I've been to a variety of unconference events over the last few years, but had never been to a PodCamp until this past Saturday. It was the third annual PodCamp London event, held at the Convergence Centre.

PodCamps started out with an emphasis on podcasting, but they have broadened their focus to include anything related to blogging, Tweeting, YouTubing, and other forms of social media -- and, in London's case anyway, just about anything else related to using the Web (topics discussed at sessions I attended included online voting and the use of browser add-ons for Gmail management).

This was one of those events that boosts your enthusiasm for a community and what we're achieving locally and the direction we're headed. Not everyone was from the London area, but most were. You got to talk to people here who are doing creative and cool things on the Web (or, in some cases, vapid and odious things, according to the Tweet stream -- I missed that session) -- some that you know, some that you've heard about, and others who were completely new to you. And you got to put some faces to some familiar Twitter handles.

I'm told the attendance was down from last year, but the people who were there were highly engaged -- both at the event and with the Web. This was almost entirely an audience of people who are actively using the Web to communicate ideas, get involved, and make connections.

My added enthusiasm may be an in-the-bubble response -- only some minuscule fraction of the people who make up this community were in attendance -- but you had to be encouraged to see that we can fill a good-sized room (with many more who would have fit in but couldn't be there) and run three concurrent sessions through the day, nearly all of which involved interesting ideas (there's a partial list here: http://wiki.unlondon.ca/index.php?title=PodCamp_Sessions -- some were added on the fly during the event).

I was also happy to see TechAlliance as the lead sponsor -- this is exactly the kind of initiative we need to get behind in this city, and we did. Kudos to my colleagues for making that call. Thumbs up to all the other sponsors who made the event so accessible. Anyone could come at essentially no cost, and it even included a free lunch (and buttons!).

It was also a great opportunity to show off the UnLab (also at the Convergence Centre) and some of the awesome things going on there -- including the newly-built podcasting studio. The always-popular MakerBot made a return appearance and the webcam-on-a-roaming-Roomba made what I think was its public debut.

Hats off to Bill Deys, Titus Ferguson (two of my partners on StartupCamp ... which will be coming back in the fall), Kevin Van Lierop, and everyone else who was involved in putting this together. This is definitely one to attend when it returns next year.