January Trip, Part 1: Podfest

So for a one week I’ve been travelling in the US and I’ve actually done quite a lot, so will document it on here over the next week (don’t worry I’ll come back to the Oneworld status schemes afterwards!)

Part of this trip I arranged by me to try out the better lounges at terminal 3 in Heathrow.

Unfortunately due to some delays getting to Heathrow I only had time to visit the Cathay Pacific lounge - but it was very good.

Foolishly, though I had forgotten one very hard learned lessons about conferences in a different continent. That is, give yourself at least 2-3 days to get used to the new timezone before going to a conference.

But this time I went straight into Podfest in Orlando, the day after arriving. This is one of the biggest Podcasting conferences in the world.

The event was run in a large hotel near Seaworld in Orlando.

The Renaissance at Seaworld is definitely a good venue - and Podfest run about 8 separate sessions at a time. While this was good from a choice point of view, the quality of the sessions varied strongly in quality from session to session.

I definitely learned a lot, but I did feel the conference lacked a certain cohesion because of the fact that there were so few common activities and sessions.

But my jetlag didn’t encourage me to go to any of the parties, so that didn’t help either.

It’s the first time I’ve been to Podfest. Would I recommend it? Yes, if you are interested in podcasting and based in the US, but I’m not sure it’s worth an international trip for.