Pagan Centered Podcast™

We’re now officially on the schedule for leading a workshop at CNC PPDs: http://2010.cncppd.org/attend/workshops.

Anything specific y’all want us to discuss? Drop us a comment. Note, the full crew of PCP will be there.

On the group Pagans Who Get Stuff Done, the concept of providing a Pagan Resumé is emphasized and recommended. This is an idea that has been tossed around the Pagan community recently, but there hasn’t been much in the way of example. Let’s look at my Pagan Resumé as an example.

Summary of experience: Leading and unintentionally influencing Pagan communities through my social and technological abilities.

CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE PAGAN COMMUNITY:

Mystics Cove Pagan Network of Clarion University of Pennsylvania, President
January 2004 – September 2005

• Co-founded this campus organization
• Led organization to valuable RSO (Recognized Student Organization) status
• Served as Pagan contact for local law enforcement, religious groups and town clergy

Fluffy Free Zone, Member
July 2005 – February 2006

• Established group podcast
• Assisted with the education of novices and correcting misinformation in social media communities

Group Investigating God, Pagan Coordinator
September 2005 – March 2006

• Co-founded interfaith discussion between the Pagan group on campus and the largest Christian faith group on campus.
• Established a weekly forum for Christians and Pagans to discuss their perspectives face-to-face on the same faith issues
• Culminated with a 3 episode podcast of the same name

Pagan Centered Podcast (fmr. Pagan Clarion Podcast), Producer and Co-host
April 2006 – Present

• Established as an alternative venue for Pagans in Clarion, PA to express their opinions about Paganism and react to local treatment of Pagans
• Named most influential podcast in December 2009 by Pan Gaia Magazine
• Negotiated twice a week airing with Pagan Radio Network
• Coordinates production and post-production efforts
• Maintains show’s web presence

Proud Pagan Podcasters (PPP), Member
November 2005 – Present

• Led revitalization effort of the organization on Yule 2008
• Oversees organization’s web presence and membership management
• Created Live Pagan Podcasting, airing live Pagan podcasts as they are recorded
• Program Director for Live Pagan Podcasting
• Liaison with the PPP’s partner organization: Pagan Newswire Collective

Pagan Newswire Collective (PNC), Liaison
Founding in 2009 – Present

• Represents the interests of Pagan podcasters to the PNC
• Assisted with the festival coverage of PSG 2010
• Member of the Tech committee

PRACTICAL SKILLS:

• Familiar with podcasting, social media, programming and other web technologies
• Formerly a freelance developer, bringing skills of time and resource management
• Former co-proprietor of a software company, bringing skills of accomplishing tasks with minimal resources
• Frequent speaker at conferences and consultant for conference organization, able to understand conferences and how to interact with conference organizers productively
• Currently an international businessman, bringing the ability to understand with and interact properly with those of other cultures
• Familiar with navigating bureaucracies to meet desired goals
• Published author, co-authoring another book. I have strong writing and editing skills and attention to inane detail

FORMAL/RECOGNIZED EDUCATION:

Bachelor of Science in Computer Science (2006)
Minors: Business Administration, Mathematics, Honors Program
Graduated Summa Cum Laude

American Marketing Association (AMA) – Atlanta, GA (2007)
3cr Seminar in Customer Service/Treatment.

Saw this article up on Fark. I find it sad because it makes sense and I have a feeling they’re right.

Like all PCP ideas, this idea has gone through:

- Rhetorical exhaustion-induced comment
- Hmm, that’d be interesting
- The resources to do this exist and we have access to them
- We can actually do this!

This time, it’s PCP: The Conference. Well, as far as the actual conference goes, PSG has very awesome content and we (the PNC) left a great impression on the organizers. We could probably work out a partnership where presenters could authorize recordings of their presentations. This year, we got 10 hours of content. Presentations at PSG are 30-90 minutes each, so it’s easy to duplicate that next year. But why limit ourselves to PSG? There are other great conferences like Pantheacon and all around the country.

How are we getting the audio? Pagan Newswire Collective is seriously pondering a festival crew for covering festivals. The PCP crew would need to pitch in with post-production and back-end efforts so we can get first dibs on the audio and keep a good relationship with the PNC so we can use their resources.

