Sometime last year Victor Cajiao of the Typical Mac User podcast, Cali Lewis of GeekBrief.tv and I started talking about organizing a cruise for podcasters and other new media creators. All three of us got too busy to move this idea forward but since I am leaving my day job in 2 weeks I want to make this idea a reality.

The Idea

The idea is to create a floating unconference on new media. I have had a chance to do a themed based tech cruise and found that it was much more enjoyable and interesting than a regular cruise vacation (bingo is not my game). We will spend the time in port exploring but when the ship is at sea we will have sessions of interest to the attendees on new media and social media.

I want to keep the cost low so I am targeting a 3-5 day cruise with no additional fee for the conference as long as you register through me. By registering together as a group, the ship should provide the necessary meeting space with no additional charge. Also we will sit as a group rotating people through different tables to make it easier to meet people.

What is an Unconference

Again to keep the costs low it is my intention to do this as an unconference where the people attending will decide what sessions we will have rather than paying for speakers to attend. I would like to provide a place where novices and experts alike can learn something.

Who are we?

I am the host of the Amateur Traveler, The Bible Study Podcast and a co-host on This Week in Travel podcast. All together I have published more than 400 podcast episodes (both audio and video).

I am working with Lorene Romero of the Home Based Travel podcast to pull this off because she is a cruise travel expert and knows how to coordinate this with the cruise company and how to help people book their travel, excursions, etc.

For full and fair disclosure Lorene and I will make money on the commissions to help pay for our time working on this.

Where should we go?

If you are seriously interested please comment on this post with your thoughts. Because of the way cruise travel gets booked and cabins get reserved I am planning this cruise in  June – July.

My first choice is a cruise from New York City June 28th 5:00pm – July 3rd 8:00am that cruises north to Halifax and Saint John with two days at sea.

Some alternatives we have identified: 3-4 day cruise from Florida to Bermuda, 5 night cruise from Galveston to Cancun, a repositioning cruise September 19 from Vancouver to Los Angeles, 5 nights from San Diego to the Mexican Riviera

How much will this cost?

It will depend on the cruise and how fancy you want your cabin to be but figure that the base cruise with all meals and with the tip but without drinks at the bar, soft drinks, and excursions to be $110 per person per day or less.  Also remember that internet on a cruise ship is expensive and slow.

Do you want sponsors?

I would be interested in sponsors. If you are interested in sponsorship I would love to find sponsors to:

• host a party the night before the cruise
• fund a group excursion
• subsidize the internet expenses of the attendees

Who is with me?

Comment on this post if you are interested. Also comment on the proposed schedule and destination. Based on what we learn we will reserve a block of cabins and publish the itinerary later this month.

I had the pleasure and privilege to be included as the second co-host in today’s episode of CNet’s Buzz Out Loud – Buzz Out Loud 877: Listener co-host show No. 1. I have long been a listener and sometimes a contributor of the show.

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Just for context, on the show I am known as Chris the Podcaster. There is a mention made on the show about how I will trick them into plugging the Amateur Traveler next time. I had contributed to the show a few times before mention was made of what podcast I actual made. A funny series of events lead to the first time they mentioned the Amateur Traveler on the show.

• I had met Tom, Jason and Molly at last years Podcast and New Media Expo. Specifically since Molly left a day earlier I had a chance to hang out with Tom and Jason and to introduce them to other podcasters. We also had lunch on the last day and I took them to the airport.
• Shortly thereafter I called into the show to make another contribution and completely biffed the call. You know how it is when you are trying to leave a voicemail sometimes. I called again and left a coherent message but I was quite sure they would mock me and play the first call which they did. I think after that they felt a little guilty so they mentioned what my show was.
• After they mentioned the show I sent this email:
  

  How sharper than a serpent’s tooth is to have a thankless technology podcaster triumvirate.

  I bet you think you are so smart. But as you sit there in your smug smugliness drinking your half-caf-mocha-latte-frapa-chino and thinking how you have powned me, know this.

