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When Titus and Bill started planning this years PodCamp I told them I was going to do some work for the website, it wasn’t going to be doing a complete redesign but more of an update to what was already an award winning site. I think they were a bit cautious, not wanting to ruin what we already had, both telling me not to worry about it as they were happy with it as is, and as time went on I think they thought I forgot about it; however today when you visit the PodCamp London Website you’ll see the update I promised!

Overall not much has changed, it was a lot of visual fine tuning and adjustments to make better use of the technologies available to us like some new CSS features (RGBA, Box-Shadow, Font-Face) to make the whole thing sing. But one of the biggest changes is the header. You may have seen me mention a few times on Twitter recently how I felt about illustrating trees, as I went back to the drawing board with the foliage and freshened up the whole vignette with a new backdrop of clouds, and buildings.

Speaking of the buildings; in the illustration for the first PodCamp I included the building the venue was in, the Station Park Hotel, which I thought was rather clever. But I didn’t consider that the venue might not always be at the same place, locking myself into changing the illustration if it ever did move. And this year we did just that, moving to the Research Park near the University of Western Ontario. So out went the hotel and in went the UWO tower.

Last but not least the logo got a bit of a touch up as well, optimizing it for printing, fine tuning the shapes, and resetting the typography. You likely won’t notice the difference, like much of the other changes on the site, but I think all the little and big changes made today take the website up a few notches.

If you have any questions, comments, or spot something wrong leave a comment bellow.

With preparations for PodCamp London 2010 (have you registered yet?) well on their way the organizing team wanted to start getting the community more involved during the weeks leading up to May 8th, 2010.

As a way to do this we have decided to set up a Community Notebook for PodCamp London 2010. Hosted over at http://pclo.tumblr.com is a simple blog set up with the intentions of having the community add their thoughts, ideas, images, links and anything else that they think relates to PodCamp London.

Although we know that images will be found on Flickr (#pclo10) and tweets on Twitter (#pclo10) the PodCamp London Team thought that having a Community Notebook would allow for the spotlight to be given on items that may otherwise get lost in all of the chatter and talk surrounding PodCamp London.

In order to contribute to the PodCamp London Community Notebook all you need to do is head over to http://pclo.tumblr.com and click on the CONTRIBUTE link (or email Kevin at vanlierop(dot)kevin(at)gmail.com, because thats what the CONTRIBUTE link does) and shortly after you will be given an open invite to contribute.

During the days leading up to May 8th, 2010 and during the weekend events we hope that http://pclo.tumblr.com will become a place where participants, observers and the community can come together to share with one another their thoughts, ideas and anything else PodCamp Related.

(note: the PodCamp London website will still be the primary and formal source for official #pclo10 information, but additional, supplementary info will be found at http://pclo.tumblr.com)

The organizing team would like to remind everyone of a few things.

Friday night is the unofficial kick off party. We are collaborating with the London chapter of the Young Professionals Group for a great night at Robinson Hall.

Registration starts at 8:30 am on Saturday morning at Station Park.

Sessions begin at 9:00 am and will be continuing throughout the day. I’d encourage you to check out the schedule and plan your day. Keep in mind that sessions will be added right up to and during the day!

The official after partytakes place at Windermere Manor at the University of Western Ontario Research Park. The party will begin at 7 pm and go until midnight. Buses will be leaving station park every 30 minutes starting at 7:15.

Keep an eye on the website over the next few days as we announce more exciting PodCamp London news.

Be sure to check out the Friday night launch party announcement.

Digital Business Cards is to be a collaborative project at PodCamp London, a project that will allow every attendee to leave their mark on the day.

Unlike traditional business cards that can get lost or destroyed, Digital Business Cards is an attempt to collect in one easy to access place the essential information from each participant at PodCamp London. Taking a short 90 seconds to answer 3 simple questions about yourself will allow for other PodCamp London participants to remember (1) Who You Are (2) What You Do, and (3) Why You Are At PodCamp London. 6 months down the road these Digital Business Cards can be an easy way to remember who you met and can allow you to make connections and collaborations for future projects.

These videos will be tagged (pclo09 & DBC09) and uploaded to Flickr throughout the day as a way to document everyone who was at the first PodCamp London. For those like myself who always loose physical business cards I figure this would be an easy way to keep track of everyone and put a face/voice to a name, as often a face or voice is much easier to associate with than a traditional business card.

On April 25th I plan on “getting the ball rolling” but I anticipate with the number of people attending I will most likely not be able to tackle this alone. With that said anyone, wanting to spend 90 seconds to “interview” another attendee is more than welcome to help in what I hope can be a collaboration throughout the day.

NOTE: I have yet to actually figure out how I will accomplish this feat on April 25th, most likely with my Macbook, but there is always the chance of me buying a Flip Video Camera before then.

Please blog about the event! Make a video about it! Tell your friends! As soon as the logo work is done, we’re planning on getting some cards made up with the event info on it, when they are done I’ll tell you how to contact me to get some and help hand them out. We are also working on other ways o encourage ou to help so stay tund for that.

For now if you do talk about PodCamp London, please tag you post/media with podcamplondon and pclo09 so we know. Don’t know how to tag, or what tagging is, maybe you should sign up so you can come and ask the question!