I spent this weekend “geeking out” at a PodCamp Boston 3, the social media “un-conference” held at the Harvard Medical Center. The organizers – Chris Penn, Chris Brogan, Chel Pixie, Sooz, Steve Sherlock, Doug Haslam, and Whitney Hoffman — deserve a great deal of kudos for putting such great event together.

This was my second PodCamp, and already the differences have been noticeable. The diversity of attendees — from the marketers and PR folks that dominated the last event in October, to designers looking to understand new methods of value creation on the web, to a teacher looking to use co-created media to help troubled students learn to communicate — was matched only by the passion and enthusiasm we had as a a whole to learn from each other and take what we have found back with us, to use and experiment with in our own ways.

A Few Highlights of PodCamp:

No Experience Necessary: A number of folks — some who traveled a significant distance — came to learn about how they can use social media within their organization without having been associated with the “social media space” (a term I particularly loathe) up until this point. What many of them quickly learned is that they have been a part of the global conversation that is happening — they just didn’t realize that it can be harnessed.

The Value Isn’t (Always) In the Sessions: No one is really an expert at PodCamp — The sessions, while engaging and thought-provoking for the most part — were not the highlight of my PodCamp experience. The most fun I had was sitting upstairs in the BrainTorrent rooms  having ad-hoc discussions with presenters, attendees, and organizers. (Another highlight: Chris Brogan covering “Pork & Beans” and “Round Here” on guitar, with varying degrees of success. I occasionally helped Chris cover up his guitar gaffes with my terrible vocal prowess).

Chris Brogan on Guitar, Jeff Fisher on Lyrics

Sponsors Who Understand: The sponsors of the event — mDialog, Blue Sky Factory, mZinga, Utterz, Blip.tv, blubrry.com, ooVoo, matchmine, marketingprofs, and Marketwire — deserve a great deal of credit for participating in the general conference conversations. They all understand that the best PR is when you become a member of your own public. Well done.

A Few Things I Hope to See Improved at PCB4:

Encourage Outside Participation: The social media community in Boston is small and tightly connected, and it seemed at times that the event was just another event for folks to get together again. While I met more folks from outside the social media community this year, the only way our community will truely keep learning is to continue to open the door for other to share their ideas.

This Stuff Doesn’t Make Itself: An number of folks — like myself — came to the conference as experience designers. We are the people who are designing social media products and recommending that our clients use them to grow or transform their business. I had several very good conversations in the BrainTorrent room around designing for social spaces — I’d like to see a presentation or two about social design principles at the next session (I already have Keynote open).

All in all, it was a great camp, and I’m looking forward to following up with all the great folks I got a chance to meet.

With all of the issues I’ve had on this blog — a horrendous hosting provider, a failed experiment with unproven blog software, family craziness, and a case of walking pneumonia, to list but a few — perhaps the reason I’ve been silent here as much as I have was because I have embarked on a career change. I’m happy to announce that just about four weeks ago, I joined the Experience Design team at Molecular.

A career move is not made without significant introspection. It was a pleasure to spend three years working with the bright folks at Miller Systems — many of whom I call friends — but over the six months before the move, I realized that my career interests were moving in a different direction, and after meeting several members of the Molecular team at various events I realized that they were the perfect fit for a number of reasons:

• I cherish the thought of collaborating with a group of folks who are like minded in their pursuit of designing total experiences that inspire.
• Molecular’s focus and industry leadership in emerging interactions — discovering patterns and themes in everyday use of technology, how those patterns evolve over time, parallels my personal and professional interests.
• To know that those i work with know that experience design intersects and intertwingles with art, sociology, psychology, literary studies, cinematography, and cultural anthropology as much as it does technology.

As a result, the future focus of this blog will be on the general themes found in this post. Blogging will be more frequent, often more topical, and occasionally (hopefully) more thought provoking than it has in the past.

After dealing with various crises at the 9-to-5, bronchitis, a cheap hotel in Albany, NY, a coolant leak in my car, Skaneateles, NY in a snowstorm, and more bronchitis, I’ve officially caught up with the rest of my life and finally feel like I can blog again.

Lots has happened since my last post here. Facebook launched, and then relaunched (and then re-relaunched) Beacon. Google launched Open Social on which LinkedIn launched their own platform.

I mention these things because they dovetail nicely into what has been occupying so much of my time. Specifically, I’ve been spent in the last few months immersed in either designing total experiences or being hindered by applications that have been organically grown without much thought to their experience at all.

It’s been a very tiresome, but very educational experience.

I’ll be spending much of my time here detailing some of the lessons I’ve been learning, and (hopefully) they will coincide with what others in my discipline have been experiencing.

I’m here at PodCamp Boston 2. The Unconference on social media. The unconference format, with content provided by the participants, has been a fantastic and informative experience so far (even when the speaker doesn’t show up for a session, which is the case right now. PodCamp’s co-founder, Chris Brogan is running an ad-hoc session on the world of Podcasting.

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Boy wonder Mark Zuckerberg and company announced today that Microsoft infused their little social platform with $240 million in cash for a 1.6 percent share. This puts Facebook’s value at $15 billion, which makes MySpace’s purchase price fall somewhere between pocket change and one car payment, relatively speaking.

And so ends the flurry of blog posts and newsbites regarding the tug-of-war between Microsoft and Google. Microsoft will serve international banner ads on the Facebook site, and Facebook can continue their plans to expand their targeted ad network.

The other obvious win for Microsoft is that it gains footing in what has become the most successful open web-based operating platform while still in its infancy, a move which will (hopefully) provide some meaningful competition to Google’s efforts on the web-OS front.

This can only be good for the rest of us. I would expect to see some cohesive form of social network/web OS come out of Google soon, integrating what has become several interconnected but disparate service applications. A little competition never hurt anyone.

As someone that publishes two blogs (or is attempting to, at any rate) and works deep within the bowels of the industry that spawned today’s ubiquitously connected society, I’m always ready to jump at the chance to mingle with other like-minded folks. One such opportunity came up last night thanks to the good folks at EMC and web strategy guru Jeremiah Owyang.

I’ve commented on Jeremiah’s blog a few times, so I thought it would be great to meet him and others in the Boston new media community in person. Of course, Jeremiah was so busy, and I so sidetracked with the other great folks milling about that I never got to get a chance to say hello.

No matter, it was great to meet all the folks I could. Some of the more interesting folks I met were from the first generation of those raised on MySpace and Facebook, folks like Amanda Rooney and Amanda Gravel, Dan Zarrella and Alison Driscoll.

I was raised on The Cosby Show, FYI.

In any case, thanks all. It was a pleasure meeting you all, and I’m sure I’ll see you at PodCamp.