  It was in fact I who did the powning.

  And now is the time to reveal my sinister plan.

  Clearly the Buzz Out Loud show has an enviably larger audience than the Amateur Traveler. So how to get the Amateur Traveler promoted on the air. Clearly this was against BOL policy so the plan must be intricate, ingenious, diabolical.

  1. Invent the character of “Chris the podcaster” and establish it with some familiar regular contributions to the show.
  2. Convince the CNET management to send the cast of Buzz Out Loud to the Podcast and New Media Episode. This was accomplished through a series of incriminating photos taken at last year’s company Christmas party. Eggnog? I think not.
  3. Send a brilliant piece of audio feedback the week of the show so that “Chris the podcaster” is fresh in everyone’s memory.
  4. Arrange for a speaker at the show to have an untimely accident so that Tom gets a speaking slot.
  5. Hand deliver fake schedules to almost all the conference attendants that mislabels Tom’s talk as “A Case for Cooperating with the RIAA… with root kits” so that most of the attendees are dissuaded from attending Tom’s talk.
  6. Offer “helpful” comments during the talk to establish a rapport.
  7. Casually use hypnosis so that Tom and Jason invite me to lunch and think it is their idea and that they are simply “hungry”.
  8. Cement the relationship with casual banter and a ride to the airport.
  9. Wait
  10. Submit a very badly done audio clip for the show that is too painfully funny not to use but will instill enough guilt that Tom will feel the need to plug the Amateur Traveler in return.

  Pownage

  I cannot believe you could fall for such a simple plot. And now the next time someone is craving the voice of a well spoken, erudite, prepared podcaster they will… oh wait! … oh no! Oh crap. Back to the drawing board.

  P.S. Thanks for the plug

Like so many others I have been meaning to write up my thoughts on last week’s New Media Expo. One thing that is interesting as i read about the conference on other people’s blogs is that there are three different conferences that are being described.

1. The first conference that I have read about is the hypothetical conference described by people who did not go this year. Let’s set that aside as an echo of shows past.
2. The second conference I read about is from people who attended for free so they only attended the keynotes and the expo floor. I did this at the first expo in 2005 because i registered too late to attend the conference sessions. There are various good reasons why people attend the conference in this fashion.

   Leo Laporte and to a lesser extent the Orange County podcasters spend the show broadcasting live from the expo floor.

   Some people attend the expo only for cost reasons because even though the conference is inexpensive for a conference, it is still too expensive for some. I appreciate that Tim and Emil Bourquin have added the free session to the expo floor for new podcasters who may not be able to afford the conference.

   Some people only attend the expo because they have been podcasting for years now and have less to learn from the conference or at least perceive they do.

3. The third conference is the five tracks of the conference itself. This is the third year that I have attended the conference sessions. There were quite a few podcasters I ran into who were just getting started or who were just hoping to get started. The conference sessions target the practical aspects of podcasting and are well suited for someone who are still learning. I attend the conference because even though I have been podcasting for 3 years I love to learn and am constantly taking notes or mailing myself emails of new ideas I should try. I also like to support the Bourquin brothers and there effort which is one of the reasons I pay to attend.

My thoughts on the New Media Expo:

Las Vegas

I was one of the people who was afraid that it would be easier for a smaller conference like the NME to get lost in such a huge city like Las Vegas. We have friends in Las vegas who have a guest house where I could have stayed for free, but I specifically stayed in the conference hotel (the Hilton) because I knew it would take more effort to connect with people. Vegas is expensive, when you are buying a Rueben sandwich and a coke for $16 it feels a bit like the exchange rate in London.

Parties

The cost of doing business in Vegas seemed to be a big reason why there were no hospitality suites or big free parties. For people like me who were already connected this was a bit of a barrier for meeting new people but I would think it was a greater barrier for the first time attendee who might not know anyone else. They could not just stand in the lobby of the Hilton as I did on a few occasions to see who I would run into.