This means if we hit 10 festivals a year, we’d have 52 hours of content per year at least. This means we could start another “channel” here at the PCP website. Perhaps we could call it something like the Pagan Conference Podcast (PCP2) or something like that. Inevitably we would have more content than can fit once per week, but we could adjust the podcast to accommodate our post-production abilities accordingly.

So, there we have it. Real in-person conferences. They’re all around the country so we avoid the “where should it be” problem. These are existing conferences, so poor Amber can just focus on the annual pow-wow rather than organizing a PCP conference. And, when geography permits, the PCP crew can show up and not organize anything other than maybe a live on-site PCP recording.

Wow, this could actually happen. What does everyone think? If we have folks at a festival that sucks, well that’s just great fodder for the Pagan Centered Podcast .

Here’s a copy of an article I posted to the Proud Pagan Podcasters website.

At PSG 2010 where we had our first PPP meetup, there was a lot of talk that Pagan media should expand into Video. We have had great success with Pagan podcasting, which has expanded into the realms of Pagan Radio Network and Live Pagan Podcasting. Why not take that success onto creating a Pagan TV channel online? I know some folks are already working on this, such as the PPP accepting YouTube channels and Vidcasts regardless of quality and the Wise Ones’ Net project which is focused on quality video programming.

This seems like a little deja-vu of Pagan Podcasting circa 2005 where most shows were of incredibly poor quality, in contrast with the almost universally professional quality of Pagan shows today. Those shows, by means of networking via the PPP, were able to share knowledge to improve the quality of their shows, and archive those conversations for future podcasters to learn from. However, unlike Pagan Podcasters, there is no camaraderie among those that exclusively produce Pagan Video content.

One idea that was thrown about was Pagan Podcasters should seed a quality Pagan Video community. To an extent, that is already happening with the Wonnet project, which is an offshoot of the long-running podcast The Secrets in Plain Sight. However, what most outside the content-generation community don’t realize is that some people intentionally chose an audio-only medium for the anonymity it offers. Also, just because one can create audio doesn’t mean we’re competent to create video – not to mention the added orders of magnitude for post-production. Honestly, the biggest hurdle is the post-production.

What if we didn’t do post-production?

The natural evolution of podcasts, which admittedly has been shaken up with new tools that have come into widespread use in the past year like BlogTalkRadio, in the podcasting community is to start with audio only and graduate through ever increasing levels of quality, going from telephone quality to near CD quality. Then, shows introduce live elements like live streaming and live call-ins. For example, the Pagan Centered Podcast currently streams video while doing their live shows using Ustream. The thing that makes things interesting is that Ustream allows recording of the live feeds and later distribution of these recordings.

So what if we just saved the raw feed and distributed that, without the daunting task of video post-production? This could begin the evolution of Pagan podcasting into Pagan podcasting + vidcasting. Many shows that follow this path never terminate their audio feed, especially since it’s not practical to put video on your iPod and take that to listen to at work.

So, is it time for Pagan podcasters to fill the void of there being insufficient quality Pagan video content? Sure, there’s Wonnet and MagickTV, but that just leaves folks thirsting for more. There’s a lot of low-quality Pagan content out there, maybe it’s just a matter of outreach and kickstarting a networking process (a-la the early days of PPP for podcasters) to raise the bar for Pagan video? What are your thoughts?

So a friend of mine introduced me to the most awesome to-do list site ever. Why am I so excited about this? Because I’m tired of hand-writing a shopping list then not having it as I pass by the supermarket which then leads me to not getting what I need and buying a whole lot of stuff that wont be consumed for months!

Economic efficiency is Earth Friendly when done right!

Hence my excitement about RememberTheMilk.com. Not only is it idiot-proof, but I can create a new list called “shopping” and then pull it up on my phone. Not only can I read the list on my phone, I can add things to lists (like, when I get a great idea for improving Live Pagan Podcasting) and mark things as complete as I get things done. Just point your mobile browser to m.rememberthemilk.com to access your to-do lists anywhere with data coverage.

I now consume less, don’t waste paper and am more efficient. W00t!

I, Dave of PCP, representing the Proud Pagan Podcasters (PPP) and the Pagan Newswire Collective (PNC), will be at the Memory Tent at Pagan Spirit Gathering to gather interviews… when I’m not out and about frolicking or doing my presentation about Pagans and Podcasting or attending Jason Pitzl-Waters’ presentation about Pagan New Media.

