For the next two days, I will be here in Ontario, California for the Podcast and Portable Media Expo. It’s the 2nd annual, and considering the concept of podcasting has only been around for a couple of years, this has been the leading convention in the space since the beginning.

In the past, video distribution has always been a problem, especially with corporate and promotional video. Generally the video was put on tape, you needed a VCR and TV to watch the thing, so it was always a hassle. The videos tended to be used as a sales tool within the context of a presentation, and then left on a shelf somewhere to collect dust. Today, broadband internet is as common as the telephone in business settings, and increasingly common at home. You can watch the video from anywhere in the world with the tools you already have (a web browser). With iPods, now you can download that video and take it with you. Video can now be distributed effectively and at a much lower cost then tape or DVD. To take it a step further, video can be updated continually as a living document, creating your own “television station” on the web and building up a body of work that can be used again and again. What would have taken hundreds of thousands of dollars can now be done for a fraction of the cost.

I’m here to learn all I can about the methods of creation and distribution of video and audio content, delivered on the web. This is going to be a very large and exciting part of our business here at upNext in the coming years, so I want to be up-to-speed on how we can make this happen for our clients as well as our own projects.