Brian Ibbot’s Coverville 500 was a wonderful exception. The music was great, the acoustics much better than last year’s concert and everyone I talked to seemed to be having a particularly wonderful time.

Expo Floor

I have heard it reported that the show floor was smaller this year. It wasn’t, but it was not really any larger either. I have heard it said that the show floor had less interesting vendors but I would say that over the years there has been an improvement in the quality of the vendors. Remember 2-3 years ago the expo floor had no microphone manufacturers and more than a few people just selling iPod cases. People like Rob Walsh of Wizzard Media did tell me they thought the foot traffic was down from last year. I only spent a couple of hours on the expo floor so i would not claim to be able to judge.

The biggest crowds were gathered by the live broadcasts which are always fun and I do wish I had more time to sit down and enjoy them. I would love it if the expo could stay open for another hour after the end of the conferences but i can understand if those who have been on their feet all day by that time might not agree.

The most useless booth in my opinion was Podcast Tuneup which had a great booth but could not explain to me in 5 minutes just what they were offering or at least could not make me care. Others who had been podcasting even longer then I have walked away with a similar impression.

Keynotes

I attended the first two keynotes by Gary Vaynerchuk of Wine Library TV and George Wright, VP of Marketing for Will It Blend, Blendtec. I thought both gave engaging and interesting talks.

I won’t say I agreed with everything Vaynerchuk presented (I personally heavily edit my shows) and yes his language was a bit coarser than I tend to employ (I know one person who walked out) but I appreciated that he knows what he wants (to own the New York Jets). My DNA and his are very different in our personalities but his talk gave me plenty of food for thought on what are my strengths and how I can leverage them.

Wright not only blended a cell phone and a rake but more amazingly described a marketing program that actually makes money and multiplied his companies sales by 7x. I find myself repeating his company’s story to others wondering how I can apply some of his lessons. Anyone got a blender?

Conference Sessions

A number of the speakers were doing return engagements but my overall impression was that the material being offered at the sessions was better than in years past. I did not miss the panel sessions which there had been in previous years. I often found myself listening to someone I have heard before like Tim Street, Tom Merritt or Don MacAllister but as the show went on I started ignoring some talks that I knew would be good to listen to people I have never heard of. I was trying to decide between a session with Rob Walsh, Shel Holtz or Paul Colligan only to have Melanie Van Orden run by excited about a session I had dismissed with Andrew Lock of Help My Business Sucks!. Andrew, who is new to podcasting, described an approach for putting together a video podcast that again was thought provoking.

One of my favorite sessions was Tom Webster from Edison Research who went through some of their research on podcast listeners/viewers.

Podcast listeners/viewers:

• Are significantly more educated than the general public
• Spend more money than the general public
• Are much more likely to buy online than the general public
• listen to 7.5 hours of audio a week vs 6 for the general public
• Are less likely watch TV, listen to radio, play video games, click on banners

Podcasters

It was again a blast to hang out with other podcasters. I did not get to spend as much time with as many podcasters as i would have liked because of that whole pesky sleep thing. I was unable to attend Paul Colligan’s profitable podcasting meetup for the first time because of a conflict with the worship service hosted by Steve Webb. I still have not had a chance to meet Leo Laporte or Amber Mac which makes me sad. I missed all of those who have been there in previous years who did not make it but I also enjoyed encouraging new podcasters.

My Favorite Moments

Chris Marquart, Alex Lindsay and I were talking when someone came up and pointed at me and said “you were my first audio podcaster” and then at Chris and said “and you were my first video one”. He is now looking at creating a podcast about Philadelphia.

I talked to some podcasters who had never recorded a show last year but who now have done 200 episodes. I am afraid that some of the people who left with the impression that podcasting may be fading did not see Tom Webster’s statistics or get a chance to look in the eyes of some of the new members of the podcast community.

Thanks

My thanks again to Tim and Emil Bourquin. I know Tim has written that he is so frustrated with the conference business that he may quit. Whatever is ahead for the podcast brothers I appreciate the effort that has gone into each of the 4 conferences now called the New Media Expo.

