10 p.m.: Crowd Sourcing / Belmont /Mur Lafferty(M), JC Hutchins, Chris Lester

Turning Fans into Minions!

JC Hutchins, 7th Son Trilogy, got two book deals from St. Martins Press for 2009 releaase. Chris Lester, Metamorph City. Mur of ... Murverse (Playing for Keeps, Geek Fu, Heaven, etc).

They can't do it all, so they need help. JC Hutchins -- there's more social tools now; started in 2006, only really MySpace for promoting self. There were podcast directories, and asked listeners to promote the site.

Chris used crowd sourcing before he launched site. Asked people to be voices, worked networking angle of podcasting community, talked to friends for voice actors, tried to pull in as many people as possible, which helps distinguish the group.

JC Hutchins returns to crowd-sourcing for 7S Oblivion by soliciting fan creations, including audio, video and written work.

Chris set up a mailing list of people who want to volunteer, he then sends e-mail to list asking for specific things he needs (e.g. secretary). Chadwick Paddington says he wants forums, so he went out and bought TheCurse.org, setting up fan site for Metamorph City.

Mur created Tales of the Third Wave as an outcropping of Playing for Keeps. Kris Johnson was first to contributed.

2 p.m.: Video Podcasting 101 / Belmont / Working with the basics: Earl Newton(M), Brand Gambin, Tee Morris, Chris Condayan, Jason Adams, Jon Stallard

Video Podcasting 101 featured Earl Newton (Video Podcasting for Dummies) as the moderator (strangerthings.tv), Chris Condayan, (MicroWorld.org), Brand Gambin (CallsForCthulhu.com, Tee Morris (teemorris.com/), Jason Adams (Jason Adams, Jon Stallard (geekradiodaily.com).

Tee Morris & Earl Newton -- when you need the videos, get into video podcasting. But it's harder -- you have to worry about makeup, visuals, lighting. Something else is to consider is enhanced podcast with still images, links, etc. Good thing, but some people still demand standard radio. So if you do enhanced you're going to need to manage two feeds: enhanced and standard.

1 p.m. Live! Takeover! (Audio Drama) / Belmont / Mur Lafferty(M), Jason Adams, JR Blackwell, Christiana Ellis, JC Hutchins, John Cmar, Laura Burns

Mur Lafferty and Jason Adams began The Take Over as a video project at LuLu, but then they lost their jobs and the project went into limbo. Now it's back as an audio drama, and the first two episodes debuted at Balticon42.

The live show began with a rousing singing of Re: Your Brains led by J.R. Blackwell, then launched into the meat of the first episode, in which ZombInc -- a company in which upper level management are all zombies -- is taking over a web development company. It'll be a full-blown, 10-episode audio drama available in June. Check it out at http://zombinc.net/ or MurVerse. The live version should should be online at some point.

After staying up too late playing Savage Worlds (and then, admittedly, a little Grand Theft Auto) I managed to haul my ass out of bed and hit the roud, finally arriving at Balticon around 10:30. Now I'm hanging out in the lobby with Doug Rapsome, Mur Lafferty, Jared Axelrod, and a bunch of other folks sucking down the free wirelness as they work on their scripts for the Live! Takeover! zombie business workers event at 1 p.m.

It's a good day to be a geek.