microphones. Like the panels sometimes had mics if they're seated at a table there, but most speakers did not have a microphone. So they had to just speak **\[16:34\]** **Sean:** to the room. Yeah. Overall, this was a great conference. I am planning to attend next year. PodCamp Toronto has been around for 15 years or so. This is my first time going, really liked it. If you're in the area or a close drive away or you want to fly in, check it out. It is worth going to. PodCamp Toronto. **\[16:56\]** **Mike:** Yeah, hopefully next year we will have a session at the, get it in in time and not have a duplicate that's already in there or whatever. You could meet us. That's right. Come out and check us out. **\[17:07\]** **Sean:** Amanda will hopefully be with us that time. She couldn't make it this time because she had a previously planned vacation. She went out, flew out on Saturday morning, conference started Saturday morning, right? Anyways, thank you for listening to this episode or the website 101 Podcast. We'll see you on the next one. **\[17:25\]** **Mike:** Bye. **\[17:31\]** **Sean:** The website 101 Podcast is hosted by me, Amanda Loots. You can also find me online at AmandaLutes.com. Recording from a secret air while plotting world domination, I'm Sean Smith, your co-host. **\[17:43\]** **Mike:** One of your hosts today was me, Mike Mella. Find me online at belikewater.ca or on socials at Mike Mella. Close Transcript Have a question for Sean, Mike, and Amanda? [Send us an email](/contact). [![Listen on Google Play Music](/assets/images/google_podcasts_badge@2x.png)](https://www.google.com/podcasts?feed=aHR0cHM6Ly93ZWJzaXRlMTAxcG9kY2FzdC5jb20vZmVlZC5yc3M%3D)[![itunes badge](/assets/images/itunes-badge.png)](https://itunes.apple.com/ca/podcast/website-101-podcast/id1449510012)[![itunes badge](/assets/images/spotify-logo.png)](https://open.spotify.com/show/3rmSM1R9t6q1U8DmYWJRSO?si=NrYPMgDaRV6Dd56PjEaPow)### Season 06 - 1 [ Tools of the Trade](https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-06/episode-1/tools-of-the-trade/) - 2 [ Website Contract Advice From an Actual Lawyer](https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-06/episode-2/website-contract-advice-from-an-actual-lawyer/) - 3 [ Choosing a CMS](https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-06/episode-3/choosing-a-cms/) - 4 [ Tips for Website Maintenance](https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-06/episode-4/tips-for-website-maintenance/) - 5 [ Working with Conflicting Personalities](https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-06/episode-5/working-with-conflicting-personalities/) - 6 [ Building an Online Course with Jane Atkinson](https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-06/episode-6/building-an-online-course-with-jane-atkinson/) - 7 [ PodCamp Toronto 2023 Recap](https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-06/episode-7/podcamp-toronto-2023-recap/) - 8 [ The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly about RFPs](https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-06/episode-8/the-good-the-bad-and-the-ugly-about-rfps/) - 9 [ Here's how to work from paradise](https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-06/episode-9/heres-how-to-work-from-paradise/) - 10 [ Rebroadcast: Pimp Your Typography](https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-06/episode-10/rebroadcast-pimp-your-typography/) - 11 [ Internet Privacy with Michael Geist](https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-06/episode-11/internet-privacy/) - 12 [ Lessons from a plugin developer with Ben Croker](https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-06/episode-12/lessons-from-a-plugin-developer-with-ben-croker/) - 13 [ Stand Out on Social Media with Jessica Perreault](https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-06/episode-13/social-media-with-jessica-perreault/) ### All Seasons - [Season 01](https://website101podcast.com/season/01/) - [Season 02](https://website101podcast.com/season/02/) - [Season 03](https://website101podcast.com/season/03/) - [Season 04](https://website101podcast.com/season/04/) - [Season 05](https://website101podcast.com/season/05/) - [Season 06](https://website101podcast.com/season/06/) - [Season 07](https://website101podcast.com/season/07/) - [Season 08](https://website101podcast.com/season/08/) - [Season 09](https://website101podcast.com/season/09/) <!\[CDATA\[YII-BLOCK-BODY-END\]\]>