This is not exactly new news but I stumbled across this report today. Earlier this year eMarketer had some positive news for podcasters as well as some advice for people who are spending their marketing budget.

• Podcasting downloading is growing

• People who listen to podcasts remember them and are influenced by them
• People who hear ads on podcasts are much much more likely to remember them than people who watch TV or streaming video

The bottom line here, in my opinion, is that for podcasts (like mine the Amateur Traveler) that are trying to monetize using sponsorship or advertising we are still in the early days. We are not seeing the beginning of the end for podcasting as some have predicted although we might soon be seeing the end of the beginning.

The companies [Podtrac and TNS] studied podcast advertising from February 2006 to March 2008 across multiple product categories and ad types. Unaided awareness for podcast ads was 68%, compared with 21% for streaming video and 10% for television.

“The data suggest audiences are paying close attention to show content and the embedded ads within them which greatly increased ad effectiveness in the studies,” said Doug Keith, president of Future Research Consulting. “The high unaided ad recall figures are no doubt the results of a less cluttered environment.”

“The studies showed a 73% increase in likelihood to use or buy an advertised product,” said Velvet Beard, vice president at Podtrac. “The studies showed that 69% of audience members have a more favorable view of in-show advertisers.”

Remember Podcasting? Listeners Do. – eMarketer

Tags: podcastingadvertising podtrac tns emarketer sponsorship new+media Amateur+Traveler

I was in Dallas on business last week and I have the good pleasure of getting together with Cali and Neal from GeekBrief.tv. Cali and Neal are getting ready to head out on a year long road trip (August) in an RV called the Big Trip. In addition to adding a new travel show for the Big Trip they have decided to shoot a new video show called “On Location” where they will interview bloggers and podcasters. As long as I was in town they shot the first episode of the show interviewing me about the Amateur Traveler podcast, my day job and whatever else the people in the chat room on ustream were asking about (besides “who’s the dude?”).

If you have ever been in a foreign country you have probably had a conversation similar to this:

“You are from California? I have a friend in California, maybe you know him!”

We always laugh when this happens because California has roughly 30 million residents and is larger in size than many countries (it is about the same size as Japan).

But if you had a conversation where you told someone you belonged to a particular church, graduated a specific high school in a given year, or had worked at a small company you would not be surprised to have the same conversation. What is the difference? The difference I would suggest is that a high school class is a community but California is not.

The point my seem obvious but I am surprised that this point of view does not always carry over to the internet. I was listening to the latest live call-in show for the excellent podcast For Immediate Release when I heard a caller express a comment that people should get involved in a community like Facebook. I am not trying to pick on Shel and Neville for their excellent show, but this comment mirrors an understanding of Facebook and similar sites that I have heard expressed on many occasions.

Facebook states in their press area that they currently have 70 million active users which is more than twice the population of California. Facebook and the other social networking sites host a great number of communities but are not communities. My daughter is a member of numerous communities on facebook like her college classmates and high school classmates. My son has many of the same high school friends but is attending a college all the way across the country. Their college communities don’t overlap. They are a similar demographic of course but demographics do not a community make. I also belong to facebook but my facebook friends tend to be podcasters and Amateur Traveler podcast listeners. I could try and befriend all my daughters classmates (creepy) but I would be treated as what I am, an outsider.

The distinction here is important. Many people confuse a community with a website or with a set of features. But communities are people. They are people who share something other than bandwidth. They share values, or experiences or interests. I have seen a number of people find no value in facebook or other social networking sites until they realize that they can use it to reconnect to their high school girlfriend or college roommate. They don’t find any value in it until they find community.

As I was recording and editing the Amateur Traveler podcast this week I took the opportunity to document the process using the new ScreenFlow application on the Mac. I skipped a bit as I spend 6-8 hours creating the show and the total video here is 15 minutes long but it should be long enough to give you an idea of the work flow.