We will have electricity, which means full podcasting equipment (if I can fit it in my rental car). All interviews will be Creative Commons Licensed (just like our show) so everyone in the PPP and PNC can use them. You can bet this content will migrate its way into PCP episodes. Our audio recording resources will also be made available to PSG organizers in case they may want to have some presentations recorded (with presenter approval of course).

Major kudos for all this goes out to Jason Pitzl-Waters for representing the PNC and PPP interests to Circle Sanctuary after I initially read the PSG guidelines which effectively bans such activity.

I think this goes to highlight a situation about guideline writing. These guidelines still effectively ban writing and learning at the event due to their poor wording. I recommend that any Pagan organization writing such strict guidelines for an event consult with someone with a contract writing background. The PSG guidelines as they stand online today remind me of the abusive contract writing of HOAs that results in silly things like bicycles being banned from one’s garage. This silliness of the PSG guidelines is such that a couple of us in new media now jokingly reference PSG as a HOA. I can hope that there’s an addendum or future rewrite of these policies to be more friendly to Pagan media while resolving the issues they’re looking to resolve with regards to their encounters with WOIO.

One thing I’d like to remind everyone is that the media treats censorship the same way the internet treats censorship: it treats it as damage and routes around it. If you’re going to keep traditional media out, they’ll just get a helicopter and fly over or show up with hidden cameras. If you’re going to try to keep Pagan new media out, you might piss off a podcaster from the world’s most influential Pagan podcast that is willing to make arrangements to route around the damage while writing a sarcastic letter to the organizers highlighting their bans on writing and learning.

In any case, censorship will bias the “reporter” and sway them towards exploring the more negative aspects of a story; because, obviously, they’re hiding something they don’t want everyone to know about — why else would there be censorship? The media is not inclined to be Pagan-friendly, the least we can do is openly accommodate them and ease the process of putting them in touch with designated spokespeople so we can continue to preserve the privacy of those in the closet. Impress the media and they’ll be inclined to pass along the good will. While Pagan media may respect privacy due to understanding the background behind the desire for such privacy, non-Pagans may confuse a desire for privacy with hiding one’s involvement with “evil” activities.

Shivian, who blessed us with his presence back in the most recent sexuality episode, has put out the Series Finale of Oh My Gods!

Read here: http://ohmygods.co.uk/strips/finale

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

This Stuff You Should Know podcast was very thought-provoking. They eventually talk about mirror neurons and how it could be the source of empathy and the appearance of these mirror neurons in Humans 5000-10000 years ago coincides with the rise of Human civilization. I recommend listening for a thorough explanation.

The SSYS podcast website is a bit of a piece of crap not allowing web browser-based listening of their show, so here’s an alternative download link for this episode:

http://m.friendfeed-media.com/7c6d42a3b0ba78682636ea066a6319abc73f837d

Those that don’t want to listen can read a synopsis at: http://blogs.howstuffworks.com/2010/04/23/podcast-goodness-pain-yours-others-and-everything-in-between/

I think Scurvy is on to something, we should treat people simply as being Human. Instead of thinking of people as Wiccan or Catholic, we should just try to think of others as Human and try to do good things for them. The good Catholic or the good Muslim probably doesn’t want to have sex with children nor fly planes into buildings — they just live trying to be good people, perhaps occasionally referring to scripture as a justification for doing so. Religious stereotypes fail us when trying to seek sane members of various religions. Then again, if you think deeply about stereotypes, the stereotypes we have arise out of the insane members of various religions rather than the sane ones.

There are insane people in every group. It is, admittedly, fun to openly mock insane people, like a Wiccan showing up to Pagan Pride Day in Hamilton, Ontario wearing Fairy Wings. However, these people are just used as stereotypes because they most easily stand out from the crowd (“mainstream”). You tend not to notice the Wiccan in a suit and tie downtown or the Baptist pastor in plain clothes at the local market. These are just people going about their mundane lives, doing normal things like working and shopping. In fact, most religious people seem to be normal. Sure, there’s always the fundies – but we need to remember not everyone is a fundie. There are a lot of good human beings out there that are deserving of being helped. So, go out there, help folks out, and let’s stop trying to classifying everyone we encounter into little classification jars and just treat them as human… even the Otherkin.