The Amateur Traveler is a weekly audio travel podcast that is heavily edited (for polish usually not for content). This particular episode was Episode 131 – Walt Disney World. I use 4 main programs to create the show: Skype, CallRecorder, Levelator and GarageBand. The choice of GarageBand will clue you in that this show is created on a Mac, specifically on a MacBook Pro. This episode was a little more work, not just because I was trying to record it and ScreenFlow was unstable (with my experience I would say that ScreenFlow is Alpha quality software, it caused my whole computer to crash a couple of times) but because I had significant audio problems with Skype including one hang up.

part 1:

part 2:

equipment:

Plantronics DSP-400 Digitally-Enhanced USB Foldable Stereo Headset

Apple MacBook Pro

software:

Skype (free)

CallRecorder ($15)

Levelator (free)

GarageBand (free with Mac or $70)

Michael Geoghegan (who hosts the Official Disney podcast among other things) is stirring up the podcasting community again (like the good friend who comes over to your house for an intervention) with an article titled “Podcasting – It’s a Community Not an Industry“.

I agree that “this is the year that podcast advertising takes off” seems like the slogan every year. At each of the last 3 Podcast Expos there was a meetup group about monetizing podcasting. The first year the group was just Paul Colligan and I and it has grown over the last two years. My feelings back in 2005 was that the whole ad selling process was harder than people realized based on my experience during the dot com boom at an advertising supported company. My guess at the time, as I recall, was that it would take 5 years for podcast advertising to take off. I signed with PodShow in 2006 in part because I did not see anyone else out there that I thought would do a better job and I thought they would help me grow my audience. A lot of people thought a potential 3 year contract was way too long, but I was pretty sure that I would be done with the contract before things really took off in podcast advertising anyway.

Part of the problem is that the whole advertising industry needs to change and that is only slowly happening. The money going into television is not proportional with the value that advertisers are getting from that media. The agencies actually know this now and a number of companies know this as well now. GM just announced that half of their budget next year ($3B) will go to the Internet. I would love to say that all of that will be for podcasting but that would be naive. I think that GM’s decisions is the beginning of a good trend but also of a period of instability and upheaval within the advertising industry.

The other unrealistic expectation that Michael did not touch upon was that advertising will pay based on what influence do you have and who do you influence. I have known people who have quit their day job to podcast when they have 50 listeners. That might be a good plan if you have a podcast heard by 50 billionaires.

When I was selling advertising on my own i was getting a $50 CPM for advertising on the Amateur Traveler podcast. But people spend more money online on travel than any thing else and my audience is not just composed of travelers but they are the people their friends ask for advise about travel (one of my listeners in Istanbul told the story her friends keep asking how she knows so much about different destinations) so many podcasts should not expect rates at that level. So best case, even if I was able to sell out advertising every week, traffic of 80,000 downloads a month would pay me $4000 a month or $48000 a year. My wife and two kids are all in private college so that would not be quit your day job numbers for me. And as Michael points out, podcast are generally not selling out ad inventory every week.

So is podcasting done? I don’t think so. Is it taking off slower than most people expected? Certainly. Will some companies go through hard times? I think so (see the rumor that PodShow is doing layoffs). But I also see some positive signs.

• The audience for podcasting is growing. Dollars will eventually follow the eyes and ears.
• Well known brands are starting to get more regular advertising by big brands, at least in my sector of podcasting which is travel. If advertising comes to podcasting on a regular basis we should expect it to come first to podcasts from old media. I expect that advertisers will start with the people in their rolodex until their is more demand than supply and then they will branch out to the larger podcasts and then they will look at aggregation of smaller podcasts. This is what I expected in 2005 and what I still expect in 2008. Of course, I also still expect that 2010 is the year podcast advertising will come together.

My plan is continues to continue to grown my audience and keep podcasting… for now at least. My plan is not to quit my day job… for now at least.

It occurs to me upon listening to a number of podcasts (I subscribe to around 100 podcasts) that many podcasters dabble with failure but never really fully embrace it. It seems like even the worst podcast has something that someone somewhere would value. But what, I wondered, if we combined the worst part of the worst podcasts. What would such a podcast sound like? Why would anyone even think like this? That I cannot answer but I can picture some practical applications if one really could devise the Titanic of podcasting (although even the Titanic had survivors). Say you wanted to quick podcasting and you did not want to ever have anyone ask you to return to it. This is the podcast that you would put out as your last episode that would cause the thought of you podfading to cause people to send you flowers and chocolates. So without further excuses, here is the recipe, in my opinion, for the world’s worst podcast.

Key Goals

• Practical – Don’t be
• Entertaining – Forget it
• Content – Avoid it

Sound Quality

Sure you could use a bad microphone, a noisy conference call service and the tried and true method of mumbling, but we these may just produce emails about your how your sound quality stinks. I used to record interviews on the same track as my guest and channel Dark Vader as I did heavy breathing over my guest talking and my show still grew. So to really fail we need to push the envelope here.

• Uneven Sound Levels – One particularly practical suggestion is to have an interview show with the two channels at vastly different sound levels. I don’t mean that one of the guests is hard to hear, I mean that even the dogs in the neighborhood are not sure that sound is coming from their iPods. Then you want that speaker to have long and presumably interesting monologs so that the user is tempted to turn the volume up, way up, “this one’s got eleven” up. Then when you have lulled them into thinking that this is the appropriate volume setting slam them with the loudest talker. Some shows (think Today in Podcasting) have actually reached sound differentials that can cause your ears to bleed. This is our goal.
• Clipping – A bad microphone is unimaginative, You can achieve much more annoying sound by simply setting your sound levels high enough that every unexpected laugh, sneeze or bilabial fricative (and we are going to want to do a lot of this) will clip in painful eye crossing ways.
• Drop Out – Don’t just make the sound quality bad. Make it bad at the worst possible time. “The secret to a six figure income is mumble pop squeak pop mumble”. “Wow Bob that’s incredibly simple. Anyone could do that!”

Pre-roll Ad

Clearly if we want to cause people to unsubscribe in droves we need to start with a preroll ad. We need to start with a long pre-roll ad. Ideally this ad needs to be totally inappropriate and offensive to the audience. We are looking for something here that makes the PodShow “Suck Less” campaign (one minute long) to become a fond memory. Think about the audience for your show. Annoying is easy but we are looking for rage or disgust. Have a Rock and Roll show? Consider a fund raising ad for the “George W. Bush Presidential Library”. Have a serious business podcast? Sure you could go with a Viagra Ad but people have been desensitized to such fare. Find words the repel like “bowel”, “sphincter” and “welfare state”.

Schedule

Of course you could skip a show or two and then spend the first 5-10 minutes of the next show apologizing or explaining just why your life is so busy, but who hasn’t done that. Try releasing two shows within an hour and then talk about the first show a lot in the second show since many users have iTunes and have it set to only download the latest show… then skip 4 weeks.

Intro

Your intro is very important. You have the listeners attention. Now is the time you want to lose it. Don’t be in any particular hurry to finish the intro. I know a show that extended the intro of their show, the part that was pretty much the same from show to show, to fourteen minutes. Fourteen minutes before they got to any real content. Can you do fifteen minutes? Tell them your email address, your blog address, what software you use to run your podcast, what cereal you had for breakfast and why, throw in an ad for “Go to My PC”. Don’t be entertaining. If you can’t help being entertaining then try the same jokes week after week. Script this portion of the show and try and not say this with any sort of personality.

Show Length

If your show is too short then you are not adding enough pain. Do people listen to your show at 30 minutes? Double it. Are this still listening at an hour? Double it. Don’t add more content, just add more time. Say things. Say them over again. Repeat them a third time. Insult your listener’s intelligence. When you are absolutely positively sure that even their toddler riding in the back seat of the mini van must understand your point by now, then dumb it down and say it again. Then repeat it again next week. Assume every email compaining about your show length is a complaint that you are not explaining sufficiently and explain it again. Don’t put in chapters in an iTunes enhanced version. That would save people’s time. Don’t just waste people’s time, waste lots of it.

Humor

Humor should be avoided at all costs. If you find this impossible, only use inside jokes that you never explain, preferably that defy definition. Some people fail to be truly awful because they try and make the humor offensive. This is a trap you should avoid. Never assume that there is a joke too low to stoop for. Someone out there likes that kind of humor. Some try and make the humor in their show impenetrable. That is also a trap. Someone will understand your joke about Attaturk or Micronesia. So again your best bet here is avoid humor or just beat the same shtick again and again.

Edit

Never never edit your show. Distain it. Insist that podcasts are not the same as main stream media. Shuffle your notes, take a bathroom break, stutter, Editing a typical half hour interview and you could easily remove 5 minutes of useless content, don’t.

Show Ending

If you have done your job correctly it won’t matter how you end your show. You could give away a free car to the first person who sends you an email and still keep the car.

It seems over the last few years main stream media has increasingly taken the position that main stream media is “professional” and that bloggers and podcasters are “amateurs”. When did “amateur” become a dirty word? I am an amateur, after all I have a podcast that proudly proclaims myself the “Amateur Traveler“. But what’s so bad about being an amateur?

The word “amateur” does not mean a beginner or someone who is bad at doing something, or at least it did not originally mean this. An amateur was someone who did something for the “love of it”. A century ago it was the professional who was under a cloud of suspicion as someone with impure motives.

Lets take the example of Jim Thorpe, sometimes called the “greatest athlete of all times”:

At the tender age of 24, Thorpe sailed with the American Olympic team to Antwerp, Belgium for the 1912 Olympic Games. Remarkably, he trained aboard the ship on the journey across sea. He blew away the competition in both the pentathlon and the decathlon and set records that would stand for decades. King Gustav V presented Thorpe with his gold medals for both accomplishments. As stated in Bob Berontas’ “Jim Thorpe, Sac and Fox Athlete”: “Before Thorpe could walk away, the king grabbed his hand and uttered the senta3ence that was to follow for the rest of his life. ‘Sir,’ he declared, ‘you are the greatest athlete in the world,’ Thope, never a man to stand on ceremony, answered simple and honestly, ‘Thanks King.’”

Thorpe’s glorious Olympic wins were jeopardized in 1913 when it came out that he played two semi-professional seasons of baseball. The Olympics Committee had strict rules about Olympians receiving monetary compensation for participating in professional athletics. Thorpe, who stated he played for the love of the game and not the money, was put under the microscope. Ultimately, it was decided that his baseball experience adversely affected his amateur status in the track and field events. His name was removed from the record books and his gold medals were taken away.

When Scientific American used to run a column called the Amateur Scientist from (1958 to 1978) they were not trying to encourage stupid people to build proton accelerators in their basements (Accelerator, proton. how to construct, 1971 Aug, pg 106). They were instead harkening back to the days of the renaissance man (or woman). It used to be encouraged for people to dabble in science out of a genuine interest without regard to what they did for a living. And why not, the most influential theory of the 20th century was proposed by an amateur scientist who worked as a patent clerk.

Mark Spitz was an amateur athlete as were all Olympic athletes of his day. One could be an amateur and still be the best. Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens are professional athletes. Jose Conseco was a professional athlete so a professional may not show professionalism any more than an amateur needs to be amateurish.

It is not my intention to try and swing the pendulum back to the days of Jim Thorpe or the early days of the internet when any hint of commercialism was seen as wrong. Rather we should see that whether or not a person is paid for their endeavors is not the sole measure of the value of their work. Edward R. Murrow was a professional journalist, but so was William Randolph “You furnish the pictures and I’ll furnish the war” Hearst. A professional journalist can make making money their sole goal or they can aim somewhat higher.

So let’s not, as if we could, strive for an internet void of commercial interests but instead evaluate work based on value and quality remembering that the Ark was built by an amateur, the Titanic was built by professionals.